Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:26:00 -0800 From: Jack Vogel <jfvogel@gmail.com> To: "Robert N. M. Watson" <rwatson@freebsd.org> Cc: mdf@freebsd.org, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Schedule for releases Message-ID: <AANLkTinTtUPhKL94KeLB_CynWSRVYqvPjFEqJK5pD7hU@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <0626B045-E0D7-4875-8B72-9CC705BD133D@FreeBSD.org> References: <9194.1292972364@critter.freebsd.dk> <0626B045-E0D7-4875-8B72-9CC705BD133D@FreeBSD.org>
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>From my perspective its not so much the work of 'back porting', like my drivers that's trivial. The issue from a developer standpoint is support, its a lot of work to keep tests going on multiple releases, and when there are bugs worrrying about repro, etc.. I take my que mainly from customers, what they need, and how important that is to Intel, not sure if that's typical or atypical, but whichever :) Jack On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Robert N. M. Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>wrote: > > On 21 Dec 2010, at 22:59, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > > > In message <alpine.BSF.2.00.1012212215320.36028@fledge.watson.org>, > Robert Wats > > on writes: > > > >> Looking at 7.x, I'm struck by how much it has slowed down. There's a > >> significant user community, but not a significant developer community. > > > > This is a very important point to interpret correctly: > > > > FreeBSD is whatever its developers make it be. > > Agreed entirely. > > > A more structured and more desirabe option is to channel such funds > > through either the foundation or a commercial entity, who then pays > > developers to pay attention to 7.x > > > > Companies who use Open Source are not adverse to paying for the > > service they get, but somebody needs to make it easy for them. > > Yeah, I think we pretty much agree on this: someone needs to do the work > within the community. I don't doubt dozens of companies (if not many more) > are busy back-porting drivers locally to 6.x/7.x, etc, and it would be nice > to (a) amortize that cost, making it cheaper to use FreeBSD in said > products, and (b) get it out into the community so everyone benefits. It's > possible to imagine different models working there, and possibly more than > one at once. I think the obvious starting point actually is in the device > driver space, and possibly through the support efforts already being made in > companies. It's useful for our community, however, to discuss whether we > have any technical/social obstacles that would limit that (i.e., would > $vendor not like it if third parties maintained their drivers in branches > they no longer QA for), and whether we can take any specific actions to > support those efforts. > > There are lots of other factors involved here too, of course, but I think > there's probably some moderately accessible work that if done, will make the > world a better place :-). > > Robert_______________________________________________ > freebsd-arch@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arch-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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