Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 10:30:03 -0800 From: "Maxim Hermion" <muxhermion@fastmail.fm> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Where is FreeBSD going? Message-ID: <20040105183003.731F644AD5@server1.messagingengine.com>
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I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5
years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds"
FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit
disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing
the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead
of
more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and
made
FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down
everyone's throat.
The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to
minimize
Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly
silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior
maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg,
atm)
he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one
wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the
spelling)
would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even
entirely
ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That
suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest
attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can
later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to
pay
for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.)
One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in
lights at some point in the long past.
Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp
development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the
archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the
number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would
delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right.
I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't
gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but
he
always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help
along
the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might
attribute
certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway,
since
-core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).
If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get
out
your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of
muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for
FreeBSD
long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central
maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through
some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi
introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and
recommitting,
ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt
did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself,
ipfw
would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port
obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).
You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman,
you
constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD
than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I,
am
not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never
be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly
others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct
contributions,
but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like
to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from
Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not
saying
Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by
the
wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's
less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can
understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few
others), although I find his method of expressing it extreme, I often
wished he'd have just visited the offenders personally with a clue bat.
All in all, history will judge if -core has made the right decision. I
personally believe it was a decision made in weakness. The loss the
project
as a whole will suffer is greater than the bruised ego's the -core has
had
to deal with in its communications with Matt. Matt was an extremist, but
he put up or shut up. I wish I could say that for most of -core. This is
a
personality confict in a technical project. I'd say that most of you take
this just as personally as Matt did, but instead of insulting him in a
moment of anger, you shoot off your own respective feet, lose a good deal
of experience and embarass the man publicly. You talk the talk of
respect, but you aren't walking the walk. I'd say most of you need
thicker
skin. In the end, FreeBSD folk will walk smiling though the streets, but
the project will become a cult of likeable people, instead of one that
achieved technical excellence. That will, imho, be what history says of
the
current -core. Hint: lose the touchy-feely, hack the code.
Sincerely,
Maxim Hermion
FreeBSD committer
PS: if I've offended anyone (yeah, I singled a few out), prove me wrong,
but spare me your insultedness. It's become a pathetic hobby in -core.
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