Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD Passes 9000 Ports
Dan writes "Kris Kennaway believes that the french/med port has the honour of being the 9000'th in the FreeBSD ports collection. Congratulations to everyone who has helped to make the Ports Collection such a success over the past 9 years!"
ITS ALMOST AS MUCH TEH GHEY AS LUNIX!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
[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. I
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 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
Based on the lack of activity in this forum, I think that it is safe to say that BSD users have been driven out by the trolls.... or they are just too busy downloading all those ports to actually come and post here. ;-)
- It's anarchy baby. Suck it up.
5000 packages after how long? A year maybe?
Naa, we've already updated our Ports for this morning. Both Source & Programs.
We are at work currentley making money, we don't have the luxory of summer vacation like the linux'ers.
As long as people like Poul-Henning Kamp lead the project it won't be worth using it. He is the reason why Matt Dillon was expelled.
Joseph Mallett
are assholes
you-know-what is d-e-a-d . . .
[ BSDhead #1 ]: Did you hear? FreeBSD has 9000 ports now!
[ BSDhead #2 ]: Crap! It is too popular! It has hit the mainstream!
[ BSDhead #1 ]: That's what I was thinking - lets switch to OpenBSD
and people wondered why I won't setup a local ports mirror for jvds :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
gentoo portage started on a moment that much more *nix software existed than when FreeBSD ports started
/dork moderators are once again on the cheap crack, and you are wrong.
???
What do you mean by this?
The way I'm reading it is 'gentoo portage was started before FreeBSD ports'.
If that is what you ment, the
Unless you can show gentoo and portage existed before FreeBSD and ports.
I want to get things working right so that I can release a Port version of Heartbeat but currently I cannot. Luckily it, by design, builds on FreeBSD and puts things into /usr/local/.../ and not /usr/... like on Linux.
This may be a factor why things aren't quite right (different versions of Automake/Conf/lib) .
UPS Sucks
I've been a FreeBSD fan for several years now. Had I been smarter when I was younger, I would have been a fan even longer than that :)
FreeBSD, IMHO, comes pretty darned close to Linux in terms of ease of install and, in many ways, exceeds it in ease of use. Configuration files are where you expect them to be. Utilities are named what you expect them to be named.
And, to tie into this article, the ports collection provides a wealth of great software. There's no issue as to which flavor of Linux you have... if you're running FreeBSD, the port will generally work on your system, whether you compile it from sources or download the precompiled package from one of the ftp mirrors.
Kudos to the FreeBSD team for all their hard work and for giving us such a stable, reliable, useful platform to develop and play on.
9000 ports in 9 years is like 2.7 ports a day. That's pretty impressive.
(not to equate quantity with quality, but still...)
congrats!
:-)
I've learned to appreciate both the version stability and back-patching done by Red Hat, and the wonderful selection of customizable ports offered by FreeBSD.
However since Red Hat seems to be abandoning the small end of the market, little by little, I find myself recommending and using FreeBSD for most folks, unless they need to admin themselves (red hat is a little easier for those folks).
Now somebody please just get a port for Berkeley's new XML database in there, and we'll be set!
After all it must have spent a large amount of time on the high seas.
thats, ..
port #1: port 22 ssh
port #2: port 21 ftp
port #1: port 80 http
uh
As you all may know, BSD has been part of the "B" team for quite some time.
The Year of Our Lord 2003 has been a particularly bad year for the "B"s,
- Bob Hope
- Buddy Ebsen
- Buddy Hackett
- Barry White
- BSD
This honored list of dead is but a small tribute to the many fans of the deceased.These dead were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.
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.
I'm a linux user that has recently given freebsd a try. I must say that I prefer it over linux. The only thing keeping me from switching full time is the lack of support for the triflex ide controller in my laptop (armada 7400). Linux just got it in 2.4.21 (maybe before in some patch somewhere).
If anyone knows of a driver in development any help would be greatly appreciated.
Jared
As you all may know, BSD has been part of the "B" team for quite some time.
The Year of Our Lord 2003 has been a particularly bad year for the "B"s,
- Bob Hope
- Buddy Ebsen
- Buddy Hackett
- Barry White
- BSD
This honored list in memory of the dead is but a small tribute from the hearts of the many fans of the deceased. These jokers were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.FreeBSD is dead, long live FreeBSD!!!! I've been using FreeBSD as my desktop for the last few years. It hasn't always been easy but it has been enjoyable. Since I started as a FreeBSD user the system has just got better and better. Big thanks to everybody involved in making this milestone possible. Here's looking forwards to the 10,000th port!!1
ported to 9000 CPU architectures ;-)
Has a Reiser4 patch been released for *BSD? No? Linux rules!!!
ok, just kidding.
I better get started!
/usr/ports && make install clean ...
cd
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.
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.
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.
Subject says it all.
One of the things I like about OpenBSD is that they actually remove crusty, unmaintained, or otherwise useless ports. I'm curious as to how well pruned the FreeBSD ports tree happens to be... Anyone?
first of all, kazaa can use any port to communicate on, including port 80, so unless your willing to block all net access, even to browsers, you cant stop kazaa, second your way off topic from the freebsd ports that were talking about. thanks for shopping at /. please come again.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
Does the phrase: "Crusty, unmaintained, or otherwise useless" ring any bells?
Elegy For *BSD
I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.
I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.
Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
The Failure of *BSD
Of course we can all agree that BSD is a failure, but why did BSD fail 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.
Yet another
crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD
accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the
latest 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 [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com]
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 hobbyist 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 dead
for real servers use real software:
Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.1998
Clean install using Full OEM
Uptime: 0:05:39:37
rock solid. tried and true. bsd is dead.
Not a BSD bash, or a ports manager bash, as they all do great work..
:)
Its just irritating when I keep running up to a port that just wont cooperate... Or one that doesnt have a cooresponding package, for low resource machines..
Again, its not a bash.. I love BSD and all the good parts of it... But nothing is perfect
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It hurts 'n' stuff.
*prods the body* halllloooo ??!!
Where have you gone *BSD? No one home. sob.
There is an interesting follow-up thread in the Nero-Online BSD Tech Center's message boards. Check it out.
I've been using Free for years as well as Open and Linux, and one thing I want to point out without sounding trollish is that FreeBSD, and certain distributions of Linux (right now using Slack9) have become extremely bloated.
When I order my Free cd's I never get passed using only one cd, and I know there has to be others who've done (and are doing) the same.
I originally switched from Mac (System 7.0) to Windows, then to Linux, then to BSD (Open) because at the time it was lightweight. Enough to accomplish whatever I wanted to do without having to wait for $X amount of uneccessary 's/garbage/binaries/g' to load.
After recently tinkering with an older machine I have here (PII 233) I decided to whip out Free and install it to tinker with it as a bastion host or something similar. However, after installing Free (4.1 at that) the machine was super slow (mind you it has 512mb of RAM), and I felt as if Free and Linux (which did the same after I fdisk'd BSD to try Slack on the machine), have simply gone the route of the `other` bloatware bandit known as XP.
MoFscker