Wind River lays off FreeBSD developers; Q&A

SidVicious and Intosi both wrote in with news that Wind River Systems (WRS), who had acquired BSDi's software assets earlier this year, including a team of FreeBSD developers, has laid off those developers. This has also been reported in other places, such as DaemonNews. This raises some interesting questions; for example, what happens to the "FreeBSD" trademark, which Wind River currently own. Read on for Wind River's answers to this and other questions.

In the interests of full disclosure. I'm also nik@freebsd.org, although not a WRS employee. I was employed by BSDi in Europe, before the European team were laid off as part of the WRS acquisition. These questions were answered by WindRiver's PR department.

Q: WRS has already been through two rounds of layoffs in the recent past. Why this third set of lay offs now? Are the FreeBSD developers the only ones affected?

Wind River has only had two rounds of layoffs. During the second round Wind River decided to divest itself of the FreeBSD project. We spent several weeks looking for a suitable corporate sponsor but did not find any company with sufficient interest and financial capability in this challenging economy. This week's layoff of the FreeBSD employees is therefore Wind River's "final option" in executing the plans set in motion by the second round of layoffs.

Q: WRS currently own the trademark "FreeBSD". Do WRS plan to retain the trademark? If so, why? If not, will WRS let the trademark lapse? Or are there plans to transfer it to a third party, such as the FreeBSD Foundation?

Wind River plans to ensure continuation of the altruistic, open stewardship of the FreeBSD trademark. We feel strongly that the FreeBSD project must be protected and encouraged and that a FreeBSD trademark in the wrong hands could be very detrimental. We continue to search for the best solution. No specific third-party has yet been determined, but transfer to a suitable third-party is the leading option being considered.

Q: WRS own the "bsd.com" domain. Will that be retained?

Possibly. Wind River will continue to invest in BSD/OS and participate as a highly interested member of the *BSD community. As such, the bsd.com domain may be important for Wind River. We are weighing this against the needs of the *BSD community and hope to resolve the issue later this month.

Q: What's happening to the "FreeBSD Mall", at freebsdmall.com?

freebsdmall.com continues to operate and take orders, and all new and existing orders from customers for FreeBSD 4.4 or other products will continue to be fulfilled. Wind River is still evaluating its long term options and strategy for the FreeBSD Mall, but plans to maintain its presence and service either internally or externally.

Q: As part of the BSDi acquisition, WRS will (presumably) have picked up customers who had subscribed to the BSDi CD sets of FreeBSD. Will WRS continue to service those customers, or are their subscriptions now cancelled?

Like all customer contracts, subscription orders will continue to be fulfilled.

Q: BSDi (and, it seemed, WRS) had made some headway in producing additional FreeBSD boxed products to go in to the retail channel. Will WRS continue to do this?

Wind River is currently continuing activities to promote FreeBSD 4.4 through the retail channel. Future FreeBSD releases will probably not be produced or distributed by Wind River.

Q: Will WRS continue to produce the usual 4 disc CD sets of FreeBSD, including one for the recently released FreeBSD 4.4?

Yes, for FreeBSD 4.4.

Q: WRS had been funding work on the FreeBSD Handbook, in order to print the second edition in the near future. [ Disclaimer, I'm co-editor of this work, along with your employee, Murray Stokely ] Will WRS continue with plans to print the second edition of the FreeBSD Handbook?

Wind River will encourage any stewards that emerge to take on FreeBSD publication to complete and publish this work.

Q: WRS houses the "FreeBSD Test Lab" at its Alameda campus. Will WRS continue to host this facility?

No. Some equipment from this lab will be transferred to Yahoo! which hosts much of the build structure equipment for FreeBSD, as well as the primary CVS source repository and main FreeBSD mail server. Wind River does not plan to maintain the FreeBSD test lab at its Alameda, CA headquarters.

Comments

preface..

[terpia]

I would like to preface this by saying that *BSD is NOT dying.
Thank you.

Re:preface..

[Asmodai]

Agreed.

I already saw troll postings saying BSD is dying.

*sigh*

When will people realise the importance of volunteer based in these projects?

ObSidenote: I wouldn't label OP's post as funny.

Re:preface..

[draxil]

Well it's, very hard for these well loved platforms to actually die die. Look at the Amiga nuts, there are STILL releases coming out (believe amiga classic os 3.9 or somesuch) even though the corpse is nearly a decade old, and who knows one day it may even come back to life in the form of this amiga one milarky (given some lightning perhaps)..

And look at BSD in comparison and it's absolutly nowhere near death (strong (fanatical) user base, fairly open etc.). BSD will pull through, becuase there are still shed loads of people using it (and unlike those dedicated amigans you dont need any exotic hardward to run it). Ok you don't have the media honey status of linux but I really don't think that is going to stop the platform riding this out. Ok so a bunch of the developers need new jobs (I see this as the main problem, trademarks and getting people to press the CDs are really secondary concerns..) but with the likes of apple taking an interest in the BSD codebase I can't see that these coders arn't going to be of interest to someone..

And I AM a linux person.. I have only ever installed it once exclaimed "oh thats nice" and then blatted it to make room for mp3s :). See we are not all that non-understanding.. Although to be quite honest what you guys really need is Debian BSD, see no corperate whoring no getting ripped off...

Re:preface..

[ch-chuck]

Yes, I just booted up my FreeBSD disk and it's still running just fine...

Re:preface..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, part of the reason why I used FBSD exclusively is to avoid trying to deal with or ask for help from Linux fanatics. You can call me a troll if you like, but the endless hypocrisy and general bad attitude shown by many of you has chased more than just me away from your favorite OS. I have no interest in being ridiculed for admitting that Linux is not the best choice for every job.

Of course, there are more concrete reasons why I don't use Linux as well, but my dislike of the community that I would be forced to deal with is a big part of my allegance to the BSDs. The Debian zealots are by far the worst and I would almost rather watch FBSD die than have it absorbed into the circlejerk.

So, no, I do not need a Debian BSD and, should it happen, I'm moving to Macs.

At this point, you are required to hurl the "wow, you must be really thin-skinned" or "good riddance" remarks my way. Go ahead, it's not as though you can chase me away twice.

Re:preface..

[Asmodai]

Who volunteers for FreeBSD anymore?

The numbers are amazing.

FreeBSD developers chase off anyone who doesn't already have extensive experience.

That's definately not true. I have gained most of my experience during my years as part of the developers.

Furthermore, criticism isn't necessarily meant as discouragement, but don't forget that if you mention ideas to the BSD developers (speaking in general, not just the committers) that most of these people have made a living in programming and Unix before most people even heard of Linux or BSD as alternative to Windows.

There is a difference in age and mindset between the BSD community and the Linux community. I often see the BSD community to be geared around 30'ish whilst the Linux community seems to have people around 20'ish in there. Of course, both have their exceptions on the old and young ages.

Furthermore, what I noticed (and I have touched a lot of different Unix systems in my past, including different Linux distributions) is that the mindset in the BSD community seems less focused on hacking up stuff, but more on adding well-tested code -call it more mature code if you like-.

Again, this has its exceptions on both side.

And do note, I am not saying that either is technologically more advanced than the other, I am merely saying that for my wishes and desires BSD was better in that it was a full operating system with a mature way of development behind it. YMMV.

By the time someone has extensive experience, they're usually working on Linux already.

Quite possible. But everyone is allowed to send patches to the BSD projects, just make sure you take all comments merely as sharing of experience on how to approach things. I know my C skillset improved by getting `lectured' time and time again about things. And not just C, but also the ability to develop things as a team, do maintenance work, technical writing, and the list goes on.

It is quite possible that the bar to entering and hacking on Linux might be lower, but does it, in the end, make it more stable or faster or..? Do not forget, most subsystems, VFS, VM, drivers, are pretty specialist kinds of source code which do verge a lot of knowledge. Not to mention designing APIs. That's the beauty of peer review. Either people confirm my idea is sound and solid or they tell me I should recheck my understanding of things. But it is in the human nature to take most criticism as a scolding.

Re:preface..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you're saying its not "dying"...

If history teaches us a lesson - then lets look back few years...

We had DOS based machines when Windows came out - most of the professional people said something like "eh, who needs windows" and ignored it... come back to the present time and oops - Windows takes 85-95% of PC's (depends if you include NT servers, workstations etc)...

Now you probably say "he's nut - he's comparing apples to oranges" - so, lets look at the non-windows server market.. ok?

Ask any professional unix developer who knows *BSD and knows linux who's got better multitasking, and better VM - and you'll find that *BSD is much better then Linux for example...

Yet Linux seems to be spreading so much more then *BSD (combine all versions of BSD and Linux still wins), even corporates today knows what is Linux, what is RedHat. Go ahead and ask them if they know what is FreeBSD, what is the difference between NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, BSDi...

Another proof? call IDC and ask them how much percentages *BSD is being used. Current number is %3.035 (from IDC figures, April 2001)..

Conclusion - is BSD better then others technically speaking? yes, I don't have any problem admitting that. Is it spreading more and more? if you count out Apple (which took BSD as a life saver after their attempt with MicroKernel) then it's more then declining - it's fading.

Oh - and regarding Yahoo - you might want to update yourself - they're using iPlant for a very long time now.

ThE BiTcH

Re:preface..

[HeUnique]

Really?

groups.google.com - heard about it?

Well, in case you'll have some spare time - go ahead browse it a bit in the BSD sections...

There is a difference between telling a newbie developers "it would be better if you do this XYZ and not ABC" rather then "RTFM, get lost"

Re:preface..

[WinterSolstice]

All newbies should RTFM before they even bother to open their mouths. People who just try and 'freeload' on the knowledge that others have acquired are sad.

Of course, there is also a difference between asking How, and asking Why. I for one will always enlighten those seeking to understand, but I tell those looking for additional documented facts to open the damn book.

-WS

Re:preface..

[stripes]

and unlike those dedicated amigans you dont need any exotic hardward to run it

No, but unlike the "dead" systems FreeBSD (and *BSD, and Linux) needs a certain amount of continued development just to keep it running.

Why? Well the hardware keeps changing. Even if you don't care to support the cutting edge the trailing edge moves. ISA cards are nearly gone, so if you refused to support PCI you would be about dead now. AT keyboards are being phased out, so if you can't support USB keyboards you are going to have to soon. Intel recently announced that they want to get rid of floppies (following Apple's lead!), so if you can't boot of CD-ROM of ethernet to do the first install, well you have some work to do.

Of corse FreeBSD can do all that, and there is no reason to believe that FreeBSD isn't going to keep up, but it is a good thing to remember that some effort is needed to keep even with a living hardware platform.

FYI, I think NetBSD was the first to get a USB stack (before Linux), and was one of the first free OS (or the first) to run on x86-64 (under simulation). They have even less manpower then FreeBSD. Of corse their main goal is being "the most portable", so they have frameworks for new busses, and a strong desire to test them out.

P.S. why pick on the amegians? There is still BSD 2.11, a full Unix for PDP-11 systems. That's right, 16 bit Unix shambles on, overlays and all.

Re:preface..

[CodingFiend]

Hopefully, when you tell someone to RTFM, you at least give a hint on which FM they should be reading. Why just give a blanket, scathing response to someone who's at least interested in learning something, when you could add a tiny bit of info of where they can find the info they're looking for? Honestly, with the amount of documentation out there, a little friendly info on where to start looking would be helpfull.

Re:preface..

[edhall]

Oh - and regarding Yahoo - you might want to update yourself - they're using iPlant for a very long time now.

I work in Yahoo's infrastructure group, and I've never even heard of iPlant. However, I do know that we use FreeBSD boxes by the thousands, and I don't see that changing any time soon. More FreeBSD boxes are put into production almost every day.

Regardless, you completely miss the point of what a free OS is, and how it lives and grows. Mindshare in corporate boardrooms is irrelevent. As any Linux fan will tell you, Linux != RedHat (or any other commercial distro). You're making the exact same mistake here.

There are several hundreds developers around the world working on FreeBSD. Only a small number of these are paid to do that development (and, in fact, most of those laid off from WRS were being paid to do other things and not just work on FreeBSD). It's just like Linux was before RedHat, IBM, and others -- and Linux did just fine (some would say better) before it had paid workers. People work on FreeBSD because they want to, and that's hardly changing.

It's the developer community that makes a free OS live. From a money prespective, FreeBSD has always gotten along on a shoestring -- and it will continue to do so. And others who appreciate its goodness will continue to use it. (The percentage may be small, but you neglected to report the fact that it's growing -- maybe not as fast as Linux at the moment, but time will tell.)

-Ed

Re:preface..

[skullY]

Of course, there are more concrete reasons why I don't use Linux as well, but my dislike of the community that I would be forced to deal with is a big part of my allegance to the BSDs. The Debian zealots are by far the worst and I would almost rather watch FBSD die than have it absorbed into the circlejerk.

Funny, that's the same reason I don't use FreeBSD, I got sick of the user community. Not the people who use FreeBSD along with other os's like Linux or OpenBSD, but those who claim to use it exclusivly. They always (yes, in my experiance, always) come across as arrogant assholes, who are somehow better because they could figure out how to run FreeBSD, even though I've always found the FreeBSD install to be easier and more painless than any linux install I've ever done (From a sample set of Slackware, Redhat, Debian, and distros derived from those 3.)

Thank you for living up to the standards of FreeBSD users, you have not disappointed me at all.

(Note for those who may flame me for using generalities: I have met people who use FreeBSD who aren't arrogant assholes, however they use FreeBSD where it does well, and where appropriate, using other operating systems such as Linux, OpenBSD, MacOSX, Windows, etc where appropriate. My comments are equally appropriate for those who use Linux exclusively. The funny thing is, I have yet to meet an OpenBSD user with similar arrogance, they all realize their OS isn't the be-all-end-all of operating systems, and there are better tools for some tasks.)

Re:preface..

[fsdb]

Could it be that Linux was the first OS to run on IA-64 because the commericial interests behind IA-64 blocked FreeBSD development on the platform by only giving access to documentation and the toolchain (compiler) to Linux companies?? Yes, that would be truth.

Maybe they were afraid BSD would run on it before Linux??

Re:preface..

[stripes]

Linux was the first free os to run on IA-64...

Please reread what I wrote, not the IA-64, the x86-64. That would be the AMD thing, not the Intel thing.

Re:preface..

[psxndc]

Have you? Then zip it. I went on the /. IRC channel because I had a networking issue setting up OpenBSD and when I mentioed that it was an OpendBSD issue, I was a) told by one user they couldn't talk to me because my host-name was too long (sorry I use RCN to connect. I'm an asshole I guess) b) told to go look for OpenBSD help on Effnet at #boysex and c) told to suck Theo's dick. Great job Linux fans.

After talking to a friend that knows networking and being given the lead that it might be a problem with two nics on my network having the same MAC Adress, I googled for it and found a rather pleasant conversation on an OpenBSD forum about a bug configuring the LinkSys card I had (which is the same one in my firewall). I swapped in another card that was detected correctly and I was good to go.

