Schedule for releases

[Robert N. M. Watson]

On 21 Dec 2010, at 22:59, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> In message <alpine.BSF.2.00.1012212215320.36028 at 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