8 ms·

Then they deserve what they get. Honestly, this is probably some kind of confusion over a company or two that has -CURRENT as an upstream to their own fork of

Then they deserve what they get. Honestly, this is probably some kind of confusion over a company or two that has -CURRENT as an upstream to their own fork of the OS because they are reliant on some kind of new changes in the system that aren't in -STABLE. Even if that's the case, you'd hope they'd be taking extra special precautions considering what they are doing.

jacquesm 12y ago
I agree with you in principle but I think in practice you'd need to give a little bit of leeway here because 'CURRENT' is a very suggestive name. And it does not suggest 'Do not use for production'. It rather suggests the opposite.
- Consultant32452 12y ago
  When I read "CURRENT" I assumed that was the label for the most current stable release. I would expect NIGHTLY or ALPHA/BETA for something that shouldn't be used for important things.
  - barkingcat 12y ago
    I think you should learn and read about what you're downloading and running in production (given your hypothetical example). It's basic literacy. For example, would you go to Linus's github: https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux and just start downloading that and try running it verbatim in production because "oh! it's Linus's branch! Linus makes Linux. It is Linux!" and then complain because it's not an actual distribution? Because that's how you read in your comment. The linux development kernel is called "mainline" Would you want them to change it to Nightly or Alpha?
    - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
      If you give inaccurate information and then correct it in the manual, you still gave inaccurate information.
      - mercurial 12y ago
        If you didn't read the manual before putting something in production, you still didn't do your job properly.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        If there is one group that categorically does not read the manual then it is computer people. And if they do read the manual it is because something didn't work as expected.
        mercurial 12y ago
        That's not entirely wrong. On the other hand, if you can't tell whether the OS you deployed in production has, say, security support, maybe you're not the right person to administer it.
        mkr-hn 12y ago
        This probably comes from overconfidence. If you're pretty sure you can handle whatever comes up, it's easy to see reading documentation in advance as a potential waste of time.
        mikeash 12y ago
        I would not state it as broadly as "computer people." A lot of computer people are indeed that way. But many others are not. Invariably, when something goes wrong, the group that doesn't read the manual visits forums or chats to seek help from the group that does.
      - TallGuyShort 12y ago
        Who gave you inaccurate information? Assuming CURRENT means stable is just plain assuming.
        PhasmaFelis 12y ago
        Principle of Least Astonishment. The names of things should not mislead a reasonable user as to their purpose. It is still the responsibility of the user to educate themselves on the things they use; but it's also the responsibility of the designer to make things straightforward and intuitive. I'm okay with blaming both of them, but don't pretend that the designer has no responsibilities here.
    - mobiplayer 12y ago
      Yes, people should read the manual. And FreeBSD should name things better. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
    - Consultant32452 12y ago
      I agree you should read and understand what you're downloading and running in production. And I'd like to think that if I were in a position such that I was making those decisions I'd not make the mistake of assuming CURRENT meant current stable release. I'm just saying, reading the post I originally had assumed that's what current meant.
  - emaste 12y ago
    I can understand the terminology may be confusing to someone new to FreeBSD, but the handbook clearly documents the meaning of -CURRENT and -STABLE, and explains that -CURRENT is the "bleeding edge" of FreeBSD development.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      "EDGE" may be a better term in that case... meaning it may cut you... there's risk... "CURRENT" to me brings a thought of, okay, it's current and up to date (safe from known exploits).
- sigzero 12y ago