Moral: a) you probably haven't met theo either so shut up b) the OpenBSD community seems friendlier to me than the Linux one.

Re:preface..

[ninejaguar]

BSD is much more mature than Linux in years and codebase. It's capabilities and stability are well known and respected. BSD has had a very long time (in computer industry terms) to capture mindshare with coders and users alike. With all those advantages, why did Linux's growth rate outstrip *BSD's? To put it simply, it comes down to the license (and history).

The history part relegates BSD to the Clone Wars era, as it was a participant, and is now a victim of that period.

The license part is related to the Unix Clone Wars. The BSD license is weak and flacid in a very specific sense. It doesn't discourage selfishness. The BSD developers are probably at the height of altruism, where they are willing to literally give away their hard work without to others who are willing to take it, add to it, and refuse to share their additions. BSD developers don't care whether individuals or corporations take their code and make it proprietary.

The GNU license that Linux is under, protects Linux from a vicious Clone War. Even if the Linux codebase should split, either side will always be legally able to add innovations introduced by anyone who's taken the Linux code and attempted to make their own version. In fact, that happens quite often with Linux as different groups create different capabilities for specific purposes. This mechanism propogates innovation. But, everyone still understands that there is only one Linux, and those who change the code are careful to ensure compatibility. If they don't, anyone is capable of making sure that they do by changing the code themselves, since it is not hidden.

Younger people understand that as part of true participation, one needs to share. They've just come out of their 'teens, and growing lessons are fresh in their minds. *BSD has no rules in regards to sharing other than its almost non-existant license requires perpetuity.

Younger programmers distrust corporations, and prefer protection for their code. They don't see anyone as being a part of 'their' team if their hard work is taken and made proprietary. They see that as selfish. Basically, fairness in a game is strong encouragement to continue playing.

This is why Linux is currently fashionable in regards to mindshare and *BSD's mindshare steadily gets older. GNU/Linux is truly an OS for the people, by the people. BSD has a mixed history of altruism, elitism, and proprietism.

= Appi =

Re:preface..

[psxndc]

Actually, it would be more like me walking to the Library in the bad part of town and getting jumped. I don't hang out on IRC, I just strolled by to see if I could get some help. I'm not actually in either camp because I use and really enjoy both. I just naievly assumed that since a number of /.ers post and support OpenBSD that they would be chilling on IRC as well. My mistake.

Re:preface..

[maxpublic]

Somebody modded this 'insightful'? The moderator must've been smoking crack.

As for the writer, maybe he doesn't realize that *every programmer in the world*, as well as just about every scientist, 'freeloads' off the knowledge that others have acquired. That's kind of the point of the system: so you don't have to reinvent the wheel, axle, or wagon, but rather can move on to steam-power locomotives.

Reading the manual is great. Having an asshole with a pole rammed up his ass accusing people of 'freeloading off the knowledge of others' forgets that *he too* is a freeloader by his own definition and thus worthy of nothing but contempt.

Max

Re:preface..

[ahde]

Linux started about the same time as *BSD on x86. Despite the large code base imported from Berkeley and original AT&T Labs Unix, unsable linux distros (SMS/slack) were around before an ordinary person could install BSD on their home system. On the one hand, it was probably harder to port the original code with all the years of cruft than to create linux once Linus &Co. got the ball rolling, on the other hand, x86 BSD was able to inheret things like a mature scheduler and network stack as well as nice applications like sendmail.

Re:preface..

[Enahs]

You can call me a troll if you like, but the endless hypocrisy and general bad attitude shown by many of you has chased more than just me away from your favorite OS. I have no interest in being ridiculed for admitting that Linux is not the best choice for every job.

Along with the alleged security holes in glibc (which most fBSD wonks can't seem to point out, despite saying they're there), the "excessive code bloat" (c'mon, let's get real here. Let's look at hardware support in fBSD, then in Linux, and then we'll talk about the codebase size) the alleged poor performance of Linux 2.4 kernels (Sysadmin showed this to not be the case; Linux systems still outperform fBSD machines overall) and the alleged poor management of Linux development overall.

Call it what you want, but I call it FUD.

I have no interest in being ridiculed for admitting that Linux is not the best choice for every job.

Agreed! However, I don't personally plan to start up a new Yahoo! so I don't need FreeBSD. For desktop machines, Linux outperforms FreeBSD. Sorry, but it's true. And yes, I've been an off-again, on-again FreeBSDer.

Of course, there are more concrete reasons why I don't use Linux as well, but my dislike of the community that I would be forced to deal with is a big part of my allegance to the BSDs. The Debian zealots are by far the worst and I would almost rather watch FBSD die than have it absorbed into the circlejerk.

For a real circlejerk, fire up your favorite IRC client, head for irc.linux.org (Openprojects) and hop into...#freebsd. Bonus if you get a kickban for asking questions about Linux compatibility (FreeBSD is not Linux!)

And it's not just #freebsd on OPN. Daily Daemonnews, FreeBSD Diary, FreeBSDzine...you name it. Many of the stories I've seen either are about "oh look, we're so much l33ter than Linux" or are loaded with comments by people creaming their jeans over FreeBSD.

And I didn't see people running to the press when a FreeBSDer stole code from the Linux kernel recently (bttv?) Apologists have even excused it ex post facto by stating that, hey, a Linux user stole BSD code without putting the required copyright notice on it (which has since been done, BTW.)

Come on. Let's get real here. Community matters . . . to a certain extent. The general attitude of developers is what should matter the most. Heck, I recently became one of those Debian folks after having used FreeBSD for a few months. I don't miss it a bit, to tell you the truth.

Re:preface..

[WinterSolstice]

Excuse me... Perhaps, before you pull out the bigger attitude stick, you should re-read. Free-loading off of people is when a bunch of wanna-be kernel programmers hang out around someone trying to make a FREE program in their abundant spare time, asking questions they could have found the answers to themselves. If more people out there said "I read the IEEE-1394 spec, but I can't figure out how to interface 'x' to it correctly; help?" and less people asked "What port does SMTP work on?", a HELL of a lot more development would get done.

Go ask your freaking sys-admin if you think that they believe in telling every single user the commands for vi again.

If you can't find the manual, or it makes no sense, that is one thing. If you haven't even bothered to look, then you are a waste of space.

-WS

Re:preface..

[funwithBSD]

I am Winter's BOFH, trust me, he KNOWS not to ask me about vi commands or sendmail or WHATEVER before at least trying to read the man page.
And he usually asks a nice specific question, like "I found out how to use .forward files, but I cant't find out how to do sigs."
RTFM

Re:preface..

[tftp]

usable linux distros (SMS/slack) were around before an ordinary person could install BSD on their home system

I tend to agree. In spring of 1995 I got a then-OK Compaq 486/80 box at work, and decided to install on it, one after another, WinNT 3.51, Linux 1.3.10 (?) that I got from Walnut Creek guys, and FreeBSD (of release that I don't recall) bought from the same place recently by our local sysadmin.

I will spare you from hearing the NT story; suffice to say, it was not very fast :-)

FreeBSD was next. But I found that it didn't have support for IDE CDROM drives! Only SCSI drives were supported, and I had to use the CD! So I transferred whole CD connent onto the HDD, and that did the trick. Later I borrowed a SCSI CD-ROM drive, and it worked. I had to jump through many hoops to get X up and running, but that's hardly BSD fault.

After that I installed Linux (Slackware distribution). It worked out of the box and recognized everything.

I didn't keep any of these OSes at that time, but FreeBSD definitely appeared to be more elitist than others. Our sysadmin ran this very release of FreeBSD on our Internet gateway, back then connected through 14Kbps modem. It worked very well, I had an account on that box and compiled stuff from time to time. As an OS it is fine. But its requirements definitely were more stringent.

I never went back to FreeBSD since then, because of several reasons. I worked for some time with NetBSD (as a job), and it was OK too, just a bit sluggish. I haven't contributed a single bit of BSD code, though, because of licensing - I am a GPL person. I wrote some drivers and apps for Linux, and I like the Linux community as it is now; there are no fanatics among developers. By the way, *BSD developers are also fairly normal people :-) while working on NetBSD projects I was subscibed to NetBSD mailing lists and helped few people with stuff that I knew about.

Re:preface..

[Asmodai]

Why just give a blanket, scathing response to someone who's at least interested in learning something , when you could add a tiny bit of info of where they can find the info they're looking for? Honestly, with the amount of documentation out there, a little friendly info on where to start looking would be helpfull.

My experience is that the amount of undertaking and background research new people to the Unix scene do is virtually non-existant.

When I started I asked some silly questions myself, but in the mean time I bought books about Unix, programming and OS/kernel design, made sure I read Quarterman's 25 years of Unix (I _do_ care about the history and facts) and a host of other books all pertaining to a slight part of Unix and associated areas. Only after when I couldn't find anything there or on the web would I bother people.

That's not being overzealous, that's getting clueful (hopefully) and respecting other people's time. And that is something many people nowadays don't do anymore, they expect answers _now_ and often ask the wrong audience (mailinglist for example).

In my opinion, that's being a parasite.

And of course, you always have some bad people reacting to someone asking, but there's also a large number of people friendly pointing things out. The community is as diverse as the people it is made up from.

Re:preface..

[mrbnsn]

I've been using BSD Unix since 1982. I've been a user and supporter of FreeBSD since 2.0.5. As CTO, I built an entire e-commerce company on FreeBSD as a platform. But I've finally given up on FreeBSD and am in the process of moving over to Debian.

It had been apparent to me for some time that FreeBSD was slipping into the Amiga death spiral, but what finally convinced me to cut my losses was the "one year" delay of 5.0. This most recent incident is just the final nail in the coffin.

It's true that FreeBSD has a noticeably better scheduler, VM, filesystem and network stack. The fact, though, is that Linux is at least 90% as good at what FreeBSD is good at, but for third-party application support, FreeBSD is like 10% as good as Linux. In a number of important cases, FreeBSD just can't do the job, period.

Consider:

• The most recent FreeBSD Java release is 1.1.8 . This will probably be the last release of Java for FreeBSD ever. (Yes there are patches for later versions, but they can't and won't be released as "Java(tm)".)
• No Oracle client libraries for FreeBSD. If you want PHP connectivity to your Oracle database, you're SOL.
• Almost no other native commercial applications (some run under the Linux compatibility layer, but there is no vendor support for such deployment).
• Seriously lagging support for device drivers, DRI, ACPI, CARDBUS, etc.

Meanwhile, Debian's package management is as strong if not stronger than FreeBSD's cvsup and ports. The community is as strong, if not stronger. And all the software I used under FreeBSD works under Debian, except better. (There's all that FSF religion, but as long as my computers work, I can probably learn to live with it.)

As my development manager said, "If even you are abandoning FreeBSD, then how can it continue?" Well, I don't know, but it's not my problem anymore.

Re:preface..

[drwho]

Funny, the "community" is the same reason I DON'T use freebsd. Maybe there's jerks everywhere and it's just who you (randomly) get exposed to.

In both cases (and OpenBSD), there's certainly some ego-trimming needed.

Layoffs.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

Just wondering but after leaving a project like the ones these developers where do you guys think they will land. Gnome? IBM? RedHat? Some other branch of *BSD?

Seems a waste of some talent, someone here has to have an idea where this level of development team would be headed.

Re:Layoffs.

[Asmodai]

Your question is kind of irrelevant in a way.

They will not land with gnome, ibm, redhat, or some other branch of BSD. They remain FreeBSD developers, do you really think they will change their aims and goals because they got laid off? They merely had a chance to work on it fulltime compared to the part-time contributions of the majority of us (yes I am a FreeBSD developer too).

They will surely wind up in companies who can use their extensive skills and probably will still be heavily involved in BSD related issues at their next employer.

And then again they may not.

Re:Layoffs.

[speedbump]

Where do the layed off developers go?

BurgerKing

Re:Layoffs.

[well_jung]

It makes sense to me that Yahoo! should hire/sponsor them. Y! is built on FreeBSD. Surely Jerry has enough cash laying around to justify a few extra delopment positions. There is not a bigger company that depends on FreeBSD more. I'm actually suprised they haven't yet.

Serious. :)

Re:Layoffs.

[connorbd]

Yahoo is one possibility, but I think Apple has the bigger stake in the future of FreeBSD (after all, they do now employ Jordan Hubbard). I do think, however, that FreeBSD's future as a separate entity is hazy at best; there's more of a need for OpenBSD and NetBSD (security fortress and OS-of-last-resort, respectively), and except for licensing issues FreeBSD and Darwin would appear to potentially occupy roughly the same niche in the market.

I don't know...

/Brian

Re:Layoffs.

[benedict]

Yahoo already employs at least one FreeBSD Core Team member, Peter Wemm.

Re:Layoffs.

[benedict]

Don't forget that Apple employs Mike Smith too, who's also on FreeBSD's Core Team.

What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[Agent Green]

I'd like to know.

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[kkenn]

FreeBSD 4.5

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[Asmodai]

Websites likes DaemonNews and other initiatives will offer CD-ROM sets and merchandise.

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[Asmodai]

Do remember that there never WAS nor HAS BEEN any official development of FreeBSD.

It is and will remain a volunteer project.

The matter that corporations decide(d) to employ certain developers full-time to work on FreeBSD was only for the corporation's own benefit.

For god's sake people, it is not like the people they laid off now cease to exist.

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[reg]

Hmm, no.

FreeBSD is still very much alive, and development of both 4-STABLE and -CURRENT continue as ever. AFAIK, none of the people being laid off are core team members or even really active source developers. Most of them work(ed) on documentation and improving the FreeBSD product line (CD box sets, etc.).

At the moment the release date for 5.x has been pushed out until late next year, partly because we've lost a few developers to real work, but also because we bit off more than we could chew... Rewriting the kernel for preemptive fine grain threading is a big task.

Other aspects of the project continue to be very actively developed. The Ports collection is almost at 6000 ports.

It is really sad to see people laid off, but this is just a side effect of the dotcom crash.

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[b0r1s]

FreeBSD 5.0 is well into development, and will most likely be finished ...

It seems relatively decent, with no obvious problems...

It's somewhat disheartening to see this the same night I upped my box to 5.0...

jeff@boris [2:53am] ~: uname -a
FreeBSD boris.st.hmc.edu 5.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #0: Thu Oct 4 17:49:06 PDT 2001 root@boris.st.hmc.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/BORIS.5 .0.1 i386

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[dinivin]

How in the world did you get modded up?

Dinivin

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[benedict]

This is "insightful"?

It's drivel. FreeBSD is not dependent on corporations for development. FreeBSD-STABLE (4.x) will continue to be developed and supported; FreeBSD-CURRENT (5.x) will continue to be developed.

Re:What happens after FreeBSD 4.4 then?

[Mr. Piccolo]

*cough*

That's the beauty of BSD licensing. Anybody in the world can pick up the source and continue the project on their own terms.

it might not be called FreeBSD 5.0 or be open-source, but hey.
Screw Microsoft Linux, I want Microsoft BSD!

The bigger question...

