Why I am retiring from contributing to FreeBSD

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

See you in Brussels, possibly?

Right now I do not have any plans to go there. But if you ever want to meet in person, I am living close where you live :)

[chrcoluk]

[...]I do feel the decision all those years ago to keep the custom multi threaded PF over keeping up with OpenBSD PF has continued to hunt FreeBSD.[...]

Improving FreeBSD's pf is an obvious goal, but pining for OpenBSD's implementation doesn't seem realistic. Unfortunately any attempts at real improvement would run straight into the politics being discussed here.

Yep, for sure.

[franco]

See you in Brussels, possibly?

Sure. :)

I guess most of these issues are self inflicted due to the medium of internet.

I disagree. I think people underestimate their impact of dismissiveness in a world where we share and grow together and it's hard to back out of a corner eventually.  At some point you're so locked in that any attempt of open communication seems like a neglect of your life's work.

Here are some helpful guidelines we can all benefit from:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/

The way commit bits work is that an existing committer (anyone with FreeBSD.org email) sends core@ an email proposing someone, and then core votes on that.

It's kind of amazing that nobody ever took the time to explain it with a single sentence in over a decade to me. It kind of makes sense things went the way they went then. Neglect only gets us so far, but it sure is the easiest thing to do.


Cheers,
Franco

[Greg_E]

Here are some helpful guidelines we can all benefit from:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/

#9 applies to sysadmins too, you need to be out in the world to see what the users are experiencing so you can solve the problems they describe.

[OPNenthu]

Here are some helpful guidelines we can all benefit from:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/

#9 applies to sysadmins too, you need to be out in the world to see what the users are experiencing so you can solve the problems they describe.

#10 doesn't work well in my experience.  Coders associate their work with their identity and any critique feels personal.  In the workplace it can feel like a threat, although this is more often the case with insecure employees.  The problem with coding is that "imposter syndrome" is felt often even if it's not talked about or admitted to, so I tend to believe that coders are in a kind of perpetually insecure state internally which reflects as defensiveness and/or sh!tty attitude externally.  (I might be projecting a bit :P)

Agree on the rest!  Very good things to keep in mind.

[franco]

Well it is plain simple: #10 is a choice you have to make. If you hate the code you wrote last year it certainly helps. If you think it was the best code ever... well... there's no help wanted there.  ;)

Oftentimes I find myself looking at code that looks stupid, but if there's a very particular reason that it's stupid that others complaining miss entirely that usually helps making better choices or redoing it or leaving it as is.

Also when sketching ideas in code and hating the direction deleting it and starting from scratch has been eye-opening on numerous occasions.

You're simply not your code.


Cheers,
Franco

[nero355]

The problem with coding is that "imposter syndrome" is felt often even if it's not talked about or admitted to

AFAIK that's something that's an issue across the whole IT world :)