Slashdot Mirror
August 2002 Daemon News Ezine Published
questionlp writes "The August 2002 Ezine has been published and is packed with articles and columns with topics ranging from behind-the-scenes look at VicFUG 2002, a report on the recent O'Reilly OSCON, one's adventure through Unix starting from Linux to FreeBSD, a HOWTO on backing up FreeBSD with tar and SMBFS, plus a look at some of the most popular web browsers (most of which are available in the BSD Ports collection)."
yay... i got the firostm splistme. i rule! yay! i'm so eereeet!
everyone here knows that the only good thing about bsd is the Daemon graphic, he's so cute!
OpenBSD sucks. Theo de Raadt sucks. OpenSSH sucks too. No exploits in the default install for 48 hours! Time to move to NetBSD and Kerberos5.
ummm, what am I saying Fist Prost!!!!!!!!!!
=========D ~
Don't point your readers to newsletters. Find the interesting articles and point to that.
Thank you.
I have been pwned because my
B;lkasdra asdfja aje ibanrapba graeog a aerogna aopregnaetb enapgregagbng a[gnre ergn gra!!!
The preceding makes slightly more sense than this article.
The newsletters are so boring!
:-)
I know this is gonna get me -1 flamebait, but at least I'm honest:
{{{
$ uname -rsm
FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE i386
}}}
Hmmm, on retrospect, the Linux mags are boring too, and the Windoze ones are even worse.
I recommend everyone to pop over to MP3.com and download Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie's "Every OS Sucks", can you tell I listened to it this morning?
YAWIAR.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
move on, nothing to see..
Not exactly BSD related, but I set up a server at work to do backups with smbtar on a linux machine. The problem is, that some users never informed me that they have 7+ gigs worth of crap sitting around in their directories that are backed up. So the tarball is over 7 gigs (according to ls), but as far as i know the file size limit is only 2 gigs. How does this work?
I heard on the radio this morning that this thread was found comatose this morning, August 03, @08:45AM, on it's home Slashdot. Even if you weren't a fan of BSD or the Ezine newsletter, you probably appreciated the benefits these two publications made to operating system development. Though new posts trickled in giving hope that this thread wasn't soon dead, the outlook is grim. The thread is as good as dead.
It will be missed.
I just heard the sad news on talk radio. Troubled linux company VA_Software was found dead in it's office this morning. Initial reports attribute the cause of death to it's IPO. There were no further details. Even if you liked LNUX, there is no doubt they lost a lot of money, and ruined a lot of lives. Truly an icon the Dot-con speculative bubble. It won't be missed, good riddance :-)
One comment in the Life After Redhat article stuck out. He loves FreeBSD and his systems are "upgraded once a week (all software)". Is this normal pratice? I still have SuSE 6.3 systems running.
Updating packages and update the system are two different things. A weekly portupgrade -a is one thing. A cvsup and rebuild of world weekly would be overkill.
However, it's so easy to do, I could see people doing it.
If your systems are as vulnerable as FreeBSD, wouldn't you want to keep the system updated with security patches as often as possible? This isn't an issue with systems like OpenBSD or Debian Linux which perform thorough code analysis for any security problems that are likely to arise. Look at how poorly Windows or OSX is coded and ask yourself whether you'd be willing to leave those machines running without patches.
You're the biggest idiot on this idiotic site!
>One comment in the Life After Redhat article stuck
:)
>out. He loves FreeBSD and his systems are
>"upgraded once a week (all software)". Is this
>normal pratice? I still have SuSE 6.3 systems
>running.
"Normal practice" varies depending on who you're talking to.
On the networks I administrate, I have a strict policy of "no unjustified upgrades", which usually translates to applying only security patches and relevent bug fixes. It might include new versions of software if, and only if, we're rolling out an enhancement to our services that necessitates it.
Part of the reason for being so restrictive is because we do QA and testing after every upgrade, so all upgrades have an associated cost in admin time. It may seem overly paranoid, but we've caught a lot of subtle issues that would have otherwise effected service to our customers.
