From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Nov 25 21:32:45 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA26890 for freebsd-advocacy-outgoing; Wed, 25 Nov 1998 21:32:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA26885 for ; Wed, 25 Nov 1998 21:32:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA00824; Wed, 25 Nov 1998 21:28:52 -0800 (PST) To: "J. Joseph Max Katz" cc: netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD advocacy list , advocacy@openbsd.org Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Nov 1998 19:38:53 PST." Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 21:28:52 -0800 Message-ID: <820.912058132@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > day OpenBSD (or NetBSD) will integrate the FreeBSD ARM port, There is no FreeBSD ARM port. > o distribution layout. We all nitpick. OpenBSD follows the decree in the > BSD Net/2 README to the letter. FreeBSD, if I remember from This is determined by hier(7). > 2: The licensing aspect-- We're rather attached to the 2-clause modified BSD copyright. Our claim to fame is an EASY copyright and I'm certainly not inclined to give this up. > o IMHO We need a solid packaging system. Someone on misc@openbsd.org touted FreeBSD is already working on a new packaging system using paid contractors so that it actually happens this time. We hope to have a technology demonstrator by March of next year; I won't say too much about it except to say that it's considerably more ambitious than any of the existing (Linux, *BSD) packaging systems and does a better job, IMHO, of handling both the front-end and security issues. > o IMHO Release distributions. Base + extended utils + programming tools + X > + kernel source + full source. Easy to use install manager. I heard > FreeBSD is paying someone to write a really, really, really good > installer. How easily can this be ported to other architectures. On That's coming out of the new packaging system since, in a more ideal world, the "installer" is just enough framework to whomp filesystems and disklabels on new disks and then use the package system to populate them. Everything will and should be a package, from the most critical system component(s) to emacs. > o Release schedules > o At the last FreeBSD user group meeting was at, jkh admitted to > being behind its deadlines. (This was almost a year ago.) Actually, what I said was that we didn't seem to be making the aggressive quarterly release schedules we'd set at the beginning of the project and were going to something closer to a 2-3 release per year (on a given branch) schedule. That still commits us to 4-6 releases a year and is probably more than enough work for anyone. I don't believe in clockwork releases either except for cases of extreme delay (like FreeBSD 3.0) where some major whip-cracking is called for to get things unstuck. Otherwise, I prefer to release when things look closer to being ready and make sure that things are ready at least twice a year. The alternative is releases which are frequently bogus. > o Security. As a security guy and OpenBSD guy as of late we need to > constantly audit code-- no new code can be thrown in the tree if it > hasn't been looked at. I think Net/Free feel the same way, but I Who's going to look at every line of code? > We'd need a leader to lead the leaders if you get my drift. It won't be > easy. I'd go further in saying that, for all intents and purposes, it's hard enough to be considered essentially impossible. Perhaps if someone of unimpeachable moral authority like Kirk McKusick were to lead, people would follow, otherwise I can't see any credible candidates amongst the current core superset. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message