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Date:      Tue, 07 Oct 1997 21:53:12 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
To:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>
Subject:   Re: group assignments from make world. 
Message-ID:  <22723.876286392@time.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 07 Oct 1997 21:45:35 CDT." <Pine.BSF.3.96.971007213941.9629A-100000@shell.futuresouth.com> 

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Just a P.S. to my previous message, I'd should also note that I'd be
the first to suggest that we should add a "special issues for -current
and -stable users" to the FAQ it I didn't already know from bitter
experience that people stopped reading the FAQ long ago (this probably
not even being entirely their fault since there have been long periods
where this resource was essentially so stale as to be untrustworthy).

Any suggestions?  Do people really want to see a "general information
for -[current|stable] users" which is posted on a regular (monthly?)
basis to -[current|stable]?  I can't really think that anything else
is going to work, and even that suggestion is imperfect (not everyone
who posts also subscribes).

As things originally started out, folks weren't even supposed to track
a branch if they didn't subscribe to the appropriate mailing list and
wern't willing to use all available means before distracting the
developers with their questions about such work in progress (for the
same reasons that you don't stand behind your plumber the whole time
he's working on your sink going "so, whatcha doing?  Is that a pipe?
How does one fix a sink, anyway?" :).  Unfortunately, "enforcing" that
model also pretty much became impossible the minute cvsup made it
child's play to track a branch (it's all John Polstra's bloody fault,
that's it!  ;-) and, taking some of the blame myself, I sort of doc'd
it all in the handbook and introduced more people to the concept.

I don't mean to sound like Cassandra here, but I really do think that
we need to figure out some other way of dealing with this extra tech
support issue or, at the current rate of increase, all development
time will soon be subsumed entirely by the task of simply reading
email, FreeBSD's principle developers getting about as much actual,
useful work done as the U.S. congress. :-(

Maybe it's time to institute something a little bit closer to the
XFree86 Project's BETA program?  Not all the way in that direction,
where early access is really restricted quite tightly, but something
which might require one to jump through just a few more hoops first
(at a minimum, you'd need to subscribe to the appropriate list and, if
you left it, so would your "license to cvsup" :-).  Too draconian?
Not draconian enough? :-)

					Jordan



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