Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:27:55 -0600 From: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> To: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> Cc: Hans Petter Selasky <hps@selasky.org>, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: bitrot [was: Deprecating / Removing floppy drive support] Message-ID: <20171203172755.GA4210@lonesome.com> In-Reply-To: <201712031655.vB3GtIME041023@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net> References: <43746890-e60a-5c8f-4c77-bbfe9a5a6aa9@selasky.org> <201712031655.vB3GtIME041023@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
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On Sun, Dec 03, 2017 at 08:55:18AM -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote: > my observation is that FreeBSD is a lot of new toys that work fairly > well and a collection of rotting bits that get the axe every few > years. Having spent 10+ years triaging PRs I can tell you for certain that there are large parts of the src tree* that no one works on. (For instance, if we use "bin" as a rough proxy for "userland", there are 1668 userland PRs.) I had a breakdown of kern PRs into "subsystems" which I kept going for a few years, but it bitrotted (was GNATS-specific). It never really got any uptake, but I found it educational anyways: https://people.freebsd.org/~linimon/studies/prs/prs_for_all_groups.html For instance, it led me to believe that large chunks of "libraries" and "audio" were not actively maintained. But beside from features missing from the tools, we have a large, open, problem with "someone needs to take ownership of the xyz code". I would be happy to hear constructive ideas. (Readers should be warned that based on past experience I no longer believe that "well, someone should just do that" leads anywhere.) obdisclaimer: I am not trying to discourage the people who currently actively work on maintenance by pointing to the overall numbers; in fact, I appreciate their efforts. I just want to know how we can clone them. mcl * The ports tree does a little better by assigning maintainers. It turns out that most, but not all, of the key components have at least a putative maintainer listed. It's good but insufficient.
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