Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD v.4.6 (NOT) Released
A FreeBSD fan writes "FreeBSD 4.6 was just released. It's a relief to see it arrive after a myriad of delays and excuses caused it to be held back. As always, with every new version, FreeBSD becomes even faster and more secure than before. Please be sure to find a mirror here before downloading." Update: There's been an update to the story, please note that "something fishy is going on"
Murray Stokely writes "We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers. Are you trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD? The release is not ready yet, and will not be until the front page of FreeBSD.org is updated and a PGP signed announcement message is posted to announce@FreeBSD.org." So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
This stuff sells itself.
And needless to say that BSD is dying.
"As always, with every new version, PRODUCT becomes ... more secure than before"
isn't that a silly statement? If PRODUCT were good in the first place it wouldn't need become more secure. If this always happens it implies many more defficiencies.
I guess it's a good thing about having a script that automatically updates the source tree and does the make world every other night :)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 prcent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Oh wait, it's not out yet.
Dumb fucks.
I wonder if you can install Lunix: Penguin Job on BSD?
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
How is it that no one thought twice before naming the new sony laptop dial driver `spic(4)'?
(cvsupping to 4.6-RELEASE as we speak)
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
Recent convert from Linux, Happy B-day FreeBSD.
:)
Now what should I grab, since I'm using 4.6rc1
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
Anybody who bothered to check the official release status would know that the release has not yet been made. In particular, note this:
Announcement sent out after a majority of the mirrors have received the bits.
Very few mirrors have got the full release yet, so the release has not yet occurred.
To post this story early will only ensure that first-tier mirrors are overloaded.
I'm a little surprised a poster would say the reasons behind the 4.6 release being late are excuses.
EVERY RELEASE HAS DELAYS
This is not a corporation. We do not keep a schedule. We release it when it's ready, slashdot be damned. Don't like it? Jump ship, goodbye, we don't need you on our team. You're not good enough mindshare to work on this project or take part in it.
Congratulations to the core on another release of FreeBSD, keep 'em coming strong.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
damn't, is it that hard to say "oops sorry"
I live in a giant bucket.
Damn straight. I wish I had mod points right now...
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
"it's" = it is
"its" = belongs to it
Can't you just post 4 simple letters?
Repeat after me: I H B T
Why did I get 10 submissions celebrating it's release?
Because the Trollaxor.com eds were hard at work on this one.
Have a nice day.
If I were to submit "U.S. Declares War on China" ten times from ten different IP addresses, would you post that too without so much as checking a more credible news source?
How is something not being released news? I dont recall ever seeing a "Linux kernel not being released yet" because we screwed up again story on Slashdot? What gives? Do you people CHECK the stories or just post?
Another reason why slashdot needs story voting, and not this nazi fuck incompetant retard system they use for posting stories.
Slashdot YHBT HAND
you fucking morons.
You not thinking it's that simple doesn't jive with the fact that the release engineering team releases it, not you. Try to keep that in mind.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
I honestly don't think it's that simple. Why are release notes up for it?
Interresting[sp?] point. Why were there so many magazines, websites, books about WindowsME (I think that's the one, I can't keep track of it anymore. I mean the successor of WindowsNT) before the product was on the shelves in the shops? Why are there all these technical documents / HOWTOs already available on the websites before the product is available? It's called preparations! Nobody was able to buy WindowsME before that day, but everybody had read about it and everybody had seen books about.
Why did I get 10 submissions celebrating it's release?
If you go to this url:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ you will see a list of release-notes, erratas and announcements. Add some creative surfing to it et voila, there is your 4.6 announcement.
I've tried to find it, but no, I couldn't find any direct links to the release notes. Only with creative surfing I could find it.
So, oops, sorry, really don't do it for me, no, not yet.
There is a damned good reason for it:
Murray Stokely writes "We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers.
Screwing it up once, "no problem just don't do it next time". Screwing it up twice, "I told you how this was going to be done, can you *PLEASE* do it right?". Screwing it up three times... Now that's a sign that there is something really wrong.
bash$
it's eating up my screen size
murray 2002/06/10 13:34:09 PDT
Modified files:
. avail
Log:
Lock src/ for 30-45 minutes while the RELENG_4_6_0_RELEASE tag is
created.