[The Original Bobski]

What happens to "free" OS's when corporate greed^H^H^H^H^H financing (the so-called saviour) takes over? Corporations traditionally gut anything not making money - what's to become of the carcass?

The future

[Masa]

This is sad...

But how does this affect to the future of FreeBSD? The FreeBSD is, after all, an open source project and will continue to evolve with or without commercial support. Right?

Re:The future

[Asmodai]

Correct.

We have 5.0 standing for November 2002 [this was changed from November 2001 due to the fact that we weren't quite satisfied with the current state and thought things were missing].

Until we release 5.0 in 2002 we continue to work on 4.x, so we will most likely see 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and possible 4.8.

Releases will very probably be going through DaemonNews, since it looked like WRS shows no interest of doing so after 4.4.

So possibly all of you subscribers might want to look for a new distributor.

Re:The future

[Noxxus]

So possibly all of you subscribers might want to look for a new distributor.

Does the uncertainty of having a retail publisher for FreeBSD have anything to do with the fact that 4.4 was released as a 4-iso set for download? Heck, as long as you guys keep doing that, who needs a publisher? I'll just donate to The FreeBSD Foundation.

Who needs corporate suits mucking things up? Rock on FreeBSD!

Re:The future

[Arandir]

Does the uncertainty of having a retail publisher for FreeBSD have anything to do with the fact that 4.4 was released as a 4-iso set for download?

No. The reasons why the ISOs are available is because the "free" in FreeBSD means "free". As in BOTH gratuis and libre. Download it for no cost then use it with no restriction.

Re:The future

[Asmodai]

Does the uncertainty of having a retail publisher for FreeBSD have anything to do with the fact that 4.4 was released as a 4-iso set for download? Heck, as long as you guys keep doing that, who needs a publisher? I'll just donate to The FreeBSD Foundation [freebsd.org].

No, it does not.

The FreeBSD Project has been releasing ISOs for a few releases now and at first it was only the first CD-ROM which we released, but people wanted the ISOs, so we gave them.

Organisations such as DaemonNews, Cheapbytes, FreeBSD Services LTD (in the UK) are examples of companies who provide a distribution channel for the CD-ROMs nowadays. And since WRS has not really shown interest in doing releases after 4.4, people might want to find a new company to get a CD-ROM subscription from. IIRC FreeBSD Services was even doing DVDROM releases.

fsck

[Noryungi]

OK, so it's bad news for FreeBSD.

What I'd like WRS to do is this:

• Transfer the trademark to the FreeBSD Foundation.
• Let Walnut Creek become an independent CD-ROM reseller again (I think that small company was profitable before, but I may be mistaken) to ensure the independence of FreeBSD.
• If they are really serious about FreeBSD, give some funding and bandwidth to the FreeBSD Foundation, and call for other large companies (Yahoo and Apple come to mind) to match their donation.

In short, if they are *not* interested in FreeBSD, which seems to be the case, they should just let it be. As others have pointed out, Wind River was mainly interested in BSD/OS, the closed-source BSD. They have got what they wanted, so firing people makes sense... Unfortunately.

Re:fsck

[TangoCharlie]

Apple as a sponsor would be a very interesting idea. It is common knowledge that much of the BSD in MacOS X is FreeBSD, so it would seem to be in Apple's favour to keep FreeBSD going. I would bet that most of the FreeBSD development in the past has been on the x86 platform, and these developers are not going to go out and buy Macs... the only way to keep the input comming into FreeBSD (and therefore MacOS) is to support FreeBSD (I Guess they could be using Darwin on x86???) How about closer links between FreeBSD and Darwin? Let's hope that FreeBSD keeps on moving forward somehow!

Re:fsck

[pecka]

...i would like to see FreeBSD on MarsWRS is doing the RT computing stuff for NASA, you know.

Re:fsck

[pecka]

that's true, but the BSD in X is based on release 3.x with HUGE ammount of work done in NeXT. so i don't think that they're so much interested....maybe ripping few pieces here and there. but i think that the main concern in Apple right now is to polish the UI and add none-core features

Re:fsck

[Arandir]

Let Walnut Creek become an independent CD-ROM reseller again

The days of Walnut Creek of over. It's sad but it's true. Back when everyone had a 14.4K connection to the internet, downloading FreeBSD, Slackware, CICA, Simtel, Hobbes, etc., was not feasible. They made their money because it was cheaper to buy the CDs than to download the software.

The situation is much different now. The abundance of broadband connections and CD burners has changed the CDROM market. From the reports before the BSDi sale, Walnut Creek had been generating less and less revenue over the previous few years.

There is still a market of "official" FreeBSD and Slackware sets, but I don't see that market driving a viable business. There needs to be other things driving revenue as well.

Re:fsck

[SidVicious]

Well Being an ex Walnut Creek CDROM and a BSDi person, let me say this, Walnut Creek CDROM was near its end. We were not shure if we were even going to get paid, till Gary Jhonson, ex CEO, made advances to buy our company. It was a dead idea for the most part when the company was trying to expand beyond selling shareware and Freeware. To run such a staff, to press CD's there was no way the support for FreeBSD or Slackware could continue. Damn I miss those guys... Slackware that is...

And to ansewr nvrrobx's question of Apple buying up the FreeBSD crew; Let me point out, Jordan Hubord, now works at apple, and let me also point out he cares about the people who worked under him at WC CDROM/BSDi/WRS, and I know of at least one possable "offer" there. Im sure there were others made also. I think its officaly under the Darwin Project, I donno, I don't keep tabs that much.

I'm just a blabber mouth :P

Re:fsck

[Reziac]

Digital River (Walnut Creek's current owner) is in financial do-do up to their waist, as of the last time I checked. The non-paying archives on ftp.cdrom.com have already been closed to the public (just like I predicted they would be :(

Not somewhere you want to depend on for FreeBSD's future.

PR Blabber

[rjamestaylor]

Q: WRS had been funding work on the FreeBSD Handbook, in order to print the second edition in the near future. [ Disclaimer, I'm co-editor of this work, along with your employee, Murray Stokely ] Will WRS continue with plans to print the second edition of the FreeBSD Handbook?

Wind River will encourage any stewards that emerge to take on FreeBSD publication to complete and publish this work.

Typical PR blather in the answer to this question, which properly should have been, "No." Here's a translation/exposition:

• Encourage

  Morally, not financially, support. As in, "Go for it! [aside: on your own dime]."

• Stewards

  An unpaid volunteer; this term is used to appeal to ones altruism; see Sucker

• that emerge

  The current arrangement is finished, something else will have to be arranged without our intervention (thus, "emerge" as if spontaneous)

• complete and publish

  As far as we're concerned, this project is aborted. Have a nice day.

Wind River: a fitting moniker for a company whose committment has dried up and blown away.

merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Ami Ganguli]

Ok, a silly question from somebody who doesn't really follow *BSD:

Is there any chance of some consolidation in the *BSDs? I always thought it strange that there were three of them, but then I don't really know the history behind it.

I'm all in favour of competition, but four free Unix-like OSs (Linux + 3 * BSD) does some a little much to me.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Asmodai]

Please make sure you check your facts.

FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD are operating systems and split off for various reasons and now serve their own niches.

Linux is only a kernel. It becomes an operating system only due to the fact that people created their own distributions.

And if we look at the distributions, there are over 100 distributions (at least).

So ask yourself, which part is more ripe for consolidation then?

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[stefanjo]

3 BSD's isnt much if you compare to all the Linux "distributions" out there.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[sql*kitten]

I always thought it strange that there were three of them

Well, the most basic reason is that there are three different objectives, which aren't easily met in a single operating system:

• FreeBSD is about the best possible performance on the x86, cross-platform capability is not very important.
  
• NetBSD is about being able to compile on as many platforms as possible. This is more important than feature set or performance on a single platform.
  
• OpenBSD is about correctness and hence security. I believe they are an offshoot of FreeBSD, but I could be mistaken. They might like cross-platform compatibility and performance, but these aren't the priority.
  

BSD/OS is a proprietary implementation of BSD by Berkeley Software Design, who's name coincidentally enough has the same initials as Berkeley Standard Distribution. They're a commercial organization, so you get support etc. from them, whereas the others are ad-hoc. This doesn't mean there's no support and no product upgrading of course, just that they tend to proceed according to the developer's wishes rather than contractual obligations.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

Linux is only a kernel

Yeah and a hacker is only a skillful coder. Maybe in the strictest sense that's true, but do to popular use Linux is now an operating system. Although I agree with your point, there's no reason for consolidation, choice is the operative word, the more OS's that are available the better. And IMHO the more *nix OS's the better, 'specially since they're, for the most part, compatible with one another.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[LatJoor]

Although the code bases will never be merged, there is code sharing between them. For example, the other BSD platforms borrow from NetBSD when they want to port to a new platform. I don't know much more than that; most of what I know about the BSDs is from their websites, because I've never installed them and I've only used FreeBSD.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

No, as I said he's only technically correct. Linux has become the term for all GNU/Linux OS's, regardless of the fact that it technically only describes the kernel. If/when HURD is ever released it will be the HURD OS regardless of who distributes it. A car doesn't cease to be a Ford just because it was bought froma distributor called AAA Car Sales.

Linux is an operating system, the word has passed into the language with that definition due to use.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[dinivin]

Linux is an operating system, the word has passed into the language with that definition due to use.

Maybe in your opinion. To those of us who can distinguish a kernel from the rest of the operating system, linux is only the kernel. Mandrake is an OS. RedHat is an OS. GNU/Debian is an OS. Slackware is an OS. But, once again, linux is just the kernel.

Dinivin

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Asmodai]

Bzzzt.

Wrong.

There's very active communication between FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD on issues pertaining to issues which might benefit all three (such as APIs).

I doubt you ever looked very carefully at the SMP work which is underway, plus I honestly doubt you know the significance of careful coding when moving to finegrained locking under SMP. This task is more tedious than you might imagine.

Of course, if I underestimated your skills, feel free to correct me.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[archen]

It's important that there is more than one BSD. Each of them differers in their philosophy, but many of them borrow ideas from each other. In essence they each use each other as a testing ground. It gives one BSD the freedom to try something and see if it works or not. If it doesn't they can go see what the other guys are up to. I guess you can say it's both an advantage, and a disadvantage of the way things are. It is in fact possible that some aspect of Linux could go down the wrong road and end up at a dead end. Then what? You start over again. With BSD chances are that even if what you try doesn't work, you can at least have a building block in what the other BSDs are doing or have done. NetBSD for instance has paved the way for many other operating systems to be ported to different systems (including Linux). And yes, Linux benefits from all this too.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[mr]

for free Unix-like OSes (Linux + 3 BSD)

Sorry, there are 190+ Linuxes.

The BSDs have carved out specific purposes for each other. OpenBSD wants 'security'. NetBSD wants portability. And FreeBSD wants to be the most useable on X86 processors via a combination of speed and a large number of packages.

To get security, you have to limit what you run, and that is counter to useability. (Microsoft claims to be the most useable, and look at all their secuity problems) Portability can be an issue with a large number of packages.

So:
1) No merger of Net/Open/Free
2) there is no Linux, there is over 190+ linuxes.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Asmodai]

No, as I said he's only technically correct. Linux has become the term for all GNU/Linux OS's, regardless of the fact that it technically only describes the kernel.

True, I am not disputing that. See further below.

If/when HURD is ever released it will be the HURD OS regardless of who distributes it. A car doesn't cease to be a Ford just because it was bought froma distributor called AAA Car Sales.

I don't think this applies quite the same to operating systems. What you for sake of simplicity of the `argument' are forgetting is that each distribution has its own philosophy and ways of accomplishing things.

There is a multitude of different package mechanisms to install third party applications. Paths and such differ as well, some usr /opt, others prefer the more BSDish /usr/local. And so on and so on.

This is the reason why initiatives as the Linux Standards Base exists. To consolidate all these mechanisms into having at least a common denominator for functionality.

Furthermore, not every distribution uses the _exact_ same Linux kernel. Some use the kernel.org ones, others the ones with Alan Cox' patches applied, others add their own patches (found on the web or home-developed).

Linux is an operating system, the word has passed into the language with that definition due to use.

I agree, the word has come to mean an operating system, but it is fundamentally flawed, for reasons of which I have only skimmed the surface above. And yet, so are many more words in our language nowadays.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Snootch]

2) there is no Linux, there is over 190+ linuxes.


OK, a coupla things here:

1. (the obvious one) - Linux is a kernel, not a distribution. There is only one of it, and all distros use it
   
2. Most distros actually use the same software, and what you don't get automatically you can get for free. In fact, the chief thing that distinguishes different Linux distros from just different default configurations and setup programs are the multiple package management systems, but there are only two of those (DEB and RPM - yes, I know and love Slackware tgz, but it's a nice and dead simple to install on ANY system), and most software gets packaged for both.
   

And before I get flamed, I'd like to point out that I'm not in opposition to *BSD - indeed, I use Slackware, arguably the most BSD-like Linux distro out there - and I even believe that the split has its good points. Just saying that BSD's main partner (not rival) in the OSS world isn't as fragmented as all that...

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[dohcvtec]

Uhh, based on your car argument, a Shelby Cobra would be called a Ford. The Cobra had a Ford engine (kernel) and built around it were either Shelby parts or commodity parts (GNU and other OSS utils, etc.) This analogy doesn't hold water, because the Linux kernel only partially defines any distribution, just as the Ford engine in a Cobra doesn't make the complete car a Ford car. So Linux is still technically only a kernel. Sure, Linux has pervaded our vernacular as being a complete OS, but the reality remains. OTOH, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are each a complete OS, and each is unique and has a unique purpose. Among the dozens of Linux distributions, many are similar and there is a lot of redundancy, but among the BSDs, there is very little.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[HeUnique]

Not IMHO...

If we'll take Apple which have OS X which is based of FreeBSD, should we call it BSX-OS X?

Most of those distributions (190, whatever) are simply a spin of Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE or Debian with few tweaks, more/less packages. You csn use the packages yourself on your favorite linux distributions without any problem. It's not like when you're moving from Windows to Linux or vice versa...

So whats your point?

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

I think we agree, maybe not exactly but in spirit at least. For instance, I personally don't buy that different paths and intalling packages constitutes a different OS ( I can install Windows on two machines with completley different directory structures), or that using slightly different kernels makes it a different OS either. It's all still Linux, whether it's running on a Dreamcast or an x86. I certainly agree with you that the word Linux describes only the kernel technically, but when you look at it that way, how far do you go? You'd have to keep coming up with new names to distinguish between the differences between two similar kernels. Language doesn't work that way, we categorize so that we can move up a level in abstraction and still talk meanigfully about a subject. So we call all Linux based kernels Linux, and now we call all Linux kernel based OS's Linux. If you ask me what OS I'm running I can say 'Linux' and you immediately understand what I'm saying. You may want more detailed information so you ask 'what flavor?' but the term Linux was enough to describe what OS I'm running.