  If you go here: https://www.freebsd.org/where.html https://www.freebsd.org/where.html There is RELEASE, CURRENT, STABLE. If you choose one without knowing the difference as to what those titles mean, you deserve whatever comes next.
  - soup10 12y ago
    In my experience with open source projects, STABLE should be first on the download list. RELEASE should really be labeled release-candidate, with stable being considered the release.
    - garrettheaver 12y ago
      Three key words there - "In my experience". Well now you've experienced a project who doesn't fit your current model of the world. Should those of us who have RTFM and experienced different vocabularies adjust to your model or should you recalibrate?
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      RELEASE is the release, -STABLE is the minor branch for bugfixes and minor new features that don't break backwards-compatibility ("stable ABI"). -CURRENT is, well, current - it's the tree the developers are working on, and is the current state of FreeBSD, where releases are archives at a particular point (more-or-less). I suspect much of this goes back to when development wasn't quite so public, so these are names that are meaningful to the developers, not the public.
- garrettheaver 12y ago
  It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks a name means based on their prior experience. If they didn't RTFM I've no sympathy, particularly if that user is depending upon security features within the OS. Users, particularly corporates, have to take responsibility for your own situation and if they got caught out by this because they didn't understand or bother to take the time to read what -CURRENT is then I've no respect for them in any technical capacity.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    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.
    - weland 12y ago
      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!
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        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.
javert 12y ago
No they don't. It's reasonable to trust that FreeBSD is providing decent RNG. Even in the dev branch. I mean, why would they not? Don't blame the user for upstream's mistake. Do FreeBSD developers (I mean, the ones who had nothing to do with this but also use the dev branch) "deserve" it, too? In general, do you always blame the victim for someone else's mistakes? edit: I am not a BSD user. I am reading now that the dev branch is purposely crippled anyway and known to be terribly unstable. If that's the case, maybe it is idiotic for non-developers to use it. I'll leave this comment here instead of deleting in so nobody else says the same thing. In the meantime, I'm glad to be using a rolling release Linux distro that always has bleeding-edge software without ever having any problems.
- girvo 12y ago
  > bleeding-edge software without ever having any problems Did you seriously just suggest that Arch never has any issues? How did you manage to achieve that, because I gave up on Arch due to it breaking at least once a fortnight. The "bleeding edge" is called that for a reason: you're likely to bleed when using it.
  - Tiksi 12y ago
    I run arch with the testing repos on both my work and home desktops, and the normal repos on one of my servers, and I've had updates break things exactly once between them (broadcom NIC wouldn't come up on my home desktop), and the fix was just a matter of rolling back 1 kernel version. So I guess YMMV?
  - javert 12y ago
    I very rarely have any issues with Arch. Like, maybe once a year. And they're always easy to fix. One big difference is I don't run a desktop environment (kde, gnome, or whatever crap is out there now). I suspect that makes things a lot less likely to break when I do updates.
- gtirloni 12y ago
  Regarding your edit, you mean like FreeBSD -STABLE?
coldtea 12y ago
>Then they deserve what they get Yeah, because it could totally not slip through to a release... Like, you know, Heartbleed et al...
Zarathust 12y ago
Sometimes you end up depending on stuff that isn't in -STABLE yet. Sometimes it is edgy new stuff that comes with a risk, but fixes for existing functionality also fall in this category. Living with broken software isn't a compromise a lot of users make.
reidrac 12y ago
It is pretty well explained in the docs: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cu... If they're confused on that, they probably have other isses to worry about.