Revision Changes Path
1.185 +1 -1 CVSROOT/avail
That is why people submitted it. They read too much into the tagging of the release. As subsequent mail noted, the release is not yet out and tags may be slid. Release notes are not directly linked. Simple enough?
If posting FreeBSD is out, before it's actual
release, that is small potatoes compared to other
OS bulletins-virii,warnings,whitepaper,etc.
These posts are funny--P2P funny.
FreeBSD Lives! We don't die, we multiply.
-- /."
Evan "standing next to his grain of salt, not to scale, whenever I read
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
chris de-boned-it
As the person who committed the 4.6 release documentation to the FreeBSD Web site, I can pretty authoritatively say why these files were there in advance of the release. The reason is so that when Murray (or whomever else) makes the release announcement, the pages pointed to by the release announcement are already on the main Web site. It basically makes it easier for users to find the information they need.
But these pages had (have) no inbound links to them at all. The fact that some people had to do some "creative surfing" to actually find the release documentation should really have been a clue that the release wasn't ready yet. If we *had* released, wouldn't it be kind of silly to keep this information obscured?
This wouldn't be such a big deal except we had a very similar situation in 4.5 with someone posting a bogus release announcement to Slashdot (and having it slip past the editors). I really hope there isn't a third time.
Oh yes. I'm also the person who wrote the so-called "delays and excuses" message. I didn't see it as making excuses for anything. I wanted to give our users some explanation as to why things would be delayed.
Peace,
Bruce A. Mah
(Member, FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)
All the code is readily available on the cvsup servers? Whats the big deal about a release? I'd rather see 5.0-RELEASE wait another 6 months and get the finishing touches on SMPng and the sparc port, as well as all the other cool stuff I've surely missed. Good code takes time, and will come if it's not rushed.
yes, "creative surfing" may get you to the most recent release notes on some of the mirrors, and the release files might be there as well. but as long as there are sites that haven't been updated yet people will pound on the other mirrors even more.
*cough*slashdot effect*cough*
so, please give the freebsd folks a fair chance of populating all the mirrors. if you really can't wait for the hottest release, you have have been tracking -stable via cvsup anyway.
Since when have you ever seen a pile of volunteered contributions without a fishy or off one in the stack? Even over and over.
Slashdot may get a million submissions a day, but they only post about ten or twenty of them. That gives them plenty of time to actually check out the story.
This is the third time this has happened with a FreeBSD release, and it's happened to Linux distro releases as well. Is Slashdot deliberately trying to destroy their credibility?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"something fishy is going on"
:p
:)
Something fishy you say? That would mean a penguin had something to do with it! Unless of course demons eat fish too
Well now I just have to wait for FreeBSD.org to give the official word then adownloadin' I will go
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Why were there so many magazines, websites, books about WindowsME (I think that's the one, I can't keep track of it anymore. I mean the successor of WindowsNT) before the product was on the shelves in the shops?
.NET (NT5.2). Windows .NET is the Server version of XP. When .NET comes out, people except a XP Second Edition with the same build number of .NET. (it'll be NT5.2 too)
Um, the successor to Windows NT 4.0 was Windows NT 5.0, more commonly known as Windows 2000 when its name was renamed by the marketroids a few months before release.
Windows ME? That was the end of the line(tm), for that pile of shit known as Windows 3.1/95/98/98SE.
If your still slow, Win2000 (NT5.0) was followed by Windows XP (NT5.1), and Windows
Yes, all the different names, and now mismatched release of Server and Workstaton/Professional versions is very confusing. If MS has any consistency, it's its consistency in being inconsistent!
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Well, then post "I hear rumurs that FreeBSD 4.6 is released, although if you look at their official site, it isn't". No-one would object to that, other than that it's a stupid thing to post.
/. but for something you can check with a visit to one web site, that you've been asked not to report prematurely twice in the past....
It's not like people expect detailed fact checking on
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
To: chrisd and the rest of the /. crew.