This is all obviously an exercise in sematics, at the root I agree with you Linux is just the kernel, but due to the nature of language it means a lot more now.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

Well yeah it does hold water, the AC Shelby Cobra was a Ford. It was a modified customized Forf, but at it's heart it was a Ford. BTW an analogy doesn't have to be perfect, that's why it's an analogy, it's intended to convey the spirit of the concept by using another more accessible if not identical one.

So Linux is still technically only a kernel. Sure, Linux has pervaded our vernacular as being a complete OS

What the hell did I just get done saying im my first post. You just repeated exactly what I said.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[stripes]

(the obvious one) - Linux is a kernel, not a distribution. There is only one of it, and all distros use it

Except they may choose different official kernel versions, and different unofficial patches. They also might choose to have proprietary binary modules (I don't believe that is the least bit common).

That said the Linux kernels tend to be more similar then the *BSD kernels. That is both a good and bad thing.

Most distros actually use the same software, and what you don't get automatically you can get for free. In fact, the chief thing that distinguishes different Linux distros from just different default configurations and setup programs are the multiple package management systems, but there are only two of those (DEB and RPM - yes, I know and love Slackware tgz, but it's a nice and dead simple to install on ANY system), and most software gets packaged for both

I would have to say the Redhat userland and the Debian userland are no more similar then the NetBSD and FreeBSD userlands. Somewhat farther apart even.

I'm not a big Linux user (one Linux box at home, two BSDs), so I don't know if any are as far apart as OpenBSD and FreeBSD, but I don't find it hard to believe that there are at least two that far apart.

Again, this is both good and bad (in this case, more good then bad though).

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

And my point is that when a word is used for a certain thing long enough it gains that meaning in the language, hence the word gay now primarily means homosexual. The same situation with Linux.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[dohcvtec]

You have a point, but hey, we're supposed to be nerds; we strive to be technically correct. We speak (and write) clearly and cohesively, unlike the unwashed masses who lack adequate grammar and spelling skills. I'll admit, I usually say "RedHat Linux" instead of the more correct "RedHat's distribution of the Linux kernel," so you may be right on the Linux thing, but I'm right about the car thing. Fair enough?

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[jgerman]

Sounds good to me.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[benedict]

I don't think it's very likely that the BSDs will merge, but I believe I have noticed an increase in sharing of code and ideas between NetBSD and FreeBSD in the last couple of years. Needless to say, I think this is a Good Thing.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[NutscrapeSucks]

If you want to get technical about it, "Linux" is nothing more than a trademark for computer products that's held by Linus Torvalds. Linus has licenced this trademark to people who produce operating systems based on the kernel he wrote.

So, it's legally and technically correct to refer to the "RedHat Linux OS". Furthermore, anyone not named Linus Torvalds who tells you "Linux is only the Kernel!" is speaking without authority.

In fact, if he wanted to, Linus could licence his trademark to the "Corel Linux WordProcessor" or the "3Com Linux PCMCIA modem", and those things could properly be called Linux. Well, no sane corporation would dillute their brandname like this, but Linus already has (see VA Linux) and probably will continue to do so.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[reg]

The BSD software world works kind of in reverse of the Linux world... In Linux you have a central kernel, which is pretty much common across all distributions. From here the big distributions tack on an installer of their choice and a mix of software which they think makes up 'an operating system'. From here, other, smaller, distributions tweak that set of packages until they have something which they consider a workable system. Then from there the user is free to customize, although they are normally locked into the package format of the base distribution (apt, rpm, etc.) unless they build by hand.

In the BSD world, you have the ports/packages collection, which builds packages from source for whatever you are running. While at the moment these are similar but not quite the same, there is quite a lot of momentum for the Open Packages which is attempting to unify all of these collections. Since these compile from source, they adapt to the operating system underneath.

The three BSDs share a lot of the utilities which make up an operating system. Like the compilers (which come from GNU), OpenSSH and many of the utilities (ls, ppp, etc.) are either maintained across all of the BSDs by the same maintainer(s) or are regularly merged.

Where the main differences lie is in the kernels and in the approach to the core OS. OpenBSD and NetBSD are fairly similar in their kernels, an FreeBSD is quite different (especially 5.x). This also where you see the philosophies of the developers... FreeBSD tries to be as fast as possible on commodity hardware. NetBSD tries to run on as much hardware as possible, and OpenBSD tries to be as secure as possible.

There is a fairly continual cross pollination of ideas between the BSDs: FreeBSD gets security fixes from OpenBSD, or code to port to other platforms rom NetBSD. They get performance enhancements like softupdates.

What is common between the BSDs is the approach. There are two rules from BSD development:

1. POLA: the Principal of Least Astonishment. Whatever the OS does must be the least astonishing thing. So when a new version comes out it shouldn't require you to reformat your disks...
2. Do The Right Thing: The code must not only work, it must do the right thing. So it's not good enough to hack up a firewire driver which just reads video from one camera - the driver must be designed to abstract the firewire bus, so disks or networking could work too.

It is these two philosophies which make Linux people think that the BSDs are bigoted. The BSDs reject a bunch of Linux's ideas because they are hacked together, and seem to work by magic.

Merging the BSDs would be a big mistake, because it would mean that there would not be room for differing ideas.

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[uweber]

I'm all in favour of competition, but four free Unix-like OSs (Linux + 3 * BSD) does some a little much to me.


While you are at it there are way to many Linux distributions merge some of them, too (yes I'm joking). Actually, although the BSDs don't share the same Kernel as it is the case with Linux distributions the differences between the BSDs are not greater than those between Debian, Redhat and Slackware!

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Snootch]

If point one is correct, then I should be able to take the kernel from RedHat and put that on Debian os slackware

Funny, that. I do that on a regular basis (often when I've screwed machines up severely), and it does work. Of course, you lose all your modules if you boot 2.4.1 on a machine which only has modules for 2.4.0, but that's nothing to do with the distribution, and even without the modules on most systems I can get a KDE startup and login with no sweat.

software like PICK only runs on certain versions of Linux

In which case it's obvious - bad software. Any decent, rule-abiding piece of software is as portable as a No. 2 pencil.

You claim that they 'acutally use the same software' then state different software is used for installng. If they were the same software, should not the install be the same?

What I meant was that 99% of the distro is the same stuff - standard utils, X/KDE/gnome, etc are almost all built from the same codebase. As I said, the packaging systems (of which there are only two) and the setup programs are the two biggest differences.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Snootch]

1. (the obvious one) - Linux is a kernel, not a distribution. There is only one of it, and all distros use it

Except they may choose different official kernel versions, and different unofficial patches. They also might choose to have proprietary binary modules (I don't believe that is the least bit common).

On the contrary, it is very common. However, all they ever do is package together stuff you can get for free in a download, and which will work harmoniously with other distros as well. I'm not saying they're not different, but that they are all nearly 100% interoperable (and the bits that aren't are by definition bad software).

I would have to say the Redhat userland and the Debian userland are no more similar then the NetBSD and FreeBSD userlands. Somewhat farther apart even.

In which case I apologise. I'm not a big BSD user, and wasn't caliming to be. All I said was that Linux is not as fragmented as the parent post suggested.

Anyway, if Free- + Net-BSD are as interoperable as Debian and Redhat are, then what on earth are people bitching about? If they're binary-level compatible, what's the fuss?

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Snootch]

If you like Slackware, you should definitely try out one of the BSD oese. I tend to favor NetBSD because it runs completely flat (the same package source files, the same kernel source tree, etc.) on my Intel and Sparc hardware.

You know, having fulfilled my quest and found a *BSD advocate who has not instantly flamed me to a crisp, I think I might take your advice...

As a question to /.'s native BSD gurus, what's the Linux binary compatibility like? I still wanna keep the ability to share binaries w/ other machines...

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Snootch]

The duke of URL did a test and showed that the quake III Linux version was faster on FreeBSD 4.2 than RedHat.

It's probably just that Red Hat runs everything under the sun by default...try it with a stripped-down (read: sensibly-installed) Slackware box. That said, I suppose Slackware is as close to BSD as Linux gets, so maybe you're right :^)

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[ahde]

It may have been worn out in past years, but maybe bears repeating. In computer terms, an operating system is the part that allows the different parts to interact. The kernel, if you will -- although the linux kernel is alot more than just the bare operating system, hence the term "monolithic" kernel. Programs that run on top of the operating system are called applications.
You could feasibly call the shell (or windowing system -- if that's all you have) that allows direct user interaction with the kernel a part of the OS. The confusion came when, as networking became a more common computing feature, some operating systems did not have that ability built in and so applications had to be written that provided it. Web servers, streaming video players, email clients, and games are all examples of applications, not operating systems.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD?

[Asmodai]

As a question to /.'s native BSD gurus, what's the Linux binary compatibility like? I still wanna keep the ability to share binaries w/ other machines...

I cannot comment on this from the NetBSD or OpenBSD perspective, someone else has to, since I never had any need for it when running these two. On FreeBSD the linux binary compatibility is quite good IMHO. Marcel Moolenaar is quite an active maintainer. We base the libraries on RedHat 6.x and I saw a commit for 7.x in the last few days. I haven't had much trouble using realplayer or other fancy apps. And in case you hit problems, it can often be easily fixed (emulation mailinglist).

FreeBSD will survive

[Xiphius]

FreeBSD has met far greater challenges than this one (check out the history between 1.0 and 2.0 :)) and will continue to leverage a superior operating system.
As i look through the commits, it seems development is even going faster than ever :D
Cheer up guys, FreeBSD will overcome ;)

Hmm, this again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me like most of the things i've seen in the last couple years, especially in the game industry, have sounded like the following pattern:

• Company of bright people gets bought by larger company.
• Larger company fires everyone from smaller company.
• Smaller company no longer exists, nor does their product nor whatever research they were doing.

This just seems awfully wierd to me. It seems to me like you still have the same bunch of people open, aand they collectively have whatever money was used to buy them out; Why don't they just immediately reform back into the company they were? Sometimes there are intellectual property concerns, true, but not if the company subsisted primarily on research or if (like dynamix) they just got completely finished with a product and it was time to start on something else, or if their product is *cough* available under the BSD license. (Except it looks like what happened here was that there was a company that existed to create funding for FreeBSD, and a larger company bought it, took the bits that created funding, and stranded FreeBSD without either funding from them or funding from the funding mechanisms FreeBSD had created.. is this accurate?)

I'm not sure what my question was. I'm just looking for comments on what seems like an odd issue to me, and wondering if anyone could try to show me why that if you're a small company with something actually sellable, it wouldn't at this point be a really foolish idea to trust another company enough to let them buy you. Given that you seem to have little proof that you're doing anything other than quietly signing your company out of existence after a three month grace period. I mean, if you just want to get rid of your products and logo, you could sell those things independently of the company itself.

Unless the reason these companies actually get bought is that some larger company wants to destroy a smaller company before they innovate themselves into being a competitor.

Unless the reason these companies get sold is that the CEO wants to quit, and he can get more money by steering the company into being sold than he can in a severance package.

Someone closer to the industry want to explain to me what is happening here?

Re:Hmm, this again.

[wolpert]

Actually, this is not the same thing as you described. A brief history; Walnut Creak software hosted the FreeBSD development. It wasn't owned by Walnut Creak, but they helped by having a distribution site, et al. Of course, Walnut Creak also distributed version of Linux and other open-source software on the website and various CD sets.

BSDi, having financial troubles (my opinion), tried to get on the open-source bandwagon by buying out Walnut Creak. This was, of course, in the time when having Linux in your product line allowed for huge market valuations. It didn't help them, though it tried.

WRS decided it wanted more technology, and bought BSDi. I think they were interested more in embeded side of BSD/OS, as well as enlarging their customer base. Either way, the FreeBSD side of the house never fit their profile. At least, with BSDi, FreeBSD was based on the same source-base as BSD/OS. Namely, BSD. (Of course. :-)

Either way, this won't stop development of FreeBSD, so it's not exactly what you described. Rather, this cause logisitical problems for a bit until a) the FreeBSD trademark issue is solved, and b) the future of their core servers and how the core members will continue their development is dealt with.

Remember, the different is that this is still an open-source, community involved development project. If transmetal got bought-out and they fired Linus, it would not stop Linux. It would just change some of Linus's logistics. The principle is very similar here. (Except that core distributions were done by BSDi and Walnut creak. Core distributions are not done by Transmetal I believe.)

Re:Hmm, this again.

[MisterMo]

You've almost hit on the answer. The market for companies is illiquid - it is hard to buy and sell them. Yet someone must have wanted to recoup some of their capital investment.

Invested captital is what Wind River uses to pay the paychecks and fund the revision of the FreeBSD handbook, for example. Because it is hard to find capital right now (it wasn't 2 years ago!) it would be difficult to "just reform" the company.

Re:Hmm, this again.

[Doomdark]

I don't really have experience to give 'real' answer, but I think that (like someone else already suggested) in many cases original founders / owners of the small company are:

• In need of many (why sell otherwise)
  
• Grown tired of the thing company does, or infighting, or too-long work days, or all of the above, meaning sell-out makes even more sense.
  
• After selling possibly have sour grapes towards each other (how many is shared, was the price right, etc. etc. etc.)
  

So, in some cases perhaps they aren't in speaking terms, or at least not interested in getting back together to start a new business. :-)

And of course it may be that people get interested in other things to do; even though they know a great deal about certain subject they may well want to try out something new. That's (from my experience) what many talented people do; want to learn new things, tricks, try their wings in different areas. After all, after sell-out most people really have to take a deep breath and think about what to do next.

Oh and also the terms of sale matter; there may be non-competition clauses in there, just because it has happened often that people start a competing business. 8-)

Re:Hmm, this again.

[ahde]

The reason you see this pattern is because of intellectual property laws. Actually, it has to do with business laws in general (in America, at least) since the same thing happens to other companies.

The difference with FreeBSD is that it is open source, so the developers can go right back to doing what they were before they got bought out, though a brief period of disorientation is to be expected.

Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut?

[BMazurek]

freebsdmall.com continues to operate and take orders, and all new and existing orders from customers for FreeBSD 4.4 or other products will continue to be fulfilled

Like all customer contracts, subscription orders will continue to be fulfilled.

So, WRS has divested the majority of its expenses related to FreeBSD, but will still sell merchandise and profit from it. Anyone know if they plan to contribute financially to the project based upon revenues/profits from the CD sales? Let's Hope...

Re:Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut?

[jbrw]

But they're allowed to do this, right? What's the problem?

Re:Does FreeBSD Foundation get a cut?

[BMazurek]

I'm not saying they're not allowed to do this. It just seems like the ethical thing to do would be to contribute back.

HP/UX, FreeBSD

[aozilla]

100 or so unix gurus laid of at HP labs in NJ. X developers laid off from Wind River Systems. FreeBSD is dead and/or dying, HP/UX is dying, what is going to happen of the rest? Are these new employees skilled in unix-like OS programming going to move to other unix-likes? Windows? Mac (I guess technically a unix now)? Or will the the tumble merely continue, taking Solaris and linux, leaving Windows and the toy (Macintosh) standing?

