Mono and it's future on FreeBSD

[Tom McLaughlin]

[cross-posted to ports at FreeBSD.org and bsd-sharp-list at forge.novell.com]

Hi all,

For the last 2 years I've been maintaining Mono and it's consumers on
FreeBSD and running the BSD# project
<http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:FreeBSD>.  Mono has come a long way in
the past two years with the help of a few people but it still has
further to go to work as well as it does on Novell's targeted platforms.
With that said, I've realized that it is time for me to step aside from
maintaining Mono and running BSD#.  A few months ago I realized I was
not enjoying my FreeBSD work at all.  That made me come to the
conclusion that it's time for me to pursue other FreeBSD work.  My life
has changed in the past two years.  The biggest change is a new job.  I
have less free time and I like spending the free time I have working on
projects related to what I find interesting at work.  I've also
accumulated a number of ideas over the past few years for FreeBSD which
I want to pursue.  Maintaining Mono and trying to run BSD# just doesn't
fit into my life very well anymore.

Many people familiar with Mono know how I got this job.  As a completely
novice programmer I just wanted to learn C#.  Soon after I did a port or
two the last Mono maintainer left.  At that point I decided to keep Mono
up to date in the interim until someone else wanted the job.  (Can 2
years be called interim?)  This is why I started BSD# instead of
maintaining the ports on my own.  Mono's issues on FreeBSD have long
been over my head.  It needs someone who will actually port it not just
keep it up to date.  I used to keep a list of known issues that could be
easily reproduced with certain applications.  Not having someone to look
at the cause of and fix these issues I eventually gave up.  This has
stalled a few applications from making their way into the FreeBSD tree.

I'm not dropping Mono, all the C# ports, and BSD# right now.  In fact, I
was at Novell's Mono conference the past two days.  I want to ensure a
smooth transition and avoid dropping all the ports maintained by
bsd-sharp-list at forge.novell.com to ports at .  I don't think it's fair to
users for me to drop all this without sufficient warning.  1.2 comes out
in the next few weeks and 2.0 is expected by the end of 2007.  I plan on
seeing 1.2 and a few of the maintenance releases make their way into
FreeBSD tree.  With 1.2 will come enabled amd64 support and better
stability.  (amd64 support has actually worked for a while but there
hasn't been an amd64 tinderbox available until recently.)  But as 2.0
ramps up I'd like to hand the reigns over to someone else more
interested and more capable of maintaining it.

For anyone interested in Mono on FreeBSD, please, join the BSD# mailing
list.  You can find more information about it on the BSD# homepage
listed in my sig.  I'm also on Freenode's #BSD-Sharp from 20:00 EDT to
23:00 EDT most evenings after work.  Occasionally I'm available on there
during the day while at work too.  There's always something for an
interested and motivated party to do.  We could use more C# application
ports.  There's also a lingering crash that happens on occasion when
people attempt to build Mono which typically goes away on the next
try.  

Realistically, I plan on stepping down in the next three months or so
but I will hang around longer if it looks like someone wants the
responsibility for everything.  I'll always be around to wrangle update
PRs as well.

Mono was fun for some time but it's just come time for me to move on.

tom

-- 
| tmclaugh at sdf.lonestar.org             tmclaugh at FreeBSD.org |
| FreeBSD                                   http://www.FreeBSD.org |
| BSD#                    http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:FreeBSD |
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