Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:03 -0800 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle Message-ID: <20120118160003.4e5ba5c5@mikmeyer-vm-fedora> In-Reply-To: <20120118233931.GL509@over-yonder.net> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1112211415580.19710@kozubik.com> <1326756727.23485.10.camel@Arawn> <4F14BAA7.9070707@freebsd.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201181034580.51158@fledge.watson.org> <4F16A5B8.2080903@FreeBSD.org> <Pine.GSO.4.64.1201181147450.6287@sea.ntplx.net> <4F1707E6.4020905@FreeBSD.org> <CADWvR2ip=nADz=BLXW%2BuNkyUP4hUf88UkOhSoz%2B0AcY79Hzdag@mail.gmail.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201181141270.19710@kozubik.com> <op.v8aqs6ii34t2sn@tech304> <20120118233931.GL509@over-yonder.net>
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On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:39:31 -0600
"Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net> wrote:
> Or there's another option, a variant of (1), where we extend the
> lifetime of some major release trains, but not all. Every second, or
> every third. Then we can have a longer life, without ballooning out
> the number of trains being supported. But that has big drawbacks too;
> the problems of backporting aren't just the number of branches to port
> too, but how far back they are. Backporting from -CURRENT to 9 right
> now is almost trivial. Going to 8 isn't too bad for most things. To
> 7, it's getting to be a much bigger deal. If 7 were an "extended
> support" train, with 2 years of active support left on it, not only
> would backporting things get inordinately expensive from accumulated
> differences, but they'd get very _risky_ too. They slip from
> "backport" into "rewrite for", and now we've seriously compromised the
> stability of the branch, undermining our own goals.
Let's look at this again. And look at why people want longer term
support. In my experience, they want this because they want security
updates/bug fixes for production systems. If LTS changes that were
limited to that after the normal support period, and restricted to
cases where the effort was warranted by the severity of the issue, it
would seriously mitigate the backporting issues.
Of course, from reading this discussion, it's clear that there are
people who want both long term support *and* new features (at least in
the form of new device drivers).
It may well be that you get to choose any two of:
- Software that is very cheap or free.
- Software that is supported over long time periods.
- Software that gets frequent updates with new features.
Given that this is a volunteer-driven effort, the first is pretty much
a given, so you can only get one of the other two. Unless you're
willing to lose the first by maintaining your own releases as others
have suggested/described.
<mike
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