As an unemployed unix C programmer, I'm worried.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Asmodai]

Get a grip. :)

First of all, BSD is not dying. In contrary it is growing.

Personally having used HP-UX I found it a shame HP is moving to Linux instead of HP-UX [I thought progress was based on technical merit? Seems hype is winning. =( ].

At this telco I work for our back-end systems will never switch to something like Windows. We have major uptimes on the Unix systems which the Windows machines cannot guarantee.

I still foresee a very bright future since a lot of the people around me start to complain more and more about Windows and where we can push Unix by proclaiming its stability and less idiotic licensing costs, we often win the debate...

Don't worry. :)

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a grip. :)

Merely questions. Living in New Jersey and watching the market get flooded with really intelligent people who have the exact same skillset as I is scary.

First of all, BSD is not dying. In contrary it is growing.

My comment was that FreeBSD was dead and dying. It started when the lead programmer and cofounder left to go work for Apple. It continued when 5.0 was pushed back by a year. Now with this news, I think it's impossible to say that FreeBSD is not dying, and personally I consider it dead.

Personally having used HP-UX I found it a shame HP is moving to Linux instead of HP-UX.

Personally having seen the source code and defect lists of HP-UX, I disagree. HP-UX died when they went SMP. They fucked it up big time, and it took years to get it back under control. Years which were wasted as other unixes went ahead. Actually this was largely due to the BSD-style code which was in the kernel (Sys V was much easier to SMPize), but from the little I know about the FreeBSD kernel they didn't have nearly the same problems as HP-UX.

At this telco I work for our back-end systems will never switch to something like Windows.

Your telco could probably use FreeBSD 1.0. I'm talking about the future.

I still foresee a very bright future since a lot of the people around me start to complain more and more about Windows and where we can push Unix by proclaiming its stability and less idiotic licensing costs, we often win the debate...

NT is getting there. I completely agree that unix is a much better product, but so was Beta (vs. VHS). I'm sure that unix will stick around in some form or another. I know nothing about the NT kernel, but I would assume it has a more tightly coupled GUI, for instance, which would pretty much guarantee that unix will always perform better and be more stable. But I don't even know if that assumption is true, and performance at the kernel level is becoming less and less of an issue with these faster and faster machines.

Don't worry. :)

I'm not worried about unix so much as my own personal career. I'm confident that unix will be around for many many many years to come, but how big of a market it will have and how many people will be hired in it. Where are all these laid off people going to go? Let me know at least that so I can put in my application!

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

If you look at the OSes available right now, you see two basic types, the Microsoft supplied stuff, and the UNIX and UNIX-like types. Yes, there are others, like OS/2, Novell, etc, but the UN*X and Windows OSes have to distinct differences, each with a real strength. Microsoft's is that they've managed to get in the sweet spot as far as licensing and distribution goes, with almost all NEW computers getting their OSes. In turn, people learn to use their OSes first, and those who aren't willing to relearn something, especially something harder, won't change OSes. the UN*X OSes enjoy a different benefit, and one that helps for those who ARE willing to try something new, and that is that many are FREE. I didn't have to go pay $199.99 for my first copy of Slackware, and that gave me something that I could legitimately and legally toy with and not have to worry about cutting a check for each upgrade.

With Apple adopting OSX (which I'm pretty damn sure is pronounced oh-ess-ecks), they've somewhat changed the playing field. One can now have a fairly decent UNIX OS behind the pretty graphics, and never actually have to touch the harder stuff IF one doesn't want to. I had the opportunity to play with the Darwin core for x86 for quite a while at my previous job, and it was not a bad piece of work. There were several things that were a pain, but I never had anything actually crash or die, as well it shouldn't.

I think that the smartest thing that Apple could do would be to release a full version of OSX for the PC. Granted, it would require a lot of work to get it to work with all of the PC hardware that is on the market at the moment, but at the same time, if they could work things out with a large vendor, like Dell or Compaq or HP or something, they could build a standard configuration that would be easily supported, and they could release lists of verified hardware. It would take a lot of work to get that far, but I think it would be worth it, and with the success that I've had with Linux as my desktop, I'd be more than willing to test out another UNIX (functionality-wise) for a different desktop, especially one that was designed for easy to use features. Hopefully, someone will realise this and do it.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[partingshot]

>Are these new employees skilled in unix-like OS
>programming going to move to other unix-likes?
...
>Or will the the tumble merely continue...

The VAX is dead! Long live the VAX!

hmmm.... VAX.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[dinivin]

My comment was that FreeBSD was dead and dying. It started when the lead programmer and cofounder left to go work for Apple. It continued when 5.0 was pushed back by a year. Now with this news, I think it's impossible to say that FreeBSD is not dying, and personally I consider it dead.

Please take your trolling elsewhere. As long as their are developers working on it (and in case you hadn't noticed, there are still plenty of FreeBSD developers, including the ones that just got laid off), FreeBSD isn't dying.

Dinivin

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Wdomburg]

>Actually this was largely due to the BSD-style >code which was in the kernel (Sys V was much
>easier to SMPize), but from the little I know
>about the FreeBSD kernel they didn't have nearly
>the same problems as HP-UX.

Why is it every source I've ever seen are under the impression that HP-UX is (and has been) based on the AT&T codebase (originally SVR2 iirc, currently SVR3.2 with SVR4 extentions)? I would think that the HP/UX instructors and engineers wouldn't lie to me about such things.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Mr. Slippery]

I completely agree that unix is a much better product, but so was Beta (vs. VHS). ...But I don't even know if that assumption is true, and performance at the kernel level is becoming less and less of an issue with these faster and faster machines.

That's really only relevant for simple desktop boxes; there's a limit on how much power you can really use to run office software. For heavy-duty, interesting applications, more machine speed gets eaten up by more load. CPUs are getting faster, but that increase gets eaten up by projects getting larger. And faster CPUs don't help that an OS is unstable, insecure, and/or unsupportable.

I'm pretty much a pure Unix geek; I've never written a program on a Windows box. But even in this slow market, I get calls from recruiters a few times a month. Not as many as I did a year ago, but they're still calling. (Three times this week, in fact. If you're in Maryland, somebody's looking for a couple of AIX developers for a contract in Hunt Valley.) Unix is alive and well.

Yes, many Unix developers are getting laid off. Guess what? So are Windows developers. So are chip designers, grocery clerks, and auto workers. The economy's in "bust" phase. Welcome to capitalism.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

HP-UX is based on the AT&T codebase. That doesn't mean there isn't BSD-style code in there.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[dinivin]

Or how about "posting blatantly false shit in order to lower the level of conversation"? Because that's exactly what was going on.

Dinivin

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Mr. Slippery]

with almost all NEW computers getting their OSes.

Um, almost all new x86-based computers, you mean? There are a heck of a lot of other platforms out there. They may not be as numerous, but in terms of dollars of marketshare, consider that an IBM pSeries 680 - which they market to medium-sized businesses - starts at $220,000.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Asmodai]

Merely questions.

I know, and my comment was semi-joking, hence the smiley.

My comment was that FreeBSD was dead and dying. It started when the lead programmer and cofounder left to go work for Apple. It continued when 5.0 was pushed back by a year. Now with this news, I think it's impossible to say that FreeBSD is not dying, and personally I consider it dead.

If you think that one person is the thing which lets FreeBSD live or die then I must sadly conclude you have been comparing FreeBSD too much with Linux.

FreeBSD, ever since I joined it about 2-3 years ago, and probably before that, the project didn't fall or rise with the come or leaving of one person.

5.0 was pushed back because of a lot of the developers, including myself, requested this since we didn't believe in releasing a `product' which we found was not what we wanted it to be yet. And we now added KSE to the kernel, which is a major step forward.

Your telco could probably use FreeBSD 1.0. I'm talking about the future.

Funny remark. I foresee a wonderful career for you as psychic instead, since you are able to conjure up the systems we use here. :)

NT is getting there.

Out of there yes. At least in Europe I see less and less usage of Windows systems and the replacing of Windows systems --which ironically first replaced Unix systems-- by Unix systems again.

Stability remains an issue and with the current licensing scheme introduced...

I know nothing about the NT kernel, but I would assume it has a more tightly coupled GUI, for instance, which would pretty much guarantee that unix will always perform better and be more stable.

Yes, NT has its graphical subsystem/driver in the kernel. Performance gain, likely, stability gain, not so likely.

[...]and performance at the kernel level is becoming less and less of an issue with these faster and faster machines.

If I can buy less state of the art hardware, speedwise, by having a kernel which is better designed and optimised and thus making good use of that hardware, I will. I am not going to counter a sloppy non-optimised kernel by buying mega-expensive hardware.

I'm not worried about unix so much as my own personal career. I'm confident that unix will be around for many many many years to come, but how big of a market it will have and how many people will be hired in it.

I think it will remain big. I have had no problems finding new Unix related jobs in the last year (switched jobs twice). Granted, that's Europe.

Where are all these laid off people going to go? Let me know at least that so I can put in my application!

Assuming you are referring to the, now, ex-WRS employees. I know some are busy on their own businesses, already heard some other FreeBSD developers offering them jobs since they know their skillset and the company they work for can use people like that. And others are just looking through the wanted ads. So it basically looks like whatever any person does when they get fired/laid off.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that one person is the thing which lets FreeBSD live or die then I must sadly conclude you have been comparing FreeBSD too much with Linux.

I don't believe that projects can survive without a strong central leader. I think there needs to be a central vision, and a decision maker to stop the differences of opinion from being something which is battled out over time. When 50% of the developers want to see FreeBSD go in one direction, and 50% of the developers want to see something else, you need a leader to tell 50% of the people to submit to the other 50% for the sake of the project.

Yes, NT has its graphical subsystem/driver in the kernel. Performance gain, likely, stability gain, not so likely.

Performance gain for the graphical applications, perhaps, but at best no effect on nongraphical applications, and more likely a detriment in performance on nongraphical applications. I'm on your side on that one.

Funny remark. I foresee a wonderful career for you as psychic instead, since you are able to conjure up the systems we use here. :)

True, true. But I can't let you get away with saying "unix works better for my telco" if you're not going to back up why. :)

If I can buy less state of the art hardware, speedwise, by having a kernel which is better designed and optimised and thus making good use of that hardware, I will. I am not going to counter a sloppy non-optimised kernel by buying mega-expensive hardware.

I'm not talking about mega-expensive hardware. Most mega-expensive hardware is built for non-microsoft operating systems anyway. And my point is that most of the performance gains in your low-end hardware is used by the applications, not by the kernel. Kernel CPU usage is growing linearly while CPU speeds are growing exponentially. As a result it is becoming much more important how well your applications are written, and much less important how the kernel is written. The most important factor in this is probably going to be marketing related. What OS system calls are the really smart programmers learning in college? Right now it's probably unix, but this could change, and that would be devestating.

Assuming you are referring to the, now, ex-WRS employees [....] it basically looks like whatever any person does when they get fired/laid off.

Well, I was more referring to the ex-HP employees, since I happen to live in NJ myself. And looking through job listings in this area, there is very little in the way of software companies using C/Unix. There are plenty of financial companies and other specific uses, and of course there are a ton of sysadmin openings, but personally I'm not so interested in writing software that's only going to be used by a single company. I'll do it for a few years, while the economy is tight, if I must, but if this is more permanent I'm going to have to consider either moving cross country, reeducating myself in Windows programming, or changing careers even more dramatically. I'm only a few years out of college, so starting my own business (presumably consulting) is not really an option. There's too much fear of us younger folk in these crazy economic times.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[dinivin]

That FreeBSD is dying.

Dinivin

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Beast Of Bodmin]

> If WRS wishes to abandon FreeBSD, it is my hope
> that they at least re-release both the FreeBSD
> trademark and the FreeBSD product under the GPL.
> Please guys, do it now. I am getting goose
> bumps thinking of what will happen if Microsoft
> decides to rescue WRS by buying all of it.
Surely if that happened FreeBSD would just have
to be renamed? No implications for any of the
source code ownership that I can see.

I also don't think it's the GPL that's responsible
for Linux being so popular. More a "hearts and
minds" (H&M) thing, and the structure of the OS.

Linux is just a kernel, /usr, /bin, /etc and so
on are what you add to create a distro. Also, the
kernel development model is more or less a free
for all. IMO it is this which made Linux so cool
in the eyes of developers.

OTOH, FreeBSD is a complete OS (you get /usr and
so on). FreeBSD is also very stable and it's
networking code is directly based on the 4.4 BSD
source, arguably the most hardened networking code
there is out there. As a sysadm I like very much
the fact that I get a complete system, but if
it wasn't just so damn good at what it does, I
would regard it as bloated.

IMO it's because the code tree is maintained as a
sort of High Priesthood that it loses H&M of
developers. Different model of development.

The BSD licence is in theory much more attractive
to a business than GPL because you don't have to
re-release source to the community.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[benedict]

It's pronounced "Oh Ess Ten".

Apple is a profitable hardware manufacturer. It's no coincidence that none of the people calling for them to port OS X to the PC are Apple stockholders. It would be fiscal suicide.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[benedict]

JKH didn't "leave" FreeBSD any more than Jeremy Allison "left" SAMBA when VALinux laid him off. Nor any more than Linus "left" Linux when he went to work for Transmeta.

Apparently much of the open source community has no idea how open source projects actually function. Anyone who reads the FreeBSD mailing lists has seen major FreeBSD developers change jobs many times without losing their commitment to the project.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Eric Green]

Note that HP has actually moved much HP/UX development offshore to India. I have no idea what their long-term commitment is to HP/UX, but it's pretty clear that for the short term it has not been "abandoned" as you suggest.

Regarding Linux, probably 60-75% of Linux originates overseas with part-time developers. Virtually all of KDE, QT, major subsystems of the Linux kernel, etc. were developed overseas. These people are unlikely to quit developing Linux just because a few American dot-coms go bust. For that matter, I no longer work for a Linux company myself, and still fix the occasional bugs that are found with the software I support (or with hardware that it drives, which sometimes requires the software to be hacked to make a certain piece of brain dead hardware work :-(. )

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[kkenn]

Jordan Hubbard is *not* the "lead programmer". He's an evangelist and does very little coding.

You've also misunderstood the reason for pushing back 5.0-RELEASE; the changes being made were just too big, and the system isn't ready for a release yet. We could have released an unstable, crap 5.0-RELEASE now, or we can wait and get it right.

Re:HP/UX, FreeBSD

[Phroggy]

I think that the smartest thing that Apple could do would be to release a full version of OSX for the PC.

Smartest thing for whom?

Keep in mind that Darwin/x86 currently doesn't support VIA or AMD motherboards, and doesn't support IDE hard drives. They've got a loooong way to go before it's ready for the market.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Stability

[aozilla]

This makes little sense to me. The whole beauty of FreeBSD vs. Linux (to me) was the simplicity. I didn't want distros and rpms and a gui install and all the other crap that came with Linux when I was installing a server. How hard would it be to just maintain the current tree and work only on the really important server features, bug fixes, and essential drivers?

