From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 23 23:37:26 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A1127106566B for ; Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:37:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E1738FC0C for ; Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:37:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CCC1646B06 for ; Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:37:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:37:25 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: current@FreeBSD.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Subject: Three cheers for the status quo, enough now? (was: Re: tmux(1) in base) X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:37:26 -0000 Dear all: I think we've now more than adequately demonstrated the importance of not e-mailing large mailing lists suggesting changes to the status quo when it comes to adding/removing programs from the base without a really compelling reason. The current blend of components is largely historical, modeling the mix found in BSD UNIX, and strikes a hard-to-characterize balance between the logical extremes "we ship a minimally bootstrapping system" and "we ship every application under the sun". This means for most parts of the base system there will be someone who argues it belongs there, and someone who argues that it doesn't. Change proposals along the lines of "Should we add tmux" and "Should we remove BIND" are therefore necessarily controversial, and often end up mired in exactly this sort of endless and unproductive e-mail discussion. This is one of the most important reasons not to propose them. The moral is clear, and this thread has done nothing to speed the testing, debugging, and release of FreeBSD 8.0. Let's get back to that and maybe let sleeping dogs lie? Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge