Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:37:55 -0500 From: Mehmet Erol Sanliturk <m.e.sanliturk@gmail.com> To: John Kozubik <john@kozubik.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>, Andriy Gapon <avg@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD is becoming ... by, and for, FreeBSD developers - clarification Message-ID: <CAOgwaMtZJso=pvipdxNQ9qEi3K--UDiTsVh0XFu%2BV6%2BOwtdz9A@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201181100170.19710@kozubik.com> References: <5000.1326883643@critter.freebsd.dk> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201181100170.19710@kozubik.com>
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On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:13 PM, John Kozubik <john@kozubik.com> wrote: > > Hi Poul, Andriy, > > On Wed, 18 Jan 2012, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > > FreeBSD has _always_ been a project by the community, for the community >> and there is no way it can be any other way. >> >> (You can consider this a law of nature as far as voluntary organizations >> of intelligent beings governed by the principle of self-interest.) >> > > > I think there's been a slight misunderstanding. Of course the project is > by the community and for the community, etc., and I agree that expecting it > to be any other way is naive. > > What I was saying is that I see FreeBSD becoming an OS whose only purpose > is the development of FreeBSD. > > Being detached from the end users is acceptable (albeit negative, I think) > but being detached from the *end use* is not workable. > > > Traditionally successful ways of getting FreeBSD to do what you want: >> >> Join the community and do it yourself >> Brib^H^H^H^HDonate cool hardware to community members >> Brib^H^H^H^HPay cool cash to community members >> > > > As you may know, I've (personally) put up several thousand dollars for > specific bounties, projects and bug fixes over the last few years. > > Yesterday in the original thread I put up USD $50k as well as hardware, > hosting and bandwidth. > > Cheers! > > I think , there is a necessity about a legal coordinating establishment , such as , for example , FreeBSD Users Foundation , formed by commercial entities using FreeBSD for their operations ( i.e. , their living are based on FreeBSD usage ) , other voluntary contributing organizations and / or persons . Such an establishment will prepare user needs , possible solution steps , problems , how to remedy them , and like issues related to FreeBSD evolution . At the same time , it will hire full-time computer/software/operating systems specialists to manage/coordinate FreeBSD development , testing , release , maintenance activities . A software system such FreeBSD in its present largeness can NOT be maintained by only voluntary efforts . To support expenses , this establishment will have a budget . Otherwise it will not be possible to hire full-time specialists / secretaries . >From messages , such a full-time person assignment has been suggested by iXSystems which is a very important contribution and starting step . This establishment will collect requests , patches from FreeBSD operating companies to apply to central source repositories . Testing , final acceptance of changes will be performed by interested parties in a coordinated way . Pursuing a local software replication of FreeBSD and trying to maintain it is a very difficult task and at the end an important burden to carrying company . A fraction of such efforts transferred to a central coordinating entity will be more fruitful to every user . It is not necessary to hire many persons full time , but only a minimum number of specialists to coordinate the development and maintenance efforts and other tasks required to be carried by them . The other parts will be supplied again by the voluntary developers , BUT with support from the coordinating establishment because , again from messages , it is understood that many developers having necessary skills do NOT have necessary hardware or available help on demand from others to test and improve the parts they are developing . Another important point is to pay some amount of incentives to developers for significant work times ( they have life to pursue and family to feed ) to compensate their consumed time from their rest periods . It seems that the commercial companies are using FreeBSD for servers . Without a wide personal user population , it will be very difficult to pursue living of FreeBSD . This establishment should also improve user interface of FreeBSD to make it more acceptable by the individual persons . With forty years of computing experience , still I am NOT able to use neither FreeBSD nor PC-BSD for my daily works . It is installed in a computer ( 9.0 , amd64 ) but not used because it is not usable ( Gnome or KDE not working sufficiently fast , the same slowness when Debian/FreeBSD kernel version is used ) . For each installation , it is necessary to set an important number of parameters ( in FreeBSD ) to make it work , which none of them is required in Linux ( Fedora , OpenSuse , Debian , Mandriva/Mageia , and many others ) . The above problems may be solved , by generating two different releases : Server , Desktop . Since 8.2 amd64 , PC-BSD is NOT usable , in an effect , I downloaded 9.0 Release , but even I did NOT try it , because no one of the release candidates worked even up to boot . I think , it is a waste of time to burn a DVD and try it with very significant probability of failure . I think , PC-BSD requires more testing on real hardware . It seems that , before releases , even it is not installed a single time on a bare metal computer ( opinion developed form existing installations ) . Saying "Whatever is suitable for you , use it" is NOT a solution . There is big amount of very high quality effort invested into FreeBSD , but it is unusable by a wide population due to user interface settings . I am NOT blaming the developers because such efforts to improve user interface requires experiments , researches , and EXPENSES . It is NOT a right and fair policy to expect such activities from developers . They are doing what they can do in a best way . There is a necessity to support their activities from the point on where they need help . Thank you very much . Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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