FreeBSD Core Developer Thrown Out

SlashChick writes "From a discussion on the freebsd-chat mailing list, it appears that one of the FreeBSD core developers, Matt Dillon, has been barred from committing any changes to the FreeBSD kernel. Dillon was one of the developers 'responsible for making FreeBSD 4.x the most rugged and stress-proof free operating system in existence,' and also contributed to fixing the Linux VM. Unfortunately, there has been little explanation from the FreeBSD core team about why Dillon was thrown out, leading to speculation and worries about the future of the FreeBSD kernel. Does the Slashdot community have any more insight into this situation? Would someone from the FreeBSD team care to elaborate and assuage our worries?" CD Update: Greg Lehey from the core team has infact elaborated in this comment.

Comments

Little explanation? I think there's enough.

[angio]

From the mail archive:

The short of it is that Matt was unable to treat many of his fellow developers with the civility and respect that they deserve.

I think that's fairly clear. There are many strong, good hackers in this world who wouldn't be able to work together. While it's unfortunate that Matt and the rest of -core weren't able to resolve it, it's a fact of life in a big project...

Re:Little explanation? I think there's enough.

[RevAaron]

Just as 5.0 was coming out and there seemed to be this general quietness about freedom and the GPL and RMS bashing seemed to be at an acceptable high point the good lads at FreeBSD go and remind us all again what open and freedom is all about.

What does this have to do with GPL or its attitude? Linus could just as easily bar kernel patch submission from some individual who he thought was causing problems.

This problem individual could just as easily keep on running with his own special kernel, with all these swell changes Linux kept rejecting. Same goes for FreeBSD- you can get the source, and this guy, or anyone, could keep on writing new code, patching their setup and giving the away the code.

Just because a project is GPL doesn't mean that it'll take code from anyone, or have a CVS server to which anyone could commit. From where would you get this silly idea?

dillon leaves the FreeBSD project

[groggy-P]

The information you have is from the open FreeBSD-chat mailing list. The thread was started by people in the project who are not on the closed developers@FreeBSD-org mailing list, and some of the statements are wide of the mark:

• Matt Dillon was never a "core developer". The FreeBSD project doesn't use that term, but it looks like a reference to the core team. Matt has never been a member of the core team.
• Matt has done some very good work over the years. His contribution to FreeBSD release 4 was invaluable, but it would be wrong to suggest that he single-handedly made the difference. Commit statistics on the orginal list show that he has not been very active over the last 12 months.
• I was not aware of his involvement with Linux VM. Nothing we have done will change this, though.
• The FreeBSD core team has informed the development community in detail about the reasons for Matt's removal. We don't think it's appropriate, nor fair to Matt, to wash dirty linen in public.
• Matt has very little influence on the future of the FreeBSD kernel. That work which he has done over the last two years or so was mainly maintenance.

It's always sad to have to make these decisions. It's even more difficult to defend them when our hands are tied behind our backs.

Re:Bona fide cuestions

[mph]

Who elects core developers?

The committers (i.e. developers with write access to the CVS repository, who number in the hundreds).

If core developers are elected democratically, why was it necessary to throw out Matt Dillon explicitly instead of just explaining the situation to the electors? Aren't electors trusted to do the (apparently) reasonable thing and unelect him?

Contrary to the title of this Slashdot article, Matt Dillon was not a member of Core, and hence was not elected. He was a committer, one of hundreds. His commit bit was granted by Core.

It is incredibly frustrating to read Slashdot whenever something like this comes up, because so many people (Linux people, it seems) confuse Core with the body of committers, despite the fact that we go through this exercise over and over again.

The flamewar is here:

[otuz]

It seems to have started when Dillon made a clever hack and people got arguing over API problems:

The problem
The solution
NOT another solution ...

The flamewar starts.. ...

and continues.

Arrogant, opinionated, COMPETENT jerks allowed

[Eric Green]

I've been acquainted with Matt Dillon's work for over 15 years now. We're talking about someone who wrote a "C" compiler and library in a week once "just to prove he could do it", for cryin' out loud! Frankly, one Matt Dillon is worth four or five of the rest of the BSD development team. I don't care how arrogant or opinionated he is, I'd hire him for my team in a second -- I've worked with arrogant, opinionated people before (hmm, I've also looked in the mirror before :-), and I don't have the slightest bit of problem with them as long as they're *RIGHT*. Just give'em the module definition, ask'em to produce documentation on what they're going to do, and then once that's done, turn them loose to do it. It works. Been there, done that.

On the other hand, Matt is not, and never has been, indispensible to the FreeBSD project. His biggest contribution probably has been cultural more than anything else -- he was working at UCB back in the "real" BSD days and knows how "it spozed to be". I suspect that doesn't make him popular with some of the (relative) newbies who want to add lots of features and stuff -- Matt's code has always been stripped down, clean, and fast as hell (if not always the most elegant or user-friendly code in the world). If the FreeBSD folks got tired of him carping about "the BSD Way", their loss... but it's not going to cripple FreeBSD by any means.

-E