From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 17 23:36:43 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 0592C106566C for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:36:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org) Received: from qmta01.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net (qmta01.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net [76.96.30.16]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D4F758FC08 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:36:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta18.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.74]) by qmta01.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id NnTU1i0051bwxycA1nciY4; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:36:42 +0000 Received: from damnhippie.dyndns.org ([24.8.232.202]) by omta18.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id Nnch1i00h4NgCEG8enciEe; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:36:42 +0000 Received: from [172.22.42.240] (revolution.hippie.lan [172.22.42.240]) by damnhippie.dyndns.org (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id q0HNadC1005322; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:36:39 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org) From: Ian Lepore To: Andriy Gapon In-Reply-To: <4F16019F.2060300@FreeBSD.org> References: <4F15C44F.1030208@freebsd.org> <1326836797.1669.234.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <4F16019F.2060300@FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:36:39 -0700 Message-Id: <1326843399.1669.249.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.26.0 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org 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 23:36:43 -0000 On Wed, 2012-01-18 at 01:17 +0200, Andriy Gapon wrote: > on 17/01/2012 23:46 Ian Lepore said the following: > > Now, before we're even really completely up and running on 8.2 at work, > > 9.0 hits the street, and developers have moved on to working in the 10.0 > > world. What are the chances that any of the patches I've submitted for > > bugs we fixed in 8.x are ever going to get commited now that 8 is well > > on its way to becoming ancient history in developers' minds? > > My opinion is that this will have more to do with your approach to pushing the > patches (and your persistence) rather than with anything else. As long as > stable/8 is still a supported branch or the bugs are reproducible in any of the > supported branches. Well I submitted a sort of random sample of the patches we're maintaining at work, 11 of them as formal PRs and 2 posted to the lists here recently. So far two have been committed (the most important one and the most trivial one, oddly enough). I'm not sure just how pushy one is supposed to be, I don't want to be a jerk. Not to mention that I wouldn't know who to push. That's actually why I'm now being active on the mailing lists, I figured maybe patches will be more accepted from someone the commiters know rather than just as code out of the blue attached to a PR. I think it would be great if there were some developers (a team, maybe something not quite that formal) who concentrated on maintenance of older code for the user base who needs it. I'd be happy to contribute to that effort, both on my own time, and I have a commitment from management at work to allow me a certain amount of billable work hours to interface with the FreeBSD community, especially in terms of getting our work contributed back to the project (both to help the project, and to help us upgrade more easily in the future). I have no idea if there are enough developers who'd be interested in such a concept to make it work, co-op or otherwise. But I like the fact that users and developers are talking about their various needs and concerns without any degeneration into flame wars. It's cool that most of the focus here is centered on how to make things better for everyone. -- Ian