I suggest the FreeBSD community forks FreeBSD, GPLs it (possibly with a modified GPL to support the advertising clause, where necessary), and then continues to maintain FreeBSD by porting new Linux drivers, fixing bugs, and if there's enough manpower, adding server-only features/performance enhancements. Yahoo used to run a lot of FreeBSD machines. I assume they still do. Yahoo combining efforts with the FreeBSD community (utilizing the GPL to try to coax a little more sharing) could do it.

I'm going to look into how realistic this (forking and GPLing) would be right after I finish hitting submit.

Re:Stability

[LatJoor]

Well, most of the FreeBSD is very hostile to the GPL (you know, the "GNU Public Virus" folks), so I'm doubtful that they'll fork a GPL'd version any time soon.

Re:Stability

[agshekeloh]

When I started using FreeBSD in 1995, they were in worse shape than they are now. No commercial support at all, except for one little server donated by Walnut Creek. The FAQ was scary. IIRC, there was no Handbook. And they *still* kicked butt over anything else out there.

And GPLing is not at all necessary. Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?

This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.

Re:Stability

[aozilla]

I whole-heartedly agree with you that FreeBSD kicked ass in 1995. I agree also that they are still a great server OS. But FreeBSD on the desktop? Frankly, I don't think that's ever going to happen.

And GPLing is not at all necessary.

Well, the only reason I think it might be is to get driver support. That's 50% of the ongoing work for a server OS right there.

Or desired. Many BSD developers consider the GPL less free than the BSD license. If all your BSD expertise is not interested in GPL'd work, where would you get developers from?

This I didn't realize, but with the other replys combined with yours, I guess you're right. I find it difficult to understand. I agree that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, I think that's pretty much a given fact. But a system based completely on altruism simply isn't going to work without a ton of money to fund it (or at least an idealistic founder working for it). I really don't see much practical benefit from having a BSD licensed OS vs. a GPLed one. It seems easy to separate the parts you want to remain proprietary into drivers, kernel modules, or applications, all of which I believe are compliant with the linux license. Perhaps it would be possible to maintain two separate distributions, one with GPLed drivers, and another without, and keep the BSD license for those not using BSD drivers. Then again, maybe this is possible already, I still don't really know all the specifics of the licensing issues with Linux and FreeBSD.

This is a setback, but nothing more. Times have been hard before. They have been good before. They will be both, again and again.

Times have been hard before, but you had Jordan Hubbard pretty much full time then. You can't discount that, and the fact that Apple has not yet stepped up to take over the development of FreeBSD seems to indicate to me that they are not going to ever do that. I'm sure the offer was made already.

Finally, I hope that the developers working on 5.0-CURRENT don't take this as an excuse to down tools and take a few months off since that will only ensure that we slip again. We've taken on some truly significant challenges with 5.0 and it will take everyone working as hard as they can to both meet this new deadline and release something that lives up to everyone's expectations.

That was Jordan Hubbard, on August 30. Do you really think you're going to get everyone working as hard as possible at this point? Or was that all just pep-talk bullshit from JH? Personally, I think it was pep-talk bullshit, but it was also an accurate assessment.

Re:Stability

[Alpha_Geek]

Bzzzt! Wrong answer.

Yahoo! still uses FreeBSD almost exclusively.

Thanks for playing. Care to try again?

Re:Stability

[Binestar]

Why would you change the license on FreeBSD from the very very open more free than the GPL BSD license it's currently under to one that has less freedoms. The GPL is more restrictive than the BSD license by a long shot (And the Advertizing clause has been removed for a long time now)

As others have said, FreeBSD isn't going anywhere. Worst case is that FreeBSD becomes Not-FBSD because this company holds the copyright on the name and they have to rename the OS.

The license is non restrictive.

Re:Stability

[aozilla]

Why would you change the license on FreeBSD from the very very open more free than the GPL BSD license it's currently under to one that has less freedoms.

Simple question. Why not? Philosophically, there's a huge difference, but what would be the practical difference for FreeBSD?

Perhaps instead dual license FreeBSD? I guess you can't do that once you incorporate GPLed code into FreeBSD.

Re:Stability

[Asmodai]

I really don't see much practical benefit from having a BSD licensed OS vs. a GPLed one.

Embedded developers, for example, can educate you on that one.

Times have been hard before, but you had Jordan Hubbard pretty much full time then.

Jordan was mostly busy with the PR side of things, something which other people took over from him in the course of the years.

You can't discount that, and the fact that Apple has not yet stepped up to take over the development of FreeBSD seems to indicate to me that they are not going to ever do that. I'm sure the offer was made already.

Sorry, Apple never offered that. But we do have some Apple developers in the group and some FreeBSD developers working on MacOS X or working for Apple.

[snip]

That was Jordan Hubbard, on August 30. Do you really think you're going to get everyone working as hard as possible at this point? Or was that all just pep-talk bullshit from JH? Personally, I think it was pep-talk bullshit, but it was also an accurate assessment.

You obviously missed the KSE import by Julian Elischer and Peter Wemm. Futhermore, there has been an increase in people working on the CURRENT sourcecode.

Re:Stability

[Snootch]

The GPL is a horrid concept to anyone who believes that their hard work is worth something.

...yes, but a lot of the time, that worth will not go to you. I stick with the GPL because no-one can screw with my code, roll it into something proprietary, and make money out of it without asking me first.

Of course, if you are truly altruistic, you use the BSD licence and let everyone do what they will. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a selfish bastard for using the GPL. I don't want people to make money out of my code without giving something back (either by keeping it all open or paying my to relicence it). I actually admire you BSD guys for your charity - I couldn't do that.

Re:Stability

[HeUnique]

Not exactly right...

Some parts uses the FreeBSD, and some parts are using iPlanet...

www.yahoo.com, mail.yahoo.com runs on FreeBSD, but vision.yahoo.com, radio.yahoo.com gives sometimes OS as "unknown" on Netcraft...

Re:Stability

[stripes]

How hard would it be to just maintain the current tree and work only on the really important server features, bug fixes, and essential drivers?

Pretty trivial, since over 99% of the people working on FreeBSD were not WRS employees, and thus are still working wherever they were working last week.

The hardest part would be getting them to stop work on 5.0, halting work on less important features, and giving up on making the nonessential drivers work. :-)

I suggest the FreeBSD community forks FreeBSD, GPLs it (possibly with a modified GPL to support the advertising clause, where necessary)

That would be a lot harder. Legally it is easy, however many of the current developers would not be interested since they like the existing license for business reasons, or moral reasons, or just plain stuburness. Loss of those people would hurt a lot.

P.S. the advertising clause has been gone for quite a while.

Re:Stability

[edhall]

Yahoo has several hundreds services that utilize
everything from Solaris to Windows 2000,
including Linux, but most servers and most
backend machines run FreeBSD, including the
gateway machines to Google.
What Google runs is their business...

-Ed

Re:Stability

[NDPTAL85]

I don't mean to be rude but its the BSD license that allows anyone or any company to run off with your code/work and do whatever the fuck they want to with it just as long as they "mention" you as the original developer, unlike the GPL which does not allow someone to just do "anything" they want with it. You know, things like taking it proprietary?

Re:Stability

[T-Punkt]

Kerberos is still free.

Re:merge back to NetBSD or OpenBSD? + emBSD

[RazzleDazzle]

OpenBSD is an offshoot of NetBSD. Theo (lead developer for OBSD) had philosophical differences with the rest of NetBSD and thus started OpenBSD. OpenBSD being the most code-audited BSD with some good cross platform support as well.

There is another small BSD offshoot in the name of emBSD. It is a stripped down version of OpenBSD and its primary objective is to create a firewall and/or router using as little hardware as possible (ideally with not moving parts like a hard drive).

What about APPLE!?

[SubtleNuance]

suitable corporate sponsor but did not find any company with sufficient interest and financial capability in this challenging economy.

Ummm Isnt Apple's OSX built on FreeBSD?

Ahhh the trappings of the BSD license, you do the work - someone else makes money by stealing it.

Re:What about APPLE!?

[maggard]

Ummm Isnt Apple's OSX built on FreeBSD?

Ahhh the trappings of the BSD license, you do the work - someone else makes money by stealing it.

The point of the license is that it *wasn't* stolen.

You many not agree with the author's choices in licenses but please don't accuse others or make up stories. The authors determined what license best fit their needs and goals and Apple used it accordingly.

It's to Apple's credit that they've since maintained an Open Source distribution of this along with paying for engineers to port it to a platform they're not on, hosting the web-site, and keeping it current with their commercial distribution.

Disagreement is a fair thing, misinformation and calumny are not.

Note: You are perfectly free to choose whatever license you like when/if you produce something.

Re:What about APPLE!?

[jacrawf]

Ahhh the trappings of the BSD license, you do the work - someone else makes money by stealing it.

*shrug* Some people just believe that freedom shouldn't come at the cost of coercion. They believe that their code is as free as it can ever be; and they are right. The code they have written is, indeed, freely available to the entire world. Does that necessarily have to mean that the code someone else writes has to be as well? Should it not be that other person's choice as to whether they want to release their own sweat and blood upon the world in whatever form they choose?

You see, to put it very simply, it boils down to where you want your freedoms to lay. People who choose licenses such as the GNU's General Public License believe that the code should be free, as though it somehow has rights. Or maybe it's just a control issue. "I wrote that code and you have to do what I say if you want to use it! Don't like it? TOUGH! Write you own code then, infidel!"

However, people who choose less restrictive licenses like the BSD license care more about the freedom of the people who write the code. Those folks believe that if you write code, you should get to say what can be done with it, even if that code cannot stand on it's own as part of a separate program. Their code is their gift to the world, and nothing can lessen that gift -- no, not even incorporating their code into a proprietary, closed program. They're glad that that person or company could make good use of what they had written. (And who knows; when the money starts getting thin and the coder needs employment, how much do you want to bet the company who used her code will be a little more eager to give her a job?)

So, is your free software truly free?

Re:What about APPLE!?

[scrytch]

Ahhh the trappings of the BSD license, you do the work - someone else makes money by stealing it.

And releases it as Darwin. But otherwise, yeah you're right. Look at what happened to Apache and X without the protection of the GPL, they're just in the dustbin of history now, aren't they?

Re:What about APPLE!?

[benedict]

OS X uses some code from FreeBSD, but it's not "build on FreeBSD" in the sense that Win 3.1 was built on DOS.

As others pointed out, the whole point of the BSD license is that the contributors are philosophically happy with having their code used in commercial products.

Man, the clueless Linux bigots are really out in force today.

Re:What about APPLE!?

[Arandir]

There once has a fabulous apple tree. No matter how many apples one would take from it, there were just as many as before! When this was heard by the villagers they all rushed to the apple tree and took apples. But no matter how many they took, there were just as many apples as before. But some of them came and took apples and locked them within a chest, so that none could steal them. And they laughed at the other villagers, saying, "Look, they do not protect their apples. Surely a thief will come and steal them."

Re:What about APPLE!?

[ahde]

and then some people got lazy and decided it was easier to just borrow apples that their neighbors had collected, which the neighbors were fine with, until they discovered they were the only ones picking apples, and they had to spend longer each day picking. They became bitter and decided to teach the lazy people a lesson and went to the apple tree and ate their apples on the spot, bringing none home. This caused bitter feelings in return from the lazy people, but when they got over it and went back to the tree they found the pickers blocking their way to the tree. They felt that since they had been the only ones picking apples for some time that the tree belonged to them and no one else. This upset the hoarders too, who felt like they had done nothing wrong. They didn't have any sympathy for the lazy people either, especially since they had turned to theiving, exactly as the hoarders had predicted. It was such a small effort to go to the tree every day, but now the tree was no longer available to everyone, and the bitter people excluded even those who had hoarded apples partly in revenge for being right, partly because they were blinded by their own bitterness, and in large part because it was in their nature to think that they were better than other people, especially when they saw profit in restricting others.

Idiots

[mosch]

Idiots and trolls, please post your 'FreeBSD is dying' messages here, so that they may be summarily ignored.

Re:Idiots

[Arandir]

Commercial funding Open Source BSDs may be at death's door, but the system's themselves are alive, kicking, and stocking up on cans of Whoopass.

In which case the chosen names are inappropriate

[S. Allen]

This has always confused me as well. If these are the real goals of the divergent branches, why not call them FastBSD, XBSD and SecureBSD respectively... or something to that effect. The current naming system seems like every other abusive overuse of popular catch words: they sound good but they lack meaning and in the end are generally confusing to the public.

I wish I could say I was surprised....

[wowbagger]

I wish I could say I was surprised by this turn of events, but having the misfortune of dealing with WRS professionally, I cannot. My experience with WRS has been pretty dismal - of the 10 severe problems I've had with their products, their FAEs have solved only 1 for me; all others I have either had to live with or have solved myself. The company I work for has been told "Y'know that version of VxWorks you have licensed? Well, we aren't going to support it anymore, but you still have to pay us for a service contract if you want to continue to ship. Oh, and you will STILL have to pay us a per-unit license fee on top of that. But don't call us with any problems."

When they bought BSD I really wondered what they were thinking, as I was at a loss to see how BSD fit into their corporate strategy. The BSD kernel is much more competent than the VxWorks kernel, but being Free Software there is little value added from WRS - I can just embed BSD and avoid dealing with WRS. If they had a good history of decent board support packages I might see where they would be of value to me, but given how poorly they've supported VxWorks with BSPs, I have little confidence they would really have a benefit for their support.

Now, had WRS been able to buy Cygnus before RedHat, that would have made sense - Tornado (Wind River's VxWorks development package) uses the GCC toolchain, so owning the primary developers for GCC would have made sense. But I cannot see where the advantage to owning BSD is to WRS.

However, this just goes to show the power of Free Software - while WRS may screw up BSD.COM, they can never kill BSD.

#include <std-disclaimer.h>
The views expressed here are mine, not my employer.

Re:I wish I could say I was surprised....

[rtaylor]

They wanted BSDi which is a commercial and closed source product.

Re:I wish I could say I was surprised....

[wowbagger]

True, BSDi is a commercial, closed-source project. However, my point was that I could just about as easily embed [Open|Net|Free]BSD and avoid WRS altogether. Therefor BSDi has little value-add from my perspective.

Re:I wish I could say I was surprised....

[fsdb]

Please get a clue... I really wish I understood why people cannot get this correct. BSDi was a company [which I worked at as a FreeBSD developer]. BSD/OS is the commercial OS product of BSDi.

Re:I wish I could say I was surprised....

[softweyr]

A lot of companies are embedding BSD these days. NAS and SAN companies are popping up all over the place, using FreeBSD and some NetBSD; new network equipment from small start-ups to major players based on OpenBSD and NetBSD (and FreeBSD in the case of Juniper and Coyote).

Linux seems to be gobbling up the low end of the market while BSD chews its way across the high end. The meeting ground in the middle is an interesting place to be, and why WRS wanted to acquire BSD/OS. They were bombarded by their customers with requests for something like Linux, with WRS tools (and support, I guess, though I've never found a WRS support contract to be worth much). WRS chose BSD/OS because they are very familiar with the GPL -- remember they've been a major commercial sponsor of GCC for many years -- and do not believe the GPL is suitable for commercial embedded "trade secret" code, for themselves or their customers.

