I am pleased to announce the results of the 2006 FreeBSD core team election. Counting the ballots reveals that the votes are allocated as follows, New Core Team ============= Robert Watson (194) Warner Losh (186) Murray Stokely (182) Wilko Bulte (159) Wes Peters (149) George V. Neville-Neil (129) Hiroki Sato (126) Brooks Davis (110) Giorgos Keramidas (100) Runners Up ========== Ade Lovett (98) Colin Percival (98) Mike Silbersack (79) David E. O'Brien (71) Tom Rhodes (45) Tilman Linneweh (19) Congratulations to Wilko, George, Hiroki, Brooks and Giorgos who will be joining the core team, and of course to Robert, Warner, Murray and Wes who retain their seats. Our thanks also must go to Peter, John, Scott, Mark and Jun for all their hard work over the last two years. The election schedule has the new core team taking office on Thursday 27 July 2006, although I'm sure that there will be a gradual handing over of the reins between now and then. I'll finish on some stats. Of the 308 committers entitled to vote, 217 (68%) committers logged into the election server, and 208 (65%) committers voted, which is down about 10% from the last election. However it is still a better turn out than most elections :). Many thanks to everyone for making the effort to vote. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It looks like my work here is done. Regards, Joe ====================================================================== There are 15 candidates running for 9 places on the core team: Ade Lovett Tilman Linneweh Brooks Davis Colin Percival George V. Neville-Neil Hiroki Sato Warner Losh Giorgos Keramidas Murray Stokely David E. O'Brien Robert Watson Mike Silbersack Tom Rhodes Wes Peters Wilko Bulte ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ade Lovett Last modified: Jun 13 08:57:36 2006 I've been a ports committer for 6.5 years, initially working on the FreeBSD/GNOME project back in the dark old days of 1.x, and more recently, the autotools (and other similar infrastructural) ports maintainer. More recently, I picked up a src bit, and having been working on FreeBSD-in-insane-IO-environment performance tuning ever since. In terms of first exposure to BSD, that'd be somewhere around *mumble* 1983 *mumble*. None of the above, however, is why I'm standing for core. When it comes to paying the bills, that's achieved from my position as General Manager of a rather large commercial Usenet outsourcing company. I'm a professional PHB. We also happen to be a 100% FreeBSD shop. We would not be where we are without FreeBSD. To me, the FreeBSD core team is equivalent to the Board of Directors of a commercial entity. The requirements for such a position are not so much a matter of technical prowess, but of leadership skills. Working with those that directly contribute to the Project whilst also maintaining an overall vision of how the Project is run internally, and most importantly, perceived by the world at large. Delegation of day-to-day operational responsibilities to other teams and individuals. Over the past few years, the Project as a whole, and core in particular, have taken great strides in moving towards a more commercially-aware (which is not the same at all as a commerical "selling out") ideology. This is a good thing. Increased traction with ISPs, VARs and, more recently, the explosion into embedded systems can only mean good things for the Project going forward. It is in this area that I firmly believe I can contribute best to FreeBSD. I make no promises, no guarantees, other than that I absolutely have the best interests of the Project at heart, and, if elected, will use my skills, such as they are, to build on the work of those that have come before me, ensuring the continued success, on every level, of the FreeBSD Project. UPDATE: I believe the dual-role of core as an overall oversight committee, and also tasked with the handing out of src/ commit bits raises some interesting issues. If we look at other parts of the tree, ports/ is managed by portmgr, and doc/ is managed by doceng. I am firmly in favor of creating a new body, let's call it srcmgr, that handles the day-to-day administrative tasks (commit bit assignment, developer interactions, etc) within the src/ tree, as has been proven to work well within the other parts of the tree. This has two benefits. First, those individuals that are likely to comprise the srcmgr@ group will have far superior input into managing the tree, just as we have devolved responsibility for doc/ and ports/ to the relevant groups. Second, by having core relinquish this dual-role anomaly, and in conjunction with "committee" meetings between core and well-defined {src,doc,ports} management teams, it can become considerably more effective in guiding the Project as a combined entity. Thank you for your consideration. -aDe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tilman Linneweh Last modified: Jun 20 21:51:20 2006 A few hours before the final deadline, I decided to throw my hat into the ring as a last-minute candidate, because there were still not enough candidates running. Two candiates for every place should be the minimum to show that we are not dying. Maybe Warner scared all potential candidates with his wiki-document ;). I have been having fun as a FreeBSD ports committer for nearly four years, maybe it is now time to serve and give something back to the community. I hope, I have not offended too many fellow committers, so that there are some spare votes left for me. In the unlikely case i get enough votes for a place on the core team i promise to do the best i can to continue the successfull work of the previous core teams. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Brooks Davis Last modified: Jun 9 06:14:16 2006 I've been using FreeBSD nearly daily for the last eight years and was first exposed to it in 1993. I've been a src committer since 2001 and a ports committer since 2004. Through a combination of luck and lobbying I've been fortunate enough to maneuver my day job to be nearly entirely FreeBSD focused. I was a mentor for two students in the 2005 Google Summer of Code, one of which is continuing this year (with ume@ as mentor). My current technical interests include mobile computing, high performance computing (HPC), networking, and finding ways to make systems more maintainable. This has translated into network interface configuration changes including the new dhclient, improvements to the diskless booting framework, and ports of HPC related tools such as Ganglia and Sun Grid Engine. My main non-technical, FreeBSD interest is increasing our visibility in the academic and research environment. I believe this is an excellent way to develop new talent for the project and to expose developers to new ideas. To that end I am conducting HPC research intended for publication using FreeBSD and am working to encourage the faculty I know to use open source software in general and FreeBSD in particular in the classroom. I am running for a position on the core team because I see it as an opportunity to serve the project in another way. I believe that being both a src and ports committer gives me insight into both facets of the project which should aid me on the core team should I be elected. Thank you for your consideration, Brooks Davis ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Colin Percival Last modified: Jun 13 08:47:26 2006 Most of you already know who I am; but a brief summary: I wrote the FreeBSD Update binary security patch tool in 2003 and presented it at BSDCan'03; I received my (src) commit bit in 2004 and joined the Security Team shortly thereafter; and in 2005 I became Deputy Security Officer and then Security Officer. I'm also the author/maintainer of Portsnap, and this summer I'm working on Security+Portsnap+FreeBSD Update, funded out of community donations. I'm standing for election because I think I can make a contribution to the project in this manner; and also because I think my vision for the project and the core team is important. My vision for FreeBSD: I don't think my mother should use FreeBSD, but I don't think FreeBSD should be a "cool kid's club" either. If FreeBSD is going to continue to develop, we need a constant influx of new developers; and in most cases, new developers were originally new users. If new users -- or at least, those new users who are competent enough that they have a chance of being future developers -- find that FreeBSD is too hard to use, the project will end up failing when the "next generation" of developers does not materialize. My vision for the Core team: While "all authority flows from the core team", I believe that the core team should be very careful in applying, or even threatening to apply, this power. In particular, even though holders of offices "serve at core's pleasure", core should always enter an issue with the assumption that the officer in question knows what he/she is doing. Core forwarding an email to so/re/portmgr/etc and saying "please CC us your reply" is good; core threatening to back out changes made by an officer should never happen unless all else fails. Ultimately, core must resolve disputes; but this must be done within a framework which recognizes that people have roles within the project (whether a specific hat, or as a maintainer of some code) in most cases because they know more about their area than anyone else -- including core. Colin Percival UPDATE: Apparently my last paragraph above ("My vision for the Core team") is leading some people to jump to (incorrect) conclusions. As far as I know, core has never threatened to back out changes made by an officer -- I used that as an extreme example of how core's ultimate authority could be (and hopefully never will be, whether I am elected or not) used. The important point I want to highlight here is that responsibility without authority never works, and I feel that a good core team is able to say "well, we think the decision made by X about Y is probably wrong, but we asked X to be responsible for Y, so once we've expressed our concerns we'll sit back and let X decide what to do". Obviously core must step in if someone (officer, code maintainer, etc) is abusing their authority; and inevitably core will be a conduit by which concerns are raised; but I do not believe that core should micro-manage, even if not micro-managing means allowing decisions to stand which core members believe are wrong. UPDATE 2: I would vote in favour of creating a srcmgr team (in analogy with portmgr and doceng) which would take over responsibility for src commit bits. I believe there should be more non-src representation on the core team, and its current dual roles of managing the project as a whole and managing the src 1/3rd of the project gets in the way of this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- George V. Neville-Neil Last modified: Jun 9 07:30:53 2006 Hi, Although I received a commit bit in the fall of 2004 I suspect more people know who I am due to the latest version of The Design and Implementation book than for my commits to