Stale NTP in FreeBSD

[David Magda]

On Oct 28, 2013, at 00:20, John Marshall <john.marshall at riverwillow.com.au> wrote:

> The version of ntp in FreeBSD has been 'legacy' since December 2009
> (almost 4 years ago).  Is there a technical reason why we are stuck at
> 4.2.4 or is it simply lack of volunteer resources?  Perhaps ntp (and
> some of the other imported software in the base) is just not on
> anybody's RADAR?  I know I can "use the port" if I want a current
> version of ntp, but I can't see the point of shipping superseded stuff
> in the base without good reason.

Given the lack of response, it looks like new features and new imports may be better directed at freebsd-current at .

For your specific question: FreeBSD is a mostly-volunteer project, with some corporate sponsorship. It looks like no one is willing to volunteer their time on a new version of NTP, and no company is willing to pay someone to look into it.

Going to the NTP software, the most recent version that is called "production" is 4.2.6p5 from 2011-12-24, which isn't that much newer than what's currently there:

	http://www.ntp.org/downloads.html
	http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Main/SoftwareDownloads

As it stands, the last person to really touch the NTP code in FreeBSD is roberto@, and that was three years ago:

	http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/contrib/ntp/
	http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/vendor/ntp/

Unless you're willing to submit patches, he may be your best starting point to see if he's willing to pick up the torch again.

-- 
David Magda