Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 20:52:19 +0200 (MET DST) From: Wolfgang Helbig <helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De> To: brandon@roguetrader.com (Brandon Gillespie) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: why bother submitting anything (via send-pr) Message-ID: <199708101852.UAA27642@helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970810104350.2884A-100000@roguetrader.com> from Brandon Gillespie at "Aug 10, 97 10:50:27 am"
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> I'm debating with myself why I should bother submitting anything with > send-pr anymore. It seems that unless it happens to be a pet project of > one of the developers, it will pretty much be ignored and never committed. > I have two submissions pending SOME response (even a 'no, we dont want it' > would be appreciated)--but nothing. The first is a rewrite of the > libcrypt, and the second is 'doconfig' (a wrap of the kernel build > process, based off Digital Unix'es doconfig). Its been so long since I've > sent these in that I've lost the send-pr id for them (altho I could dig > them up again). The cryp() stuff is misc/2302 (1996/12/27) and the config wrapper is bin/3386 (1997/04/25). misc/2302 was analyzed by Mark Murray and he wrote on Jan 18 that he is going to "commit it real soon now". bin/3386 was "Responsible Changed" from gnats-admin-> to FreeBSD-bugs by Satoshi on May 20. That is all that happened to those two PRs till today. The PRs seem to be orphaned since Mike Pritchard left the FreeBSD project in May 1997. We submitters who are not committers have a *very* hard time getting any feedback. Six of my submissions are left open. Some of them are already fixed or analyzed and should be closed, some are only fixing typos or adding a line to man pages and are not worth the trouble you have to go into in order to get your submission noticed. > Basically, what i'm wondering (as a disgruntled person wanting to help but > seeming to be ignored) is why isn't there somebody simply responsible for You are not the only one wondering! > non-developer submissions? So far it seems that the way things work > around here is if a developer takes interest in it, it'll move forward, > otherwise too bad, mebbe one of the other *BSD systems will like it. They do! Last week I've got more responses (three) from NetBSD users than from the FreeBSD project (zero). > Now, to retract a touch, I was in contact with Mark Murray > (mark@grondar.za) about the libcrypt rewrite--but I think he had some > hardware problems and either lost interest or isn't able to do much at the > moment (I havn't had any responses back from him). Jordan mentioned that he's going to hire developers for porting the OS to another architecture. (He left open which architecture.) I conclude from this, the desertion of the PRs and the discussion about current ports versus stable ports that the FreeBSD project is switching to a commercial company that does not depend on volunteers any more in the long run. Wolfgang
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