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

Hi Tomasz [*] people ... both of You :)

After more then 20 years of using FreeBSD I have seen behaviors that I like and the ones that I do not like.

I often complain about behaviors that I do not like ... but I am not sure that it changes much.

There was time that I believed that I could change things ... or at least people ... to the better ... I am not sure I believe that anymore.

Looking at the OS landscape I still feel the same.

I love AMIGA Workbench and its history ... but its only a history.

Windows is not for me.

The macOS is not for me (sometimes its less shit then Windows ...).

Linux is not for me - unless you want to pay me some really decent coins to cope with it at work.

That leaves me with FreeBSD/NetBSD/Illumos.

OpenBSD ... as much as I like their attitude ... is just 'NO OS' for me. No ZFS. No Wine. No Bhyve. No Jails.

With NetBSD its lack of Wine on at least FreeBSD level and no Jails ... and not ZFS Boot Environments.

With Illumos its lack of most packages FreeBSD has, I can replace Jails with Zones ... but Wine is out of business ... and hardware support would not be the same either.

That leaves me with FreeBSD as UNIX that - and I mean that - **sucks the least**.

Maybe one day I will find a better UNIX ... but it is not this day.

I am in a comfortable position that no one can 'ban' me ... or 'remove' my commit 'bit' (because I do not have one). One may say that I am bulletproof ... but on the other hand I may just watch how FreeBSD ecosystem evolves and I can praise it or complain about it. Its still a lot of freedom ... but not much 'influence' besides some (pointless?) social media stuff.

What I mean to say here ... endure mate.

If current 'Core Team' is not up to the task - and I do not know all the details and did not tracked that case in any way - lets elect better 'Core Team' next time.

If its not possible there is always a place for LibreBSD fork ... just like HardenedBSD fork have happened.

Same as XLibre fork happened as incompetence and intentional harm of Xorg/X11 state from some Red Hat people and from some freedesktop.org people ...

I hope that LibreBSD would not be necessary as I still miss Matt work that wanted to go his own way with DragonflyBSD ...



[*] I know Edward that Tomasz is only your 2nd name - but still.



Regards,
vermaden




>> On Tue, Dec 30, 2025 at 9:59 AM Edward Tomasz Napierała wrote:
>> 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.
>> (..)
> 
> Hey there Tomasz, please stay with the project, focus on the code,
> let yourself and the project grow, do not get distracted.
> 
> We are all tired of the politics, fake divisions, ideologies, and
> omnipresent dramas. It has impacted us all more or less one way or
> another in the real world everyday life I know. We all can have
> different personal opinions on various things, but we should stick
> together and focus on the technical side of our technical project, it
> was possible many years ago, why not now? What happened to good
> old Meritocracy and Friendship?
> 
> Any internally / externally induced drama / divisions should be
> prevented and chased away as this will only waken us all.. looks
> like this is the goal.
> 
> For many people FreeBSD is the ultimate safe harbor that we must
> protect. United and focused we are strong. Please stay focused and
> strong folks!
> 
> Much Love, Peace, Unity.. and Happy New Year folks!! :-)
> Tomek
> 
> --
> CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info