Subject: Fish
There is nothing fishy going on, you are just fucking morons who can't do like you've been asked.
Thanks
I was interested to se that Murray Stokely asked if the poster of the story was "trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD" Why would he think that? It is a serious thing to alledge. Is it likely that someone was trying to?
The problem I have is a /.'ing could break the pre-release distribution system with every one hitting on the same mirror, that is supposed to be feeding other mirrors.
What credibility? This is a forum for a bunch of like minded people to gather on the net. Just like everything else, consider the source. /. is dead on about some things, and horribly off about others, just like a bunch of techies in the break room waiting for coffee to brew.
Of course, so is the "credible media", which consistantly refered to the nonexistant "anthrax virus" for a few months. It's high school level science to know the difference between a virus and bacterium, and every major news outlet has a high paid science editor, plus several consultants. And yet the media got it wrong over and over again.
Me? I take stuff on Slashdot as someone calling a neat "fact" over a cube wall - you check it out yourself.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Just cvsup to the RELENG_4_6 branch (open for almost a week now) et voila...
:)
FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE #0
It's probably just the finishing touch to packages, ISO's and the like, not to mention giving them a chance to get the data on the FTP mirrors that takes a while still.
Anyone who keeps track of RELENG_4 (or _4_6) can already have it. Suckers who perform a reinstall from CD at every release will just have to wait some more
So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
Yeah, he feels that the editorial staff are a pack of unprofessional assclowns who can't be bothered to perform the sort of rudimentary fact-checking demanded of the average high school newspaper.
And hey presto, he's right.
--saint
ALL of the release stages are detailed on this page. And actually, the simplest way to verify whether or not 4.6 is really released is to take a look at the FreeBSD FTP site. After the 4.6-RELEASE directory and the ISO directory is populated on the main server, the mirrors will be updated and the hammering can begin. I could be wrong, but for the time that I've been running FreeBSD, the binaries are usually available before the actual announcement, so if the binaries aren't there, there is no release.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Hehe, Slashdot really is a load of shit sometimes. The editors clearly can't learn from pervious mistakes, and would never keep a job going in real-life professional journalism.
Actually, it is just that simple. There is an explanation for all of this.
Why did you get 10 submissions that the release was out? Because the release has been tagged in the cvs tree, that's why. This doesn't mean that it's been released, just that we know what versions of what files (may) make up the release. It may only take an hour of so to build the release itself, but it takes a lot longer to build all the packages, get the stuff shipped to the mirrors and all the other things the RE people have to do before they can announce the release.
Why are the release notes on the website? Easy, the website is part of the cvs tree. The website build system has been building the release notes for 4.6-RELEASE for weeks (if not months). With that said, I note that the 4.6 release notes are NOT linked anywhere, but it does provide access to the handy release schedule.
Part if the issue here, IMO, is the transparency of the Project itself (this is a good thing). People can see the release happening in real time as each part is completed, so I can see how some people would jump the gun a bit and start submitting stuff to
As for Murray? Well, I understand his feelings, but I may have taken a different path to the same result...
Sheesh... this isnt Celine Dion's fault, give the ol' girl a break, will ya?
A small concession would be to have FreeBSD.ORG deny or redirect any requests with HTTP_REFERRER of slashdot.org until release time.
:)
Not nice, but it works for somethingawful.com.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Bite me.
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The filure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BS had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
I have the 4.6-mini iso, the binaries are out and full iso's will be available soon, so in other words they're doing the smart thing and saying that we'll say its released when all the mirrors have the files needed, rather than say its released and not have it available for a couple of days.
-mutter- something something something...
just fine.
r 19
r 16
r 11
http://www.bsdcity.com
They even have a security policy
http://www.bsdcity.com/faq.php3?mode=faq1#Anwse
And they think 600,000 people is 'just right'
http://www.bsdcity.com/faq.php3?mode=faq1#Anwse
And, for the BSD is dying crowd
http://www.bsdcity.com/faq.php3?mode=faq2#Anwse
yhbt, since it's NOT RELEASED YET. hahaha.