Matt
Don't flatter yourself, fucknut.
1) It's development method is too formalised, it discourages people from just throwing a patch at things and becoming involved
2) BSD users are to the Unix world like how Mac users are towards Window users "Use my superior OS you inferior idiot"
3) They're obsessed with the opposition, they mention Linux, constantly
4) The logo is aweful and unsuitable. "Oh boss, I'm just going to install this software with a devil on it.."
5) Linux isn't as bad as they try to say it is. If you want quality, get a quality distribution like Slackware and not a hashed together commercial distro.
Could somebody please tell me? Why or why not?
I've found portupgrade so easy I use it once a day on my DevBox. Only takes 5mins unless something big needs upgrading. In doing this I've managed to fix several vunerabilities before I've even known they existed.
The only thing that stops me doing a build world more often than once a month is that mergemaster takes a little concentration.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
FreeBSD is, in fact, THE free Unix. Linux is a Unix clone. FreeBSD is based on Berkeley Unix, and is thus, a direct decendant of the original Unix source code, not a rewrite. Not that it matters much.
Yes, effecting service to your customers would be a disaster... You can do better without them ;)
And still no *BSD Is Dying post. He must have slept in or something. Or maybe they shut off net access at the asylum.
That is like saying Windows XP is a good OS because it isn't decended from Dos code.
It seems to be normal practice on Debian, probably because it's the best way to pick up the security patches.
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying.Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
The project has faced numerous setbacks in recent years, leading to waning developer interest and participation, a user-base migrating to Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X, and no financial support whatsoever.
How did it happen? Well, these were the main events. First, *BSD split into 3 incompatible projects - FreeBSD, which focused on 386 and 486 machines; NetBSD, which focused on little-used architectures like Sparc and PPC; and OpenBSD, which focused on minimal functionality and poor performance. This split divided the already-small community and served to set up bitter rivalries. Then, Linux came along and stole all of *BSD's press, funding, and much of it's thunder with its better performance, functionality and ease-of-use. As if that weren't enough, OS X later took nearly all of the desktop *BSD users. And finally, in what has all but spelled out the demise of *BSD, two core developers have quit the project. First, Jordan Hubbard quit *BSD to get an actual paying job at Apple. He made this move citing OS X's superiority, *BSD's imminent demise, and his inability to feed his family with the broken promises of an SMP-enabled kernel. Shortly after that, Michael Smith left, saying simply, "It's true, *BSD is dying."
Where does all this leave the IT industry at large? Fortunately, the IT world is now healthier than ever. The death of *BSD is simply natural selection at work, as companies leave the shoddily written *BSD behind and move ahead with Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
RIP *BSD.
While it may be an advertisement, it's a free service and the entire e-zine is based on OSS ... so ... everyone who keeps with the "this is stupid post articles from them" and "BSD is dead" ... chill
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
Get winshit then you know why your os sucks you fucking linux magots
>FreeBSD is, in fact, THE free Unix. Linux is a
>Unix clone. FreeBSD is based on Berkeley Unix, and
>is thus, a direct decendant of the original Unix
>source code, not a rewrite. Not that it matters
>much.
It doesn't matter, and it's not really accurate. FreeBSD is based on the 4.4-lite codebase, which is the version that removed the last vestiges of copyrighted USL (Unix Systems Lab) code from the Net/2 codebase released by Berkeley's CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) as part of a settlement agreement in the lawsuit USL pressed against the BSDI and UCB. So yes, FreeBSD *is* a rewrite.
And even that is somewhat irrelevent, since if you want to be pedantic about the term, UNIX is now a specification and operating systems which are certified to conform to that specification. None of the free Unixes have gone through the certification process, and thus are all "unix-like" and not UNIX.
