From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 18 19:46:54 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 1BF1A106564A; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:46:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from john@kozubik.com) Received: from kozubik.com (kozubik.com [216.218.240.130]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F08798FC18; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:46:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from kozubik.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kozubik.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id q0IJkokf060979; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:46:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from john@kozubik.com) Received: from localhost (john@localhost) by kozubik.com (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) with ESMTP id q0IJkjO7060976; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:46:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from john@kozubik.com) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:46:45 -0800 (PST) From: John Kozubik To: Igor Mozolevsky In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <1326756727.23485.10.camel@Arawn> <4F14BAA7.9070707@freebsd.org> <4F16A5B8.2080903@FreeBSD.org> <4F1707E6.4020905@FreeBSD.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Andriy Gapon , WBentley@futurecis.com, Daniel Eischen , Robert Watson , William Bentley 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: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:46:54 -0000 On Wed, 18 Jan 2012, Igor Mozolevsky wrote: > I was thinking about this and I'm with Andriy on this: such solution > has no long term potential and will only serve to stagnate the > innovation. This has been repeated over and over in this thread, but > it's worth another mention, currently, there are effectively four > tracks: 7.4, 8.2, 9.0 and -HEAD, which understandably poses a lot of > difficulty for in terms of maintenance. Whatever historical reason for > that is, I think a lot of people would agree that this needs changing > in the near future to have a single -RELEASE branch and a single -HEAD > branch, but with the understanding by the devs that just because > -RELEASE has been cut, it doesn't mean that everyone, en mass, drops > development on that and hops on the -HEAD bandwagon... And as long as we're repeating ... :) Since 9.0 is already out of the bag, I think a decent approach would be to fizzle out 8.x on the current timeline/trajectory (maybe 8.4 in 6-8 months, and maybe 8.5 in a year or so), then: - EOL 7 - mark 8 as legacy - mark 9 as the _only_ production release - release 10.0 in January 2017 And in the meantime, begin the every 4-6 month minor releases that we all agree can occur with 9. By Jan 2017, you get to 9.12 or 9.14 or so. This is nice because no upheaval needs to happen with 7 and 8, and interested developers do not get kneecapped vis a vis 9 - they can just keep going where they were going with it, and the only real change is that 10 is pushed out a long ways, and people[1] get to really sink their teeth into 9. [1] *both* developers and end users