From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 11 05:09:16 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD2B816A41A for ; Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:09:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ari@ish.com.au) Received: from fish.ish.com.au (eth5921.nsw.adsl.internode.on.net [59.167.240.32]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC0FC13C4DB for ; Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:09:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ari@ish.com.au) Received: from ip-182.ish.com.au ([203.29.62.182]) by fish.ish.com.au with esmtpa (Exim 4.43) id 1JOQyt-0004Bb-59; Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:13:27 +1100 Message-Id: From: Aristedes Maniatis To: Ken Smith In-Reply-To: <1201271346.36488.23.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:09:14 +1100 References: <1201271346.36488.23.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.915) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd 7 release process X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:09:16 -0000 On 26/01/2008, at 1:29 AM, Ken Smith wrote: > Yeah, sorry. I've got communication issues that run so deep at this > point I've basically given up on "fixing it" for this release and will > try again from scratch next release. [ Anybody wanna be a secretary? > No pay, no benefits, and likely no praise/recognition other than me > saying "Thanks" periodically but you'll make lots of people happy. > Applications welcome. :-] Although I know your question is tongue in cheek, I am sure that there are quite a few people on the periphery (that is, not committers) who would help where they could. The problem is largely: how can they get involved? This touches somewhat on the other German thread in January here. Some things which I believe might help with the communication issues: * more communication on public lists (even if that list has posting rights restricted to committers in order to keep the noise down). I assume there is communication happening behind the scenes about the release of 7.0, but it isn't visible to enthusiastic non-committers * increased use of the FreeBSD wiki which allows people with less than committer rights to contribute (possibly looking at replacing the main site with a CMS driven/wiki in the longer term which allow greater freedom in assigning rights, simpler access to revision history and less effort to fix a page while you are looking at it). As an example, I created a page [1] with information about ZFS but how does such a thing get into the official documentation? * better/improved bug tracker which could be used to generate pages such as the 7.0 todo list automatically, manage workflow (eg. release engineering requirements for commit approval, or the MFC process) Of course any change affects a large number of people and needs to considered carefully. But I do see the above things as being very successful at the Apache Foundation for management of an equally large number of developers and tasks. At Apache many projects have a deeper usage of bug tracking to generate release notes, track work remaining to release, etc. Cheers Ari [1] http://www.ish.com.au/solutions/articles/freebsdzfs --------------------------> ish http://www.ish.com.au Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001 GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A