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DragonFly BSD Announced
JoshRendlesham writes "Matt Dillon announced today on the freebsd-hackers mailing list the creation of the DragonFly BSD project. It seeks to build on the work of FreeBSD 4.x, including a rewrite of the packaging and distribution system, among other goals."
Brad Pitt announced a new fork from the -AC kernel tree.
Keannu Reeves announced: "Whoah."
This is great news. God knows we need another BSD, I don't think anyone is happy that currently we only have FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, TrustedBSD, XMach, Darwin, and Microsoft Windows.
Oh no! Who will pay the administrators the big bucks now?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Here I was thinking that BSD is dead or dying. Maybe this will revive it...
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/
Hopefully my T1 can handle the cvsup load. Eventually I'll colocate some boxes to deal with that issue.
<voice person="nelson">Ha ha!</voice>
Dragonfly BSD is dying...
--Life may have no meaning, or, even worse, it may have a meaning of which you disapprove.
...packages and ports system. They're part of the best things FreeBSD has above Linux right now!
Once could ask the same of linux people. Why do we need 9000 linuxes, anyway? Last I checked, not counting Mswindows, we've only got three or four BSD's. Why not another one? Why not 8000 more? Gotsta stay competitive you insensitive clod!
That doesn't make sense to me. Thats like deciding there are too many car manufacturers and complaining to Ford that there should be fewer and better car manufacturers. In fact, it would be EASIER to do this in the car industry because you can probably get the major car manufacturers together. No one ever said this new BSD was going to be good, just that it was here. No one said you should support it, but then again maybe you should. Each distro of anything is subject to the people that make it. If you want one final all encompassing sent-from-God BSD then go and make it!
...it doesn't have a cute little daemon in its logo.
"BSD is dying"
That's another distro, right?
Fewer distributions? Letseee.. There's open net and free.
That's three. There are some minor versions (e.g., picobsd)
based on these.... There's also OSX/Darwin.
That's too many for you? Before you answer, consider
how many linux distros there are.
Also, please follow up with proof, statistics and something
more tangible that the crap you pulled out of your ass that
having many distributions is inefficient. This is a conclusion
you've reached, I suspect, without any proof or careful
analysis. Show us the numbers that this is a 'bad' thing
for an architecture.
Did you say "goatse stay more competetive"?
And you're damn right, considering the competetion that guy faces!
POW!
All the various BSDs share code when one solution seems to fit more than just the distribution that developed it. If DragonFly is going to focus on something that the other four aren't, then more power to them. I'm sure the others will adopt any good ideas that come out.
Define "best"
I think the reason that there are different BSDs is that there is no "best" for everyone.
There's no need for a unified BSD because the source to all of them is free for use with almost no restrictions, so every flavor of BSD can benefit from the others.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
not funny but should trigger some moderator reflex.
*BSD is still dying? :)
You're thinking of DeadBSD, which was a short-lived flavor.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
You type your Slashdot posts in Notepad? How sick is that?
That's the bitch part about freedom: people don't always do what you want them to do.
I'd like to see Gentoo's Portage move onto BSD, it was originally inspired by the BSD ports system, but has become very easy to use and refined. It's time for a BSD to try out Portage (Mac OS X is geting Portage soon!)
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
If I had mod points today I'd be half-tempted to give you a Funny point for spoofing Slashdot's most popular Mac troll. You need to avoid the Offtopic negatives, though, by at least sneaking a Dragonfly BSD reference in there somewhere...
I find this project exciting. Having tried gentoo's portage it has become clear to me that ports could be a lot better. While ports does work, it has a bunch of tools which make its use easier which arent included by default and could be integrated into ports.
you were using the kludge known as X dumbass.
Need a hit of Xtacy?
Are they talking about replacing the ports system? I thought that that was one of those most revered parts of the original FreeBSD
I'm crossing my fingers that this comes out with Portage as the package manager...
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
-V
Insects and Grafitti Photos
How many women will dress up like a dragonfly?! C'mon!
