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

Re:Oh great... SlashTroll Fest!

[Dave_B93]

You forgot one..

11. Doesn't this guy have the same name as Matt Dillon the actor?

get some perspective, please.

[twitter]

Would you be one of those folks who describe free software as "communism"? That's rich. To compare free software (people who want to share their software with you so that you can modify it to suit your needs and share in turn) with the Communist Party of the USSR (people who enforced non freedom of speech by jail and death) is silly at best. I get tired of such stupid comparisons. Get it straight: sharing information is not unAmerican, it violates no one's rights and it helps everyone but those who would perpetually sell you the equivalent that does not work as well.

This is not about the users and they don't owe you anything. You don't have to use free software, you don't have to use freeBSD and the authors have no power over you at all. The code lives on, despite the folly of those who wrote it. Take it for what it's worth, contribute if you will.

Re:the reason

[DuBois]

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? The police have been wrong about possession of pornography before, and will be again. Pornography planted on/in a person's house isn't impossible.

And besides, mere posession of any kind of *whatever* should never be construed as a crime. Crimes are actions that have victims. Possession of a non-human *anything* doesn't make "it" a victim.

The current inhuman view that possession of drugs, pornography, "weapons of mass destruction," etc. is criminal and deserves the death sentence is in and of itself criminally inhuman.

And if you think "death sentence" is exaggeration in that last sentence, consider what happens when a person loses his entire reason for living by being put in prison, excluded from contributing to FreeBSD, or whatever other consequences flow from being *accused* of possession of what some government flunky doesn't like.

Re:It's not a devil

[CConkle]

Regarding your sig--there is not, necessarily, a client behind every sleazy lawyer.

(I have been, at various times, a paid employee of a very good law firm, and wish to remind everybody that there _are_ good lawyers.)

But back to the topic. By far the sleaziest lawyers are the great class-action filers, who organize so-called "class action" lawsuits solely for their own enrichment. Such practices can be hugely lucrative. One of my jobs as a legal investigator was to review the filings of the so-called "Citizens for Better Business Practices", incorporated by a disbarred attorney convicted of several counts of fraud (not to mention pimping and pandering... it's all in the State Bar Court files). These wonderful citizens filed no less than thirty-four seperate lawsuits, with a total of well over 130 defendants, on extremely poor grounds (a technicality of advertisement law). Resisting such a claim is expensive--and said Citizens accompanied each complaint with a letter "offering" to settle, for several thousand dollars.

So no, that _is_ in fact a devil, not a daemon.