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[Jo Rhett]

On Sep 17, 2008, at 4:33 PM, Robert Watson wrote:
> An important factor is whether or not we consider the release a  
> highly maintainable release, and while we have intuitions at the  
> time of release, that's something we can only learn in the first  
> couple of months after it's in production.  I don't know of any COTS  
> software house that really does it any differently

I understand what you mean, but the statement is blatantly false as  
stated.  Anyone selling software to the US Government *must* specify  
(or meet, depending) a minimum support period, and must also specify a  
cost the agency can pay to extend the support period.

Not relevant to FreeBSD -- just qualifying the statement as it  
stands.  For the obvious comparison, Solaris versions have well- 
published release and support periods, usually upwards of 8 years.   
Obviously they have more resources to do this, I'm just pointing out  
that the statement you made is incorrect as stated.

> and I'm not sure you could do it differently -- no one plans to ship  
> a lemon, but once in a while you discover that things don't go as  
> planned.


I am amazed at the preposterously large elephant in the room that none  
of you are willing to address.  Watching each of you dance around it  
would be terribly funny if it didn't affect my job so badly.  (and if  
I wasn't going to have to bail on FreeBSD and go to some crap form of  
Linux because the FreeBSD developers appear to be unwilling to  
consider the idea of getting more help)

Your limitation is resources, right?  You've calculated what you can  
support based on the resources you have, right?

We are talking about ways to increase the resources available to  
you... right? So the math on which the conclusions are reached then  
changes.

So lets figure out... what do the basis numbers need to be to change  
the support period?

Obviously this is a bit of hand waving.  These numbers are unlikely to  
be empirical.  But try.  Examine the concept of having increased  
resources.  What do you need.  How do you need it, to make a real  
change?

Please stop avoiding even considering what people are offering to you.

-- 
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source  
and other randomness