From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG  Thu Jan 26 18:31:28 2012
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From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
To: Mark Blackman <mark@exonetric.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:22:29 -0500
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	(bigwig.baldwin.cx); Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:31:27 -0500 (EST)
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>,
	Mark Saad <nonesuch@longcount.org>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity,
	and lifecycle
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On Thursday, January 26, 2012 11:49:22 am Mark Blackman wrote:
> 
> On 26 Jan 2012, at 14:37, John Baldwin wrote:
> 
> > On Thursday, January 19, 2012 4:33:40 pm Adrian Chadd wrote:
> >> On 19 January 2012 09:47, Mark Saad <nonesuch@longcount.org> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> What could I do to help make 7.5-RELEASE a reality ?
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> Put your hand up and volunteer to run the 7.5-RELEASE release cycle.
> > 
> > That's not actually true or really fair.  There has to be some buy-in from the 
> > project to do an official release; it is not something that a single person
> > can do off in a corner and then have the Project bless the bits as an official 
> > release.
> 
> And raises the interesting question for an outsider of 
> 
> a) who is "the project" in this case
> and
> b) what does it take for a release to be a release?

I'll answer the two together.  The project is the entity that "owns"
freebsd.org and a release is not a release unless it is present on
ftp.freebsd.org and has a signed announcement e-mail with hashes, etc.
on the freebsd-announce@ mailing list.  Without those things there is
no reason for a user to believe that a particular set of bits is a
legitimate FreeBSD release.  Additionally, a release should be available
via the appropriate tags in the CVS and SVN repositories available from
freebsd.org machines.

-- 
John Baldwin