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Date:      Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:29:49 -0300 (ADT)
From:      The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
To:        dennis <dennis@etinc.com>
Cc:        Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) 
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.3.96.970418142521.4592O-100000@thelab.hub.org>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970418121536.00b52b60@etinc.com>

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On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, dennis wrote:

> >This is *common* with all organizations, at least with FreeBSD you get
> >*hints* as to what's coming down the pike by looking at commit messages,
> >with commercial companies you cross your fingers and hope for the best.
> 
> Freebsd is *not* a commercial company and there is no benefit to secrecy.
> Why does a "free" OS have secrets? And this is not about fixing bugs,
> believe me I understand about bugs, its about having to reengineer
> freebsd based systems every couple of months.....

	If you actually read what you were responding to, you would have
seen that Nate stated:

"at least with FreeBSD you get *hints* as to what's coming down the pike by 
 looking at commit messages"

	They are merely *hints* because 90 days down the road, it might be
determined that what was being worked on is just not stable enough to put
into a release...but at least you can watch the develoment process towards
the integration of that "new thing"

> I'm just getting tired of getting hit in the nuts for not supporting
> -current....the fact that the release is out of date a week after its
> out is a very bad thing and really needs to change...

	Wrong industry...my Pentium was out of date *before* I bought it,
I just couldn't afford the newest and best *shrug*

	As for using -current, IMHO, in many ways it is more stable then
the previous -release...but you tend to have to be careful to watch those
commit messages that Nate mentioned above, as well as watch the -current
mailing list, since most of the core developers actually give warnings about
instabilities.

	I used to run -current on my production machine in Toronto, but due
to a hardware problem (bad RAM), I haven't been able to upgrade it for several
months...if you want the "newest and best", take a risk, grab a "spare" 
machine at the office (*all* offices have at least one machine you can take
a chance on, even if its not as powerful as you'd like) and install 
-current and test it for yourself.

Marc G. Fournier                                
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 




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