“RNG broken for last 4 months”

Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by jacquesm on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @04:09AM (#9067623)

So, then we should label the unstable may crash at any time release 'USETHISONE' and the stable one 'POSTALPHA'.

Really, I don't get this attitude of 'if they can't be bothered to read the manual they get what they deserve'. It's everybody's loss to have more compromised machines on the net because compromised machines allow bad elements to gain a foothold and from there it can get much worse in a hurry.

So you treat this as a communications problem and reduce the potential of error by properly labelling your releases (this costs $0) instead of telling those that got bitten by it that they 'got what they deserve'.

Whether you have respect for them or not doesn't enter into it, it's a security issue, not a respect issue.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by weland on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @04:25AM (#9067658)

CURRENT has meant MAYCRASH in BSD for... 25 years now?

I don't know how suggestive it is to someone who doesn't use FreeBSD, but if you as much as download and install it, there's no way you don't stumble into at least one "-CURRENT is not what you want for production" fine print.

This isn't a communication, security or respect issue, it's a competence issue. You don't just install an OS on a server and "somehow" not know you're installing a development version!

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by jacquesm on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @04:30AM (#9067671)

Lance Leventhal is one of my favorite authors of machine language books, he wrote a series of books on old school microprocessors, each of which followed a fixed template and taught you the basics of yet another processor in a familiar setting.

One of the lines from those books that stands out very clearly 25 years after reading them last: "If a variable is tallying the number of horses name it 'nhorses' not 'qdogs'".

Names matter. So if 'CURRENT' means 'MAYCRASH' name it so.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by weland on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @05:33AM (#9067815)

-CURRENT is called CURRENT because it reflects the CURRENT development efforts and their CURRENT state. Of course it may crash. When it stops crashing, it's going to be released and that's how it will be turned into a RELEASE.

There is literally (and I'm using the word in its proper sense, not as a hyperbola) no way you end up with FreeBSD on a server without knowing this. No one just installed it "by mistake" in a production environment or mistook it for a STABLE version.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by vertex-four on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @05:07AM (#9067754)

Many projects use "head" to refer to their development branch. That's equally as non-meaningful, yet nobody complains about that.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by bdowling on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @06:43AM (#9067979)

"Head" is very commonly used because it is from the language of revision control systems. CVS, Subversion, Perforce, Git, Mercurial, and probably others all refer to the latest checkin as the "head". It has a specific meaning to a much larger group of people than just FreeBSD users.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by garrettheaver on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @06:58AM (#9068023)

-CURRENT machines shouldn't be "on the net" in any meaningful way unless you've calculated the risks and are willing to accept them.

I don't get this attitude of people who think projects should fit their model of how things should be named. Many of us have no problem understanding the labelling, its really fairly intuitive. We also have no problem understanding alternative schemes used in other projects. Just because its different to what you're used to doesn't make it wrong.

Whether or not I have respect for them matter quite a lot if they're trying to market security related products. Basing themselves on -CURRENT and not understanding the potential consequences speaks volumes about that organisation or teams competency in their chosen field.

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Re:“RNG broken for last 4 months” by tracker1 on Wednesday February 18, 2015 @12:33PM (#9069752)

Given that... wouldn't -DEV or -EDGE or -UNSTABLE make more sense?

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