From owner-freebsd-current Tue Sep 22 02:22:18 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA24929 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Tue, 22 Sep 1998 02:22:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA24808 for ; Tue, 22 Sep 1998 02:21:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA27220; Tue, 22 Sep 1998 02:21:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) To: ben@rosengart.com cc: "Dag-Erling C. Smrgrav" , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: shouting in a void? In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 21 Sep 1998 15:14:57 EDT." Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 02:21:52 -0700 Message-ID: <27214.906456112@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I'm tired of jumping through hoops. I'm going pretty far out of my way > to be helpful to the FreeBSD project and to myself by spotting problems > in 3.0-alpha^H^H^H^H^Hbeta, and all I hear is that I'm not doing enough. Now now, calm down. Perhaps the real problem is that you're not really cut out for running -current and we simply have a personnel mis-match problem here. And do hang on, before you get your back-fur all standing on end, and let me just clarify what I meant by that, subtracting out as best I can the usual pejorative implications of saying "you're not cut out for xyz" (e.g. "you wimp!"). I mean nothing of the kind, and simply state the very plain and simple fact that -current is not for everyone, not even relatively close to release time (that being usually when some of the most frenetic activity of all takes place, in fact). It does occasionally happen that someone wanders in who's NOT well-versed in the process of jumping through hoops and doesn't quite know that hoop-jumping is, indeed, an integral part of the process of getting into BETA testing at all. Consider it now stated explicitly. We're not out to alienate users, but we *are* after a certain calibre of tester here and I think maybe you might have inadvertantly wandered into the wrong line, that's all. It's no biggie and your manhood will be in no way diminished if you jump back into -stable, believe me! :-). Indeed, I have told a number of people who scarcely lacked for clues (who were, in fact, quite a bit smarter than I am) to stick to -stable and NOT to run -current or any of our dot-zero releases because I happened to know for a fact that they had better things to do with their time and, if they even tried to participate, would only become rapidly frustrated and annoyed at the various bumps in the road and the extra email and all the other hassles that go with the process and they'd probably just end up flaming somebody. It's a dead loss all around when something like that happens, so you really don't want to recommend it. > Is core interested in a stable 3.0-RELEASE or is the idea just to > alienate enough users that the complaint volume is low anyway? No, we simply recommend that some people stick with -stable, even if it hasn't got all the bells-and-whistles they might be looking for, and avoid -current if they're not willing to put up with some truly rough road occasionally. - stable has its occasional bumps as well (re: the recent ipfw stuff) but nothing like "E-day" or "C-day" and if there were any WORSE time for someone to wander inadvertantly into the -current zone, I can't think of one offhand. :-) There will be more than ample time later for the second-wave folks to jump on the 3.0 bandwagon, ideally at a time when the wagon is moving at a much less frenetic pace than it is now. And it will. Patience. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message