FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle

[Mark Linimon]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 12:24:22PM +0100, vermaden wrote:
> It would also be good to have some wiki.freebsd.org page that
> would describe what information is needed to fill a good PR

See:

  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/ .

Your suggestion to include things like dmidecode is a good one, and
we should add those.

> I still was (or at least felt) that was a FreeBSD newbie that time,
> so I did not knew if my 'handbook part' was just rubbish, or stupid,
> or ... whatever, no one responded, so I assumed that its not
> needed/useless and moved along.

I'm hoping that the forums are a better place for new users to ask
questions these days, than the high-volume mailing lists.  In theory
it should be a more appropriate venue.  (Having said that, I don't
participate in the forums due to lack of time, but I understand there
is a community of moderators and seasoned users on it.)

> It would be also good to have a wiki.freebsd.org page describing
> what is needed and in what format a user should send the
> documentation changes

Perhaps there should be a docs analogue to the following:

  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing-ports/

doc folks, any takers?

> I have now filled these PR's here:
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=164431
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=164432

Thanks.  This makes these issues visible.

> So its time for another article/page on wiki.freebsd.org, how to become
> a committer and help to solve PRs'

See:

  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing/
  http://wiki.freebsd.org/BecomingACommitter

> how to add your mirror to FreeBSD project

See:

  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/hubs/index.html

So, let me add in conclusion, I'm willing to give a hearing to constructive
criticism such as this posting.  There are some good, concrete, suggestions
here.  If I've given the impression in my earlier response that I'm not,
I'm sorry.  OTOH I see a lot of non-constructive criticism go by and you'll
have to excuse me for being rude to those posters.  After the Nth posting
like that it's simply too much for my patience.

mcl