Interesting NetBSD annual report

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:00:48 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> wrote:

I read the following report from the NetBSD group:

http://kerneltrap.org/node/4680

It has some interesting points. First, they analyze how the fit with
other open source database offerings. Their position is somewhat
similar to ours.

Their development style is also similar to ours.

Not too surprising since both projects came out of Berkeley.

They complain about release delays and the challenge of organizing
volunteers, just like us.

Is there any volunteer organization that's any different? :-)

Second, they have a much more rigid hierarchy structure. There are
good and bad things about that and you can see it in the report.

It could be that the people really do make a difference but, as a NetBSD
developer, I never really feel that the hierarchy gets in the way of
doing things. I think that in any organization the people get stuff
done regardless of what structure is in place. It depends more on the
people than the structure.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:42:51AM -0500, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

They complain about release delays and the challenge of organizing
volunteers, just like us.

Is there any volunteer organization that's any different? :-)

FreeBSD doesn't seem to suffer much from either issue. Then again, they
also have something like 2000 committers, probably about 100 of which
are very active.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming, or what?"

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Jim C. Nasby wrote:

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:42:51AM -0500, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

They complain about release delays and the challenge of organizing
volunteers, just like us.

Is there any volunteer organization that's any different? :-)

FreeBSD doesn't seem to suffer much from either issue. Then again, they
also have something like 2000 committers, probably about 100 of which
are very active.

FreeBSD suffers from *alot* of other things because of havin gtoo many
committers :( As hard-core FreeBSD as I've been over the years, things
haven't been the same since Jordan left ... to the point that I'm already
planning on moving over to DragonFlyBSD (fork project of FreeBSD ...
same base code as what we're currently using [ie. FreeBSD 4.x] but
with *alot* of fixes for some pretty major problems that still exist
in the current version of FreeBSD) over the next few months ... they've
already re-written the VFS system, which we tax heavily, but haven't
finished the rewrite of the unionfs code (which is how we tax VFS) which
is in the works ...

Love the OS ... not so haappy with the direction its taken :(

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 01:27:09PM -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Jim C. Nasby wrote:

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:42:51AM -0500, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote:

They complain about release delays and the challenge of organizing
volunteers, just like us.

Is there any volunteer organization that's any different? :-)

FreeBSD doesn't seem to suffer much from either issue. Then again, they
also have something like 2000 committers, probably about 100 of which
are very active.

FreeBSD suffers from *alot* of other things because of havin gtoo many
committers :( As hard-core FreeBSD as I've been over the years, things
haven't been the same since Jordan left ... to the point that I'm already
planning on moving over to DragonFlyBSD (fork project of FreeBSD ...
same base code as what we're currently using [ie. FreeBSD 4.x] but
with *alot* of fixes for some pretty major problems that still exist
in the current version of FreeBSD) over the next few months ... they've
already re-written the VFS system, which we tax heavily, but haven't
finished the rewrite of the unionfs code (which is how we tax VFS) which
is in the works ...

Love the OS ... not so haappy with the direction its taken :(

Hrm, guess it's been too long since I've been subscribed to -current. I
know they're still working bugs out of 5.x, but I attributed that to the
major changes made. One of the big reasons I've been such a fan of FBSD
is the technical direction was set by a group of very competent people,
instead of just one person.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel@decibel.org
Give your computer some brain candy! www.distributed.net Team #1828

Windows: "Where do you want to go today?"
Linux: "Where do you want to go tomorrow?"
FreeBSD: "Are you guys coming, or what?"

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Jim C. Nasby wrote:

Hrm, guess it's been too long since I've been subscribed to -current. I
know they're still working bugs out of 5.x, but I attributed that to the
major changes made. One of the big reasons I've been such a fan of FBSD
is the technical direction was set by a group of very competent people,
instead of just one person.

The problem right now is that there are too many 'very competent people'
...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664