the tree. At the moment I am working on the IPv6 and IPSec parts of our network stack, getting Embedded FreeBSD organized and out there, mentoring students for the Summer of Code, and chairing the upcoming AsiaBSDCon 2007 program committee. With all that going on, why on earth would I want to join core? Core performs a few essential functions for FreeBSD that I think I can help out with, including providing some very general direction, being the contact point for a lot of external groups and doing everyone's least favorite job, conflict resolution. With people talking about taking FreeBSD into the embedded space I think having a person or two deeply involved in that process on core will help to keep the embedded bits of the project on track. I have extensive experience and contacts in the embedded space and I think these will be well used on core. In terms of working with other projects, I helped facilitate the transition of IPv6 and related code from the Kame project, which ended in March 2006, into FreeBSD where we are now maintaining our own version instead of doing periodic integrations. I am also working with Randall Stewart and the group building SCTP, to get that protocol integrated into and maintained in FreeBSD directly. On conflict resolution I think the fact that I generally have a level head and thick skin will serve me well on core. I also have extensive experience meeting many of the people we all know from the mailing lists face to face, as I travel quite a bit for work and make a point of meeting developers in any city I can find them. Having met people in person often helps in resolving conflicts. (On a side note, if a developer offers to show you a good restaurant, go, I have gained at least several of my extra kilos, or pounds, from eating with the FreeBSD developer community). Thank you for your consideration, George ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hiroki Sato Last modified: Jun 9 09:42:33 2006 My name is Hiroki Sato, a 28-year-old Japanese. I have been a doc committer (mentored by kuriyama@) since 2000 and a ports committer (mentored by linimon@) since 2004. Also, I have joined Release Engineering Team and Documentation Engineering Team since 2004. My primary working area includes writing release documents, doc tree tagging, maintaining my ports (most of them are text processing software), and so on. There are two reasons why I am running for this election. One is that I think core team should continue to keep its members international; FreeBSD committers are living in all over the world and communication with each other is very important as we all know, so I do hope I will be able to act as a liaison between people in Asian communities and other areas. Since there are various regional characteristics/issues that affect development of FreeBSD such as internationalization and technology deployment (IPv6, embedded system, etc.), I think it is an essential taste for core. You might think I am not so a good mixer, but I have always tried to be such a person by attending international conferences periodically and writing magazine articles on FreeBSD. Another is that during working as re@ and doceng@, I reached a point where I thought that we need to give more attention to frame of reference for our production quality. I am sure that every committer has his own idea about the key selling point of FreeBSD and firm reasons why he is working on the project, and it is working very well, but in addition to them I think we should take care of "product" aspects we do not have sufficiently now---for example, we do not maintain enough documentation for what people can (or cannot) do by using FreeBSD. Which standards have been implemented? When feature "A" is added? While we know them vaguely and we can say we are not offering this sort of support, average users always need such information and think it as a quality indicator, and for developers it will be a good guide for future plan. So I think it becomes more important to keep "what we have" clear and quality/performance evaluation. If I recall, linimon@ is working on such documents, rwatson@, kris@, and others are doing on various performance analysis, and there are already several TODO and ideas pages. This work needs more cooperation with various developers and is not one of core's tasks strictly, but this is my view of issues of the project I think I can contribute and one of my priority subjects that I am thinking to work toward. I am going to continue my contribution including ones described above regardless of whether I will be the member or not, of course. Please vote me if you consider me as worthy of inclusion in the new core team. Thank you for your consideration, Hiroki Sato ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Warner Losh Last modified: Jun 13 17:19:38 2006 My name is Warner Losh. I've been a core team member for the past 5 or so years. I specialize in conflict resolution within the project. I believe a good core team member leads by example. For more details on what I think makes a good core team member, please see my wiki entry at: http://wikitest.freebsd.org/How_to_be_a_FreeBSD/core_member I will be helping to lead the charge to expand FreeBSD's suitability for the embedded marketplace. We need to run on MIPS and have better packaging tools and integration to produce small memory footprint systems. Core is the managment team of the project. Core is entrusted with the stewardship of the FreeBSD project by the developers who elected it. Core's job is to