The name's too long. DragonFlyBSD? Come on! I'm not even sure where to capitalize the letters! It's bad enough the "OpenBSD" is as long as "FreeBSD", but spoken it's an extra syllable. I'll stick with NetBSD. Yeah. Nice and short!
What were they thinking when they named their project after a bug?
Dead, I tell ya.
when your read goals as goats
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Oh well, it's probably about hurt egos again. :(
In a way it is. Matt Dillon got lost commit access to cvs a while ago because he was trying to get some stuff into 4.8 and got rebuffed. Looked like he violated their code of conduct a few too many times, got kicked out, and started a project where he made the rules. TdR in the house?
The problem with BSD is that there are too many Albert Einstein-like people involved with its development... and Matt Dillion is one of them. I don't mean that in a bad way. These guy are *smart* probably one in a billion kind of smart. The problem with that is they can't work together very well. Theo (Open BSD), Matt (FreeBSD) Both these guys forked over differences of opinion with other developers.
Imagine what these guys could actually *do* if they put aside their differences and worked together!! No unsolved CS problem would be safe.
Same troll as you used on an SGI bash a few days ago - this is the post you made, and this was the thread.
In other news, Ben Stiller has started his own fork of the FreeBSD tree called "Angelfish" which competes directly with DragonFly. Apparently, the fight is really about who should be maintainer of FreeBSD itself...
Dragonflies live longer than 24 hours. See the British Dragonfly Society FAQ.
Just when FreeBSD got great (the 5.1 distro is the best ever - well worth using on the desktop) - they go and base a new distro off the (relatively) clunky 4.8.
WTF? I don't understand the logic. FreeBSD 5 has superior performance, more features and better hardware support than 4.
I'll be sticking with the newest relese of FreeBSD, thanks.
"Our goal is to create a flexible duel-purpose caching infrastructure"
Maybe this project should just be called "Oedipus"
This isn't the actor, it's the lawman. Jeez, Slashdotters are so ignorant!
Are you giggling hysterically about your post, you pimple-faced, fat, geek boy? No one else on earth is laughing with you. Get help.
is that you?
Wow. Matt Dillon. :) There's a name that brings back memories.
:)
Matt: if you're reading this, I loved DICE, and all your other work on the Amiga - your compiler is one of the reasons I'm a programmer today. I hadn't been keeping up with your work but it's good to see you're still out there doing stuff.
(seems a lot of the old Amiga 'big names' have gone on to do interesting stuff in the time since)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Matt Dillon's early background as an Amiga programmer is really showing through here. He's basically proposing doing a piecewise conversion of BSD to an Amiga-style message-passing operating system.
He's basically doing the reverse of what so many folks (NeXT, HURD) have done or tried to do.. not taking a microkernal and putting a UNIX layer over it, but taking a UNIX and scooping out the inside to replace it with a message-passing microkernal.
This will definitely be a fun one to watch. Go, Matt, go.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Learn to configure your box.
WTF is a sig?
My first reaction was "oh, forking is bad, we don't need another". But in truth, this is no more remarkable than the fact that there are 100s if not 1000s of different flavors of GNU/Linux.
So there.
Define "best"
In terms of BSD? MacOS X.
Ahhhhh interesting detective work . . . I suppose I usually ignore AC posts that seem inflamitory.
.but interesting to know that someone:
I probably will still do so . .
a) has a standard troll post like that
and
b) it is moderately interesting troll post
and
c) someone bothered to remember a previous troll
May be I don't have enough time on my hands...
robi
Perhaps the devil (no pun intended) is in the details. Certainly from the perspective of a end-user, who usually don't deal with packaging systems in the first place, this new OS doesn't make any difference.
A rolling stone is worth two in the bush!
Oh comon Drag-On-Fly-Bee-Ess-Dee, what was wrong with the name FlyBSD?
Now THATS an operating system name, nice, simple, to the point, and is just overall a bitchin` name.
WTF is a sig?
This might have a chance of surviving! FINALLY - and I really _mean it_ - someone has thought about the mascot issue with BSDs. This DragonFly mascot will not scare anyone away, it will attract people. It was a wise choice and I personally think it looks cool :) Well done and I'm eager to see this project grow!
