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

I will chime in here agreeing with Enjie's reply in spades; same here. 2026 will be 2025 on steroids. Personally, it ain't finished yet.



-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy@FreeBSD.org>  Web:  https://FreeBSD.org
NTP:            <cy@nwtime.org>    Web:  https://nwtime.org
                                                    e^(i*pi)+1=0

Pardon the typos. Tiny keyboard in use.

On January 1, 2026 7:17:52 p.m. PST, "Enji Cooper (yaneurabeya)" <yaneurabeya@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 1, 2026, at 10:05 AM, Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> -> I don't have all the facts and opinions from both sides on the topic of plausible misconduct of core@ >but i would like to comment on another related topic to this discussion which is what is hurting the >project in my opinion
>> 
>> >in my opinion the project is affected by paralysis due to lack of contributors for a lack of better words, >often times i see many useful patches sitting in review waiting to be approved or critical bugs in >several important ports not being patched or some new ports just sitting for years
>> 
>> >and the sad part is i have no idea how to properly help with this even though i want to
>> 
>> >some might think that i can help with reviewing patches or patching those bugs sitting there or those >ports waiting to be approved but the reality is i don't have the skills for that and even if i did i >wouldn't be making much of a big impact by myself alone
>> 
>> >and the sadder part is instead of seeing new contributors joining from time to time, i see many >veteran contributors leaving from time to time and i have no clear idea as to why
>> 
>> 
>> I agree and I want to ask if the AI can help the relatively small numbers of developers to improve their work of patching new bugs. I don't mean that AI should do all the work,but I suspect that if it is used to automatize the procedures,keeping intact the brain of the developers to express their creativity,could this be acceptable as a measure to mitigate the lack of contributors,if it is intended as a temporary measure,I mean...not definitive… 
>
>(I can’t speak for everyone; just for my self)
>(Not discussing personal/specific things in public; just vague generalizations)
>
>Hi Mario,
>
>I don’t know about you, but personally 2025 was a royal shit show for me from start to finish with all of the personal stuff that occurred in my life.
>
>It came in multiple waves:
>- Loss of a loved one.
>- Climate change induced stress.
>	- The fire season was particularly bad where I was in 2025.
>- Social and economic upheaval and stress.
>- The dull hum (like with fluorescent lights) associated with my corporate job.
>- General uncertainty over the future.
>
>Aka “Life”.
>
>While this doesn’t explain away everything, it might help explain some of my ability to focus, concentrate, and respond to others over the past several years (realistically since 2019~2020), but especially last year. This is part of the reason why I get snippy and overly direct sometimes over email, PRs, etc: it’s me showing my frustration over not being able to focus my time and efforts on something that I care about and help others because my time and mental faculties are getting stolen by other things in my day-to-day “life”.
>
>I don’t know everyone’s situation in the project, but there's a lot of other folks were having problems in my part of the world; I doubt it’s going to get better in the near term. This chaos/uncertainty will likely affect a large number of developers until this situation/system achieves homeostasis or resolves itself (my bet is more on the former than the latter).
>
>“AI" slop/enshittification has only increased the amount of shit being sprayed everyone’s way, and is only serving to distract and divide us from things that matter. Just like [anti]social media.
>
>Take care,
>-Enji (ngie@)
>
>PS I find the current iterations of applied machine learning to be subpar and a net-negative on the whole for society based on social commentary, and my personal interactions with LLMs and what they produce. I am hopeful in whatever comes out of this “AI” mess, but the bulk majority of what I’ve seen produced by “AI” today is unusable to me for a variety of reasons. I use “AI" more as a shitty search engine these days since general purpose search engines have become such dumpster fires.