From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jun 18 22:32: 6 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.86.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 646D637B40E; Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:32:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.12.3/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g5J5UFIj005364; Wed, 19 Jun 2002 07:30:15 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: Garrett Wollman Cc: nik@FreeBSD.ORG, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Timetables for interface deprecation/deletion In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:02:04 EDT." <200206190202.g5J224qM051487@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 07:30:15 +0200 Message-ID: <5363.1024464615@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've read the entire thread now. I'm sure this is well intended. But I am firmly against such a sweeping use of "red tape" as it will make forward progress practically impossible: KSE for instance would not be possible because it changes the API so that old ps(1) binaries do not work. I think we need make a considered judgement, per major release, about what is in, what is out and what stays for compatibility reasons, having rigid and inflexible rules on the subject is not helpful to anybody. This is the kind of rigid square policy-making which big companies need to apply because they dare not delegate "good judgement" to their development department. This does not belong in a for-fun Open Source project. I agree that we need to follow standards reasonably close, but we do not need to be backwards compatible over timespans of 5 years. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message