Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 15:27:41 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> To: tlambert@primenet.com Cc: jessemonroy@email.com, jessem@livecam.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Concern over ftp.freebsd.org Message-ID: <20010503152741H.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: <200105032146.OAA02712@usr05.primenet.com> References: <20010503112139V.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <200105032146.OAA02712@usr05.primenet.com>
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From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Subject: Concern over ftp.freebsd.org Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 21:45:55 +0000 (GMT) > I don't appreciate the mini-flame-fest, and I don't appreciate > this being moved from -hackers, and turned into a mailing list > version of The Jerry Springer Show. It feels very much like > an attempt to bury legitimate, and, admittedly, _very poorly_ > voiced concerns, under a hail of noise. Well, you may not appreciate it but it still doesn't fit -hackers' charter and hence did not belong there. Had it started as a reasoned set of concerns as to whether or not ftpd itself was capable of handling the load, or discussing a new ftp load-balancing algorithm, then it would certainly have been -hackers material but it didn't even pretend to do that. It was more of a meta-discussion about the FreeBSD.org infrastructure itself, and www, hubs and announce are where those sorts of discussions occur. > I think that there is some legitimate concern over the, to all > appearances, unheralded demise of ftp.freebsd.org. Of course there is - do you think I and others involved have been turning handsprings over it all this time? Obviously not, and we've simply been focused on trying to FIX this problem by whatever means necessary all this time. Also keep in mind the fact that we've been somewhat starved for answers ourselves as to whether this was going to be a long term or (comparatively) short term problem. We've been hoping for the best and planning for the worst, and until I was more sure of the situation I wasn't comfortable in posting something that might only aggrevate the situation with the current hosting ISP. > When this happened, it seriously underscored the degree to which > the FreeBSD project depends on good faith effort by agencies not > under the projects direct control (as Linux depends on the good > faith and continued existance of Linus and those lieutenants who > hold the keys to the non-repository maintained source tree). I think I did cover this in my announcement, and we're certainly taking every step to ensure that we're not so firmly behind the 8 ball should this kind of thing happen again. > In the process, which was the creation of an internal release, > not a competing release, I found a number of other issues which > would preclude someone else from taking up the banner of FreeBSD > CDROM creation, should California break off and sink into the > ocean (or Jordan get hit by a bus or crucified by Jesus). You should probably state what those are rather than leaving your concerns so unspecifically stated. I'm sure that if I stopped producing and putting up ISO images, someone else would rapidly step into the fray since it's hardly rocket science to do so and there are a number of FTP sites who'd willingly host them. I think half a dozen different Linux distributions got started this way without anyone even needing to get hit by a bus, so the barriers to entry are probably lower than you imagine they are. > But there are a number of outstanding issues remaining sadly > unaddressed, and they would most certainly shake the faith of > anyone else basing a product or developement environment on an > assumption that FreeBSD will always be around in the form it > has been historically. It shook my faith, and I've been around > and an advocate since day one. Erm, like WHAT? It's not as if I didn't make an effort to point out that we've come face to face with some of our own infrastructural shortcomings and will be working to address them. What remains unaddressed that you think we could address within the limits of our current resource constraints? > On the other hand, it's pretty clear that there are outstanding > issues that remain to be addressed. I think you've made this point enough times that I can not be faulted for asking you to itemize them. :) > Here is what outsiders have seen: > > Walnut Creek effectively sold FreeBSD to BSDI, in what appeared > to many of us to be an arranged marriage. Wrong. Nobody has sold FreeBSD to anyone and if you'd listened to ANY of the Wind River *public* developer calls (which, even if you could not participate in real-time, were archived for some time afterwards at www.wrs.com) you'd have heard it stated over and over, by the most senior WRS management, as something which very definitely was not the case. Wind River has no illusions about buying an open source project, not that it could even if it wanted to, and you shouldn't either. > The Windriver acquisition feels more like a Mexican divorce, > followed immediately by another arranged marriage with an older > gentleman whom our parents have chosen for us on the theory that > our judgement is suspect based on our previous failed marriage. The FreeBSD Project has always been free to pick its own allies as it sees fit, and I'm sure saner heads in the community are simply watching WRS very closely right now to see whether, once consumated, it's a marriage of mutual convenience, a one-night stand or merely the unfortunate results of excessive alcohol consumption. I currently work for WRS (in advance of the BSDi deal going through) and even I don't know the answer to that question yet. I can guarantee you that I'll be watching with just as hawk-like a degree of attention as everybody else, however, and I would hope that everyone can keep their preconceptions either way to a minimum and just wait to see how things develop. To do anything else would be foolhardy at best. > The situation with ftp.freebsd.org is unfortunate, as coincidence > goes. It does not add to the trust. No, but it truly is just a coincidence and hence shouldn't be held against the prospective bride. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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