Right, I typed that wrong. This conversation certainly isn't mud
slinging -- open, honest discussion can do nothing but good [no matter the outcome].
The cleverness of the "troll" was:
1. It was written by somebody who at the least had read these lists for at least the last two years
2. It aired the real frustrations of those of us without commit bits
3. It was on the whole, apart from the personal attacks, reasonably correct.
Which leads me to query, given limited time an resources, what can I do? I've moved many a production server to fBSD over the last 10 or so years -- some of them literally -- by blathering nonstop about the virtues of the OS. So what else is there? Do I need to start writing documentation or publishing and pimping more Howtos on the intarweb? Should I brush up on my C and start patching?
And therein lies a problem. The only thing any of the committers cares about is what they think. Got a problem? Submit a patch. Don't like the way things are done? Submit a patch. Don't like how such-and-such a util works? Submit a patch.
Except, when Matt Dillon did submit, he was told to back out his changes and then lost his commit bit. This was because there was an "imminent commit" due from somebody working on SMP, which still isn't finished really. As for users, sysadmins, people who through advocacy go about sourcing funding, sponsorship, support? They "don't matter". It's the first time I've seen a software project where users are almost actively despised. Sometimes I get confused and think I must be reading an OpenBSD list instead - that's how they do it over there, and that's why I haven't run OBSD for 4 years.
In short, you can put all the effort you want in, but -core and many with a commit bit will resent you for it, because you're just a user. Who cares about users? This is their project after all.
And yeah, people will think I'm trolling, but I'm not. I'm just not happy with the way non-programmers are treated. My perogative, but as the project is defined as being a group of developers, it's not my project and therefore my opinion is worthless. Ask yourself this: What is the core goal of the FreeBSD project? To produce the "best" in it's class? Best for who? Developers? Are you a developer? Maybe it's not the OS for you then unfortunately.
Personally, unless the madness around SMP, the 5- branch and various other bits are ironed out, I can see my next server deployment making use of DragonFly. At least they listen to people who don't submit patches due to the limitations of time/skill/whatever. No, I'm not a Matt fan - I like and respect most on -core and others. I just think 5- has got... well, it's all a bit out of hand really, isn't it?
All they had to do was ask a few sysadmins and end users what they thought. All of this could have been avoided nearly 2 years ago.
Just my tuppence worth, which few are interested in, but ho-hum.
-- Paul Robinson
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