Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 12:53:38 +0300 (EET DST) From: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl@mcs.com>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.de>, hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, FreeBSD-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The -stable problem: my view Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960608123625.26929B-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> In-Reply-To: <16972.834190075@time.cdrom.com>
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Eat good food, preserve nature, be nice to all nice people :) On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I don't have a full-time engineer at present to devote to this, nor can > > I afford the single mistake that destroys our environment. I can put > > someone on this with a 4-10 hour per week commitment, but that's about it. > > .. > > Somehow, the -STABLE intent must remain. I don't care *how* it is > > accomplished, but it has to be accomplished. An example of the problems is > > Well, then I think it's time for you ISPs to start donating more > resources to us. > > It's a pretty simple equation which would be solved in the commercial > world by us charging you more money. Since we're not in the > commercial world, then it stands to reason that if you or anyone else > wants feature or service "X", which we claim is beyond our resources, > then it's your task to ensure that we have the resources we need. > > Knowing your position of relative wealth (far more than any of ours), > why not hire a part-timer and "give" him to us? He can work with the > other full or part time programmers the other ISPs (or other > commercial interests) hire to make -stable everything you want it to > be. Everybody gets what they want then - we stop having our very > limited resources bifurcated, you get your -stable branch. > > Anyway, let's Just Do It or stop pounding shoes on the table talking > about how "-stable MUST NOT DIE!" and it's up to the current > developers to pull a rabbit out of their hats and somehow make it all > work. I'd be happy to talk to Karl (or anyone else) about co-managing > whatever human resources they can donate to the project. > > I should also note here that any other proposals which involve me or > anyone closely involved in -current development doing the work will be > politely deleted - I think I've already made my position more than > clear and I will not be budged on it. It's just too much work, > members of the core team have complained to me in private that -stable > was sucking the life force out of the project (or refused to > participate in -stable at all) and they wished we'd stop, this is not > a problem that suddenly appeared - it's been 15 months in the making > and now we need some additional man power if we're going to deal with > it in any more permanant fashion. > > As I said, I'd be more than happy to talk with the "vested interest" > folks in seeing how they personally might not take more responsibility > for the -stable service they've come to appreciate. Everyone always > talks about how they'd like to give something back, well, here's a > golden opportunity! Give me about 2 - 3 part-time employees and I'll > give you back a -stable that will make all of us very happy. > A great idea! But why does this all openly come out only now? At least part of the solution might be just saying - maintainers and mergerers for stable needed! Would more volunteer based development of -stable be realy that hard? 1) If you want to get a given feature in -current, what do you do? You ask if somebody is working on it, join in if somebody is and do it yourself if it isn't. 2) Couldn't maintaining of stable look like: a) The core team suggest that it would be nice if somebody would bring feature x over to -stable. b) Person y responds - I'll look into that (and most probably some more persons join him) c) While tracking -stable, y ports featrure x over to stable and make sure it does not affect it's stability d) when ready, he makes the diffs available and people test them out (NB! it is not commite yet) e) Concensus says - it's stable. Now is the point the thing shall be (if it hasn't already) be taken into close consideration by a core-team member, who will in some time commit it. 3) If enough changes are not brought over quickly enough, the core-team takes -current from some point of time, renames it to -semi-stable and put's it in for the stablity testing for being renamed to -stable Any big troubles with that scheme? (Yes, I really love -stable) Sander > Jordan >
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