From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 20 04:07:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA15853 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 04:07:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wgold.demon.co.uk (wgold.demon.co.uk [158.152.96.124]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id EAA15840 for ; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 04:07:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wgold.demon.co.uk by wgold.demon.co.uk (NTMail 3.02.10) with ESMTP id qa001342 for ; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 20:09:18 +0100 Message-ID: <3357C6DD.2482@wgold.demon.co.uk> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 20:09:17 +0100 From: James Mansion Organization: Westongold Ltd X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chris Timmons CC: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Info: Westongold Ltd: +44 1992 620025 www.westongold.com Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Chris Timmons wrote: > > Are you trying to win the "Works with eDns!" stamp of approval for > rhetorical acrimony? > > You've seen how FreeBSD releases are constructed by breaking off branches > from -current and stabilizing them over a period of time. Feature sets > appear in -current well before ever making it into a release, so there is > planning time. As for FreeBSD-SMP, it is no secret that it exists and has > been loosely targeted for 3.0, what more do you want? Well, personally I think the problem is that if I say 'FreeBSD does not have SMP support', then I mean 'finished and working' and by implication given the way the (admirable, IMHO) release process works, this means that stable releases don't have it. Trouble is, people pop up and say 'yes it does have SMP support'. This is confusing, to say the least. Personally I think its a big mistake - if someone has a real need for an SMP enabled production system and tries to build it at the moment with FreeBSD then she'll be sorely disappointed, similarly with Linux. Personally, I'd say that FreeBSD is defined by what's on the current stable release available on ROM. What it may/will be defined by is -current. I would hate to see the professionalism of the release management be threatened by indicipline about what is/is not in the product (yet). (That there has been SMP code in there for a long time is largely irrelevant, until it works properly) James