From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 17 09:33:34 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73346106564A for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:33:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ml@my.gd) Received: from mail-ww0-f50.google.com (mail-ww0-f50.google.com [74.125.82.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E9408FC12 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:33:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wgbgn7 with SMTP id gn7so2808747wgb.31 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:33:33 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.180.83.72 with SMTP id o8mr20901369wiy.22.1326791397680; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:09:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from dfleuriot-at-hi-media.com ([83.167.62.196]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id n3sm41836597wiz.9.2012.01.17.01.09.56 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:09:56 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4F153AE3.9010602@my.gd> Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:09:55 +0100 From: Damien Fleuriot User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:33:34 -0000 On 1/16/12 11:28 PM, John Kozubik wrote: > > Friends, > > I was disappointed to see that 8.3-RELEASE is now slated to come out in > March of 2012. This will be ~13 months since 8.2-RELEASE and is typical > of a trend towards longer gaps between minor releases. > > I also see that undercutting the current release before wide deployment > and maturity is continuing. 7.0 came (barely) after 6.3, which was bad > enough, but not as bad as 8.0 arriving with 7.2, and now 9.0 with 8.2. > > Finally, the culture of "that's fixed in CURRENT" or "we built those > changes into (insert next major release)" continues to get worse. It's > difficult to escape the notion that FreeBSD is becoming an operating > system by, and for, FreeBSD developers. > Wholeheartedly agree. I'm having an increasingly difficult time defending FreeBSD in our company against the advances of debian kfree which is much easier to maintain. Can we get back to the 4.x release style and, hopefully, see some 9.7, 9.8... ? Check this PR I opened some months ago: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=161123&cat=kern It was planned for 9.0-RELEASE, there is no mention of 8.x That's just the kind of problem John raises here. I can't keep on defending FreeBSD when the minor fix to a major bug isn't backported, and only makes it to the next major version, 4 or 5 months from now.