From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 17 22:57:06 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49E8C106564A for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:57:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: from mail-iy0-f182.google.com (mail-iy0-f182.google.com [209.85.210.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 163D28FC18 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:57:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iagz16 with SMTP id z16so8929892iag.13 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:57:05 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.50.178.71 with SMTP id cw7mr19650045igc.0.1326839309079; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:28:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from mikmeyer-vm-fedora (dhcp-173-37-11-196.cisco.com. [173.37.11.196]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id gf6sm33023361igb.1.2012.01.17.14.28.28 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:28:28 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:28:26 -0800 From: Mike Meyer To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20120117142826.4f68c7d5@mikmeyer-vm-fedora> In-Reply-To: <81A5F99A-CA8B-4BA9-936C-51F5421460AC@exonetric.com> References: <9E283165-BD56-4DBF-9799-757C475815FB@bsdimp.com> <81A5F99A-CA8B-4BA9-936C-51F5421460AC@exonetric.com> Organization: Meyer Consulting X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.10 (GTK+ 2.24.7; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:57:06 -0000 On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:27:24 +0000 Mark Blackman wrote: > I'd have thought PC-BSD and iXsystems are the natural people to to > take over that role in any case. The FreeBSD foundation seems less > interested in the "for end-users" angle as well. If that's the case, is there any reason for cutting "FreeBSD" releases? No, I'm serious. If FreeBSD is being run by developers for developers (first rule of organizations: they're run for the benefit of the people who run them), how do they benefit from a release? If users move to some other organizations releases, and the developers don't get any benefit from them, why do them? On a less radical note, how about taking in the resources suggested for the "sponsored branch", and using those to reorganize and expand the role of release engineering? Maybe get help from PC-BSD and iXsystems as well? Make STABLE the "sponsored" branch owned by the expanded RE group. To justify this, change it to an "always production ready" approach. Set up a CI system to test it regularly, and back out changes that break the build or tests. This does *not* include testing ports or anything else outside the base system. RELEASES become a snapshot of the new "always production ready" STABLE that has ports (and anything else included that's outside the base system) built for it and tested on it. The goal is that doing the work to keep STABLE production ready will significantly decrease the amount of work required to do a release.