Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 21:30:57 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> Cc: paul@freebsd.org, terry@lambert.org, gibbs@freefall.freebsd.org, pete@sms.fi, davidg@Root.COM, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Which SUP files are available and where ? Message-ID: <890.811485057@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 18 Sep 1995 12:14:16 PDT." <199509181914.MAA04387@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
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> Well, maybe you should step back and take a closer look as to what some > of our ``average FreeBSD users'' are doing with FreeBSD. Believe it or > not FreeBSD is becomeing very large in the ISP market segment, these > people _must_ have security related bugs fixes in a rapid manner, and > infact many of them have there own full time staff to make _sure_ they > have these fixes in place. That is a lot of resource that could be pulled > into a cooperative effort to create this ``maintaninance team'', and these > people tend to be very conservative about doing anything that could degrade > there systems. I think we (the project) are perhaps getting back into the grey zone we were in for awhile when Karl Denninger was having all those problems with FreeBSD and had our guys running in circles trying to fix them. When you're small, you can afford to blur the lines of distinction a little and treat all users alike. As we become more successful, I think that a commercial enterprise will become inevitable. Why? Several reasons: 1. You can't expect volunteers to hop for you, and hopping is sometimes required (the CERT advisories are a good example). 2. The FreeBSD project has a duty to the free software world first and the commercial world second. Since it's not being supported by the commercial world, that simply stands to reason and a lot of people are only in it for the joy of it anyway. This means that if a lot of our time is subverted into doing support, we're doing a disservice to all the other users - 10% of the users end up taking 90% of the resources. 3. The commercial interests *want* someone to be accountable for the software. Your own success at building and supporting systems is prima facie evidence of this. I'm not sure when or if that'll happen, mind you, but like I said - I think it's an inevitable consequence of our increasing success. Jordan
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