Vincent Milum's (darkain) open letter to the FreeBSD community

C

cmoerz

Have anyone of you read it? What's your take, thoughts, ideas on the points he's making?

docs.google.com

FreeBSD Letter

An Open Letter to The FreeBSD Foundation, The FreeBSD Core Team, FreeBSD Committers, and the general FreeBSD Community as a whole Hey there, Vince here! Some of you may know me better by my online handle “Darkain”, or even a few may know my recently created YouTube channel “Circuit Rewind”. If ...
docs.google.com docs.google.com
 
Interesting. I have no idea whether they know how to program in C/C++ or not. Matter-of-fact, I don't even know how to measure whether they can program in C/C++ or not and get a single number. It's just too much of a multi-dimensional problem. The coding style that was used 25 years ago (and they say that they started programming back then) is completely different from the coding style used today; auto variables and the various safe pointers have revolutionized how C/C++ are used.

I do not follow the mailing lists, except when I have to look up a specific problem. I have not seen "talking down" to people without commit bit as a problem in those short visits.

Their criticism of the FreeBSD distribution model seems to be focused on one and only one thing: Make FreeBSD more appealing to distro hoppers: people who switch from one Linux distro to another all the time. Fundamentally people who are using computers as a toy, not as a thing to get work done. I'm not sure I want FreeBSD to appeal to those people.

I see computers in general, and FreeBSD in particular as something that enables performing tasks, solving problems, doing useful work. Not as a purpose of its own. Not something that needs to be played with, but something that needs to be learned, tuned and administered, and understood well. I'd rather have 1 user who uses FreeBSD for 100 weeks (making it their main production platform), than 100 users who use it for a week, and then switch to some Linux distro or yet another OS. In particular, I'd rather have 1 user who learns the ins and outs of FreeBSD, and can meaningfully contribute (whether it with volunteer maintenance, packaging or development work, with money, or with giving good advice). From this viewpoint, the criticisms in the article quoted above don't stick. If you are running FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi, you need to read how it works, and learn what powerd does and then enable it. I see that as a good thing, forcing people to understand and do the right thing. Similarly, if someone is serious about using this OS, they can learn what the difference between current, release and stable is. I don't see that as a "barrier to entry", but as something that to a serious user will not be a problem.
 
ralphbsz said:
… Their criticism of the FreeBSD distribution model seems to be focused on one and only one thing: Make FreeBSD more appealing to distro hoppers: … Fundamentally people who are using computers as a toy, …
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I respectfully disagree about the perceived focus on distro-hopping.

Also, I dislike demeaning assumptions about end users.

… (Get FreeBSD) has no real explanation of what “RELEASE”, “CURRENT”, “STABLE”, “RC”, or “Snapshots” means. One of the most frequent questions, and most misunderstood things about FreeBSD is simply what the different branches are even for. In normal lingo, “current” would be, well, what the current version of a program is, the latest release, not a development branch. Stable similarly has a close meaning if you compare it to other distros like Debian Stable. From an outsider’s perspective, Release, Current, and Stable are all used interchangeably. There is a very small and brief explanation of part of this information on the page, but it's down in the “Development” section, where a normal non-dev would most likely skip over. …
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The first Wayback Machine capture of the current edition of the page: <{link removed}>.
 
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From Vince himself:
  • <{link removed}>
  • <{link removed}>
Also:
  • <{link removed}>
  • <{link removed}>
  • <{link removed}>
  • …
 
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how they treat those newer to the community who are trying to affect change.
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To me, this is often a red flag. Oftentimes, people want change for the sake of change. Or change because some other group does it a certain way that they like. And when they don't get their way, posts like this appear.

Now, I don't know this guy, and don't have time to finish reading it right now, but that was my first impression.
 
I skimmed through it yesterday, didn't find it interesting enough to read all of it, and also refrained from commenting on mastodon, because I actually agree with you so far: I don't share the criticism about the distribution model at all, and I can't confirm the "bad behavior" from my own experience...

That said, if someone indeed makes an "argument" of the "you don't know X" style, that's very wrong of course. Maybe it happened, I don't know. But then, this should really be discussed in private instead.
 
Oh, and I’m also the co-founder and admin of the FreeBSD Discord Server, a community of over 3,000 members strong.
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Like reddit, this is self assigned and does not have any meaningful affiliation with the FreeBSD project. Newbies tend to not know this so it ends up having the blind leading the blind.

So I believe the FreeBSD project should either take a harder stance explaining that these consumer chatrooms are unofficial and not recommended or they should appoint someone appropriate from their development team or foundation to do a proper job.

Other than that, I can't really comment. Have no idea who he is other than just some guy with some random ideas like the rest of us. I tend to disagree with his Raspberry Pi powerd views though. These images should be as vanilla as possible. "little tweaks" here and there are dumb. Just read the damn documentation.
 
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kpedersen said:
Like reddit, this is self assigned and does not have any meaningful affiliation with the FreeBSD project. Newbies tend to not know this so it end up having the blind leading the blind.
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Any collection of people is just a collection of skills which these people are willing to share. In what way does an "affiliation" increase that skill?

