From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 18 10:30:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA20065 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:30:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thelab.hub.org (hal-ns3-18.netcom.ca [207.181.94.146]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA20056 for ; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 10:30:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from thelab.hub.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thelab.hub.org (8.8.5/8.8.2) with SMTP id OAA11730; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:29:49 -0300 (ADT) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:29:49 -0300 (ADT) From: The Hermit Hacker To: dennis cc: Nate Williams , "Jordan K. Hubbard" , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970418121536.00b52b60@etinc.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, dennis wrote: > >This is *common* with all organizations, at least with FreeBSD you get > >*hints* as to what's coming down the pike by looking at commit messages, > >with commercial companies you cross your fingers and hope for the best. > > Freebsd is *not* a commercial company and there is no benefit to secrecy. > Why does a "free" OS have secrets? And this is not about fixing bugs, > believe me I understand about bugs, its about having to reengineer > freebsd based systems every couple of months..... If you actually read what you were responding to, you would have seen that Nate stated: "at least with FreeBSD you get *hints* as to what's coming down the pike by looking at commit messages" They are merely *hints* because 90 days down the road, it might be determined that what was being worked on is just not stable enough to put into a release...but at least you can watch the develoment process towards the integration of that "new thing" > I'm just getting tired of getting hit in the nuts for not supporting > -current....the fact that the release is out of date a week after its > out is a very bad thing and really needs to change... Wrong industry...my Pentium was out of date *before* I bought it, I just couldn't afford the newest and best *shrug* As for using -current, IMHO, in many ways it is more stable then the previous -release...but you tend to have to be careful to watch those commit messages that Nate mentioned above, as well as watch the -current mailing list, since most of the core developers actually give warnings about instabilities. I used to run -current on my production machine in Toronto, but due to a hardware problem (bad RAM), I haven't been able to upgrade it for several months...if you want the "newest and best", take a risk, grab a "spare" machine at the office (*all* offices have at least one machine you can take a chance on, even if its not as powerful as you'd like) and install -current and test it for yourself. Marc G. Fournier Systems Administrator @ hub.org primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org