# Is there some sort of shakeup going on?



## Terry_Kennedy (Oct 9, 2012)

A cvsup from earlier today showed dougb relinquishing maintanership of a number of ports, with commit messages like:



			
				ports/dns/bind99/Makefile said:
			
		

> Throw my ports back in the pool, and make my intentions clear for the various ports that I've created.
> 
> I bid fond fare well
> A chapter closes for me
> What opens for you?



I don't see anything about this on the freebsd.org homepage, and all of the FreeBSD mailing lists are reporting "Error 503 Service Unavailable". http://people.freebsd.org/~dougb/ gives a 404 Not Found.

I sense a vast disturbance in the Force...


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## wblock@ (Oct 9, 2012)

No, these are two unrelated events.  dougb decided to leave.  At the same time, there is a project switching many of the main FreeBSD systems to a different facility.  Don't panic.


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## UNIXgod (Oct 9, 2012)

Is there someone lined up to take over portmaster development?


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 9, 2012)

Why is Doug leaving?


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## wblock@ (Oct 9, 2012)

UNIXgod said:
			
		

> Is there someone lined up to take over portmaster development?



Not yet, AFAIK.



			
				drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> Why is Doug leaving?



He did not say, at least in any of the messages I saw.


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## AJ-BSD (Oct 9, 2012)

I'm new to FreeBSD, so I don't know who Doug is...
Yet thanks for all the development, and thanks to everyone else that has worked and keeps on working with FreeBSD.

I really, really, reeeaalllyyy like this OS!


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## jrm@ (Oct 9, 2012)

It might have something to do with this thread on the ports mailing list: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2012-July/077049.html.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Oct 9, 2012)

jrm said:
			
		

> It might have something to do with this thread on the ports mailing list: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2012-July/077049.html.


This seems likely. Earlier, I found what seems to be one of dougb's last posts: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2012-October/078717.html

Seeing as how a critical fix to ISC BIND was just announced, let's see how long it takes to make into the FreeBSD ports now that dougb is gone.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 10, 2012)

UNIXgod said:
			
		

> Is there someone lined up to take over portmaster development?



Or rather, with the impending /var/db/pkg >> /pkg/; csup  >> svn; new port options framework; deprecation of portmanager... is there some equally adept coder to temporarily, or longer, oversee  the portmaster development ?  Just wanting to "me too..."


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## Crivens (Oct 10, 2012)

Even these posings only show a fragment of the whole picture, and it is one that seems to be EOL anyway. It seems like this has been going on some time already and now it is way too late to mend anything.

I would like to thank dougb for all his work and commitment, life is too short to bear all what we might want to. So take what way you want, and maybe it will lead you around the other side of the mountain and meet us again.


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## wblock@ (Oct 10, 2012)

In the short term, the ports and programs that doubg maintained so well are in excellent condition and will continue to work.  In the long term, other people will take over maintaining them.  In some cases, there are alternatives, like ports-mgmt/portupgrade and -devel, which are now maintained by bdrewery@.  So, again, don't panic.


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## jrm@ (Oct 10, 2012)

I appreciate(d) Doug's style.  He paid attention to details and preferred simple, efficient and "correct" solutions.


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## jrm@ (Oct 10, 2012)

bdrewery@ has also taken over ports-mgmt/portmaster.  See the latest commit message in the port link.


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## SNK (Oct 10, 2012)

This is very unfortunate. I hope he sticks around.

Thank you Doug for your work!


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## gkontos (Oct 10, 2012)

FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 is on the ftp servers since October the 1st. Yet there is no announcement and the main site still shows FreeBSD 9.1-RC1.

The way things are moving lately it really reminds me of an old Jack Daniels commercial.

If it was just someone who left the project for personal reasons then everything would be fine. But I think that this should be a wake up call...


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## OH (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 is on the ftp servers since October the 1st. Yet there is no announcement and the main site still shows FreeBSD 9.1-RC1.
> 
> The way things are moving lately it really reminds me of an old Jack Daniels commercial.
> 
> If it was just someone who left the project for personal reasons then everything would be fine. But I think that this should be a wake up call...



I don't know the commercial (link?), but I fully agree with the rest of your post.

Doug may have been blunt in his wording, but he usually made good points and raised valid concerns. It's a shame it has come to this.


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## gkontos (Oct 10, 2012)

OH said:
			
		

> I don't know the commercial (link?), but I fully agree with the rest of your post.
> 
> Doug may have been blunt in his wording, but he usually made good points and raised valid concerns. It's a shame it has come to this.



Kind of old and cut off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WxIrkRrtlc

This might fit better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIXj1Nh588


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## wblock@ (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 is on the ftp servers since October the 1st. Yet there is no announcement and the main site still shows FreeBSD 9.1-RC1.
> 
> The way things are moving lately it really reminds me of an old Jack Daniels commercial.
> 
> If it was just someone who left the project for personal reasons then everything would be fine. But I think that this should be a wake up call...



Really, everything anyone does is for personal reasons.

When developers leave, it is not necessarily permanent or necessarily a bad thing.  Think of it more as a band breaking up.  Creative people often have creative differences, and sometimes they do better in different groups or on their own.

As far as the project, there are lots of big changes going on at the same time.  pkgng is out, many of the servers are being moved, ports just changed over to svn.  All this is going on at the same time as a release is being prepared.  It's a lot of work, and almost all of it is being done by unpaid volunteers who also have real lives.  So things will be unsettled, and then they will settle down again, and the process repeats.  It's a good sign, in the sense that things that need work are getting it.  If you can, help out.  Submit PRs, or donate time, equipment, or money.  Or explain to an employer how it will help them to have their employees contributing back to FreeBSD.


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## kpa (Oct 10, 2012)

People come and go and nobody is truly irreplaceable. We have a saying in finnish that translates to roughly "a war does not depend on one man".


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## gkontos (Oct 10, 2012)

I will generalize and maybe deviate to the point of being off topic.

I recently had to set up an IPsec LT2P VPN server with radius authentication. 

I tried to do that with FreeBSD and spend almost a full day. I used 4 different KERNELS combined with security/ipsec-tools or security/strongswan. In all cases the results did not meet my requirements. I had to make this work for OSX, Windows7, IOS and Android clients.

It took 20 minutes to make that work with Ubuntu 12.04

I am also involved in building ZFS based storages. I can safely say that my experience with ZFS has evolved a lot since FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. Yet I struggle daily to deal with issues that are only addressed in CURRENT and (maybe) MFC to STABLE. I am seriously considering of switching to Oracle and pay the license instead of having to deal with stupid issues that should have been already solved.

Most of my clients demand stability. Stability and bureaucracy often go along. Using a Prerelease or Beta or RC for months might sound like a good choice to us. But for high rank IT personnel, who need to cover their ass, this is a no go situation. For the shake of the argument please have a look at the differences in code between RC1 & RC2.       

Journal UFS2. It was finally released in FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. But wait, there is a bug and you can not backup a UFS2+J fs!!! Ok, has it been fixed? Yes but we don't issue an errata because it is not a security issue!!!

A new next generation package management tool is announced and it is supposed to be the default for FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. But wait, we don't have enough mirrors to support it!!!

The list can go on and on and on... The point is not to blame the developers who are involved here. A foundation is supposed to be behind all this to support and fund the project. Because a project can not survive without a project manager. And because a successful project is a project that is being used. 

I don't care if you produce the best car in the world. If no one is driving it then you have nothing.

Just some bitter thoughts from a FreeBSD advocate.


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## Niatross (Oct 10, 2012)

He can't leave. He has to go through me before he leaves.

Besides all that, I just learned portmaster and don't want to have to re-learn somebody else's utility.

Get him back over here so I can reprimand him.


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## Crivens (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> The way things are moving lately it really reminds me of an old Jack Daniels commercial.


The one where they hurry some booze around the place like it was some old b&w slapstick?
(whistles innocently while looking at some scotch which passed voting age some time ago)



> But I think that this should be a wake up call...


+1


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## OH (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Kind of old and cut off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WxIrkRrtlc
> 
> This might fit better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIXj1Nh588



In that case, no, that's not what I was thinking of. The problem here -in my mind- is not the change, but the way the changes are handled.

FreeBSD 8.3 was barely released as preparations for 9.1 got underway (as a result of the shortened release cycle that has us supporting two production releases?) and at the same time we're introducing pkgng, optionsng, new Makefile headers, replacing CVS with SVN, not to mention the ongoing work on clang (and to a lesser extent ZFS).

For a project, as wblock@ correctly states, handled mainly by volunteers, that seems like quite the extra workload for what I assume to be a virtually equal amount of developers / committers.

As a result, even though the feature freeze process was shortened, "big ticket" ports such as The Gimp 2.8 and KDE 4.9.x are waiting for updates and/or exp-runs, while we're technically not even in feature freeze yet.

Just before submitting I see gkontos' reply. I just have to add that I'm not bitter (but then again I haven't tried setting up LT2P VPN with radius either, net/mpd5 FTW).
This is just what I'm seeing, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, so I'll stop right here and get myself some proper whisky.


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## wblock@ (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> A new next generation package management tool is announced and it is supposed to be the default for FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. But wait, we don't have enough mirrors to support it!!!



No, not until 10.0-RELEASE.


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## kpa (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 is on the ftp servers since October the 1st. Yet there is no announcement and the main site still shows FreeBSD 9.1-RC1.
> 
> The way things are moving lately it really reminds me of an old Jack Daniels commercial.
> 
> If it was just someone who left the project for personal reasons then everything would be fine. But I think that this should be a wake up call...



http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2012-October/069998.html


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## gkontos (Oct 10, 2012)

OH said:
			
		

> FreeBSD 8.3 was barely released as preparations for 9.1 got underway (as a result of the shortened release cycle that has us supporting two production releases?) and at the same time we're introducing pkgng, optionsng, new Makefile headers, replacing CVS with SVN, not to mention the ongoing work on clang (and to a lesser extent ZFS).



Correct but that is always the case. There are always 2 production branches that need to be supported. At least that is the case since FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE. 

Pkgng. A very nice and promising tool. Originally it was expected to be part of FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. This has changed and there are some thoughts for either 9.2 or 10.0. Why? 

The switch from CVS to SVN. The idea is not bad. However, timing is everything. There was absolutely no reason to force this without any planning. Look at the result. Nobody knows what will happen for the 8 & 9 branches yet. Even worse, people who used to update their sources using csup() were not able to do that anymore for 9.1-beta and 9.1-RC1 but they can use it for 9.1-RC2!!!

Clang. It didn't work for 9.0-RELEASE and now it is planned for 10.0-RELEASE Again, why? And I really don't want to hear anymore about the licensing issues. At least not until 2014 when 10 will be released!

Things are really developing fast. Look at the competition:

Virtualization... Yes, there is a on going project for a native hypervisor expected for FreeBSD 10. blah, blah
High Availability... HAST is here but I don't see any rapid evolvement. Where is the asynchronous replication?  
IPv6... Why on earth do I still have to compile IPSEC in the kernel? 
The list can go on...



			
				OH said:
			
		

> For a project, as wblock@ correctly states, handled mainly by volunteers, that seems like quite the extra workload for what I assume to be a virtually equal amount of developers / committers.



You are right. That is why I would never blame developers or commiters. It is somebody else's job to support them and support the project as well.  



			
				OH said:
			
		

> Just before submitting I see gkontos' reply. I just have to add that I'm not bitter (but then again I haven't tried setting up LT2P VPN with radius either, net/mpd5 FTW).
> This is just what I'm seeing, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, so I'll stop right here and get myself some proper whisky.



I think that I am more frustrated than bitter. And that is because I love FreeBSD and I would really hate to see all this effort going wasted. 

Btw. My comments are not personal, just the result of pure frustration!


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## UNIXgod (Oct 10, 2012)

Niatross said:
			
		

> He can't leave. He has to go through me before he leaves.
> 
> Besides all that, I just learned portmaster and don't want to have to re-learn somebody else's utility.
> 
> Get him back over here so I can reprimand him.



portupgrade isn't that bad( I used it for about 4 years before switching to portmaster ). IIRC it's switches are the same as pormaster. The big deal about portmaster was that it's built on a pure posix shell so no dependencies. It's also quicker than portupgrade for the the reason that it relies on ash and not ruby+berkelydb.

