Re: Where is FreeBSD going?

From: Paul Robinson (paul_at_iconoplex.co.uk)
Date: 01/07/04

  • Next message: Matt Emmerton: "Re: Where is FreeBSD going?" 
    Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 23:28:25 +0000
To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>

    Brad Knowles wrote:

    > Define "us". You sure as hell aren't speaking for me.

    Accepted. It came from paul@iconoplex.co.uk and therefore can only
    represent my own opinion. But I know a lot of people who are looking at
    deploying 5- who aren't just pissed off - they're *scared*. I don't
    think many of the developers understand this. To us (yes, I'm not
    speaking for Brad Knowles), FreeBSD is not a project we spend our spare
    time on and love and adore. Well, it is, but it's also a lot more. It
    defines our careers. We roll out something that isn't "quite right", our
    jobs are finished. Right now, if somebody asks me what our roll-out
    strategy is for the next 18 months, I have to respond "don't know",
    whereas the Linux guys are just laughing... don't even start me on what
    the Windows guys are doing to my career right now....

    OK, so it has got personal... I accept it is not the FreeBSD development
    team's job to look after my career, and to date I've looked after that
    by myself OK, but all I'm asking is you try and at least understand
    where some people are coming from on this.

    If 5.3, when it arrives, is genuinely production ready, trust me, the
    drinks are on me - I will do my absolute best to get to the next BSDcon
    and get everybody drunk on an expense account. If it isn't, well, I'll
    just have to whisper "I told you so" quietly somewhere.

    > If you have a set of skills that you think could be useful, please
    > contact Mark or one of the other members of -core to find out how you
    > might be able to contribute to the project.

    Mark has mailed me off-list. His tone isn't great. I probably deserve
    the "*** off. Go away." I'l deal with that seperately. :-)

    > I have the greatest respect for Matt, but he has been a serious
    > problem for the project for a long time. His technical disagreements
    > with other members of the project are just one relatively minor aspect
    > of those problems. His personality has been a much bigger issue.

    OK, I've never run into that. Over on the DragonFly stuff, he seems
    pleasant enough and his ideas are innovative, strong, if sometimes...
    *cough*... eccentric (e.g. replacing sysinstall with an Apache server
    and a load of PHP...), but I'll accept I haven't seen that, and I know
    others have had their problems there. I did see the fall-out on these
    lists with the argument that caused it all to kick off about a year ago
    though, and I don't think others on the project dealt with him (in
    public at least) fairly. Again, just my opinion, I wasn't involved,
    don't know what happened in private.

    > If you want to feel like this is your project, then you need to
    > find a way to take ownership of some part. See above.

    Ooooh, no. That isn't what I want at all. I just want end-users to feel
    they have a voice. That's all. Maybe they do, and I don't see it. Maybe
    they don't *and that's for the good for the project* but in my opinion,
    it just seems odd.

    > Please let us know how it turns out.

    Actually, no, I suspect 4.9 will keep me going for at least another 18
    months, by which point hopefully 5- stable will be back where everybody
    wants it.

    In fairness, tonight, I was sat at a BSD User Group meeting in front of
    my laptop with a fresh copy of 5- and I (for one reason or another) was
    digging around and found a copy of the 5- roadmap article in
    /usr/share/doc which I hadn't read in a long time. I honestly wish I'd
    read that before posting my last mail to this list. An apology of sorts
    is due, and you may have it. Sorry.

    And yes, I was having a bad day, and my tone was rotten to those of you
    who put so much time into FreeBSD, and all I ask in future is that you
    realise that some points about bitrot, bloat, bad performance and a lack
    of *feeling* the end user gets heard is enough to cause real problems
    for a lot of people. 

    -- 
Paul Robinson
_______________________________________________
freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
  • Next message: Matt Emmerton: "Re: Where is FreeBSD going?"