Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:09:40 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> To: John Kozubik <john@kozubik.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Mark Felder <feld@feld.me> Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle Message-ID: <9E283165-BD56-4DBF-9799-757C475815FB@bsdimp.com> In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201171009330.19710@kozubik.com> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1112211415580.19710@kozubik.com> <op.v78i3yxi34t2sn@tech304> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201171009330.19710@kozubik.com>
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On Jan 17, 2012, at 11:12 AM, John Kozubik wrote: > Again, I'm not suggesting more snapshots - I am suggesting more real, = bona fide releases. This will help people. I tend to agree with you. Our release engineering process isn't serving = the needs of users as much as it once did. When Walnut Creek was = running release engineering, we had releases often because they wanted = to make money from their subscriptions. This produced reasonably spaced = minor releases and except for 4-5, decently spaced major releases. Even = after the torch passed from walnut creek to others, there was still = either residual pressures to make the releases happen, or inherited = mindset that keep on the same pace. Today we have lost our way. We have no major vendor pushing the process = along to make it happen faster. We have no reason to get things done = faster or differently than the volunteers are doing it. So we're = languishing. 9.0 took forever to get out, and we didn't do stop-gap 8.x = releases. Our port collection has also gotten bigger since those = by-gone days so doing a release of the whole ports tree is taking longer = to QA, so pressure to do it more often meets up with resource = constraints. Our binary update tools lag considerably compared to = Linux, and there's a big reluctance to whole-heartedly embrace PBI as a = possible solution. Maybe pkgng will help there. Maybe the various = attempts to get ABI stability to allow for easier decoupling of FreeBSD = base and FreeBSD ports releases. But we have a real problem here. One I don't have easy answers for how = to solve. One that likely has many other root-causes than the few I've = cherry picked for this reply. The underlying balances that allowed the = early project to succeed have shifted, but we've not shifted with them. Warner
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