[RFC] Why FreeBSD ports should have branches by OS version

[Mark Linimon]

On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 11:58:14AM +0800, Julian Elischer wrote:
> What we want is:
> A "recent" starting point for our next project/upgrade to start from
> and an ongoing version of that, which will get critical fixes only for
> at LEAST 2 years, probably 5.
> The key here is the *_*critical fixes only*_* part.

And how much is that worth to you and/or your company?

I mean, honestly.  You constantly criticize the volunteers for not doing
what you need.  Well _need_, to me, implies the existence of some kind
of incentive.  I can state to you, flatly, that "a feeling of a job well
done" isn't _sufficient incentive_ to do professional-level QA.  There's
a reason people get _paid to do it_: it's hard, long, tedious, unrewarding
work, and it never ends.

Clearly, relying on _volunteers_ to do professional-level QA isn't working
out for you.

Thus, IMVVHO, at this point, to get what you _need_, you need to get out
your checkbook and provide a _financial_ incentive.  In my experience,
with the volunteers that we have, we can barely keep things afloat as
it is.  It's sufficiently hard to recruit people, and burnout is high
-- especially given the grief we take.

(I won't even start on how even "critical fixes" can drag in the need
to update dependencies, which then conflict with each other, and so on
and so forth, and thus even "critical fixes" aren't trivial.)

Summary: you are providing negative incentive to the ports crew, with
no upside for them, and you can't understand why it doesn't work.

tl;dr: you want us to be RedHat but with no paid employees.

mcl