Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:31:33 +0200 (MET DST) From: Wolfgang Helbig <helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De, brandon@roguetrader.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: why bother submitting anything (via send-pr) Message-ID: <199708110731.JAA01446@rvc1.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de> In-Reply-To: <2423.871257696@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Aug 10, 97 05:01:36 pm"
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> > The PRs seem to be orphaned since Mike Pritchard left the FreeBSD > > project in May 1997. We submitters who are not committers have a > > *very* hard time getting any feedback. > > > > Six of my submissions are left open. Some of them are already fixed or > > analyzed and should be closed, some are only fixing typos or adding > > a line to man pages and are not worth the trouble you have to > > go into in order to get your submission noticed. > > Again, I'm _very sorry_ you're having this experience and all I can Well, last night Steve Price had a look at my submissions and closed all of the old ones. Thank you Steve! > say is that this is due to overload, not any deliberate desire to > ignore PRs. Far from it - I'd sleep better at night if I had someone I didn't know, you are were sleeping at all :-) > looking after the PRs full-time but wishing alone does not, > unfortunately, make it so. > > > They do! Last week I've got more responses (three) from NetBSD users > > than from the FreeBSD project (zero). > > They probably have far fewer PRs overall to respond to. ;-) I didn't send PRs to NetBSD. They asked about BISDN stuff and the CMD640 workaround. > > Jordan mentioned that he's going to hire developers for porting > > the OS to another architecture. (He left open which architecture.) > > FreeBSD/ALPHA As far as I remember you were once talking about yet another architecture. > > I conclude from this, the desertion of the PRs and the discussion > > about current ports versus stable ports that the FreeBSD project > > is switching to a commercial company that does not depend on > > volunteers any more in the long run. > > This is a thoroughly incorrect conclusion, I'm afraid. I'm glad to read! > What the FreeBSD project is current trying to do is cope realistically > with the side-effects of its success, such side-effects being a > burgeoning PR database, more tech support questions flowing in than > most of our volunteers can handle and a greately increased need for an > effective quality assurance program. > > To put it another way, there are a growing number of tasks which > volunteers refuse to handle simply because they are not fun at all and Well to me submitting man page fixes and answering questions still is fun (maybe because I'm new at this and hence learn a lot from doing simple stuff that might be boring to the more experienced volunteer) > rather too much like a Real Job(tm) for them to want to do it for > free. It is THESE people that I'd like to pay, along with the serious > developers needed to make progress on a number of stalled issues (like > the new installation tools), in order that FreeBSD might continue to > deliver on its promise. > > I think you vastly underestimate the size of the growing gap between > what volunteers are willing to do and the number of un-done tasks we > have piling up, waiting for a mysterious "someone" to do them. Hmm. That's why I'm reluctant submitting trivial fixes. OTOH I was impressed by the polished nature of FreeBSD when I switched from Linux and I hate to witness a decrease in quality because of the success eating up all resources. Wolfgang
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