FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle

[Mark Felder]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:25:12 -0600, Matthew D. Fuller  
<fullermd at over-yonder.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 02:50:08PM -0600 I heard the voice of
> Mark Felder, and lo! it spake thus:
>>
>> I've seen  several other things hit -STABLE right after the freeze
>> ended early  January which surprise me that they weren't included in
>> -RELEASE and we  didn't have another RC.
>
> You mean the 9.0-RELEASE that's scheduled to be done (after having
> already slipped a month) at the beginning of Sept 2011?  At some point
> (well before those add'l patches you're talking about, IMO) you have
> to STOP and release the damn thing already.
>
>

Yeah, but how much sense does it make to do a -RELEASE with critical bugs?  
For example, gmultipath guarantees a panic on various hardware just by  
breaking a path. This was fixed in a full rewrite discussed this summer  
and publicized in November. Now anyone with shiny 9.0 (or even 8.2)  
running gmultipath risks a panic. The fix IS the rewrite. But it's s total  
rewrite and so patching that onto 9.0 as errata doesn't really make sense  
(rewrite adds features too), so now the choices for a stable gmultipath is  
-STABLE or patiently waiting for 9.1.

So yeah, 9.0 slipped hard. Perhaps it should have slipped a bit further  
until blockers like gmultipath and the cdrom/CAM stuff were fully  
addressed. But it's impossible to release 100% bug free software.... where  
exactly *do* you draw the line? :-/

I certainly would not be better than anyone else at managing any portion  
of this project. I'm just glad I have the ability to find and apply fixes  
myself when necessary.