[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle

[George Rosamond]

On 01/19/12 12:30, Mark Saad wrote:
> Talk
>    I know someone you have been following this thread. " FreeBSD has
> serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle"
> I want to know what the NYC BSD users think of this.
>
> I wish each release was developed and maintained longer. I am now
> running lots of 7.3-RELEASE servers and I would like to see 7.5 and
> beyond . I do not want to put time into rebuilding software and
> upgrading again to find out there is another newer release . When the
> 4.x life cycle was in full swing you could depend on freebsd 4.x+1
> being just around the corner with bug fixes driver updates and small
> new features. What happened to this ?
> What do we do ?
>
>
> For the complete story see the freebsd hackers archive
> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.devel.hackers/45459
>

I saw this thread also.  Can't we talk about SOPA more? </jk>

Longevity of the releases is certainly important, but that is always 
limited by something else, such as the number of releases :)

That's the real perplexing part for me.

4.x was nice and stable and pretty for so long.  Everything was nice and 
clean.  And there was focus.

 From the outside, it is confusing to watch 7.x 8.x and 9.x, plus 10.x 
the foci.  Why is that going on?

I know there are significant overhauls happening, like replacing gpl 
code and gcc for 10.x, but I'd rather be confident that ONE of the 
releases was the main production focus.  There are huge changes between 
7.x through 10.x, which would reinforce this all the more.

The OpenBSD release approach makes the most sense to me.  You can plan 
your holidays around it.  Don't go on vacation early May or November. 
You are in rhythm with many thousands of other users.  Problems and 
questions happen concurrently.  Everyone is speaking the same language 
and experiencing the same upgrades.

And yes, I sympathize Mark.  In my context, I *can* have 6.x, 7.x and 
8.x boxes in production and just deal with stuff as it comes.  But being 
EOL'd and all of the sudden the most current is three releases ahead is 
an ugly scenario.

Anyway, my $0.02.

g