jacquesm 12y ago

I agree with you in principle but I think in practice you'd need to give a little bit of leeway here because 'CURRENT' is a very suggestive name. And it does not suggest 'Do not use for production'. It rather suggests the opposite.

Consultant32452 12y ago
When I read "CURRENT" I assumed that was the label for the most current stable release. I would expect NIGHTLY or ALPHA/BETA for something that shouldn't be used for important things.
- barkingcat 12y ago
  I think you should learn and read about what you're downloading and running in production (given your hypothetical example). It's basic literacy. For example, would you go to Linus's github: https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux and just start downloading that and try running it verbatim in production because "oh! it's Linus's branch! Linus makes Linux. It is Linux!" and then complain because it's not an actual distribution? Because that's how you read in your comment. The linux development kernel is called "mainline" Would you want them to change it to Nightly or Alpha?
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    If you give inaccurate information and then correct it in the manual, you still gave inaccurate information.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      If you didn't read the manual before putting something in production, you still didn't do your job properly.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        If there is one group that categorically does not read the manual then it is computer people. And if they do read the manual it is because something didn't work as expected.
        mercurial 12y ago
        That's not entirely wrong. On the other hand, if you can't tell whether the OS you deployed in production has, say, security support, maybe you're not the right person to administer it.
        mkr-hn 12y ago
        This probably comes from overconfidence. If you're pretty sure you can handle whatever comes up, it's easy to see reading documentation in advance as a potential waste of time.
        mikeash 12y ago
        I would not state it as broadly as "computer people." A lot of computer people are indeed that way. But many others are not. Invariably, when something goes wrong, the group that doesn't read the manual visits forums or chats to seek help from the group that does.
    - TallGuyShort 12y ago
      Who gave you inaccurate information? Assuming CURRENT means stable is just plain assuming.
      - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
        Principle of Least Astonishment. The names of things should not mislead a reasonable user as to their purpose. It is still the responsibility of the user to educate themselves on the things they use; but it's also the responsibility of the designer to make things straightforward and intuitive. I'm okay with blaming both of them, but don't pretend that the designer has no responsibilities here.
  - mobiplayer 12y ago
    Yes, people should read the manual. And FreeBSD should name things better. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
  - Consultant32452 12y ago
    I agree you should read and understand what you're downloading and running in production. And I'd like to think that if I were in a position such that I was making those decisions I'd not make the mistake of assuming CURRENT meant current stable release. I'm just saying, reading the post I originally had assumed that's what current meant.
- emaste 12y ago
  I can understand the terminology may be confusing to someone new to FreeBSD, but the handbook clearly documents the meaning of -CURRENT and -STABLE, and explains that -CURRENT is the "bleeding edge" of FreeBSD development.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    "EDGE" may be a better term in that case... meaning it may cut you... there's risk... "CURRENT" to me brings a thought of, okay, it's current and up to date (safe from known exploits).
sigzero 12y ago
If you go here: https://www.freebsd.org/where.html https://www.freebsd.org/where.html There is RELEASE, CURRENT, STABLE. If you choose one without knowing the difference as to what those titles mean, you deserve whatever comes next.
- soup10 12y ago
  In my experience with open source projects, STABLE should be first on the download list. RELEASE should really be labeled release-candidate, with stable being considered the release.
  - garrettheaver 12y ago
    Three key words there - "In my experience". Well now you've experienced a project who doesn't fit your current model of the world. Should those of us who have RTFM and experienced different vocabularies adjust to your model or should you recalibrate?
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    RELEASE is the release, -STABLE is the minor branch for bugfixes and minor new features that don't break backwards-compatibility ("stable ABI"). -CURRENT is, well, current - it's the tree the developers are working on, and is the current state of FreeBSD, where releases are archives at a particular point (more-or-less). I suspect much of this goes back to when development wasn't quite so public, so these are names that are meaningful to the developers, not the public.
garrettheaver 12y ago
It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks a name means based on their prior experience. If they didn't RTFM I've no sympathy, particularly if that user is depending upon security features within the OS. Users, particularly corporates, have to take responsibility for your own situation and if they got caught out by this because they didn't understand or bother to take the time to read what -CURRENT is then I've no respect for them in any technical capacity.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  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.
  - weland 12y ago
    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!
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      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.

javert 12y ago

No they don't. It's reasonable to trust that FreeBSD is providing decent RNG. Even in the dev branch. I mean, why would they not? Don't blame the user for upstream's mistake. Do FreeBSD developers (I mean, the ones who had nothing to do with this but also use the dev branch) "deserve" it, too? In general, do you always blame the victim for someone else's mistakes? edit: I am not a BSD user. I am reading now that the dev branch is purposely crippled anyway and known to be terribly unstable. If that's the case, maybe it is idiotic for non-developers to use it. I'll leave this comment here instead of deleting in so nobody else says the same thing. In the meantime, I'm glad to be using a rolling release Linux distro that always has bleeding-edge software without ever having any problems.

girvo 12y ago
> bleeding-edge software without ever having any problems Did you seriously just suggest that Arch never has any issues? How did you manage to achieve that, because I gave up on Arch due to it breaking at least once a fortnight. The "bleeding edge" is called that for a reason: you're likely to bleed when using it.
- Tiksi 12y ago
  I run arch with the testing repos on both my work and home desktops, and the normal repos on one of my servers, and I've had updates break things exactly once between them (broadcom NIC wouldn't come up on my home desktop), and the fix was just a matter of rolling back 1 kernel version. So I guess YMMV?
- javert 12y ago
  I very rarely have any issues with Arch. Like, maybe once a year. And they're always easy to fix. One big difference is I don't run a desktop environment (kde, gnome, or whatever crap is out there now). I suspect that makes things a lot less likely to break when I do updates.
gtirloni 12y ago
Regarding your edit, you mean like FreeBSD -STABLE?

coldtea 12y ago

>Then they deserve what they get Yeah, because it could totally not slip through to a release... Like, you know, Heartbleed et al...

Zarathust 12y ago

Sometimes you end up depending on stuff that isn't in -STABLE yet. Sometimes it is edgy new stuff that comes with a risk, but fixes for existing functionality also fall in this category. Living with broken software isn't a compromise a lot of users make.

reidrac 12y ago

It is pretty well explained in the docs: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cu... If they're confused on that, they probably have other isses to worry about.