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Date:      Mon, 05 Jan 2004 12:14:46 -0700
From:      Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
To:        "Munden, Randall J" <Randall.Munden@umb.com>, "Maxim Hermion" <muxhermion@fastmail.fm>, <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Cc:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: Where is FreeBSD going?
Message-ID:  <6.0.0.22.2.20040105121215.0465f8a0@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <79B4EAB03B5E4649A740A8C1452F60643523EE@y6001a.umb.corp.umb .com>
References:  <79B4EAB03B5E4649A740A8C1452F60643523EE@y6001a.umb.corp.umb.com>

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I'd like to see a more open and inclusive form of governance for
FreeBSD. The current system of governance has, as its underlying
assumption, that the most prolific coders make the best leaders.
In my personal experience, this isn't a valid assumption. System
administrators and end users have a big stake in FreeBSD, and are 
just as likely (perhaps more likely) to be good leaders for the
project.

--Brett Glass

At 11:43 AM 1/5/2004, Munden, Randall J wrote:
  
>This makes me wonder if it isn't time for a new -core.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Maxim Hermion [mailto:muxhermion@fastmail.fm] 
>Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 12:30 PM
>To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
>Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
>Subject: Where is FreeBSD going?
>
>
>I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5
>years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds"
>FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit
>disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be
>pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult,
>instead of 
>more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and
>made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects
>down 
>everyone's throat.  
>
>The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to
>minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been
>mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his
>superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by
>Greg,
>atm)
>he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If
>one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the
>spelling)
>would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even
>entirely 
>ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That
>suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest
>attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can
>later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to
>pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster,
>et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his
>name in lights at some point in the long past. 
>
>Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp
>development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the
>archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the
>number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would
>delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right.
>I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't
>gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but
>he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help
>along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might
>attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter
>anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite
>statistically). 
>
>If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get
>out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting
>pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface
>for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no
>central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat
>through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that
>Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and
>recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security
>than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly
>honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit
>or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually
>actively _cares_ about).
>
>You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman,
>you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with
>FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he,
>like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip
>that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There
>are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically
>correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee
>club" that core would like to have around them.  You guys lack the
>talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap
>fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most
>intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the
>superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower,
>and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his
>frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few others), although
>I find his method of expressing it extreme, I often wished he'd have
>just visited the offenders personally with a clue bat.
>
>All in all, history will judge if -core has made the right decision. I
>personally believe it was a decision made in weakness. The loss the
>project as a whole will suffer is greater than the bruised ego's the
>-core has had to deal with in its communications with Matt.  Matt was an
>extremist, but he put up or shut up. I wish I could say that for most of
>-core. This is a personality confict in a technical project. I'd say
>that most of you take this just as personally as Matt did, but instead
>of insulting him in a moment of anger, you shoot off your own respective
>feet, lose a good deal of experience and embarass the man publicly. You
>talk the talk of respect, but you aren't walking the walk.  I'd say most
>of you need thicker skin. In the end, FreeBSD folk will walk smiling
>though the streets, but the project will become a cult of likeable
>people, instead of one that achieved technical excellence. That will,
>imho, be what history says of the current -core. Hint: lose the
>touchy-feely, hack the code.
>
>Sincerely,
>          Maxim Hermion
>          FreeBSD committer
>
>PS: if I've offended anyone (yeah, I singled a few out), prove me wrong,
>but spare me your insultedness. It's become a pathetic hobby in -core.
>
>-- 
>http://www.fastmail.fm - Choose from over 50 domains or use your own
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