From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 21 22:29:03 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id WAA11231 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 22:29:03 -0700 Received: from dataplex.net (SHARK.DATAPLEX.NET [199.183.109.241]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id WAA11224 for ; Fri, 21 Jul 1995 22:29:01 -0700 Received: from [199.183.109.242] by dataplex.net with SMTP (MailShare 1.0b8); Sat, 22 Jul 1995 00:28:55 -0500 X-Sender: wacky@shark.dataplex.net Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 22 Jul 1995 00:28:56 -0500 To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" From: rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth) Subject: Re: Support charges ( was Re: SUP target for -STABLE...) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk >There's also the question of what to do when we get a problem report >for an area of the system that's clearly in the domain of someone NOT >working for the organization. We can't pass the buck to a volunteer, >so we need to make sure that we have total coverage of the system >replicated in the support organization. This would effectively mean >creating a "shadow FreeBSD Project" of sorts, which would take some >finesse since it means that the corporation is going to have its own >CVS tree and its own lineage of FreeBSD releases or face an even less >desirable situation where volunteers are co-opted into working for the >org or get their toes stepped on when someone in the corporation >rushes in to fix a bug that they're contractually obligated to fix >quickly and don't have much choice about. I think this is the crux of the problem. If you have a real support organization, they will soon INSIST that THEY have control of THEIR source tree. Once they implement a fix, it would have to become mainstream. New code entering the tree would be required to pass significant testing, etc. In short, you would soon have another BSDI. I am not sure that that could co-exist with the volunteer organization. Thought for discussion: What if the "for pay" group were the release engineers and responsible for the changes that go into the -STABLE tree? Volunteers could only submit to -current or through the group engineers. ---- Richard Wackerbarth rkw@dataplex.net