Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 12:34:43 -0700 (MST) From: Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Bill Fumerola <billf@chc-chimes.com>, Adam Turoff <aturoff@isinet.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ports Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903091154280.20575-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu> In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990309094137.04170100@localhost>
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Hi,
> The main reason to get RECENT (if not "cutting edge") ports is to
> close security holes. No one's system should be compromised because he
> or she can't get a version that's immune to the latest "skript kiddie"
> exploit.
Then aren't you tracking -STABLE or -CURRENT to get the latest security
fixes to the OS? If not then you must be patching by hand. See, that's
the SAME thing as patching the ports that won't work because you aren't
tracking.
> Give me a break. No one has asked me to maintain a port to date.
As I told you before no one will ASK you to maintain a port - you
volunteer and do it. There are at least, in my present ports tree that
does not have any of the foreign language ports, 142 ports that have no
maintainer. Do you use any of these? Maybe. Could you help by
volunteering yourself as a maintainer by doing a simple send-pr with a
patch saying you want to be the maintainer? Yes. Do you use software
that hasn't been ported? If yes, could you do a port and be the
maintainer for it? Yes. Does someone have to ask you to do this? NO!
Since you seem to need to be asked, could you please maintain the lesstif
port? I use it fairly frequently and I have to not have the latest
greatest version. Or how about wget? I use that too and no one maintains
it either. Or how about fixing libgtop so it will compile on 2.2.8 so I
could try Gnome on my one remaining 2.2.8-STABLE machine.
> What's more, if what you say above is correct, I *can't* maintain a port
> on the 2.2.8 systems we're running here.
> Because that would be silly and wasteful. It should be possible, in
> fact easy, for support for earlier versions to be rolled in
> automatically as the port maintainer goes about his or her usual work.
If it's easy then go do it and stop complaining about it. Put your effort
where your complaining is. I've told you in my other email who "owns" the
code you want to work on. Write up some code, do a send-pr and let them
look at it - maybe it'll get included. If it doesn't then you can start
complaining, until then you're just crying wolf.
Brett Taylor
***********************************************************
Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu *
brett@daemonnews.org *
*
http://www.daemonnews.org/ *
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