Bazaaring the cathedral (Lowering the Barrier to Entry)

[Hans Petter Selasky]

On 04/01/15 18:55, Eitan Adler wrote:
> One of the key reasons for the lack of people is the high barrier of
> entry to joining the FreeBSD project.  While every modern project uses
> git (usually hosted on github), FreeBSD uses self-hosted subversion.
> The use of git goes beyond just the choice of version control.  It
> allows for workflows that FreeBSD can't even dream of.  The linux
> kernel has no concept of a committer.  Instead anyone can clone the
> git tree, build a kernel, and call themselves a Linux distribution.

Hi Eitan,

Before you speak so nicely about how Linux is doing things, have you 
ever tried to submit a patch to Linux yourself? I have a bunch of 
candidates in 
/usr/ports/multimedia/webcamd/work/webcamd-3.18.0.1/patches (Use this 
latest tarball: 
http://home.selasky.org:8192/distfiles/webcamd-4.0.0.2.tar.bz2) which 
you can start with as a fun experiment ! And then write back when your 
done. I'm starting counting right now.

I have ported a lot of Linux USB drivers to userspace in FreeBSD through 
the webcamd project, and quite frequently I need to make patches to make 
the code compile which really should be up-streamed. Sometimes I also 
find real bugs. Sending the patch to Linux-USB is easy. Getting 
attention to the patch is hard. Frequent roadblocks in the Linux-USB:
  - patch must be styled correctly
  - patch must be send using a certain e-mail program
  - patch must apply cleanly to the Linux GIT
  - patch must have a signed-off-by before it can be committed

Speaking about USB I don't want FreeBSD-USB to become what Linux-USB is. 
There are so many mails flowing into Linux-USB every day that no-one is 
caring to read it all. Getting a decent reply from someone can take 
months, because of the huge amount of e-mails.

--HPS