Re: "Why I am retiring from contributing to FreeBSD"

W dniu 30.12.2025 o 09:59, Edward Tomasz Napierała pisze:
> Hi, I’m trasz@; over past two decades I wrote the iSCSI stack,
> and autofs(4), and rctl(8), and ZFS ACLs, and reroot, and some other
> bits, working for FreeBSD Foundation and now University of Cambridge.
> Currently I’m in a weird situation where FreeBSD core team (likely)
> won’t kick me out until I release the email archive documenting their
> mishandling of a certain incident, including them lying to my face
> to discourage me from speaking up about it.
>
> Or, they could kick me out for protesting against genocide in a way
> that hurt core team member’s income streams.  Or because a YouTuber
> they like asked them to.  We’ll know the official excuse once it
> happens :)
>
> This email is about something else though.  Normally this would barely
> raise any eyebrows, but given current circumstances it deserves closer
> look: seems like core@ scared away another long time contributor:
>
> https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=50102.0
>
> The background - record of someone’s hurt feelings - can be found at:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20250616201452/https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=280701
>
> Note that I don’t know the situation and so I’m not definitely claiming
> core is in the wrong here - just that it would be naive to blindly trust
> they are still doing the right thing, given recent history.
>
> The problem, as I see it, is that core@ has learned, consciously or not,
> that they can just ignore the developer community altogether.  They don’t
> even bother answering emails at this point.
>
> Another committer declared that “the proper way is to elect better core
> team next time”.  And so there is this fundamental problem that we grew
> attached to larping democracy with core elections.  Real democracy depends
> on being able to criticise the elected team, which in FreeBSD is not
> currently allowed; any discussion on this topic gets immediately squashed.
> Democracy also requires transparency, which is something that we used
> to have, at least betwen core and developers, until the current core team
> “forgot about it”.  This whole mechanism is fundamentally broken, yet
> we refuse to acknowledge that and instead continue the cargo cult.
>
> So, go read the links above, then ask core@ what happened there.
> Sorry I have to do it like this in public, but my previous, more private,
> attempts have all been ignored.
>
>
Hi,

that would be a very sad story if you were to really leave Edward. 
Anyway, thanks for your contributions on behalf of the FreeBSD user 
base. We all appreciate your work, and it would definitely be a loss for 
the community. But well, everyone can be replaced and each project can 
also stagnate or progress backwards in some aspects...

Regarding FreeBSD, after 30 years of leveraging these bytes for teaching 
and running a few Internet services, my impression is that the project 
has increasingly become more and more business-driven. A relatively 
small number of companies appear to guide much of the OS development, 
while the Foundation at times works to keep the project viable and to 
engage the broader community. So in the meantime, while a few companies 
pull and push the cart of OS development, and the Foundation from time 
to time tries to move the cart back on track and attract new people, the 
Janitor has retired...

We are not in a position to judge the core@ team. Moreover, we have no 
direct insight. But I personally do sympathize with the challenges they 
face in navigating internal tensions within the project. Ideally, they 
could focus on the technical direction of FreeBSD - but are they allowed 
to, and able to do so in practice? And who would write the code? Who 
would sponsor this work?
Some time ago, on another list, I asked who is really in charge. The 
answer I received was: the people actually doing the work. I hope this 
is, or can remain, true and it might be beneficial to have a small group 
of programmers clearly responsible for project management, rather than 
having technical leadership consumed by non-technical matters. A 
secretary or spokesperson could be hired for that.

I sincerely hope the situation can still be resolved, and perhaps even 
improved.

Cheers,

Marek Zarychta