Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 19:19:08 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: toor@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson) Cc: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, dyson@iquest.net, bpechter@shell.monmouth.com, brett@lariat.org, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Swan song Message-ID: <199903270019.TAA09663@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <199903262345.SAA09609@dyson.iquest.net> from "John S. Dyson" at "Mar 26, 99 06:45:39 pm"
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > product - you talk a good fight, but when it comes time to actually > > "fight" you run away, citing a lack of ability at writing or speaking > > or, if you're feeling especially cagey, the fact that you "can't talk > > about your work." > > > I cannot deal with public situations -- however you have done > squat for the project in the arena of marketing. OSDI != marketing, > and a good person has taken over the VM (and hopefully the VFS). > BTW, my job was NEVER marketing. I *try* to avoid the areas where I am only minmally competent. You obviously do not avoid such areas, and are willing to "cowboy" and waste the competent works of others. The "marketing" effort was so pathetic that people who had no business in messing around in the field KNEW that it could be done better, and did try. However, the damage done by those people is directly a result of previous marketing folly, and frustration due to that folly. Some people spent years of effort (off the clock) in their area of competency, while others might have spent wasted years of effort outside their area of competency -- further wasting the effort of others. People who have high positions in a project, who don't have the competency to understand or compensate for their own areas of competency don't show project level competency at all. I was NEVER part of the offical core leadership, but had tried to communicate with the competent? youngsters. It is a wonderful situation that FreeBSD will have a chance now. Let *competent* technical people do seriously technical things, and let *competent* marketing people do marketing things. The time for the "cowboy" is over. The VM review procedure should be extended to other important subsystems, *when* excessive and/or occult damage has occurred. There isn't the freedom for "cowboy" development anymore. Sure, in the past, FreeBSD could tolerate it -- however that isn't desirable or tolerable anymore. All in all, the technical issues were never the *worst* problem for FreeBSD -- again, it was the marketing. It is too bad that so much damage was done, and waste ensued. I have a couple of megs of source diffs right now, that were produced before I left. The risk of adding that code without review was intolerable, and the need to move from "cowboy" mode was critical. I was working on a review infrastructure, but that kind of behavior was not respected in core. Also, I was working on putting together a forward looking effort, but core doesn't respect that either. With the attitude that FreeBSD currently has, it will always be a monolithic BSD kernel technologists project. That is fine, but not adequate in the 5yr timeframe. In that arena, Linux will likely win -- without seriously glitzy marketing and sales efforts on the part of FreeBSD. The new marketing person is a chance for FreeBSD to avoid being a dot-item on a U**X timeline. It does seem that certain people in core is slowly realizing the previous folly, and will slowly (hopefully quickly) fix the problems. However, there has been lots of wasted time. There had been almost NO forward thinking in the past. When I left, many things pretty much froze -- and now the "cowboy" phase that I was trying to graduate beyond is beckoning again. That has to be managed, but seems to be too much for the core leadership. (I suspect that more experienced core members might see this problem.) The key to saving the project from "cowboy" development is to create a development structure. There has been *some* progress, but is inadequate, or dysfunctional so far. John To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199903270019.TAA09663>