Best desktop, sure. No arguments here. I'm posting this from an iMac running 10.2.
Best server? Highly debatable. OS X Server is a fine product, one I'd never disparage, but I'm very happy running a FreeBSD HTTP/IMAP/IRC/Loads of other stuff server and an OpenBSD firewall.
The "best" is always whatever works best for you.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Surely this is a mistake. It must be ... It has to be, becaise we all know: BSD Is Dying
Did someone forget to give this guy the memo?
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
The proposed new messaging layer sounds really interesting and powerful. A little like Mach or QNX, perhaps? Many kernel methods and system calls will use messaging instead of traditional brittle techniques that often lead to API problems down the road. Also, multithreaded kernel design should be simplified as result. My only question is how much will this slow down FreeBSD?
... a place where the "BSD is dying" guy can post and be vaguely on-topic
http://virtuelvis.com/
Oh, come ON people! The first GNAA post doesn't appear until after three pages of comments?
Slashdot is the world's finest troll repository. We expect our trolls to be ON THEIR GAME at ALL TIMES. High standards are at work here. Shape up!
um... is he trolling because he didn't realize there was BSD code in Windows? sheesh! time to meta-moderate.
Anonymous Howard, who made a career of proclaiming the demise of the *BSD Operating Systems, was found dead at his keyboard this afternoon. He had just turned 16. An unnamed police spokeswoman said it was an apparent case of "autoerotic asphyxiation gone haywire". [You know the rest of the story.]
What does an old gunslinger have to do with this announcement? Even more important... will Miss Kitty be involved?
Un-news
So is forking something that's dying anything like beating a dead horse? :-)
Having NetBSD/FreeBSD seperate was good in many ways because it kept mutually incompatable folks away from each others throats. Once things cooled down, technology began to flow in both directions between NetBSD and FreeBSD. Later on, OpenBSD came along. All sorts of good things came from that. Can you say OpenSSH?
It would be nice if DragonFlyBSD (gah, ENAMETOOLONG) was a similar deal. As a FreeBSD developer, I hope that there will be plenty of opportunities to take good stuff in both directions. If we can keep people away from each others throats and work on making the code better, then everybody wins.
Diversity is good. Developers fighting each other is bad. Forks can be a good way to relieve the stress. There is no need to make a Big Deal(TM) about it.
Ironically, lefties know how to save anything that's not. Personally, I don't think either stance makes much sense.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Looked like he violated their code of conduct a few too many times.
This one never gets old. I also laughed my ass off to the ones above. Here's my contribution, i've got spare Karma, *BSD, dead at 55.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
I guess they need to look at
Debian FreeBSD
They've come quite a long way and have installable systems available
Glibc Based Debian Freebsd
Seems like this is what Dragon fly FreeBSD is trying to do
- Not Theo, but not Bill either
Makes you wonder if OS X/darwin will be paying much attention to what Matt's doing.
Good!
No offensive satanic demon mascot anymore! This is what FreeBSD should've done YEARS ago - ditch that red guy with horns. Us non-satan worshippers can now give BSD a try.
I'm a FreeBSD user, but not by religion. I use Linux on certain systems where some distro fits better.
However during daily usage FreeBSD simply turned to be superior to the big few Linux distro's as far as release engineering goes.
Matt branches, but let's take reasons and goals to be unimportant for now.
How is he going to sustain _any_ release engineering the quality FreeBSD (and the major Linux distro's) has/have?
Why not one *NIX them?
I'm mainly a BSD user (still like Slackware, my first Linux encounter of the first kind), but from a user perspective the various BSDs are more coherent than the avg Linux distro.
A different kernel is often irrelevant if you come above a certain level. A level below which an average user won't go anyway.
(should have used "preview"
Anyway. A lot of posters which whine about the fragmented BSD seem to forget that _any_ *nix OS fork will pick developpers from Linux too. While
there used to be a large gap between FreeBSD and Linux, this has been closed in the last few years. FreeBSD got more user (-hardware) friendly, Linux moved, and partially even topped FreeBSD in the advanced server range.
