ARRRRGH! Guys, who's breaking -STABLE's GMIRROR code?!

[Julian H. Stacey]

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bj=F6rn_K=F6nig?= wrote:
> Jamie Bowden schrieb:
> > On 9/9/06, Mark Andrews <Mark_Andrews at isc.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> > Yeah, -STABLE is what you should run if you want stable code, right?
> >>         No. STABLE means STABLE API.
> >>         If you want stable code you run releases.  Between releases
> >>         stable can become unstable.  Think of stable as permanent
> >>         BETA code.  Changes have passed the first level of testing
> >>         in current which is permanent ALPHA code.
> > No, this is what it means now. [...]
> Why do you say "No" if you mean "Yes, but in former times ..."?

Stable is a misnomer that harms FreeBSD somewhat.  A promoter of
FreeBSD I know has long encouraged people to upgrade from release
to stable. Some don't & won't realise Stable is Not necessarily
Stable, & may get burnt.  Much of the world speaks English only as
a 2nd language.  They won't benefit from the double trouble of
foreign + weird BSD geek speak:  "Stable isn't Stable ?  Yes or No !"
"It's stable, but it's OK to crash ?  - I'll go Linux !"

Imagine a boat labelled Stable: It sinks. The designers claim:
"Tough! We left the Application Interface  (routes to bars & toilets)
stable, but changed other stuff.   Hey ! Stable never meant Stable !

It'd be some work to eradicate the misnomer, but the name's perhaps 
less entrenched than one might guess, eg:
	ftp ftp.freebsd.org
	cd /pub/FreeBSD
	dir
	lrwxr-xr-x   1 ftpuser  ftpusers        19 Mar 24 14:58 FreeBSD-stable -> branches/4.0-stable
	cd  FreeBSD-stable
	550 No such directory.
-- 
Julian Stacey.  BSD Unix C Net Consultancy, Munich/Muenchen  http://berklix.com
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