balance the various needs of the project and to provide oversight. The core team works by consensus building to foster cooperation within the project. Core monitors both interactions within the project and relationships with groups outside the project to ensure the project stays on track. Core allows good people the freedom to do good work, either with "hats" or without. When the work causes friction or concern, core increases its monitoring and intervenes when necessary. Core, like everyone else in the project, balances the consequences of their actions against the benefit those actions provide. While core is the final arbitor within the project, it does so only in the name of the project's developers. Core has delegated much of the day-to-day running of the project to different groups within the project. Core has done so in recognition of the good work these groups have done and to legitimize these groups' functions to the rest of the project. These groups' authority to operate comes both from the mandate from core, and from their hard work and responsible actions. As always, Wilko the core secretary is a godsend. If you are elected to the team, I hope that you'll treat him well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Giorgos Keramidas Last modified: Jun 9 15:14:38 2006 Hi, Most of you probably know me from email communication and my doc+www work, but a brief reintroduction is useful too. I was introduced to FreeBSD about 7 years ago. Until then, my operating system of choice was Linux, and I had worked mostly at adding support for my native language (Greek), translating documents from the LDP and in general helping with the packaging and distribution of custom solutions based on Slackware Linux. Working with FreeBSD after the package-management hell of some Linux distributions was a breeze of fresh air back than, and it still is today. For the last seven years, I have been using FreeBSD everywhere and as much as I can, because I have found that its development model matches my style more than that of some Linux distributions. I immensely value the level of professionalism we show as a team, and I have spent a lot of time advocating this aspect of FreeBSD to both academic & corporate environments where I live. During the seven years of working with and for FreeBSD, I have been active mostly in the documentation & support area, and also served as bugmaster@ for a period -- parts of which were collaborative work with Ceri Davies and Mark Linimon, who have now taken over the role of bugmaster@ and are, frankly, doing a fine job. My involvement with our support mailing lists and my term as bugmaster@ have taught me the value of communication (some times over-communication too), which is a good skill but has only been exercised at my ${REALJOB} so far. I don't really have a thick skin, but I keep trying to reason things through and try to show some respect for the diversity of people who use and develop FreeBSD. Hopefully, this is also going to be useful as part of the core team, to the advantage of both the team and myself. My involvement with the core team is just one way of offering more help wherever I can. I understand that this is going to be a lot of work at some times, but I am willing to put in the hours, if not for any other reason because FreeBSD has served me well all these years, and I have offered a tiny little bit in exchange for all that help. My vision for FreeBSD is one that I carry along from the days when I was a rabid Linux advocate, and having arguments about the feasibility and usefulness of UNIX as "The One True Desktop(TM)" with other Linux users. I don't think we can convince my aging parents to use FreeBSD as their workstation. I do think, however, that we can realistically aim at gathering an ever-increasing team of developers and users who are technically competent, who like doing cool, interesting things, who have come to FreeBSD not because they hate Windows, Linux or whatever, but because they really *like* what we are doing. Thanks for reading this through, Giorgos Keramidas ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Murray Stokely Last modified: Jun 13 05:02:59 2006 I have served on the Core Team for the past 4 years, and I'd like to again serve to continue my work and provide some degree of continuity to what I expect will be a mostly new team. During the past 2 years I have primarily divided my time between advocacy, corporate relations, release engineering, the website/documentation, and Summer of Code. Over the next 2 years I will again devote my time to these activities. Some of my specific accomplishments over this past term include: * Leading the FreeBSD participation in two successive Google Summer of Code programs. This engendered a $70,000 investment in FreeBSD development by Google and helped bring over 30 new young developers to FreeBSD, including several that have since become full-fledged FreeBSD.org committers. * Putting on a flame-retardant suit and integrating a new website redesign done by Emily Boyd, a Summer of Code student I mentored. Visit http://www.freebsd.org/old for nostalgia. * Publishing a third printed edition of the FreeBSD Handbook with FreeBSD Mall, Inc. and contributing hundreds of improvements to the doc/ cvs tree. * Giving presentations about FreeBSD at the O'Reilly European OSCon, the Oxford Computer Society, GUFICon, BSDCan, and meeting with user groups in China, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, and more. * Continuing to serve on the release engineering team in a limited capacity to help mentor new REs, help troubleshoot sysinstall and build issues, update release documentation and the website, and otherwise backup Scott, Ken, and other primary REs when I can. * Participating on marketing@FreeBSD.org and working with Dru Lavigne and George Neville-Neil on high level whitepapers touting the benefits of FreeBSD (http://www.FreeBSD.org/marketing) In addition to more of the same, I'd like to work on updating the Handbook for FreeBSD 6.x, improve the user experience by helping integrate BSDInstaller and/or FreeSBIE into the base system, improve our website, participate again in Google Summer of Code, approach other companies about supporting FreeBSD development, and of course, plan a FreeBSD 15 year anniversary bash to rival the DNA Lounge / San Francisco party we had a few years back for the 10th anniversary. I am no longer working full time for FreeBSDMall. I now work at Google, and can spend 20% of my time working on projects such as Summer of Code which benefit FreeBSD and the open source community. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- David E. O'Brien Last modified: Jun 21 06:53:56 2006 I've been a FreeBSD committer since 1996, and a user since 2.0. My FreeBSD activities include: + at one time I had the highest port maintenance count of over 130 ports -- though that record has since been surpassed. :-) + maintained parts of the toolchain for over 7 years + much work in src/contrib and general code cleanups + been part of the release engineering team starting with 4.1 up thru the mid-5 series + I also wrote part of the FreeBSD Handbook & Porter's Handbooks. + donations@ team member. + I am a src, ports, and docs committer - highly ranked in terms of number of commits in both src and ports. I state all this not to say that one must be an uber committer or developer to be qualified to run for Core. But rather I think one of the most important things for a Core member to do is be very active within The FreeBSD Project before being elected. Be that advocacy, administrative, or development. I also feel that Core activities should be a high-priority among all things in their FreeBSD life. (This also goes for all the other "hats" in the project.) And that Core members should not wear too many FreeBSD "hats" or they cannot fully serve their responsibilities well. As part of this I feel that "did not vote" Core votes should be the exception rather than the norm. Rather the norm should be a vote of real opinion ("yes" or "no") as that says to me the Core member put time and thought into the issue. My most applicable attribute as a candidate is that I passionately dedicate myself to things I commit to. Core needs active members. I have dedicated myself to The FreeBSD Project for the past 11 years and made FreeBSD a major part of my life. If elected I will dedicate myself to Core activities -- putting them above any other FreeBSD activities. I feel too much discussions of late are labeled a "bike shed" and immediately discounted. I believe the project should pay more attention to letting all committers state their position and having their position considered in direction and decisions. I am very involved in our multi-platform efforts, and think this is an important aspect of FreeBSD and a big part of our future. I've purchased one of every of our platforms that I can with my own money as I believe in this dream and have put much release engineering effort, keeping non-i386 platforms in sync with i386. After 11 years, I still do all I can for the project, including advocacy and thru my efforts contacting and pushing hardware vendors much equipment has been donated to the FreeBSD project. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Watson Last modified: Jun 19 22:59:54 2006 Dear FreeBSD Developers, It has been almost six years since I joined the first elected FreeBSD core team. The election of a core team represented a turning point for the FreeBSD Project: a move from a successful but ad hoc group of developers towards sustainable, self-governing institution. This experiment has proved extremely successful, and shown that FreeBSD is more than a few individuals producing good software, but truly a community with both a strong history and a strong future. I'm proud to have played a role in that evolution, and hope to continue to do so if elected to a fourth term on the FreeBSD core team. As a candidate, I bring a number of qualifications to the table: - Experience. As a long-time member of the FreeBSD core team, I've had a chance to experience the good and the bad, and further, reflect on both. I have gained significant insight into the operation of the project, both things that have worked, and things that haven't. Being able to exploit experience of this sort is critical to the success of the FreeBSD Project, as well as offering necessary continuity to a new core team. - Moderation. One of the most important obligations of the FreeBSD core team is to resolve, but also prevent, conflicts in the developer and user communities. While it is important that members of the project be active participants in technical and social debates, it is also important that these discussions be productive, and not damaging to the project. I bring to the table the ability to step back from many of the arguments, and an understanding that the solution to many disagreements is never purely technical, any more than that the disagreements are purely technical. - Leadership. I have taken initiative on a number of occasions to expand the scope of the FreeBSD Project, in terms of significant technical contributions (TrustedBSD, SMPng, and many smaller projects), but also to help set the direction and tone of the project. I have also taken on significant responsibility for the day-to-day management and paperwork of the project, from involvement in the FreeBSD Foundation to release engineering and security teams. - Advocate. Over the past eight years, I have worked as an active advocate for FreeBSD both inside and outside our community. From presentations at conferences, working with potential consumers of FreeBSD and the more broad community, to press interviews and articles, advocacy for the project is another important part of being a core team member. - Nuts and bolts. I have demonstrated that I am willing to take on the less glorious and less glamorous aspects of making our community possible, including helping to negotiate license agreements, fundraising, administering services, organising developer summits, working behind the scenes to build concensus, and a broad range of other administrative activities. These are the things that must get done for a community to be a success, and I'm proud that I've been able to help do that for the FreeBSD Project. They are also things that the core team exists to help perform. The statements of many of the other candidates talk about how they would like to see the project change in the future. Many of the changes they propose are reasonable, and I am not opposed to change. However, I am very committed to the system and approach we have already built, as it expresses a balance between the competing goals and interests of the many participants in our community. My role in supporting change moving forward will be to bring insight into the current system with its checks and balances, to help avoid mistakes we've made before, and also to help steer us clear of mistakes we don't need to make! The FreeBSD core team sits in a unique place in the FreeBSD Project: it is simultaneously an introspective body, selected by and for the FreeBSD developers for the purposes of managing the project and relationships between developers, and also a body who has a responsibility to consider the role and importance of the FreeBSD Project beyond the immediate developer community. For me, one of the most interesting challenges is how to continue to grow the FreeBSD community to include larger numbers of diverse projects and approaches beyond the simple "committer" view of the world. Exploring and maintaining our idea of FreeBSD as a centralised and structured project while engaging with the many derived projects and consumers of FreeBSD is critical to the future success and growth of the project. The long history, and especially recent success, of companies and projects deriving core technologies from FreeBSD suggests we are part of a larger community whether we recognise it or not, and one that we need to work with and support better than we do today. The FreeBSD core team has always played, and must continue to play an important role in understanding and developing the involvement of the FreeBSD Project in the larger world, and while managing the day-to-day operations of the project, it must also avoid purely introspective thinking. For these reasons, I hope you will consider voting for me in the core team election. Robert Watson June 2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Silbersack Last modified: Jun 18 20:06:13 2006 As I write this, it has been 5 years and 3 days since I became a FreeBSD committer. While that may be a drop in the bucket in comparison to some committers, it seems like a lifetime ago for me. When I initially became a committer, I was a 22 year old college student who was busy transferring from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science and hoping that I could still find a job with my lousy GPA. I was looking for something to contribute to in my spare time, and FreeBSD was something I had heard people talk about, so I decided to try to contribute to it. One TCP security advisory and a few frantic days of trying to learn how to generate "TCP Initial Sequence Numbers" later, and I was on the path to committership. 5 years later, much has changed. In that time, I supplemented my B.S. in Computer Science with a M.S., also in Computer Science. I was pointed down the path of teaching by an old friend from high school, and ended up making a full time out of that. And now, I'm in the process of moving from the world of teaching into the world of software development at a company that is basing products on FreeBSD. As the result of this job, I will have to avoid working in some areas of the kernel, but I'll still be able to develop in most other areas of FreeBSD. In those same five years, much happened with FreeBSD as well. We all saw the SMPng project sputter to a slow halt, along with the enthusiasm many of us had for FreeBSD development. But then, something changed. New committers stepped forward, and SMPng development was started, then completed. Along with that, enthusiasm seems to have picked up on all fronts, and the project now seems to once again be firing on all cylinders. I don't know what the future holds for FreeBSD, but I see many possibilities. I know that some see a future where FreeBSD runs on all important embedded devices, while others see FreeBSD becoming the best operating system one can get for 32 processor systems. Having spent much of my recent time teaching classes on Linux, I see how we could harness the broad hardware support and enormous collection of software in the ports tree to make FreeBSD the best desktop UNIX system out there. The nice thing about these dreams is that they are not mutually exclusive, except from the perspective of developer time. I feel that I would be a good candidate for core because I have a good understanding of the general layout of the project, and I haven't made any enemies inside or outside of the project. Naturally, I have gotten into my fair share of heated discussions over the years, but I have mellowed over time. As a member of core, I would be extra careful to avoid getting into any arguments, especially public ones. Those of you who have attended recent conferences may have met me, I attended BSDCAN 05 and 06, as well as EuroBSDCon 05. I would like to attend at least those two conferences in the upcoming year, but I do not know how much time my new job will permit for travel. At any event which I do attend, I will be proud to serve in my PR role as a member of core. As a result of the time I have spent teaching, I'm quite comfortable speaking to audiences, and I presented at both EuroBSDCon 05 and BSDCan 06. While I don't have any technical work to present on in the near future, I'm sure that I could quickly adapt rwatson's propaganda presentations to my personal style. I don't have any ideas on how I would help core steer the project, as I'm well aware of the fact that core doesn't steer. Rather, core just tries its best to ensure that developers aren't doing anything detrimental to the code or the community of developers. In short, I'm committed to the long term viability of the FreeBSD project. As I can not guarantee that I'll be able to produce much code in the near future, I believe that the best way for me to help at this point in time is to serve as a member of core. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Rhodes Last modified: Jun 10 03:28:00 2006 I'm sure many of the committers will not believe me to take this election, or the role of a core team member seriously. Let me assure you that I plan to take the role extremely seriously and will work hard to improve FreeBSD - like we all do. Since I became a committer (March, 2002), I have worked vigorously to improve FreeBSD for both the user and developer. Bringing in several new manual pages, making extremely vast additions to our documentation, and doing much in the way of src/ fixes - mostly minor and a few major. It is my opinion that a core member should care about FreeBSD, and that is a reason for standing. A few other things I've done for FreeBSD include helping out on the security team, writing manual pages for developers, playing a lead role for the donations team (which included the occasional skipped lunch break to ship something and paying out of pocket for shipping), documenting several new features, and major advocacy with companies. To me, -core will be another way I can give to the project. And I have yet to interact with a single developer who I cannot get along with. Now we have more candidates, yay! Personally, I think people on the list here who would be good -core member, and/or would work well with me include Giorgos, Warner, Hiroki, Brooks and Colin. Admittedly so, and to my dismay, I have not had the opportunity to work with George and Ade; hopefully this will change. Eventually, someone will pop the question "how would you handle disputes." At this time, I cannot correctly answer, no one can. Disputes should be handled on a case by case basis and I'm sure all will be completely different, requiring different methods of recourse. All I can say is that I'll do my best. And some project members are always going to look at me as "that Tom Rhodes guy who is always drunk at conferences, I don't want him being a figurehead for a project I care so much about." True. If elected, that would need to change a bit. I'm a social person, can't help that, but I tend to party way too much. In honesty, I don't know how well I will do as a core member, only how I would like to do - be fair, honest, look at the issues from both developer and user point of view, continue giving back to the best damn operating system I've ever used. Who would make a good candidate: Remember, this is *my* opinion on who would make a good core candidate. There has been a lot of talk on the lists recently about how much time -core will eat, who should be running here, etc. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and likewise, I have one as well. Anyone in the project who is active can stand up for this election; however, the person who will get *my* vote will be more than the once or twice a year commit. I'm looking for someone who is active on at least a few of the lists; makes several non-style commits (add a new section to the handbook, new driver, fix a bug in our code, etc.). Anyone who attends conferences, even if just one a year, or does a lot of advocacy. It really doesn't matter to me where you commit or type of commit bit you have. But I would hope you have a long fuse, surely dealing with much of the -core overhead will push every single last button you have. Those with short fuses will definitely not make it. If you get along with most of the project on fairly decent terms, I applaud you, and hope to see you standing. If you attend conferences, push FreeBSD in the business or home user world, fix bugs, maintain some major area of FreeBSD (network driver, manual pages, etc.), then stand up and be counted for. You will most likely get my vote. Thanks for you time, -- Tom Rhodes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wes Peters Last modified: Jun 12 17:21:55 2006 I am a current member of the Core Team, and have been serving for four years now. Warner Losh and I helped write the original charter that lead to the election of the Core Team. The first elected core team did not fare well in some ways, but the members who remained and those elected to the second and third teams have served the project well. That said, the current core team has become weary of the work and a general feeling that it's time to pass the reigns has overtaken us. I have carefully considered whether I would stand for core in this election, and have decided that I am actively interested in shepherding in the next generation of leadership more actively than I did core.1. I promise to work faithfully on behalf of all FreeBSD committers, and on behalf of the user community, to be actively involved in the day-to-day work of core, and to focus on mentoring the new core team members in the hope they can do the same for the next generation of FreeBSD leadership. The structures we have in place now run with a light touch on the tiller, we are no longer inventing infrastructure as we grope along. There are a few corrections that need to be made. We have learned from experience that having other officers (or "hats" as they are often called) be a part of the core team is a bad idea. First, serving on both is too much workload to ask of a volunteer. Secondly, the blurred lines of responsibility between the officer responsibilities and the core oversight can cause problems. Any currently standing officers I would ask to immediately assist in finding successors for their positions should they be elected, and to consider this carefully before running. That said, people who have served in these roles for years are the leadership of FreeBSD and should be considered natural candidates for core. I also promise that if elected I will not stand again, I am voluntarily term-limiting myself. This is for the good of FreeBSD as well as myself. I will continue to explore ways to involve people other than "just programmers" in FreeBSD. I am a board member of the BSD Certification Group and a member of Software in the Public Interest, and have taken on a few other liaison roles on the core team. It is important for FreeBSD to be seen as a member of the open source and Internet communities, and we will expect new core team members to take on responsibilities like this as well. You know me from my writings, both within and outside of the core team. If you consider me to be fair and reliable, punish me with another core term. Pax, Wes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilko Bulte Last modified: Jun 28 08:35:25 2006 Hi there, My involvement with FreeBSD started in the days it was not called that way yet, in an epoch when 386BSD 0.1 & patchkit floated on the net. I got my first copy via ftpmail via UUCP mail ;-) At the time I was working as a computer hardware design engineer. A brief look at the very early Linux revs of those days quickly steered me towards the more 'complete' (in my eyes) BSD style of doing things. I never looked back, or regretted, that decision later. In a later life I worked as a software engineer on SysV.3. So yes, I am one of these dangerous people who do use a soldering iron ever so often. My first computer was a homegrown one (for the curious: a Motorola MC6809 @2MHz, 1Mbyte of RAM, running TSC Uniflex which is a sort of stripped-down UNIX v6 derivative made to fit on a 8 bit CPU). A FreeBSD src commit bit I got by virtue of jkh, sometime early January 2000. The first time I ever met Jordan was when I was one of the organisers of the First Dutch FreeBSD Hackersparty in 1998. My first words to him: "So, and who are you?".. Apparantly he never held that against me :-) See http://people.freebsd.org/~wilko/Hackersparty in case you are curious. I was also one of the founders of the Dutch FreeBSD Users Group (NLFUG, later renamed into D-BUG; http://www.d-bug.nl). I'm no longer involved with D-BUG, ENOTIME summarises it. My main interests mostly centered around the FreeBSD/alpha platform port. I wrote docs, did release testing and later on became the release builder for the Alpha releases. Working for Digital Equipment helped a lot here. At some point in the more recent past core was experiencing operational issues which resulted in a call for a "core secretary". I was foolish enough to volunteer. Core at the time was even more foolish to 'hire' me, and I've served in the core-secretary role ever since. I have been asked to clarify what the plan is with me serving as core-secretary should I be elected on core. Well, the idea is for the new core to recruit a replacement secretary. There is already one volunteer known to the current core team. So the feeling is that this transition should not cause any disruption. My take on core in general is that the less you hear from them the better. Core as an entity should facilitate as much as possible the "smooth sailing" of the Project. Obviously some things are quite visible, typically policing committer behaviour is one of the more unfortunate and frustrating (to core) parts of the job. My 2 tours as core-secretary have given me a more than average insight in what the work on core entails. But while I know that serving on core is a relatively thankless job, I still want to give it my best shot. Wilko ----------------------------------------------------------------------