This might draw Linux developpers even in larger absolute numbers than from e.g. FreeBSD.
And while the Linux developper numbers might be large, the real useful people are scarce, and every loss is, uhh...., a loss, while the new BSD
won't be able to gain enough momentum to keep
up in release engineering and hardware support.
The era that *nix clones can enter the general purpose market is simply over, at least at this
moment.
...Which might have a little to do with DragonBSD, since it branches off from 4.x...
Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
would choose to use a Mac over other
Come on, trolltacula, you can do better than that.
-uso.
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
Think about it.
200+ different things all called *linux*, and 2 different sets of people.
1 set - all the linuxes are from the same kernel, so it doesn't matter
the other set? The marketing agents who want to prove SuSE is better than RedHat who's better than (juggle fork names in whatever order floats your boat.)
Thus market confusion reigns.
Though many folks have choosen to troll out the BSD is dying thingy they may have a point. As solid as all the BSDs ,Free, Open and Net are they have become remarkbly stodgy to use. I would guess the development teams are likely stuck in this same rut as well. I am happy to see somebody step up to the plate to try, but the BSD license will eventually kill this one to I fear. If it ever does come to maturity and show any real promise some mega corp will just hijack the codebase, upstage them and just spit in their eye again anyway. How do you spell sucess?
GPL
I'd hate to let it loose on Slashdot.. we'd have no comments on our posts!
YOU FAIL IT, that's right motherfuckers.
Lefties, on the other hand, are in favor of everything good, against everything bad, but won't specify what falls into which category, because different people have different ideas of what's right or wrong. Everything's relative, isn't it? Elect me, elect me!
Don't cha know? Like many lower animals, *BSD eats its own.
Does this mean that VoIP on Dragon Fly might put me in touch with my hero ELVIS, maybe even get him to sing?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
holy cow a ghost post bsd can't be dead that anon dead idiot only took a matter of miniutes to reply.
Sounds like a political war between people with gig egos, and axes to grind.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
BSD is a failure. Simple as all that.
Dead is BSD. No longer worth the trouble. Dead.
Matt - Love the project. Really, really love the project. I've been walking around with a ridiculous grin all day long that someone in the *NIX scene is finally going to try to Do the Right Thing. (Of course, as a FreeBSD user, I'm equally interested to see how KSE and the like perform when all is said and done -- but when it comes to doing something useful, like, say, deploying production systems, it's all about the solution with the right featureset and the fewest parts to break.)
;)
That said, I've got point out to the rabble that no, Amiga, in any of the Classic, Extra Crispy, or
Third-Party-Possibly-Rebranding-to-Atari flavors, is certainly no deader than the good ol' Atari camp. It's just that, as you've said elsewhere, the Amiga scene has had GCC for quite a while -- and is now using it in the development of both competing OSes -- so we've less reason to bother you for legacy support than those poor ST users.
We're rooting for you!
That's the bitch part about freedom: people don't always do what you want them to do.
And yet it is reasonable to conclude that *BSD is dying.
hehehe, I'm laughing. YHBT.
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.
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
It is the age old story of market consolidation. It happened in the auto industry--LaSalle, Packard, DeSoto, all fine cars, all dead. The same shakeout is happening in the operating system realm. The end of BSD is a sign of progress in its own way. The consolidation of markets indicates a maturing market. This is a good thing. Even death brings forth new life.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is sick beyond repair, and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally 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.
Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Yeah, DragonFly was a horrible movie.
And it was Kevin Costner, not Matt Dillon.
Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
"BSD is dying" is dying.
> You need to rsync quite often
:)
... under FreeBSD I can chose specific mirrors to specific packages.
" emerge somepackage
Only before updating everything. How often that is, is up to you.
> I noticed several broken ports.
It indeed happens! Is it, however, Portage's fault, or that of the package's maintainer?
>
> Try that with portage?
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://somewhere.somedomain.net
You're welcome.
Now don't take me wrong. BSD Ports are very good.
It's just that Portage is no less good.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
...I wish Dillon luck. I have always admired his work, and thought the goals of his project I had heard of before interesting.
People should realize FreeBSD couldn't go both ways at the same time. We went one way, and Dillon will be going another way. If his project survives, and I hope it does, it should benefit everyone. Even if the source itself is never used elsewhere, we'll learn with the experience.
(8-DCS)
I'm still trying to figure why people chime so much against forks. Forks make Open Source go round, let people explore new directions, and avoid ultimate fighting-style fights :-)
Anyway, good luck to Dilon, especially on his ports/packages rewrite work.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
I'd install stuff by hand. I just want to update my ports - I don't think that's too much to ask.
Yes, I've submitted that as a bug. Yes, it was rejected.
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
* * * * * *
Dear Father O'Day:
Thanks for your letter. Being Catholic myself, I know exactly what you're talking about! It has always been our plan here at Apple Computer Inc to revolutionize personal computing with our high-quality and highly gay products.
I'm happy to answer your letter by letting you know that YES we will be releasing an entire hLife ("homo-life") software line. You'll be able to recognize it in stores by the small stylized logo depicting a large cock entering a tight anus with an Apple logo on it. ("Suddenly it all comes together" indeed!).
Anyway, I hope you and other members of our community will join us on our mission, and purchase the exciting new hLife boxed set. Only the boxed set comes with translucent cock rings!
Sincerely,
Harry Rodman
Vice-president
Homosexual Liaison Services
Apple Computer, Inc.
Ayn Rand. C'est moi.
Forks are bad. Every time we BSDers have a fork it means *less compatibility*. It is truly ironic that each BSD variant is more binary compatible with Linux than with each other. The Linux folks got it right - keep the kernel standard and customize in user land. On the other hand we are almost exactly the opposite -- vary the kernel and keep user land almost the same. Wouldn't it be nice if commercial software vendors could release a plain "BSD version" guarenteed to work with Open/Net/Free/DragonFly/Whatever ?
It teh ghey hay.
gah ENAMETOOLONGTOOLONG.
;^)
Better stick with EDOOFUS.
matt should be putting his effort back into amigas. forget PCs brother!
shit, I've been watching too much of Hulk Hogan...
Sounds like you've described most politicians, actually...
Sounds cool, maybe its a chance for *BSD to gain some mainstream appeal. An improved package system could make it useable for mere mortals... Ah, but I'll probably stick to FreeBSD for the time being, it seems good enough to me... Tim
Thats just silly. I use FreeBSD as my production workstation (that includes XWindows, Gnome 2.x, lots of bleeding edge stuff) and it works fine. *BSD isn't dead, and as long as its as FreeBSD is as well maintained as it is, I'm happy. Time to update my ports tree. :)
Tim
The statement of an anonymous coward, not BSD (which, incidentally, is *not* a living organism)
Follow the link guys. It's a link to a thread on a BSD mailing list complaining about a guy on slashdot posting the usual diatribe about BSD dying.
it's s-a-r-c-a-s-m folks! And a little bit of irony mixed in...
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Don't be too impressed on a). The original poster is probably a script.
It would be really interesting if the someone in c) is also a robot, though.
No, no, no, you anti-BSD trolls are all quite confused (and incorrect). No operating system is not physically alive, thats what I was intending to say. Next, BSD is not dead. (Only cynical ./ readers, or windows users would say such things) In fact, its much easier to keep current with most *nix applications on FreeBSD than on most Linux Distributions, at least for me. Now, what I would constitute as being "alive" are three categories:
1) Is it maintained?
2) Is the source code available to fork if necessary?
3) Is it in widespread use?
The answer to #1 is definitely a yes. And is FreeBSD maintained? Yes. Is NetBSD maintained? Yes. Is OpenBSD maintained? Yes.
#2. Yes for all BSDs, well maybe a partial yes for Darwin...
#3 Is it in widespread use?
Sadly, this would have to be a no, but with the innovations of Darwin, (if you count that as BSD, then #3 is yes) and Dragonfly (which looks quite groundbreaking to me, if not much more so than Darwin)
So whats your problem, coward?? can't show your true face??
Tim
Now that's high tech multitasking.
This looks *realy* cool!
[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.