I never believed WRS would hold onto the FreeBSD assets for long. The original integration of Walnut Creek into BSDi never really worked out, and WRS was never likely to hold onto a cost center that did not produce profits. Internal and external pressure to finish and release Tornado for FreeBSD, based on the two-year-old but never released Tornado for Linux, was ignored by company management, proving the lack of any real support for FreeBSD in WRS management.

For the Anonymous Cowards out there, I fail to see how a company that never helped FreeBSD dropping their non-support of it will substantially change the FreeBSD project. FreeBSD did fine without a corporate sponsor originally, and the CD-ROM business is no longer important to the survival of FreeBSD. The current strategy of having the project produce ISO images and allowing anyone who wishes to burn those images onto CDs and sell them meets the needs of the customers, the project, and the vendors, no formal relationship is needed.

The only real remaining issue is to get the FreeBSD trademark transistioned to someone who will keep and protect it.

Re:I wish I could say I was surprised....

[rtaylor]

Bah, on the side of the box (16 user license) it has a big BSDI on it. It's the front that says BSD/OS.

Now, bookshelves hold stuff sideways -- so I always see BSDI.

Think Mach

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX is founded on CMU Mach. That is the core. Layered on top of this are some BSD compatibility libraries which translate Unix system calls to native Mach system calls. On top os this layer is another layer of proprietary GUI libraries which is the real "magic" of OSX.

It is a bit of an exageration to claim that OSX is based on BSD, given its Mach core and its proprietary Apple superstructure.

Re:Think Mach

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You do not know what Mach is.

Mach is a microkernel. You do not know what a microkernel is.

Mach is meant to float between your OS kernel and your hardware. It is there to let your OS kernel interface with the hardware. It is there to provide a layer of abstraction so that os x, and things developed for os x, are less hardware-dependent.

Those are not "BSD compatibility libraries" sitting on top of mach. They are actual BSD code. They were originally a version of FreeBSD, but NeXT/apple has (like with the xMach and mkLinux projects) tweaked the system from being a monolithic kernel to using mach.

If you really care whether what you're talking about makes any sense or not, maybe you should go read some of the excellent developer documentation at apple's website. I suggest you don't listen to anything i've said, as some of what i've said above may have been slightly innacurate and instead find out for yourself what is happening, starting with here, which is an overview of the kernel environment of os x and appears to go into the relationship between the mach and bsd portions of the system. There is also lots of helpful low-level documentation linked from Apple's roadmap to Darwin documentation. Had you spent three minutes using search engines, you could have found these documents yourselves.

I'm going back to bed.

FreeBSD and BSDI

[LyNXeD]

Being a sysadmin, I've run servers on pretty much 3 platforms: Linux, FreeBSD, and BSDI. (Although, even as we speak, our BSDI machines are on their way to being FreeBSD.)

Some of the advantages of BSDI were you could call them for support, they released security patches and fixes (although some required you to have an upgrade contract, and as soon as ours expired they quit even sending us notifications of such updates.) What I didn't like about BSDI is it's closed-source nature, which to me would make it more difficult for developers. Plus, they didn't seem to have very much RAID controller support (at lesat, along the lines of Dell.)

FreeBSD, on the other hand, may not have the "call this number for tech support" (although I am sure someone sells commercial support), but it IS open-sourced and it supports our RAID controller properly. :) I haven't found too many differences between BSDI and it, and actually like FreeBSD better.

We have two servers running our major services (mail, web, ftp, dns, etc.) and both were running BSDI. We recently commissioned a Dell, onto which I installed FreeBSD, and are phasing out one of our BSDI machines. After that, said BSDI machine will be blown away, loaded w/FreeBSD, and will replace the P166 box that is our secondary RADIUS, secondary DNS, and backup MX. (Don't ask - the dual 166 kicked the bucket in June, and the single 166 is what was in the spare parts bucket. We knew it would handle the load, and didn't want to invest in a new box when we'd be getting one in a couple months anyway.) The 166 is running BSDI, and will put back into retirement soon.

But, back to the point. With FreeBSD being open-source, it's open nature is going to allow development to continue. As far as the trademark is concerned, IANAL but they probably only own the trademark to the *name* "FreeBSD" - thus, in a worst case scenario they could probably write a shell script to run sed on all of the files with s/FreeBSD/WhateverBSD/g :)

I will say that I'm much happier now, as on FreeBSD I don't have to have a goofy cron job that checks to see if MySQL is running, and if not, restart it. :) (And, instead of using 80% CPU at peak times, MySQL now only uses about 20%)

Just my $0.04 (still adjusted for inflation)

Re:FreeBSD and BSDI

[HiThere]

May I suggest:
s/FreeBSD/AvailableBSD/g
or
s/FreeBSD/BestBSD/g

The first is a suggestion of stability, openness, etc. The problems are that available is too long, and the acronym looks strange -- ABSD (but perhaps all acronyms look starnge at first).

The second seems a bit vainglorious. Perhaps you could just call it BBSD and hint that it was used for bulletin boards. :-)

(I like Linux, but you've got great names.)

Re:In which case the chosen names are inappropriat

[sql*kitten]

The current naming system seems like every other abusive overuse of popular catch words: they sound good but they lack meaning and in the end are generally confusing to the public.

I think the names were chosen long before anyone considered what the public might find confusing, and long before they were catchwords :0)

Stickers?

[helixblue]

This will probably be moderated as off-topic, but the biggest victim for me to the WRS buyout was that stickers were no longer available..

Does 4.4 come with stickers? Anywhere to buy them individually? My new car is badly in need of them.

Re:Stickers?

[Arandir]

Hmm, 4.3 came with stickers, but 4.4 hasn't been mailed yet (next week I think). I sure hope it has stickers.

Trapping of BSD license

[Cormack]

It is not trappings, it is real freedom. In opposite to strict GPL.

GPL MAKES you to be free. And it is very like to make all people happy (Communism is good example).
Do you like communism? Do you know about ``make all people happy'' attempts in USSR, North Korea and other such countires?

Uhm FREE BSD not FREE ?

[motox]

How come a private company owns a free trademark ?! That's odd, if its like that they should switch to PayBSD :)

Differences

[fat_mike]

Without starting a this BSD is better war. Could somebody explain to me the differences between the three different BSD's?

Re:Differences

[swdunlop]

Snide jokes aside, FreeBSD is the eldest of the currently used BSD-4.4 family, and has been very heavily optimized for the x86 family of procesors. FreeBSD's primary goal is to be fast and stable.

NetBSD grew out of FreeBSD during an uncomfortable time when the FreeBSD regents, the individuals who guide FreeBSD's growth in a kind of guiding council, were focussed on ix86, and only ix86 for their OS. The NetBSD team's goal has been portability above all else, and can be likened to rabbits. You name the platform, the NetBSD guys are already installed there, or working on a distro for it.

OpenBSD grew out of NetBSD, as certain individuals wanted a stronger emphasis on security. OpenBSD inherited a fairly wide platform base from its NetBSD foundation, but their primary goal is security by default.

If you needed a system to sit exposed to the internet, I cannot recommend OpenBSD strongly enough. If you need a system to serve data quickly using inexpensive hardware, FreeBSD has many performance advantages, even over the linux 2.4 tree. And, if you want Unix on your Atari Falcon, go grab NetBSD, you nutcase. =)

Oh, and if you want a Unix your grandmother can be comfortable with, go get OS X. ;)

Re:Differences

[Asmodai]

FreeBSD runs on i386, and Alpha.

Btw, just for information: Sparc64, PPC and IA-64 are being worked on and committed to the sourcetree.

Re:Differences

[Lazaru5]

There are errors in your history.

NetBSD and FreeBSD simultaneously grew out of the 386BSD project which was headed by Bill Jolitz. It was a project that ported 4.4BSD to the i386.

There's no such thing as "FreeBSD regents". You're thinking of the Regents of the University of California, who owned the (open source) license to BSD. They're a bunch of university administrators and have nothing to do with operating system development.

In fact, NetBSD is technically older than "FreeBSD", as FreeBSD was then just a handful of people (4 or 5) who started releasing patches to 386BSD called the "386BSD Patchkit".

You're right about the rest.

For your (and anyone reading this) review, see /usr/share/misc/bsd-family-tree and visit http://www.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.html.

Re:Differences

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

OpenBSD grew out of NetBSD, as certain individuals wanted a stronger emphasis on security. OpenBSD inherited a fairly wide platform base from its NetBSD foundation, but their primary goal is security by default.

Though true, it also was due in part to a conflict of personalities. Pretty much anyone who knows (or of him, I've never met him personally) Theo de Raadt see him as immensely talented, but also fairly abrasive. This had about as much to do with him leaving and forming OpenBSD as anything else.

This is not to disparage Theo. He has contributed a lot to not only OpenBSD, but other systems as well. There is a lot more code sharing among the BSDs than most people realize. Any holes found in OpenBSD get notified elsewhere. I know that the USB stack is fairly common across all systems, in facet the code has CVS ident strings for both FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Re:Apple should not release X for x86

[sboss]

The OS X.1 CD was free since OS X was broken. And that is from Apple's mouth. It worked but not very well. Instead of making everyone buy a new verison o f the O/S when all you are doing it patching the holes and fixing the bugs, they released it for free. Unlike M$ who release 98 when all it was, was a patched verision of 95. I congratulate Apple on releasing the CD for free.

Thank you Apple.

Re:Their fault for kicking Slackware to the curb!

[SonofRage]

TRUE

Tough Sledding

[Anonymous Coward]

It is going to be tough, even the (seemingly better funded) linux distributions are falling on hard times. I think FreeBSD's biggest issue may be getting mind share. They entered the open source/free software (or whatever the politically correct name for it is) arena AFTER Linux, although BSD had been around for a long time before Linus even started his work. However, the politics of the FreeBSD project had very high expectations of Unix knowledge of both users and developers. Although they disagree, I think the bar to entry is a bit high, and has hurt their penetration into undergrad culture (where the bulk of hobbiests with substantial free time are), and the learning curve has steered people to Linux. I hope that FreeBSD can find good ways to expand (OSX was a great thing for them), but I'm skeptical as Linux may be so dominant.

Re:Their fault for kicking Slackware to the curb!

[Snootch]

Poetic justice that BSD is now dead, yet Slackware soldiers on, and rather successfully at that.

You're telling me, mate - Slackware ROCKS! Have you tried 8.0 yet? You'll get addicted very soon. It's not too fast to download in the UK yet, but once I get all of 8.0 I'll probably set up a mirror.

Re:Their fault for kicking Slackware to the curb!

[RevDiaBLo]

Poetic justice that you think BSD is dead. What makes you think it will be any different than Slackware?

FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development

[bee]

What I'm wondering is how working on 4.x and 5.0 at the same time will affect FreeBSD. Is most of the work being done on 5.0 independent of the work involved in 4.x++ ? I'm just hoping that FreeBSD working on 2 different streams at the same time doesn't significantly slow down progress.

Re:FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development

[Lazaru5]

FreeBSD follows a pretty standard development cycle, influenced by it's use of CVS.

There is the main development trunk, known as -CURRENT (or -HEAD and -MAIN in CVS terms). This is where all the really cool new stuff goes and as a result may be unstable at any given moment. Most work goes into this main trunk. This is 5.0 right now.

CVS allows branching of source. -CURRENT _used_ to be 4.0, but it progressed far enough to be -STABLE. A branch occured at that point, but -CURRENT continued growing straight up (becoming 5.0-CURRENT), and 4.X-STABLE started growing out to the side (just like a tree branch.)

When something in -CURRENT has been well tested and is deemed to be stable enough, it's merged into the branch below it. This is how -STABLE continues to grow. The latest -STABLE has reached 4.4 now.

CVS also supports tagging. It's primary use is to mark a snapshot of the CVS repository for -RELEASE.

It's always been done this way, and many, many software projects are developed this way.

This is unlike the Linux kernel development probably because Linus and friends don't use CVS (or if they do it's not public and it's not used in the same fashion.) Linux also has two different streams. The even numbered kernels are "stable", and the odd numbered kernels are "developmental". 2.2 used to be the stable branch, and 2.3 was the dev branch. 2.3 became the 2.4 stable branch, and 2.5 is now the dev branch. I only call them branches because I don't know what else to call them, not knowing how Linus actually manages source.

Re:FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development

[benedict]

FreeBSD has worked this way for a long time.

It works pretty well, because users and developers have differing and sometimes incompatible needs. Users need a stable operating system whose behavior they can predict. But for the operating system to move forward, sometimes large changes need to be made, and they can't be made stable and predictable without some time for debugging. So the developers need a "sandbox" where they can do what they have to do and not worry about destroying users' expectations of stability.

Re:FreeBSD 4.x and 5.0 parallel development

[ahde]

No, linux is an elected despot. The BSD teams are hereditary oligarchs. A commitee is not a democracy.

Didn't they already contribute?

[Len]

Seems to me that they've already made a contribution by funding a money-losing FreeBSD project. If they eventually make a fortune from a small FreeBSD investment then your criticism would be valid, but I'm still skeptical about companies making huge amounts of money by selling free software.

Who can save us now???

[Ubergeek26]

I find this rather shocking and at the same time a wee bit disconcerting.

I am really suprised that Apple hasn't stepped forward to fund this, as IMHO it could be in their best interests.

Of course, given today's business world they could take the Rambus route and sue everyone that makes an OS. Hell, sue Microsoft, that seems to be the trendy thing to do nowadays anyway.

Re:*BSD is dying

[Melantha_Bacchae]

A clueless AC wrote:

> *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a
> miracle could save it at this point in time. For
> all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

So the solar flare that happened the day of the announcement at Seybold of the release of OS X.1 wasn't enough of a miracle for you?

Sheesh, you just can't please some people. It's okay, Mothra, at least I appreciated it. ;)

OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.

Exactly! You got why the GPL is different from BSD

[NDPTAL85]

I think you summed it up exactly.

The GPL license cares about the code first and foremost, even to the detriment of the developer(s) in some situations. At all costs the code must survive and remain free.

The BSD license cares about the developers and the users, even to the detriment of the code/project in some situations. At all costs must the people developing and using the code have all options available to them.

This is also why Linux has more mindshare, marketshare and corporate interest. The god damn project (that being Linux) is able to survive and thrive because the GPL won't allow it to be taken advantage of.

Seeing as how Unix is already decades old one would think the BSD guys would have gotten this by now. Programmers come and go. The projects, if they are good enough remain. What fucking good are the personal freedoms the BSD license provide if projects run under a BSD license are so frequently subject to being taken advantage of, used and then left to be forgotten with very little contribution in return?

Is *BSD dying? Hell no. Just a temporary and annoying setback. The BSD camp COULD do with a little more self-promotion though. ;)

Trademark

[Z4rd0Z]

I'm really interested to know why the FreeBSD Foundation doesn't own the trademark to FreeBSD!

BS! They ripped me off

[siberian]

The minute WRS acquired FreeBSD my subscriptions stopped coming in but they KEPT CHARHING ME. All the numbers were disconnected or permanent hold patterns. Eventually I got through to someone who said they 'fixed it' when all they actually did was charge me AGAIN and never send me shit.

WRS has fucked up FBSD beyond belief. Its a sad thing.

OS != web server

[horza]

I work in Yahoo's infrastructure group, and I've never even heard of iPlant. However, I do know that we use FreeBSD boxes by the thousands

Yahoo use FreeBSD as the OS and iPlanet (which is another name for Netscape Enterprise Server afaicr) as their web server.

The percentage may be small, but you neglected to report the fact that it's growing

Not according to the latest Netcraft survey. I personally I like FreeBSD but Linux has so many easy to use tools and so much support which for me is more important than raw performance.

Phillip.

Re:OS != web server

[Quikah]

Yahoo use FreeBSD as the OS and iPlanet (which is another name for Netscape Enterprise Server afaicr) as their web server.

iPlanet doesn't even have a BSD version (at least not according to their download page). Are they running the Linux version on FreeBSD?

Re:OS != web server

[edhall]

Yahoo use FreeBSD as the OS and iPlanet (which is another name for Netscape Enterprise Server afaicr) as their web server.

Complete and utter nonsense. Most of Yahoo's servers either run Yahoo's own server software or a certain popular free software server which shares a name with a Native American tribe. But as I said, there are literally hundreds of services supported by Yahoo, each running on the plateform that supports it best. If you poke around enough, you'll even find some IIS servers -- or NES.

-Ed

Re:OS != web server

[horza]

FreeBSD has Linux emulation, but I believe a lot of stuff marked 'Linux' will compile under any *nix or *BSD if cleanly written.

Phillip.

Slackware

[(startx)]

Hopefully they'll do the same thing that the Slackware team did after Windriver dropped them. Continue developing, and find someone else to press the cd's, keeping a greater percent of the profit for themselves.

How can an open source development project die?

[edunbar93]

How can volunteer work on a project such as this be killed by layoffs? If anything, it will increase development efforts as the people laid off now have more time on their hands. ;) The very nature of any such project is that people are doing this in their spare time, for the living hell of it or to scratch some itch, or "because it's there." Linux is the same way. Even if you shot all the developers, more people would come by and continue where they left off, just because they want to, and because the license lets them.
FreeBSD will live on, through thick and thin, even if it's just held together by a few guys on a weblog...

Re:Yea!

[Arandir]

Hell Yes! BSD is too free! But the GPL doesn't go far enough. If you really want to keep people from stealing the code, make it proprietary.

The more restrictions the better.

The "cash" has disappeared

[Eric Green]

Many of these buyouts were done with dot-com magic fairy dust (i.e., now-worthless stock). For example, one buyout that I'm familiar with was 60% stock/40% cash. And yes, when the larger dot-com that did the buyout folded the smaller subsidiary, the founders *did* try to start operations back up again, but because various trademarks were owned by the company that did the buyout, they had to start up under a different name, and because they only got 40% cash, they didn't have enough cash to publicize and fully ramp up operations again. And of course the stock is now worthless.

There are other such buy-outs that were virtually all-stock. With 1-year lock-ins so that the founders can't sell stock. With non-compete clauses in the contract. Etc. There's one word for those small company founders now that the stocks they were paid with are worthless: SCREWED.

Re:Yea!

[AX.25]

You are an idiot. The point is that BSD is the exact opposite of proprietary software. You IP is anyones to take, use and make money. GPL on the otherhand is the best of both free and proprietary. Anybody has the freedom to use GPL software, but if you change it you have to contribute back to the community the changes you made if you make the sofware available to anybody else.

You could event the next great app, place it under the BSD license and hell yea it would be free, but some Joe who is smarter than you could come along and take your code, add a couple of things and sell proprietary versions. All the while you still have to go to the soup kitchen twice a week. With the GPL you would have access to Joe's changes get an even better idea and make some money for yourself. Of course Joe would have access to your changes, but that is only fair.

You all compete, make a better product and let the best marketer win. Oooops. That would be Microsoft, so never mind.

Oh well...

[Buzzwang]

It seems that whenever I get involved with something, it fails. I bought a ReplayTV unit some time ago, then Replay all but disappeared and is now coming back. I bought stock in 3DFX, who are now all but outta business. I also run FreeBSD on two servers and 3 laptops here, and now they are going away. Maybe I should just move to the hills and leave the world alone.

Regardless, I like FBSD and plan to keep using it. I'm currently downloading all that I can (via a schedule so I don't overload or hog the network)from the FBSD ftp servers so I can at least save some of it for future use. I've got plenty of space on my server, and I'm adding another 60gig shortly, so I'll be able to hold a good chunk of the info for awhile. I don't believe FBSD will go away and disappear because to many of the people involed/working on it just simply like it and want it to live. So, I choose to believe that it will continue in a diminished state for some years to come, and may resurface one day as a good OS to install/use. I'll keep using it as I have no reason not to, and I also like it. I would advise others that feel as I do to consider downloading and saving a portion of the materials so that they do not every become lost or unavailable.

My mind, my thoughts.

Re:In which case the chosen names are inappropriat

[styrotech]

Don't quote me on this, but I had some notion that the name OpenBSD came from after Theo broke away from NetBSD the new OpenBSD team wanted to make the dev process more 'open' and pioneered anonymous CVS for the entire codebase. The secure part came later, and the other BSDs have since used anonymous CVS as well.

Re:FreeBSD is dead

[V.P.]

He's not dead! He's resting!

OSX Pronounciation

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

So, OSX 10.01 is pronounced "Oh ess Ten Ten point oh one"?

Re:OSX Pronounciation

[benedict]

I guess so. Don't blame me, I didn't do it.

NeXT tried, and died

[SideshowBob]

Its been tried, and it failed. Now whether they could do things differently this time, or whether the market has changed and would be more receptive, is moot. Steve Jobs is in charge of Apple and since he was burned once, I doubt he'll try again.

RTFM is all about ego

[ClosedSource]

I think RTFM is entirely about ego and always has been. There are two kinds people: those who want to help other people learn and those that who want to feel superior by pretending to be too busy or important to answer a question. I suggest that anyone who is tempted to respond to a question with RTFM - don't bother to respond at all. A RTFM response is content-free anyway.

The 3 BSD's explained

[gruntvald]

• If you like to shop at amazon, FreeBSD is for you
• If you have a fast internet connection, and don't like paying for stuff, use netbsd
• If you find it hard to have a conversation with people because everyone is stupid compared to you, openbsd is the way to go

Re:Yea!

[Arandir]

You are an idiot.

Considering you said "GPL on the otherhand is the best of both free and proprietary," I would wager good money that it's you who are the idiot. Why in hell would I wish to use a license you claim is the best of proprietary?

Java on FreeBSD

[Starship Trooper]

The Linux JDK can be installed using the java/linux-jdk13 port (or linux-ibm-jdk13 for the IBM JDK). While the IBM JDK did give me some problems, I have yet to see any trouble using Sun's Linux JDK under FreeBSD; it even works under native-compiled Konqueror for applets. Tomcat runs fine for servlets, too.

Re:You haven't met Theo have you?

[skullY]

He's the reason I don't run OpenBSD. I've never met anyone who fell into the "arrogant jackass" category as neatly as he does. The only other person I've taken as immediate a dislike to is DJB

He may be an arrogant jackass, but he's never come across to me as thinking his OS is perfect for anything and everything, which is the attitude I was complaining about. He's just arrogant about how secure his software is.

The funny thing is, that's the sort of arrogance I like, and is one of the reasons I run his software. Then again, I also use a lot of djbware, for the same reason. They're two people who have earned their arrogance, and even though I'v been (indirectly) put down by djb(*), I still respect both of them and will use their software.

(*For those who are curious, DJB once posted to bugtraq saying that there aren't any patches to qmail he will endorse, and that mast of them are shit. I've produced a patch or two for qmail, and he's right. Compared to the quality of code he writes, my stuff and most everyone else's stuff is shit.)

Re:um hello moron!

[tve]

Perhaps he meant Questions & Assurance. :)

Walnut Creek CDROM?

[cpeterso]

Was Walnut Creek CDROM located in Walnut Creek, CA in the SF Bay Area? I grew up in Walnut Creek and I always thought it was funny/cool that a company would borrow the name.

Re:Walnut Creek CDROM?

[Jerrry]

No, it was actually located in neighboring Concord, way out near the Port Chicago Highway.

Re:Walnut Creek CDROM?

[fsdb]

But it did start in Walnut Creek, but quickly moved to Concord (cheaper rents).

Re:cmon, are you that NEW to the inter-ma-net?

[cpeterso]

Are there really that few of us left that remember the "..it's always September on the Internet" phrase and how it came about?

So what does "it's always September on the Internet" actually mean?

chris

Community

[ll5]

FBSD is not going to die, not with the amount of love and sweat that the users and developers put into it. I primarily use GNU/Linux, bouncing between Progeny and SuSE, but I like having a FBSD box around as well. I am amazed at the war of words brewing between the respective "Communities" found herein though! Most Linux users I know (and I encourage them whenever and wherever possible) are happy to try FBSD, OpenBSD, even QNX. They may not stay with it, but at least they can learn to appreciate the differences along with the many similarities. The funny thing is, you can put all of these systems on a network together and they interoperate just fine. Too bad the same cannot be said for some of the representative factions below. Why does it seem that the assholes are so much louder than the more open minded users? Oh yeah, MS users count too! Some things are better utilized with something like Win2K, media applications spring to mind for myself. Though I am really hoping that this http://www.demudi.org/ can help resolve that defeciency.

Merging BSD with Linux

[Taco Cowboy]

Looking at the bad (humiliating) treatment of BSD (specially the way the FreeBSD team has been treated) at the hand of the commercial/for-profit world, may I humbly suggest that perhaps it's time to combine the talent pool of BSDs (Net- / Free- / Open-) and merge their effort to Linux, so that their effort will NOT be wasted, or be humiliated again.

I do understand the underlying philosophical differences existing between the BSD and Linux, but that was _before_ the BSD being so humiliated.

The spirit of BSD is such that they produce stuffs for the world and EXPECT NOTHING IN RETURN, so much so that they even ALLOW those for-profit entities to RAKE IN TRUCKLOADS OF MULLAH (read: Apple/Sun) but the irony is that the artruistic spirit of the BSD team (while now only confined to the FreeBSD team, it may spread to the Net- and Open- camp as well in the future, who know?) has not only being violated, they are being totally humiliated by being singled out, given pink slips, and shown the door.

The second irony is that the humiliation is happening EXACTLY at the 10th anniversary of Linux's first code appearing to the world - which took place at 5th, October, 1991.

And by the way, HAPPY 10th Birthday, Linux !

I think that it is time to throw away the philosophical differences between the BSD camp and Linux. Merging the talents from both camps would be a plus, since the Linux camp's adherence to the GPL spirit - you ain't gonna exploit my contribution to the world and MAKE MONEY FOR YOURSELF ONLY - may be the ticket to strike back at the humiliation by those hungry for-profit baddies.

But of course, my humble suggestion will forever remain a suggestion. It's up to y'all to decide what to do.

Thank y'all for reading.

Re:WRS and SMPng [Was:fsck]

[Asmodai]

Please don't forget that WRS has provided most of the code that has enabled the SMPng project, the main one to justify the 4.x to 5.x release change.

Hmm, that's not correct.

A team of people got code and help from the BSD/OS developers, this code was significantly reworked, added to the FreeBSD sourcetree. Then this team continued development, part of being full-time WC-CDROM employees, and part as WRS employees. For all I know, Wind River never contributed code as a corporation to the FreeBSD Project. Unless you want to call paying those developers `providing most of the code'.

Re:Exactly! You got why the GPL is different from

[jacrawf]

This is also why Linux has more mindshare, marketshare and corporate interest. The god damn project (that being Linux) is able to survive and thrive because the GPL won't allow it to be taken advantage of.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this statment. Although it could well be possible, I'd also have to say that laws and personal politics had something to do with it.

Remember, back in the early '90s AT&T threw a big legal fit over some of their code still being in the BSD Unix sources. This effectively put the 386BSD and FreeBSD camps on hold for a couple of years because no one wanted to be violating AT&T's copyrights and have a screaming dog lawyer breathing down their necks. This was subsequently cleared up, of course, but it left many BSD developers quite confused.

Fortunately (or not, depending on your viewpoints I suppose if you're a true BSD bigot! *grin*) around this time, a fun little kernel project was started by the now semi-legendary Linus Torvalds in Finland. He didn't know much about kernels at the time, but didn't care for DOS and Minix didn't appeal so he set out to write his own. Linus, being quite the affable personality, quickly had quite a few people willing to help him out. Since there were no questions about AT&T's copyrights, no one was hesitant to jump in, especially with such a nice guy at the helm.

Some might go so far as to say that the Linux development community for a very long time was really a lot like a cult of personality. It likely wouldn't have mattered that the Linux kernel was licensed under the GPL or the BSD licenses; Linux would still have remained popular because Linus made such a fine benevolent dictator.

I could be wrong about all of this. Are there any early Linux developers around who would be willing to tell me that they contributed to Linux specifically because it was licensed under the GPL?

Also, I'm not convinced that the BSD license is a liability in, as you said, that it can "allow [the code] to be taken advantage of." Any code that is licensed under the BSD license never suddenly become non-free after all. There is nothing that says that if some proprietary company comes along and uses that BSD code base and then extends it to add new features and gizmos, that someone else can't do the same from the same code base and then release those changes under the BSD license as well.

This can lead to a lot of re-inventing the wheel, but in reality it doesn't usually happen THAT often. It can also greatly help with compatibility. There is a reason that BSD sockets are the defacto digital networking paradigm in the world and that is because anyone who wanted to was allowed to just yank out the BSD code from the kernel and adapt it into their OS. Heck, even Linux did this.

The same can be said for X because of it's less restrictive (as compared to the GPL) MIT license on the base source distribution from the X/Open gang. Sure, there are plenty of X implementations, and not all of them are released with source code, but all of them are generally highly interoperable.

Then again, I could just be highly delusional about all of this. ;-)

I do agree that the *BSD projects could do with a bit more self-promotion. Personally, I'd like to see OpenBSD wriggle it's way out of the security community and become more generally used. There are some very good things happening there, and some of their utilities (especially the PPP tools and the ease-of-use of most of the encryption related tools) are par excellence.

Re:FBSD folk not even friendly to those who RTFM

[david8210]

Yes, I encountered this problem toooo! FreeBSD core teams sucks!

Re:In which case the chosen names are inappropriat

[fsdb]

You can be quoted on this. You are correct.

The only embelishment I can add is that Theo wanted access to the NetBSD CVS repository. NetBSD would not give it to him. From that denal he felt everyone's desire for access and gave it.

There is no "GNU/Debian".

[CraigMcPherson]

According to Debian, the official name is "Debian/GNU."