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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.
That's it. I've lost complete faith in Slashdot as a news source. A major release of FreeBSD doesn't make it to the front page, yet a patch level to the development Linux kernel does? The only people interested in a patch to the development kernel are those who are actively following kernel development and this is hardly news to them.
Its obvious that this entire site is driven by promoting Linux and downing all others. Submit an article concerning an opensource IRC client being back doored and you'll get rejected. Submit a post concerning a security hole in IIS which was patched 18 months prior and you'll be front page news.
While I understand that Opensource is a driving factor behind this site, the title is still "Slashdot : News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". I move to have this changed to "Slashdot: News for biased Linux nazis, stuff that doesn't matter".
scott
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$
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)
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