Policy for removing working code (Was: HEADS UP: FreeBSD 6.4 and 8.0 EoLs coming soon)

[Vadim Goncharov]

Hi vwe at freebsd.org! 

On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:01:55 +0200; vwe at freebsd.org wrote about 'Re: HEADS UP: FreeBSD 6.4 and 8.0 EoLs coming soon':

> On 09/07/10 23:31, Vadim Goncharov wrote:
>> 07.09.10 @ 18:53 Andriy Gapon wrote:
>>> The reason is performance for overall network stack, not ideology.
>>
>> For a practical reasons, "it works but slow" is better than
>> "doesn't work at all (due to absence of code in the src tree)".
>>
>> "Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast. In that order", know this?
>> Sacrificing "work" for "fast"?.. Hmm, if it is not ideology, then what
>> is it?..
>>
>>> BTW, there were advanced notices for users, request for volunteers, etc.
>>>
>>> So, if you didn't speak up at that time please keep silence now :-)
>>
>> You do not understand the problem. It is not in notices & volunteers,
>> but rather in the Project's policy - delete something which could still
>> work. Personally, I don't use ISDN, so didn't said anything that time,
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> but now, there are more precedents of removing components from FreeBSD -
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> so, for now, I must say that this policy is harmful. Though I doubt that
>> one man's opinion could change Project's policy until it's too late...
>>
> Are _you_ willing to maintain it?

Have you read carefuly? I don't use ISDN (and so won't maintain), but
I consider this policy, as time goes by, could touch subsystems which now
I will be interested in. Precedents that already happened, to give an idea,
include (but not limited to) e.g. window(1) and pppd(8).

> it (i4b) worked, nobody was maintaining it, nobody opted to maintain it, 
> everybody was asked to maintain it, nobody wanted, everybody has been 
> asked to speak up if the code will be axed out, nobody spoke up, it has 
> been axed out ... 13 months ago and even then nobody complained about.

Hey, _everybody_ was asked? And nobody complained? But this is simply not
true. So then why someone complains now? Answer is simple: because it wasn't
everybody. Let's go to gmane and look to archives of announce@ for past
8 years.

Exclude release and security announcements. Exclude conferences announcements.
Exclude finance-related Foundation announcements and other DVD-like stuff.

Then you left with actual Project info. Exclude announcements about new
projects and status reports, as they tell about new fetutures only.

What is left after? Not glamourous marketing but real info about events that
could harm production systems:

Mark Murray       Perl5 is leaving the base system for 5.0 and after! 15 May 02
Kris Kennaway     Ports scheduled for removal on Feb 2                03 Nov 03
Kris Kennaway     Ports scheduled for removal in March and April      25 Feb 04
Kris Kennaway     Ports scheduled for removal on August 20            22 Jun 04
Joe Marcus Clarke Updating guidelines for ports                       13 Oct 04
Kris Kennaway     Ports scheduled for removal                         30 Jul 05
Kris Kennaway     Volunteers needed to help maintain ports            25 May 06
Ken Smith         Upcoming change in Daylight Savings Time            25 Feb 07
Kris Kennaway     HEADS UP: xorg 7.2 update in progress               19 May 07
Doug Barton       BIND 8 is EOL as of 27 August 2008 (fwd)            28 Aug 07
Joe Marcus Clarke HEADS UP: Ports support for 5.X is no more          02 Jun 08
Peter Wemm        FreeBSD.org begins switch to Subversion             04 Jun 08

Only 12 letters for 8 years!

And we see that _earlier_ Project actully did such announcements - individual
ports could be viewed analogous to individual base system subsystems like ISDN
or window, etc.

Only 4 years ago. And these days Project began to turn to some another policy
with not-so-good smell. Surely this is not coincidence.

-- 
WBR, Vadim Goncharov. ICQ#166852181       mailto:vadim_nuclight at mail.ru
[Moderator of RU.ANTI-ECOLOGY][FreeBSD][http://antigreen.org][LJ:/nuclight]