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Nearly 2 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
Echo|Fox writes "So much for *BSD is dying. The latest Netcraft survey shows over 2 million active sites, and almost 4 million active hostnames all running on FreeBSD. Combined with the report that 5 of the top 10 hosting companies in terms of reliability were FreeBSD based, it's been a very positive month *BSD wise. Perhaps the most interesting quote from the survey is: 'Indeed it [FreeBSD] is the only other operating system that is gaining, rather than losing share of the active sites found by the Web Server Survey.'"
I thought BSD was dying...
And I don't have the "BSD is Dying" troll handy.
We still have the Natalie Portman and SCO dying trolls, right?
__
Seriously, I don't know why BSD isn't taken more seriously as a server. Linux is insecure, whereas BSD...
Damn, another troll.
I give up.
Does OS X count, when they sum up all the BSD machines?
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Same Story Different Spin
/ 13/132250 &mode=thread&tid=130&tid=185&tid=1 90
Maybe nobody was reading Slashdot on Sunday:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
* IS DYING (including BSD and NETCRAFT)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
All this time I was reading here that Netcraft confirmed that *BSD was dying...and now they say it's alive, has 2 million sites and is growing.
Maybe they should make up their minds ... ;-)
5 of the top 10 hosting companies in terms of reliability were FreeBSD based
:)
When in actuality the netcraft article says this:
"Intriguingly, all of the Top 5 placed sites run the FreeBSD operating system"
Slight difference there.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
This doesn't show anything! I'm a big fanboy for:
_____ -- put OS here
That runs:
_____ -- put web server here
And it's just as reliable and good as FreeBSD.
Hell, It's BETTER because:
___________________________-- put dubious statistics here
_______ -- put marketing rhetoric here
And besides, you can't do:
________ -- put proprietary technology here
with FreeBSD anyway so it's worthless!!!
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
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
I wonder how much the FUD from SCO might have contributed to this ...
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone 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.
[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
I don't believe the stats at all.
:
You see the trouble is that Netcraft is running on a dying platform itself. All they are trying to do here is to stop the rats jumping a sinking ship.
I will continue to post the TRUTH.
A *BSD joke:
Knock, knock:
Who's there?
*BSD
*BSD Who?
Oh come to think of it I'm dead. Sorry.
I found this article hopeful.. at first. It seems to suggest that the only reason BSD sites are increasing is because of mainly Yahoo and a few other hosting sites who use BSD. Either way, if Yahoo uses it.. people who work at Yahoo must learn to administer it. So that's good.. I guess.
Now, as for the professional "anon cows" who seem to dedicate their creativity to explaining the end of BSD, these arguments are disingenious. Mainly, the only thing that may or may not be dying is the current power structure behind the three named distributions (open, free, net). The centralized structure may eventually die.. and then BSD will just adopt the decentralized model ala Linux.
saying FreeBSD is dying would be like saying "Latin is dying" back when it started branching into its current variants. By making such statements.. one just shows how little they grasp what BSD is. Maybe people don't speak Latin today... but they certainly speak Spanish or Italian. In the future, people may not have a Main Office to hold their "I heart BSD" rallies.. but they will be using it.
I'm running FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE as a server/router solution. I've talked with linux users about al the amazing features it has and the stability it offers. All of have switched to FreeBSD. If you want to install something, you just look up your port in the ports list, you type: make install distclean, and you are ready. It automatically downloads it from a ftp server, if the first is down, it checks for a mirror site. It checks for all necessary dependencies and installs that too. I started with Mandrake linux and after that i'm in FreeBSD land. Never looked back since. Oh did i mention it has the Unreal Tournament and Quake3 server in the ports? One "make install" away for pure gaming haven for you and all your friends =P
Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
What we really need is more downmod options, like "Stupid fool", "Moron", "Cum-gargling gutterslut" or "Too inbred to think". Clearly these would be more specific to the type of BSD troll who links to early-90s filesystem research papers and claims that it has any relevance today.
--
My other computer is your IIS server.
Only other than what? It turns out, if you follow links, that Win2k3 server is the other gaining OS. They go on to say this:
Woo, 1/20th of their new sales come from previously linux sites.
*Makes hand-wank gesture*
...or in debian...
apt-get install nameofpackage
...or in MS-Windows...
Aaaah! Where do I click? How do I pay for this? I want my paperclip!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's easy to disassociate the nameserver from the OS using the ports tree so it's easy to upgrade the system and more secure since you can run in a change-root.
See this USENET post.
I'm involved in an Oracle on Solaris/sparc to Linux/Intel migration, and I can't but thinking why not also FreeBSD for the enterprise? It has the fibre HBA drivers for SAN, it has a volume manager, it has a very stable filesystem (moreso than ext2/3), it can run Oracle with Linux emulation libraries, has SMP, a fantastic TCP/IP stack, easy installation/upgrading of ports & packages.
I never used FreeBSD until a few months ago when I tried to get my favorite, OpenBSD, up on a very weird 1U Intel based server I picked up on eBay from a failed telco. Versions 2.9 to 3.3 of OBSD wouldn't work, it would hang in the idle loop FreeBSD 5.x has been running fine on it (don't know why)
What more proof do you need?!
*BSD is dead. Long live *BSD.
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 mere 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
Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate forSo why now the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
I've found FreeBsd to be a nice stable platform which I run my business on. No dowtime due to kernels oops. It just gets up and runs and runs and runs...
Yeah ok this is a pimp but FreeBSD just works and the package management is only second to debian (which I think is being ported)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
It tells you that you need to futs around and configure things. If I wanted to do that,
I'd install stuff by hand. I just want to update my ports - I don't think that's too much to ask.
Yes, I've submitted that as a bug. Yes, it was rejected.
Netcraft is dying!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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 infinitesimally 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
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone 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 [theos.com] 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.
Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera tells The Post's Deborah Orin: "As someone once said, people need people. And we look forward to returning to the way we were in the future and earning the support of our funny valentine in the general election." Not that Babs was overly generous for a multimillionaire - the maximum donation now is $2,000 but she gave $1,000 apiece. Also missing from her gift list was the only woman in the race, ex-Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, and the very most liberal contender, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio.)
Fags like us like the Anonymous Coward account more than anything!
"SCO is dying" a troll? Hell, they're being a bit loud about it, but they are definately starting to go through the death throes.
In a year or two from now... I'd expect "BSD is dying" might be replaced with "SCO is dying"... and then it'll only be funny 'cause SCO will be long past dead by then (as Slashdot newbies say "SCO-who?")
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
sho nuff
OK, I already know I'm stupid, so please don't feel compelled to point that out, BUT... Aren't these statistics based on IP addresses? If so, does anyone know how many actual boxes comprise the 2 mil sites?
Wait till SCO finds out about BSD.
All Unixlike code are belong to SCO......
Just because they don't own it, does not mean they cannot try to bill you for it, this is America!
I am sure SCO has stolen some code from BSD too.
9. "The report of BSD's death was an exaggeration." -- Mark Twain
8. "My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping." -- Rita Rudner
7. "Ours is not to wonder why, ours is just to compile or die"
6. "There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an SCO attorney? -- Woody Allen
5. "They say such nice things about OS's at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days." -- Garrison Kiellor
4. "Either BSD's dead or my watch has stopped." -- Groucho Marx
3. "*BSD rode in on a pale horse"
2. "I did not come to bury BSD, but to praise it"
1. "Please don't bury me. I'm not compiled yet"