Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 17:06:13 +0200 From: Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> To: Mark Blackman <mark@exonetric.com> Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Policy for removing working code Message-ID: <20100908150613.GA10557@owl.midgard.homeip.net> In-Reply-To: <4C879E2F.6000107@exonetric.com> References: <201009011653.o81Grkm4056064@fire.js.berklix.net> <201009080842.28495.jhb@freebsd.org> <slrni8f5pi.2k1s.vadim_nuclight@kernblitz.nuclight.avtf.net> <201009081021.48077.jhb@freebsd.org> <4C879E2F.6000107@exonetric.com>
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On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 03:31:11PM +0100, Mark Blackman wrote: > John Baldwin wrote: > > [ Trimming cc's a bit ] > > > > On Wednesday, September 08, 2010 10:01:22 am Vadim Goncharov wrote: > > >> Big thanks for your work, but unfortunately, the problem itself is not ISDN or > >> network stack, it is deeper. It is the policy or may be style of thought, > >> discourse. Something like: > >> progress dictates we need fix/maintainership to feature X > >> & we have no resources to maintain feature X > >> -> we announce theis need, but only to _limited_ audience, not wide circles > >> -> nobody responds > >> -> the X code is removed > >> AND we think this logic chain is correct, thought we did not things this way > >> even 5 years ago. > > > > Actually, things have worked this way far longer than 5 years ago. For > > example, we lost a few SCSI HBA drivers during the transition to CAM (e.g. > > wds(4) was not present in 4.x but was eventually CAM-ified and reappeared > > in 5.0). I suspect there was far less notice given for those drivers > > than for ISDN (multiple notices to arch@ and current@ spread out across > > many months). > > On top of which, I'd say that the general philosopy is always that > you stick with the release that works for you. Surely the people who > "need" those ISDN drivers, simply stay with the release that works for > them. If they need new features as well as ISDN, they do a cost-benefit > analysis on writing drivers to fit the new framework. Only problem with that is that eventually those old releases stop receiving security fixes at which point it might become downright dangerous to continue using the old release. I think that is exactly the situation now which started this discussion - the last release supporting ISDN was 6.4, which is to be EOL soon. -- <Insert your favourite quote here.> Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se
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