The Roots Of BSD

drix was the first to write in with this "Standard fare roots of the BSD/hacker movement piece over at Salon. The picture of the FreeBSD devil guy is pretty cool." This is actually another chapter in Andrew Leonard's Free Software Project online book. Well written, but occasional errors (FreeBSD and BSDI have not merged, for example) cast doubt on some of the facts. Informed comment from people who were there would be appreciated.

Comments

Doomed to Failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The current dominance of Linux over BSD leads to the interesting thought that Linux may be doomed to the same (relative) 3rd string status as BSD eventually. Both OS's were formed and are maintained in a similar manner, and both have the same weaknesses that has been killing BSD for the past 10 years.

It really is a question of strong leadership. When Joy left the BSD movement the problems really began, and now that Linus is working for Transmeta, how long will it be before he too drops his creation in favor of newer (and much more profitable) enterprises?

I hate to defend Micros~1, but Gates' leadership is the primary reason the company is so strong. Same for Apple & Jobs. You can not have long-term success w/out leadership, and no one took over that position with BSD. If Linus goes, who will replace him?

I work for an ærodynamics company, and despite our superior product, we may soon be filing chapter 11. Why? Because our brilliant co-founder left to work for a breakfast cereal company (of all things!), and despite the new CEO, nobody can take his place as a strong leader.

The prestige of parenting a brilliant idea is wonderful, but it seems to me that most will choose to use that prestige achieved to gain a more lucrative position for themselves, dropping their creation like a dirty diaper.

Re:Doomed to Failure?

[Gurlia]

This is a very interesting thought.

Though IMHO I think the issue has more to do with continuation than a strong leadership. A strong leader isn't always necessary for continued success, (Apache, anyone?) although it does help a lot. The real issue is, how many of the supporters share the same original insight, motivation, or drive, that sparked the movement in the first place?

In any movement, you have roughly 4 groups of people: (1) the leader(s), (2) the ones who really believe in what they're doing (ie. the zealots), (3) the ones who not only believe in what they're doing but know what they're doing, and (4) the cheering team. The leaders, of course, are the ones who had the original insight/inspiration that started everything. The cheering team is there because it's the current cool trend, but who have no idea what it's really about. (2) are the zealots who are convinced by the movement and who will stick around even after everything dies down.

(3) is the important group. Unfortunately, it is also often a very small (or even non-existent) group. These are the people who actually understand the original leader's insights / inspirations, and perhaps has their own insights and ideas, and who know how to go on if the leader(s) resign.

Anyway, my point is, the lack of group (3) in a company/movement/anything is the real reason there is no continued success, because when the leaders leave, there is nobody who knows how to carry on, so everything dies off. But if there is a group (3), then they will know how to take the lead and continue what the founders started. They may not necessarily be visibly taking over the leadership, but they are the ones continually "fanning the flames" started by the original founder, so to speak.

Furthermore, in order for a movement to continue, group (3) must somehow be maintained. There needs to be a continual influx of people who actually know what it's all about, and not just there because it's the Next Hip Thing, or merely convinced to dedicate their lives to the Right Thing (but not really know the original insight that sparked it off).

Coming back to BSD / Linux, it's not so much a matter of having somebody capable enough to take over Linus when (if) he stops working on Linux; it's a matter of whether there are Linuxers who share his original insights and who continually have fresh ideas to carry on. Human beings cannot stand stagnation (although ironically they tend to stagnate as time passes); once a movement runs out of fresh ideas, people get bored and leave, and it dies off.

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Re:BSD's Importance

[Gurlia]

I actually never realized just how much BSD has influenced the free software movement until I started noticing just how many parts of Linux systems inherit from BSD. The whole socket abstraction to TCP/IP (and other protocols) came from BSD, basic utilities like renice, write, and others as well. This may not sound like much, but you just have to read the source for things like IRC clients or other net apps to realize just how pervasive that BSD idea of sockets is. Plus, I live on renice so much that I can't imagine life on Linux without that little contribution from BSD. :-)

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BSD's Importance

[LaNMaN2000]

There is no doubt that the importance of BSD to the free software movement has been vastly understated. What is disappointig about the article is that it focuses as much on Joy's personality rather than the incredible accomplishment that BSD was.

It proved that software projects could be distributed yet centrally managed--a fact that needed to be established before telecommuting could become mainstream. Sure, Joy is interesting, but the fact that a culture beyond open-source owes its existance to BSD is completely understated.

The cute little daemon...

[seebs]

Well, if you want to know about factual errors, how about the one where the slashdot article refers to the Berkeley Daemon as "the FreeBSD devil"?

:)

1. He's a daemon, not a devil.
2. He's BSD's, not FreeBSD's.

History is Not Darwinian

[WebBug]

Ah, BSD, looking back it is like looking into another world altogether. I remember other products from the same period that were "the best" and yet, those too are long gone.

History looks back not on the best, but on the survivor. Beta Video tapes, DAT Audio, Digital AM/FM Radio, all have been "the best" and all have simply died.

The causes are varied but they all share a common thread. Microsoft realized very early on that if you want to survive it matters not if you are the best, but rather that everyone recognizes that you are "it". Sony blew it with Beta because they did not allow general propegation of their standard. The VHS format was given away for free and adopted instantly by the pornography movement in the US and became the instant standard.

BSD never made themselves a public entity. Linux has fought tooth and nail to make themselves visible. Outside of the computer professional field I doubt if anyone has heard of BSD, free or not.

Unfortunately, it is the public's awarness that determines a products viability, and most importantly it is the public perception that a product is "used" that makes it indeed used.

Take voting in an election as a good example. People want most of all to vote for the winner. So, whether they understand, believe in, or agree with, a candidate is moot. They will vote for the candidate that they believe will win. MS was preceived as having "won" the OS wars way back in the late '80's, even though MacOS, OS/2 and others were far far ahead of Windows 3.0.

In Summary: Publicity Pays, big time