Matt
(And just as one side note, even if none of the above was true, saying "FreeBSD is THE free Unix" doesn't make sense, since OpenBSD and NetBSD are also derived from the 386BSD codebase, and would therefore qualify under your definition.)
He's right, though. Customers may end up requesting things they don't really need. Sometimes it is better to educate them in how to use the tools that already exist than to install every little piece of software they all "need" at the time.
They pay us to administer their servers. I think we (administrators) do a better job if we keep the server stable and up than we would if we were just their lackeys.
Now that FreeBSD is getting more press, it's clear that leenucks has passed its prime is on the way down. Fortunately, once you're over the hill, you start to pick up speed.
"BSD ports"
:)
Uh. Ok, "ports" are what FreeBSD and OpenBSD call the third party package tree. NetBSD calls it pkgsrc (for package source). So please, don't assume that BSD (and I bet you usually mean *BSD in your slashdot lingo, like you would use "virii") uses "ports". Because BSD and *BSD means NetBSD too, and the word "port" means "architecture" in that operating systems. Yes, it's a seperate operating system to FreeBSD and OpenBSD, no matter how you like to look at it.
Posted for the soon to be popular organisation to ban generic BSD and *BSD references.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
And don't forget with the current rate of holes/bugs found it seems that some upgrade has to be made. But maybe it's just me that so unlucky to run the ones most affected lately. hrmph. :)
my sig
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone now knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
Is this normal pratice?
It is for me. Remember though, this is an upgrade to installed ports, not to the whole system. Ports includes everything above the kernel and userland. In Linux terms, it would be everything that isn't installed during a minimal bare-bones install.
Approx once a week I cvsup the ports tree, check for updates to my installed packages, and generally upgrade everything. For this week, it turns out that I can update cups-base, gettext, kdebase, mozilla, netpbm and qt.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
[npc@temple:(22:40:09):/usr/src/sys/kern]
>uname -a
FreeBSD temple.replaced.org 4.6-STABLE FreeBSD 4.6-STABLE #0: Sat Jul 29 16:13:18 BST 2002 root@temple.replaced.org:/usr/src/sys/compile/tem
[npc@temple:(22:40:11):/usr/src/sys/kern]
>grep "UNIX System Lab" *
init_main.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
init_main.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_acct.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_acct.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_clock.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_clock.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_descrip.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_descrip.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_exit.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_exit.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_fork.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_fork.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_prot.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_prot.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_resource.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_resource.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_shutdown.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_shutdown.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_sig.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_sig.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_subr.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_subr.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_synch.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_synch.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_threads.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_threads.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_timeout.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
kern_timeout.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
subr_param.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
subr_param.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
subr_prf.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
subr_prf.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
sys_generic.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
sys_generic.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
tty.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
tty.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
tty_conf.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
tty_conf.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_lookup.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_lookup.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_subr.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_subr.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_syscalls.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_syscalls.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_vnops.c: * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
vfs_vnops.c: * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
[npc@temple:(22:40:34):/usr/src/sys/kern]
>
You were saying...?
>It seems to be normal practice on Debian, probably because it's the best way to pick up the security patches.
Security patches, yes. But syncing with the CVS with all the "latest" stuff? That would be crazy for a server, wouldn't it?
Do you do this with portupgrade? It's pretty sweet :-)
It was a joke about the misuse of "effect" rather than "affect". Why am I not surprised that you didn't get it?
From: Jordan Hubbard
Subject: Resignation from FreeBSD core team
Guys,
After giving it a fair bit of thought over the last few weeks, I have decided to step down from core. I am doing this for a variety of reasons, any one of which would probably be sufficient grounds in and of its own and, taken in combination, certainly constitute ample justification for doing so:
The first and certainly foremost reason is a lack of time and energy. I simply no longer have the time to devote to doing what I would consider an adequate job of being a responsible core member and the "honorable" thing to do in such cases is clearly to step down and let the next election hopefully sweep someone else with more time and energy into the position.
