duration of the ports freeze

[David Southwell]

On Saturday 01 December 2007 15:05:39 Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
> It's nothing like global warming.  Global warming is an ill understood
> problem, with various estimates ranging from basically not existing to
> it's too late and we are all doomed anyway, and the potential
> consequences of not fixing it if it is a problem are widespread and
> catastrophic.
>
> Issues with the ports freeze are very well understood, with consequences
> of getting it wrong either way being fairly inconsequential, and always
> something that can be revisited without the whole world going down the
> tubes.  The very worst that can happen is that a marginally used operating
> system will go down the tubes, and someone will fork the code long before
> that happens.
>
> To compare "ports freeze" to "global warming" is hyperbole in the extreme.

I am not comparing a ports freeze to Global warming -- just likening the 
responses to a problem. 

Just like there were people in governemnt who tried to deny the need to tackle 
global warming so there are those, in the freebsd community, who wish to bury 
their head in the sand to the apparen need to re-engineer the ports system so 
that ports freezes are unnecessary. There is also the need to deal with other 
historical deficiencies in the ports sytem (especially dependency system) 
that are causing increasing problems.

I have been using freebsd for over 14 years and am very aware the the 
engineering processes of the 70's and 80's upon which it was based are now 
creaking at the seams. We need to engineer in a more scaleable fashion and do 
it before exponential growth in the ports system overwhelms else.

Like dealing with global warming it is better to act early than too late.

david