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Announcing WiFiBSD
flynn_nrg writes "WifiBSD is a minimalistic version of FreeBSD based on the 5.x branch. WifiBSD is aimed for wireless routers running on embedded devices such as boards from soekris.com. In addition to the wi driver WifiBSD includes support for Atheros's 802.11b/g and 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Chipsets. The latest version of WifiBSD can be found here."
Here's an article from IBM DeveloperWorks about making a wifi router.
pee ess bee ess dee is dying
[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
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.
While I'm glad to see BSD becoming more prominent and giving Linux some competition, I'm a little worried about something; the ongoing attempt to make BSD and Linux "all things to all people". In other words, to put these OS's on everything from small embedded chips in cell phones, to huge enterprise class server setups. I think this approach only creates more bloat in an OS.
Granted, you can take the source code, modify it heavily for your purpose (embedded routers in this case), and it might bear little resemblance to the parent OS. But is it still BSD or Linux then? How far can you alter it before it becomes a radical offshoot, and in truth, a different OS?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Aside from the Episcopal Church's heretical election of a sodomite bishop, the latest scandal in the collapse of culture is a high school in New York City which is being set aside for so-called "homosexual" students. Wisely, a Latino-American group is suing the city for discrimination and ConservativePetitions.com has mounted a campaign targeting the mayor of New York [ and BSD ].
Even more insidious and less publicized is the on-going infiltration of prep schools by pedophiles. Exeter and Groton are among the best boarding schools in the country and have even helped educate American presidents. Regrettably, these formerly Christian, highly structured, exemplary academies are being infected by pedophiles who find the boarding-school atmosphere a perfect place to exercise their power to convert underage children who are not at a stage of cognitive or psychological development that they can make wise decisions in this respect.
As one wise country singer has said, every teen-ager [ and BSD ] is confused about their sexual identity.
Several years ago, a scandal erupted in Exeter when it was found out that an art teacher had been raping, sodomizing and molesting the boys. Then the same thing happened at Groton, and a friend of ours called to tell us that his son had been abused and he was suing the school. His case made it to national headlines. Now, another headmaster is fighting for homosexual housing and for the homosexualization of the church [ and BSD ].
These perverted thinkers hide behind the now-disproved theory that people are born this way. Even if the fickle fate of scientific research should go the other direction, it would not be cause for bringing pedophiles into the prep schools. Children who are born with heart defects are treated medically to repair their heart. Children born with autism or schizophrenia are treated to help them overcome their problems. People who come out of homosexuality have expressed great joy and relief they're no longer caught in the sodomy lifestyle.
Furthermore, the majority of homosexuals say they were preyed upon when they were younger by an older adult. If colleges should be safe places for our children, so even more so should boarding schools, classrooms and churches. We cannot express anxiety about pedophile priests when there are pedophile pedants advocating sodomizing children in prep school.
In addition to the medical and psychological evidence on homosexuality and pedophilia, there is universal condemnation of sodomy in the Word of God. The problem with abandoning the Word of God is that countries which do so, and individuals who do so, stew in the bile juice of their own sins. As the book of Romans says, they will bear the marks of their depravity in their own body.
For example, Canada, which has been ahead of the United States on the road to sinful serfdom, is suffering the fate of those who stew in the juice of their own sin. SARS has marked Toronto as an infected metropolis, while across the border in the United States, the devastation has not occurred. Mad-cow disease, crop blights, strikes and all of the problems plaguing Canada are a perfect example of what happens when people abandon God.
Throughout history, the countries that abandon God have ended up in the same condition. These boarding schools will end up in the same place. For a few years, they will produce a crop of abused children and then fewer and fewer parents will send their children there until these schools become shadows of their former selves.
One well-liked, brilliant girl at one of these boarding schools wrote against this madness and was viciously attacked by a pedophile professor. The pedophile stages a benefit for returning alumni to convert them to their perversion.
The bad news is that these children will be corrupted. The worse news is that these pedophiles are sealing their own doom. Sadly, people of conscience, wisdom and understanding are failing to take a stand. As God warns us:
a: not me!
The project is based on minibsd, which is based on freebsd.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Subject says it all.
...and whilst that was a nice informative article, it was also noticeably linux specific (of course, you couldn't be trolling - not with a closing line like that). /., I think a few BSD targetted articles on configuring WAPs
This being the BSD area of
might be more apt.
That said, this WiFiBSD thing looks like a nice little development. Could well come in handy.
|>
Here be Dragons
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?
Get yo gruve on.
At least when WiFi vendors use linux, they are theoretically contributing their modifications to the public good.
If this works great, than WiFi vendors don't owe the community a cent.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Running a BSD based wireless router off a floppy has been possible with PicoBSD for years. I fail to see how WiFiBSD accomplishes anything, aside from distributing the floppy image, which has already been done by theWall
http://astutehosting.com/
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.
Background: http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/wcl/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/ NodeFactory
Code (in public subversion):g /factory/trunk/install/install.sh
g /factory/trunk/
http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-confi
http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-confi
Machines using the code: http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/wcl/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/ NodeMap
Though this one is a bit more fully fledged; as it also includes SNMP management and OSPF routing.
Dw.
This is great I cant wait to set up a BSD Wireless AP do you think that any vendors will get on and use BSD in Wireless AP
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
It hurts 'n' stuff.
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.
Hopefully this will get taken up by the others, OpenBSD and NetBSD. As far as I know, 802.11a/g are still a glimmer there. And I hope that the driver does not include a proprietary binary.
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 marketing 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 dilettante dabblers. If truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying