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Walnut Creek CDROM And BSDi To Merge

Posted by Nik on from the NP:-paranoimia dept.

It's been planned for some time, and on March 4 at a user group meeting in the Netherlands, Jordan Hubbard let slip the news that the ink was dry, and Walnut Creek CDROM, a big player in the development and promotion of FreeBSD, and BSDi are merging. Obviously, this has big implications for FreeBSD. You can read what's been written so far at this DaemonNews article. Later today we'll have an interview with Walnut Creek president, Bob Bruce. If you've got questions, then you know the drill. . . Oh, OK. If you don't know the drill, post them here, let the moderators moderate them up, and I'll make sure they get an airing later.

3 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. What about Slack?! by gaj · · Score: 5
    My immediate concern is how this will affect Walnut Creek's support of Slackware. Slack has been cursed with little to no PR as it is. Granted, this is partly due to Pat's refusal to cooperate in standards processes[1]. Slack has been the most stable and secure Linux OS for as long as I can remember (which would be back when I dloaded the A series of disks of of a local Citadel86 BBS using a 1200baud modem...no idea what year that was, but it was a ways back!). It hasn't had much by way of mainstream support and recognition for a few years now.

    I would hate to see Slack go the way of the Dodo because of this. Granted, this announcement means that the box that I was going to wipe RH6.1 off of (I test each new RH, Deb and Slack distro as they come out and I have the time and drive space) and put Slack back onto will probably be getting a FBSD 3.4 install instead. Time to start playing in that space a bit. Most of the mainstream Linux distros (RH, Deb, SuSE, Turbo) don't suit me well. Deb is nice once it's set up, but the devel process is broken. Evolution will fix this, but I don't have the time to waste on it right now. Great distro, just not for me. RH...well, it's really not bad, but I don't much like their config style. Not the SYSV part...that's ok. The /etc/sysconfig directory mess is what I'm refering to. Makes the construction of the official admin tools easier, but at the expense of making manual or custom config/mgmt a pain. Don't even get me started about SuSE in this regard! As for Turbo, I've not done more than a simple install, so no comment. (And the crowd goes wild!!!)

    Anyhoo....this rambled on longer than I had inteded. I suppose I should just email the Slack crew and WCCDROM for a real answer, rather than asking here. I would say that it was to save the time, but typing all this drivel took at least as long as the emails would have.

    [1] Yes, I know they do a great job of following the file hierarchy standerd. I was refering the the LSB, which is going to be good, but would be better with Slack folk working on it, too.
    --
    If your map and the terrain differ,
    trust the terrain.

  2. A couple of questions by ebcdic · · Score: 5
    • Which parts of BSD/OS will be merged in to FreeBSD, and which will be the "value-added" features of BSD/OS?
    • Will there be a single, public source tree for the common parts?
  3. Big implications for all BSD, and Linux too by gsutter · · Score: 5
    This merger has implications for all the other BSDs as well as Linux, since:
    • Most of the BSD/OS code will be available to open source projects.
    • BSD now has a commercial backer on the same scale, or at least potentially so, as some of the Linux backers.
    • A more competitive BSD means that Linux will have to respond to an increased rate of BSD improvements (just as BSD has had to respond to a faster rate of Linux improvements!), forcing general innovation.
    (disclaimer: I work for Daemon News, and wrote the merger article)