Either way whether it's pure ports; portmaster; portupgrade, or pkgng it's good to have choices. I'm glad to hear that portmaster was picked up.

Also if Doug is reading this; I also want to thank you for the project.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 10, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Journal UFS2. It was finally released in FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. But wait, there is a bug and you can not backup a UFS2+J fs!!!



FWIW
[I use as a filesystem and backup...]

SUJ. I cannot say enough good things about it. rsync... --bwlimit=1000  (if the paths are correct and pretested and working.) Many times it has saved data here, and/or
speeded up 
	
	



```
fsck_ffs -y /dev/...
```
  (Sometimes without the -y if a SUJ fsck freezes).


Agree with some of the rest of the post but I've posted it elsewhere...


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## OH (Oct 11, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Correct but that is always the case. There are always 2 production branches that need to be supported. At least that is the case since FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE.



I'll quickly explain my point with the use of the wayback machine:

In 2004, 4.9 was a production release and 5.2 the NT release
In 2007, 6.2 was the production release and 5.5 the legacy release
In 2009, 7.1 was the production release and 6.4 the legacy release
In 2011, 8.2 was the production release and 7.4 the legacy release
And now both 9.1 and 8.3 are production releases and 7.4 remains the legacy release


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## gkontos (Oct 11, 2012)

OH said:
			
		

> I'll quickly explain my point with the use of the wayback machine:
> 
> And now both 9.1 and 8.3 are production releases and 7.4 remains the legacy release



If you go back you will see that when 8.1 was released 6.4 was the legacy release. At some point there is always work done on 2 different releases.

This time there was a significant delay in FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE causing 8.3 to delay and 8.2 EOL to be adjusted.


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## OH (Oct 11, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> If you go back you will see that when 8.1 was released 6.4 was the legacy release. At some point there is always work done on 2 different releases.
> 
> This time there was a significant delay in FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE causing 8.3 to delay and 8.2 EOL to be adjusted.



I can see that 6.4 wasn't EOL (which happened nov 30, 2010) when both 8.0 and 8.1 were released, but on the frontpage 6.4 was no longer advertised as an available release soon after 8.0 was released on nov 25, 2009.

Similarly, with 7.4 EOL in five months, I see your point that advertising three available branches does not mean that there is a bigger workload than when two branches were advertised. A better question is perhaps, why 7.4 is still on the frontpage, knowing that it'll be EOL in five months. (I vaguely remember reading about that somewhere, but can't find it now.)


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## gkontos (Oct 11, 2012)

OH said:
			
		

> I can see that 6.4 wasn't EOL (which happened nov 30, 2010) when both 8.0 and 8.1 were released, but on the frontpage 6.4 was no longer advertised as an available release soon after 8.0 was released on nov 25, 2009.



Yes, it looks that way. Why was I under the impression that always 2 branches are actively maintained :q
Maybe I had too much Jack Daniels  



			
				OH said:
			
		

> Similarly, with 7.4 EOL in five months, I see your point that advertising three available branches does not mean that there is a bigger workload than when two branches were advertised. A better question is perhaps, why 7.4 is still on the frontpage, knowing that it'll be EOL in five months. (I vaguely remember reading about that somewhere, but can't find it now.)



For the same reason why 8.2 was the official production release even though its EOL was approaching. I still remember some questions about 8.2 and EOL warnings! Things were really pushed way back with 9.0-RELEASE.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Oct 12, 2012)

Crivens said:
			
		

> Even these posings only show a fragment of the whole picture


Probably taking that quote out of context, [more in the context of my previous post]... but it may be that a few FreeBSD particulars, which  were previously "let me illustrate that for you..." (cvsup ...) and which are now "let us each read the manual [wiki] ..." IOW less explainable in just a few minutes to someone brand new to it all. [A chance of added complexity inadvertently not preceded  by documentation that is as readily available as used to be the case... ]


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