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FreeBSD Core Developer Thrown Out

Posted by chrisd on from the maybe-good-maybe-bad dept.

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.

2 of 570 comments (clear)

  1. dillon leaves the FreeBSD project by groggy-P · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.
  2. The flamewar is here: by otuz · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.