Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

BSD Learns To Play Nice

Posted by AilleCat on from the unification-in-diversity dept.

Upside Today has an article entitled "BSD community learns to get along". The interesting thing is that BSD seems to be getting more media attention lately. One of the notable points is the upcoming regular "dead-tree" edition of Daemon News, meaning that BSD will now have a print magazine in the US, completely devoted to it. The first copy is slated for January 2001, just a month away.

10 comments

  1. not 100% getting along. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Note who didn't get mentioned:

    > says McKusick. "When they accept open source, they find that there still are some limitations to Linux. That's when they start looking around for other alternatives and find FreeBSD and NetBSD."

    Note how OpenBSD was not mentioned. Perhaps Mr. McKusick doesn't consider OpenBSD BSD enought becasue they don't have a Daemon as the mascot?

    1. Re:not 100% getting along. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Kirk simply does not like OpenBSD. When asked about various "flavours", he said that "OpenBSD probably has the least justification for existance". This is probably because he views FreeBSD as his baby, and OpenBSD has much more potential to swipe users from FreeBSD than NetBSD does (much more end-user oriented, while NetBSD is much more research oriented). Oh well, that's life. I happen to have a mountain of respect for Dr. McKusick and Mr. de Raadt both, but that's just me.

      Yes, it's Dr. McKusick, please at least get his name right ;)

    2. Re:not 100% getting along. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh wow. You wish. Just realize that OpenBSD is getting bigger: more developers, more platforms supported, more users, more CD sales. TrustedBSD ? Yeah, well, if it goes off the ground, a few years from now. Unless you actually hate OpenBSD, I don't see any reason to wish for its demise.

    3. Re:not 100% getting along. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I respectfully disagree that OpenBSD has the
      least justification for existance.
      Many see it's strong point as its security/crypto
      features, and that is true. But in the larger
      picture OpenBSD is a well thought-out, "correct",
      OS that doesn't include bloat. I think there will
      always be a requirement for functional, well crafted BSD distribution that lacks bloat.
      Arguably OpenBSD fits that role very nicely.
      And if reading the OpenBSD mailing lists is any
      guage it seems to be attracting linux users.
      Maybe those linux users admire the level of technical competence that the BSD model of development brings.

      1 vote for diversity.

    4. Re:not 100% getting along. by mr · · Score: 1

      >Unless you actually hate OpenBSD, I don't see any reason to wish for its demise.

      Hate, no. Wonder about the long term positioning, yes. If the functions of OpenBSD (a default secure install mode as an example) is put into another BSD, the idea of a secure BSD distro is further justified, but the market share will slip to the preceived stronger BSD distro.

      Theo and Co. win the ideological battle. Yet they could end up with no market share. And, at the point where Theo can't sell enough CD's to support the project, does the project stop, or become parttime?

      --
      If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
    5. Re:not 100% getting along. by scruffyMark · · Score: 1
      OpenBSD has much more potential to swipe users from FreeBSD than NetBSD does

      Or, to put it another way, FreeBSD has much more potential to swipe users from OpenBSD than from NetBSD. Specifically, ain't nobody stealing NetBSD's obscure-hardware corner of the market without a heckuva lotta work.

      --

      What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht

    6. Re:not 100% getting along. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
      Theo and Co. win the ideological battle. Yet they could end up with no market share. And, at the point where Theo can't sell enough CD's to support the project, does the project stop, or become parttime?

      Or maybe OpenBSD and FreeBSD merge, which would be nice. As much as I love OpenBSD (and prefer it to FreeBSD, for security reasons) I would really prefer it if there were only one BSD implementation. Sure, things from one *BSD make it into the others eventually if there's a need for it, but it'd be nice if all the platforms supported by all the *BSDs got all the same things at the same time.

      Mind you, that will probably never happen. NetBSD supports so much silly hardware (Silly to me, anyway; I'm sure there are people out there who would be hanging themselves right now if NetBSD died because their weird-ass hardwre was no longer supported by anything worthwhile) that it would be nigh-impossible to port to all platforms any new kernel mods. But FreeBSD and OpenBSD could manage a merge. That too will probably never happen, if only for political reasons.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:Nah... by little+monkey · · Score: 1

    That's what I like about him.

    and at least we Canucks can choose a leader!
    (even though we chose wrong...)

  3. This is great... by drolp · · Score: 1

    Enough complaining about this "learns to"... I think that this is great news, I always look forward to the new daemonnews. One of my concerns though, is if they can actually gather enough news for a print magazine, without adding too much filler. In my opinion what is released each month on the ezine is probably not enough 'as is' to be a entire print magazine. jki

  4. What do they mean "learns to play along"? by Nishi-no-wan · · Score: 3
    From what I've seen of the BSD community, they've been working along for a very long time. The various pccard (PCMCIA) drivers were ported from NetBSD to FreeBSD back with PAO2 (which was then redone in 3.x and 4.x), weren't they? And there have been a great many security features ported from OpenBSD to FreeBSD. It just seems to me that FreeBSD has been the blending pot for all of the various flavors for quite a while.

    FreeBSDCon --> BSDCon was a great idea. The current effort to merge ports/packaging system is another one. But were the BSD's really that fragmented all along?