Many people tend to think that some kind of authority is necessary to sit above anything to make it kind of "serious". Experience shows that this may not work so well in practise, and sometimes even has a detrimental effect.

Concerning that paper: I didn't find much substance in it that would call for action.
 
PMc said:
Any collection of people is just a collection of skills which these people are willing to share. In what way does an "affiliation" increase that skill?
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The affiliation often means that it is more likely to be lead by someone with the same mindset as the greater project.

if it is some randomer, they might just be a hobbiest who loves i.e desktop environments and games and can't quite see the relevance in the projects actual goals when it comes to other people's requirements.

The i.e FreeBSD developers tend to be surprisingly united in their vision for the project. This is very different to i.e reddit / discord users.
 
kpedersen said:
The affiliation often means that it is more likely to be lead by someone with the same mindset as the greater project.
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Yes, good point.
kpedersen said:
if it is some randomer, they might just be a hobbiest who loves i.e desktop environments and games and can't quite see the relevance in the projects actual goals when it comes to other people's requirements.
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That's the majority, anyway.

Then., You are certainly aware that this is not so much a matter of skills, but rather of shared visions and ideals.
And I have no problem at all with people joining together to follow their own diversified visions and ideals. Only when they come and state, the foundation should this and the foundation should that, then the usual answer should be: just find a way to do it yourself. ;)
 
cmoerz said:
… What's your take, …
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I haven't finished reading, this is currently my favourite:

❝… i didn't do this because of myself, i did this because i'm seeing trends that push people away. if you want to take the letter and pick it apart piece by piece of only its contents and not the overall message, fine, go ahead. but plenty of people see beyond just the words and understand the overall message. positive change is already happening, much faster than i had anticipated. it just isn't out in the main channel, but there is some damn good conversations happening behind closed doors right now that will go public soon enough. …❞
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Oftentimes, people want change for the sake of change. Or change because some other group does it a certain way that they like.
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Anyone remember the "discussions" around changing the default shell away from csh to sh?
Quite the donnybrook or brouhaha were had.

As for the mailing lists:
I've followed a few for a long time (security, hackers, questions) and don't recall seeing anything towards newcomers like I've seen in Linux lists or OpenBSD for that matter. Now if someone new comes in harsh, they wind up getting ignored. Back in 4.x to 5.x days there were some good bikesheds on how things should be done, but all stayed relatively nonpersonal.
 
kpedersen said:
Like reddit, this is self assigned and does not have any meaningful affiliation with the FreeBSD project. Newbies tend to not know this so it ends up having the blind leading the blind.

So I believe the FreeBSD project should either take a harder stance explaining that these consumer chatrooms are unafficiated and not recommended or they should appoint someone appropriate from their development team or foundation to do a proper job.
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fwiw the community page explicitly references Discord, and based on how that page is worded, it looks like it falls into the official spaces category to me:

The project maintains several official community spaces… For more real-time collaboration, we have a number of FreeBSD IRC channels and an instance on Discord… Beyond officially run community spaces…
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Discord, Reddit, Matrix, fediverse i.e. Mastodon​

patmaddox said:
… based on how that page is worded, it looks like it falls into the official spaces category to me: …
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Discord was added in 2021, <{link removed}> for <removed> was added in January 2022:

{link removed}

{link removed}

{link removed}

In March 2022, it was made clearer that the FreeBSD Project does not host the Discord instance:

{link removed}

{link removed}
  • wording chosen by Li-Wen Hsu, who is (also) within the Technology Group at The FreeBSD Foundation.
Git history and blame: <{link removed}>, <{link removed}>.


I don't think of {removed} as official, I added the word unofficial around thirteen months ago.

{link removed} is not a chat room.

Let's remind ourselves of the first six words of the proper, official Community page:

FreeBSD’s community is diverse and extensive
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Missing from the Community page:
  • FreeBSD {link removed} in Matrix (2,111 people at the time of writing)
  • The FreeBSD Foundation, pictured below in the context of BSD Cafe
  • …
 

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I have noticed some heat in the -ports mailing list, but it's almost all light. Far, far better than most mailing lists I've cared to follow.

Thanks for reading TFA so I didn't have to, BTW.
 
TFA - I guess that's a relative of RTFM and a contraction of writing out the same with "article" instead of "manual". That's at least my guess to what it means? I've not been following recent internet abbreviations since memes flooded the internet.
 
cmoerz said:
TFA - I guess that's a relative of RTFM and a contraction of writing out the same with "article" instead of "manual". That's at least my guess to what it means? I've not been following recent internet abbreviations since memes flooded the internet.
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Stands for The Fine Article, just like the Fine Manual. What did you think it meant?
 
Probably didn't get the memo. That's a nice red Swingline Stapler you've got there, however. I've been looking for it all the time.
And I'm gonna have to ask you to move your desk all the way to the back to the wall... :)
 
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