Surely with a sub 250000 uid you have seen the *BSD is dying crapflood on EVERY BSD ARTICLE since before you joined?? Why respond in detail now, today, to this particular crapflood? Was there something particularly special about it, or were you just particularly oblivious?
Unfortunately, penguin slaves who engineer Linux distros and the cvsup-challenged dorks who gotta have the latest-greatest-coolest don't understand the concept of being thorough.
You are an idiot, the people that read/post/contribute to your "weblog" are idiots.
You and your readers could not pool enough IQ points to pull that off.
FOAD, you sophomoric little fag.
-chrisd
-chrisd
actually BankOfAmerica_ATM (or whatever his name is) is a brilliant troll. The others are idoits.
The (real) announcement came out a couple hours ago; presumably it will appear on the freebsd.org website at 0800 UTC when the site is rebuilt.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Delivered-To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc: bmah@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE is now available
From: bmah@FreeBSD.ORG (Bruce A. Mah)
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 16:34:26 -0700
Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG
I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, the very latest release on the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE in January 2002, we have made hundreds of fixes, updated many system components, and addressed a wide variety of security issues.
One of the most significant changes in FreeBSD 4.6 is the adoption of XFree86 4.2.0 as the default version of the X Windows System. We encourage users (particularly those upgrading from older installations of XFree86) to consult the relevant section of the FreeBSD Handbook for information on installing and configuring XFree86 4.2.0. This information can be found on-line at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/x11.html
On systems with the doc distribution installed, it can also be found at:
A number of enhancements to network device drivers have been made, as well as updates to the ATA storage subsystem.
Some contributed programs have been updated, such as sendmail (updated to 8.12.3) and the ISC DHCP client (updated to 3.0.1RC8).
For more information about the most significant changes with this release of FreeBSD, please see the release notes:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/relnotes.htm
It is also useful to peruse the errata file, as it contains late-breaking news about the release:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/errata.html
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities (including a schedule of upcoming releases), please see:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/
Availability
------------
FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE supports the i386 and alpha architectures and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for the i386 are available now. Final builds for the alpha architecture are in progress and will be made available shortly.
We can't promise that all the mirror sites will carry the larger ISO images, but they will at least be available from:
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.lt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/FreeBSD/
If you can't afford FreeBSD on media, are impatient, or just want to use it for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO images, otherwise please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following companies have contributed substantially to the development of FreeBSD:
FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/
FreeBSD Services Ltd. http://www.freebsd-services.com/
Daemon News http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html
Each CD or DVD set contains the FreeBSD installation and application package bits for the i386 ("PC") architecture. For a set of distfiles used to build ports in the ports collection, please see the FreeBSD Toolkit, a 6 CD set containing extra bits which no longer fit on the 4 CD set, or the DVD distribution from FreeBSD Services Ltd.
FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Trantor, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Before trying the central FTP site, please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:
ftp://ftp..FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD
Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.
More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html
For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The FreeBSD Handbook. It provides a complete installation walk-through for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/install.html
Acknowledgments
---------------
Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 4.6, including Compaq, Yahoo!, and The FreeBSD Mall.
In addition to myself, the release engineering team for 4.6-RELEASE includes:
Murray Stokely : Release Engineering Lead, i386 Builds
Robert Watson : Release Engineering
John Baldwin : Release Engineering, alpha Builds
Brian Somers : Release Engineering
Steve Price : Package Splits
Will Andrews : Package Splits
Kris Kennaway : Package Building
David O'Brien : XFree86 Integration
Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work which went into making this release. Many thanks are also due to the FreeBSD committers , without whom there would be nothing to release, and thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who have contributed bug fixes, features, and suggestions.
Enjoy!
Bruce A. Mah
(For the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=2600+ 0+current/freebsd-announce
Go for it!
"We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers. Are you trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD? The release is not ready yet, and will not be until the front page of FreeBSD.org is updated and a PGP signed announcement message is posted to announce@FreeBSD.org."
I do not believe that kind of demeanour is going to attract new people to FreeBSD.
You may call me a troll for saying this, but you know I'm right.