Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:51:40 -0400 From: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> To: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@widomaker.com> Cc: "Freebsd-Advocacy (E-mail)" <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: your mail Message-ID: <20010722155140.A59512@blackhelicopters.org> In-Reply-To: <20010719105522.B23021@widomaker.com>; from shannon@widomaker.com on Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 10:55:23AM -0400 References: <9B9CB6555E6BA049BC2B857E7711C24F2A051B@puke.reno.oemsupport.com> <20010719105522.B23021@widomaker.com>
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On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 10:55:23AM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote: > I don't think we should assume that they mean reliability when they > say stability. For all we know, they could mean they think FreeBSD is > changing a lot right now, and so they want to wait for a 5.x release. > > It's not uncommon for companies to make decisions like this, wether it > makes any sense or not. Oh, waiting makes a lot of sense. (Before anyone reads the below: the community has been very supportive. I have nothing but good things to say about people.) I'm writing a FreeBSD book. It's targeting 5-stable. Unlike many FreeBSD books, this one actually exists as a huge sheaf of paper, a contract, and a due date. To have a book that covers 5-stable in the store at the beginning of the time when 5-S is being used, I have to be tracking -current. However, after tracking -current moderately closely, and not merely reading but assimilating cvs-all, -current, -hackers, et al, for a year, all I can say is: God, kill me now. Just kill me where I stand. Lightning bolts from heaven would be acceptable. So would a meteor strike. Plagues of flesh-devouring cockroaches with razor-sharp mandibles that slice bits off you one square millimeter at a time until they leave your gleaming bones and gibbets of cartilidge drying in the sun would be just peachy-keen dandy. From an outsiders' perspective, the "thrashing" in current is unbelievable. Just do an archive search on, say, "diskcheckd". Or "lukem-ftpd". And, as I slide down the razor blade of life towards the due date, I see devd looming up like a big knob at the end of the bannister. Writing accurate documentation that will be valid for more than two months is a hideous task. This thrash is, of course, necessary to improve FreeBSD. FreeBSD will be better off for it. The improvements in 5-S will be tremendous, and I think 4.x kicked some serious butt. Having used FreeBSD since the 2.0 days, I think every release has made some big changes. Technical books have a long history of short lifespan -- a year, eighteen months, and that's it. I'm expecting to have to do a second edition for 6.0, of course, but I'm hoping to avoid a second edition for 5.5. There's rewards, of course. If I can keep getting out a good book for each .0 or .1 release, it'll be quite gratifying. I'll get a good rep, people will want to hire me to run their FreeBSD networks, blah blah blah. Right now, 4-stable is approaching its end-of-life. It isn't dead yet, by any means, and will be in common use for at least another year. But would a software company want to develop a product for 4-stable at this point? I doubt it. And it *appears*, from an outsiders' perspective, that 5-current is a rollicking roller coaster without barf bags. This appearance is a big disadvantage for an open-source project. (Of course, the closed-source folks do the same things, you just don't *see* it.) Or maybe it's just me. You know, I should shut up now, go back, and rewrite the diskcheckd section. Again. ==ml -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org http://www.blackhelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ Big Scary Daemons: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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