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From the article: Most of them, [Sons] said, "are older than my father.... [and] are not always up to date on the latest techniques and security issues." [...]

From the article: Most of them, [Sons] said, "are older than my father.... [and] are not always up to date on the latest techniques and security issues." [...] Sons suggested that they "should be retired." That is incredibly asinine and discriminatory to boot. From the NTPsec project manager's comment: The main point of contention that caused the fork was BitKeeper vs Git. I can't believe that arguing over VC tooling is what caused the fork. Why not just compromise on this, use BitKeeper for long enough to get on the maintainer's good side, and helpfully offer to convert to Git later? This is how ESR got GNU Emacs development migrated from Bazaar to Git, and it seemed to have gone pretty well for all involved.

gwu78 10y ago
I am too lazy to look it up on the mailing lists but a while back I recall ESR contacted certain BSD projects trying to convince them to change to Git. I mistook it for the occasional incoherent spam that slips through the filters.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > I am too lazy to look it up on the mailing lists but a while back I recall ESR contacted certain BSD projects trying to convince them to change to Git. They're mostly still on CVS these days, right? Regardless of one's personal feelings about esr, is there any good reason to stay on CVS in this, the second decade of the twenty-first century?
  - liveoneggs 10y ago
    a reason (although not necessarily good enough) is that git requires a lot of resources for large repos there were other reasons but the discussion hasn't re-happened in the last 18-24 months
  - loeg 10y ago
    FreeBSD's been on SVN, not CVS, since 2008. Many developers use an official git mirror[0] to stage their work before committing. [0]: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd
  - jlgaddis 10y ago
    As loeg mentioned, FreeBSD uses SVN. OpenBSD still uses CVS. Why? Basically because they are the ones using it and it continues to work just fine for their needs. Is there any good reason for them to migrate everything to a new VCS, be forced to learn new tools, etc., when what they are using now meets their needs just fine? This is a perfect example of change for change's sake.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
saul_goodman 10y ago
People live forever, why should anyone try to take up the reigns from the older generation? I think it's clear, even if you don't like some of Sons's attitude, that this was a sound-bity quote likely taken a little out of context. And why do people fork a project when they want to fix things? I'm sure there were dozens of problems in getting started on fixing NTP, BitKeeper was just the first problem to deal with. What can you do when the current maintainer is so contrary that they have already lost access to free funding to modernize a dying code base? We don't need NTP backported to unix workstations that EOL'd over a decade ago, we need an NTP that doesn't cause more problems than it solves.
- eridius 10y ago
  I'm struggling to imagine a context that excuses the attitude of "that developer should be forced to retire so we can take over their project".
HedgeMage 10y ago
That's simply not what I said; I was misquoted. Please watch the original video. https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-internet-is-going-to-fall-down-if-i-dont-fix-this-susan-sons?imm_mid=0eb1c1&cmp=em-webops-na-na-newsltr_security_20161129 https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-internet-is-going-to-fall-... It's amazing* how many people here are willing to roast me over a third-hand account of my opinions, when I've already offered to answer questions directly. * Not actually amazing, fairly typical of internet commentary, really.
- areyousure 10y ago
  To save effort on finding the relevant segment of a 17+ minute interview, I have attempted to transcribe a portion. See also https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/susan-sons-on-maintaining-and-securing-the-internets-infrastructure https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/susan-sons-on-maintaining-and-... with some portions transcribed (inexactly); add ~20s to the times below to match the podcast timing. (5:26) [O'Reilly interviewer] Mac Slocum: Related question on this: how can the Internet's infrastructure remain up to date and secure, particularly when it's distributed like this? (5:33) Susan Sons: So the really terrifying thing about infrastructure software in particular is when you pay your ISP bill, that pays for all the cabling that runs to your home or business. That pays for the people that work at the ISP. That pays for their routing equipment and their power and their billing systems and their marketing and all of these wonderful things. It doesn't pay for the software that makes the Internet work. (5:54) That is maintained almost entirely by volunteers. And those volunteers are aging. [Um.] Most of them are older than my father. And [um,] we're not seeing a new cadre of people stepping up and taking over their projects, (6:10) so what we're seeing is ones and twos of volunteers who are hanging on and either burning out while trying to do this in addition to a full-time job, or are doing it instead of a full-time job, or should be retired, or are retired. [Um.] And it's just not giving the care it needs. (6:27) And in addition to this, these people aren't always up to date on the latest [um] techniques and security concerns of the day. And the next generation isn't coming up. I recently started a mentoring group called the #newguard that takes early and mid-career technologists and we cross-mentor and then we match them up with the old guard who are maintaining and who built this software to try to help solve that problem. But in the meantime there's still not enough funding going in this direction. And there's not enough churning happening. [Um.] And it's a really tough thing because there's a certain amount of what I call "functional arrogance" involved. [Um.] I don't have a certificate of "Susan is good enough to save the Internet" anywhere. I don't know who hands those out. (7:08) Slocum: Sure.
Animats 10y ago
Most of them, [Sons] said, "are older than my father.... Eric S. Raymond, who seems to be behind the "young" fork, is 59.
- loeg 10y ago
  To be fair, that is technically younger than my father. By 3 years.

