future for FBSD on alpha

[Dieter]

> I wonder how many people run FBSD on alpha.
> According to bsdstats.org very few - less than 5 boxes.
> There must be more.

There are lots of BSD machines that bsdstats.org doesn't
know about.

> Is there a way to find out how many people are on this list?
> Is it a good indicator?

Probably the best indicator I can think of.  Some people on
the list will be running multiple machines, others will be
just reading the list but not running any machines.  For
example, I'm running NetBSD on my Alphas.

> I'm trying to find out if there are people on this list, who,
> like myself, are keen to see FBSD supported on alpha
> for say 1-3 more years. If yes, we might be able to lobby
> ports maintainers not to drop support for alpha ports.

I might be interested in switching from Net to Free, but if
support is going away that would be a bad idea.  1-3 years
isn't very long.  This is part of a larger problem.  NetBSD
is also dropping support for arches.  People don't want to
support things like uucp or usenet any more.  Anything more
than 5 nanoseconds old just isn't considered cool.  Even if
the replacements are far worse, which is often the case.
What are we supposed to do with older boxes?  Some applications
that don't require the latest fast hardware, like firewalls,
still require support and security fixes.  Throwing machines
into the landfill isn't very green.

Sometimes a developer will complain that maintaining support
for something takes too much time, but will then spend large
amounts of time removing support.  Hmmmmm...