Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:38:46 -0600 (MDT) From: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> To: John Prince <johnp@lodgenet.com> Cc: <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: ATA Atapi 4.6 Release Message-ID: <20020618092610.M32141-100000@vespa.dmz.orem.verio.net> In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020617112839.030a9ff8@popmail.ct.lodgenet.com>
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On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, John Prince wrote: > > If not, can someone reply as to why the stability of FreeBSD was > compromised in favor of an improved method, that does not quite have > the bugs out of it.. Well, in response to this, I can give you my conjecture. There are differing viewpoints on what FreeBSD is all about. There are many different ways to classify FreeBSD users, but for the moment think of them as 'corporate users' and as 'os developers'. From the corporate side, people tend to want predictable release dates, a very codified, process driven system for handling bugs, 'full' stability, backward compatibility etc. For the developer side, FreeBSD is about doing cool things with the operating system of your computer. Making things work better/nicer, or just experimenting etc. I would say that over time, the corporate-type people have become more influential in the project and the world has changed in such a way as to make 'change' harder. It appears that your bias is towards stability at the expense of innovation (I realize that they need not be not mutually exclusive). Other's bias is toward getting new features at the expense of some compatibility. In this particular case, the ata-drivers are a two-edged sword. People want them so they can hot-plug ata devices (especially raid devices), which the new framework/driver allows. One could argue that it might have been better to mfc earlier (ie right after 4.5-R) or wait till after 4.6-R so that the most time possible for working out these kinks could be used. I dont know what factors accompanied the timing of the MFC but I think that if we were going to do it at all, we just had to pick a time and do it. Never could all the bugs be worked out between any two releases, even with the most optimal timing, so if we want the new code at all, we just have to bite the bullet and work with it. Fred -- Fred Clift - fclift@verio.net -- Remember: If brute force doesn't work, you're just not using enough. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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