From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Oct 7 21:53:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id VAA18533 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 21:53:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA18528 for ; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 21:53:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) Received: from time.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id VAA22728; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 21:53:12 -0700 (PDT) To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" Subject: Re: group assignments from make world. In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 07 Oct 1997 21:45:35 CDT." Date: Tue, 07 Oct 1997 21:53:12 -0700 Message-ID: <22723.876286392@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Just a P.S. to my previous message, I'd should also note that I'd be the first to suggest that we should add a "special issues for -current and -stable users" to the FAQ it I didn't already know from bitter experience that people stopped reading the FAQ long ago (this probably not even being entirely their fault since there have been long periods where this resource was essentially so stale as to be untrustworthy). Any suggestions? Do people really want to see a "general information for -[current|stable] users" which is posted on a regular (monthly?) basis to -[current|stable]? I can't really think that anything else is going to work, and even that suggestion is imperfect (not everyone who posts also subscribes). As things originally started out, folks weren't even supposed to track a branch if they didn't subscribe to the appropriate mailing list and wern't willing to use all available means before distracting the developers with their questions about such work in progress (for the same reasons that you don't stand behind your plumber the whole time he's working on your sink going "so, whatcha doing? Is that a pipe? How does one fix a sink, anyway?" :). Unfortunately, "enforcing" that model also pretty much became impossible the minute cvsup made it child's play to track a branch (it's all John Polstra's bloody fault, that's it! ;-) and, taking some of the blame myself, I sort of doc'd it all in the handbook and introduced more people to the concept. I don't mean to sound like Cassandra here, but I really do think that we need to figure out some other way of dealing with this extra tech support issue or, at the current rate of increase, all development time will soon be subsumed entirely by the task of simply reading email, FreeBSD's principle developers getting about as much actual, useful work done as the U.S. congress. :-( Maybe it's time to institute something a little bit closer to the XFree86 Project's BETA program? Not all the way in that direction, where early access is really restricted quite tightly, but something which might require one to jump through just a few more hoops first (at a minimum, you'd need to subscribe to the appropriate list and, if you left it, so would your "license to cvsup" :-). Too draconian? Not draconian enough? :-) Jordan