gwu78 10y ago

I am too lazy to look it up on the mailing lists but a while back I recall ESR contacted certain BSD projects trying to convince them to change to Git. I mistook it for the occasional incoherent spam that slips through the filters.

zeveb 10y ago
> I am too lazy to look it up on the mailing lists but a while back I recall ESR contacted certain BSD projects trying to convince them to change to Git. They're mostly still on CVS these days, right? Regardless of one's personal feelings about esr, is there any good reason to stay on CVS in this, the second decade of the twenty-first century?
- liveoneggs 10y ago
  a reason (although not necessarily good enough) is that git requires a lot of resources for large repos there were other reasons but the discussion hasn't re-happened in the last 18-24 months
- loeg 10y ago
  FreeBSD's been on SVN, not CVS, since 2008. Many developers use an official git mirror[0] to stage their work before committing. [0]: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  As loeg mentioned, FreeBSD uses SVN. OpenBSD still uses CVS. Why? Basically because they are the ones using it and it continues to work just fine for their needs. Is there any good reason for them to migrate everything to a new VCS, be forced to learn new tools, etc., when what they are using now meets their needs just fine? This is a perfect example of change for change's sake.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

saul_goodman 10y ago

People live forever, why should anyone try to take up the reigns from the older generation? I think it's clear, even if you don't like some of Sons's attitude, that this was a sound-bity quote likely taken a little out of context. And why do people fork a project when they want to fix things? I'm sure there were dozens of problems in getting started on fixing NTP, BitKeeper was just the first problem to deal with. What can you do when the current maintainer is so contrary that they have already lost access to free funding to modernize a dying code base? We don't need NTP backported to unix workstations that EOL'd over a decade ago, we need an NTP that doesn't cause more problems than it solves.

eridius 10y ago
I'm struggling to imagine a context that excuses the attitude of "that developer should be forced to retire so we can take over their project".

HedgeMage 10y ago

That's simply not what I said; I was misquoted. Please watch the original video. https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-internet-is-going-to-fall-down-if-i-dont-fix-this-susan-sons?imm_mid=0eb1c1&cmp=em-webops-na-na-newsltr_security_20161129 https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-internet-is-going-to-fall-... It's amazing* how many people here are willing to roast me over a third-hand account of my opinions, when I've already offered to answer questions directly. * Not actually amazing, fairly typical of internet commentary, really.

areyousure 10y ago
To save effort on finding the relevant segment of a 17+ minute interview, I have attempted to transcribe a portion. See also https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/susan-sons-on-maintaining-and-securing-the-internets-infrastructure https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/susan-sons-on-maintaining-and-... with some portions transcribed (inexactly); add ~20s to the times below to match the podcast timing. (5:26) [O'Reilly interviewer] Mac Slocum: Related question on this: how can the Internet's infrastructure remain up to date and secure, particularly when it's distributed like this? (5:33) Susan Sons: So the really terrifying thing about infrastructure software in particular is when you pay your ISP bill, that pays for all the cabling that runs to your home or business. That pays for the people that work at the ISP. That pays for their routing equipment and their power and their billing systems and their marketing and all of these wonderful things. It doesn't pay for the software that makes the Internet work. (5:54) That is maintained almost entirely by volunteers. And those volunteers are aging. [Um.] Most of them are older than my father. And [um,] we're not seeing a new cadre of people stepping up and taking over their projects, (6:10) so what we're seeing is ones and twos of volunteers who are hanging on and either burning out while trying to do this in addition to a full-time job, or are doing it instead of a full-time job, or should be retired, or are retired. [Um.] And it's just not giving the care it needs. (6:27) And in addition to this, these people aren't always up to date on the latest [um] techniques and security concerns of the day. And the next generation isn't coming up. I recently started a mentoring group called the #newguard that takes early and mid-career technologists and we cross-mentor and then we match them up with the old guard who are maintaining and who built this software to try to help solve that problem. But in the meantime there's still not enough funding going in this direction. And there's not enough churning happening. [Um.] And it's a really tough thing because there's a certain amount of what I call "functional arrogance" involved. [Um.] I don't have a certificate of "Susan is good enough to save the Internet" anywhere. I don't know who hands those out. (7:08) Slocum: Sure.

Animats 10y ago

Most of them, [Sons] said, "are older than my father.... Eric S. Raymond, who seems to be behind the "young" fork, is 59.

loeg 10y ago
To be fair, that is technically younger than my father. By 3 years.