Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 22 Jul 1995 00:28:56 -0500
From:      rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth)
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...)
Message-ID:  <v02130502ac363765843a@[199.183.109.242]>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>There's also the question of what to do when we get a problem report
>for an area of the system that's clearly in the domain of someone NOT
>working for the organization.  We can't pass the buck to a volunteer,
>so we need to make sure that we have total coverage of the system
>replicated in the support organization.  This would effectively mean
>creating a "shadow FreeBSD Project" of sorts, which would take some
>finesse since it means that the corporation is going to have its own
>CVS tree and its own lineage of FreeBSD releases or face an even less
>desirable situation where volunteers are co-opted into working for the
>org or get their toes stepped on when someone in the corporation
>rushes in to fix a bug that they're contractually obligated to fix
>quickly and don't have much choice about.

I think this is the crux of the problem. If you have a real support
organization, they will soon INSIST that THEY have control of THEIR
source tree. Once they implement a fix, it would have to become mainstream.
New code entering the tree would be required to pass significant testing, etc.
In short, you would soon have another BSDI. I am not sure that that could
co-exist with the volunteer organization.

Thought for discussion:
What if the "for pay" group were the release engineers and responsible for
the changes that go into the -STABLE tree? Volunteers could only submit to
-current or through the group engineers.

----
Richard Wackerbarth
rkw@dataplex.net





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?v02130502ac363765843a>