Another reason, and I hate to say this but it probably needs saying, is that being in core is honestly not what it once was. For a old-timer like myself, who was used to a core team that was far more cohesive and generally on the same page, it's simply a painful experience a lot of the time. Perhaps this is due to overly rose-colored recollections of the old core on my part, and I do certainly recall us having more than our share of disagreement and inefficiency in the past, but on the balance core still feels too much like the pre-WWII Polish Parliment sometimes, where we're fully capable of arguing some issue right up to the point where tanks are rolling through the front door and rendering the whole debate somewhat moot. I'm also not blaming this on the democratic model we've adopted, a stance which would be hypocritical at best since I'm one of the folks who argued strongly in favor of it, but I guess it's going to take a few more iterations before we get it right. It will also probably be a lot easier for truly new people who don't have a lot of preconceived notions of what core is to make that happen.
Finally, it also bears noting that while being part of the FreeBSD project is many things, it should always be "fun" to at least some degree for its participants or there's really not much point in being involved. Being in core, where one gets to deal almost solely with conflict resolution and bureaucracy, is not fun in any sense of the word and while being in core constitutes the bulk of my involvement, without any cool development work (which I also haven't had time for) to counter-balance it, it simply leaves me with less and less enthusiasm for FreeBSD. Better to pull the ejection handle now than to let things get to the point to where I'm simply bitter and annoyed ALL of the time vs merely some of the time. :-)
While my time has been very limited lately, I hope to get back to a point where I can start actively contributing to FreeBSD again, and the best place for me to make those contributions is not in core. I would therefore like to officially tender my resignation and request that I be removed from the core mailing list at the earliest opportunity. Thanks!
- Jordan
I know this article was put up on /. yesterday, but I saw BSD and figured I still had a fighting change.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It's really quite simple. You can lock into the RELEASE version of the OS and only get critical updates that way. If you edit your /etc/cvsupfile so that this this is set:
/etc/cvsupfile" you will pull down FreeBSD 4.6.1-RELEASE-p7 today not 4.6-STABLE.
*default tag=RELENG_4_6
when you run "cvsup
Most productions systems are safe to update once a week that way. You will eventually need to do a real update.
Nobody likes you.
Personally I try to keep my entire system upgraded to -STABLE (rather than security-patches-only for -RELEASE or the bleeding edge of -CURRENT), and I manage to download all of the neccesary patches over a dialup modem. :-) Because I have a dialup modem I have to do it frequently though. I've never had any trouble from "cvsuping" yet, and it's so fast that like I said I do it over a 56K connection.
> It doesn't matter, and it's not really accurate.
It is accurate enough. If memory serves me right, only six files were removed from the codebase as part of a lawsuit settlement.
Yup. I don't know how I could ever live without it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
His use of "effecting" in his joke was correct, at least according to the dictionaries I have. So it wasn't a very good joke.
Some people do it to help debug and test the next release. Others are crazy about the latest new insignificant feature.
>npc@temple:(22:40:11):/usr/src/sys/kern]
>grep "UNIX System Lab" *
[snip]
>You were saying...?
And what percentage of the codebase is that? One percent? Even before 4.4lite, it's reported that 90-95% percent of the codebase was rewritten.
Let's say way back when I owned a Packard Bell. Some cool game comes out, so I get a new video card. Then I start running out of space, so I throw in a new hard drive. And then the phone company screws up and doubles voltage, frying my modem, so I replace that. And then I decide I want something faster, so I throw in a new motherboard, processor and memory. Then I want a DVD drive, but there's no room in the case, so I put move the whole thing to a new case.
Am I still running a Packard Bell because I happen to have kept the mouse and sound card from that machine?
If we're going to accept that logic, is Windows XP a BSD since it has Berkeley code in it?
Matt
>It is accurate enough. If memory serves me right,
>only six files were removed from the codebase as
>part of a lawsuit settlement.
And before that, 90-95% of the code base was rewritten. Which is why I said "the last" of the contested code.
Matt