Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD Access Control Lists

Posted by michael on from the chmod-777-much-easier dept.

BSD Forums writes "The Unix permissions model has worked for decades due to its flexible simplicity. It's not the only approach, though. FreeBSD 5.0 supports Access Control Lists, which allow for more flexible permissions. Daniel Harris explains what ACLs can make easier."

108 comments

  1. first post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    step off bitch!

  2. BSD is dying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...that is why no one is posting on this thread.

  3. Now correct me if I'm wrong... by Ataru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But Windows NT has had ACLs for some time now.
    A lot of people have derided the concept.
    But as far as I can see, they are a complete superset of the Un*x system.
    It's pretty hard to argue that it's not as good.
    Discuss.

    1. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by nathanh · · Score: 5, Insightful
      But Windows NT has had ACLs for some time now. A lot of people have derided the concept. But as far as I can see, they are a complete superset of the Un*x system. It's pretty hard to argue that it's not as good.

      Other operating systems, including UNIX, have had ACLs before Windows NT even existed and the concept was derided then as well. This is not a "Un*x vs Windows" argument. Please don't turn it into one.

      The typical arguments against ACLs are:

      • ACLs add complexity to the filesystem code; making the filesystem slower, buggier, harder to write and more difficult to prove.
      • ACLs add an administrative overhead to the system. In a nutshell, ACLs can get messy very quickly. Very hard to debug certain problems.
      • ACLs can remove rights from accounts that actually need them. Typical problem is removing read-rights from the backup account.
      • ACLs require more complex userspace tools. This makes userspace tools bloated, potentially buggier and harder to use.

      The trick, as with all computing, is to weigh the benefits vs the costs. Sometimes you need ACLs and then it makes sense to introduce the extra complexity. Other times it makes no sense at all, so you dispense with them. For example, there's not much value in ACLs for an embedded UNIX with a single user (eg, a PDA). There's definitely a lot of value for ACLs with a multiuser UNIX or a UNIX fileserver. You need to decide when it makes sense to have ACLs and when to use UNIX ugo, not make blanket statements about one being better than the other.

    2. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by Ataru · · Score: 1

      But it is only necessary to say,
      "So why can't everyone do whatever the hell they want to any file they come across?"
      Over to you.

    3. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by Przepla · · Score: 4, Informative
      Typical problem is removing read-rights from the backup account.
      Well in FreeBSD that is not a problem, since operator account was designed to do backups. This user has a read-only right to any filesystem. You have to use root account to set no-dump flag however.
      --
      When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    4. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by nathanh · · Score: 1

      You didn't understand anything I said.

    5. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by scrytch · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > But Windows NT has had ACLs for some time now.

      True, and they have features that POSIX ACL's don't, such as more granular access rights and categories like OWNER/CREATOR.

      It also has this other charming feature: when you use the GUI, it sorts the ACL by name. And when you have global allow or deny privs on particular credentials, but specific other credentials that override them, they may work when you set them, then mysteriously not once you simply view them in the GUI, because the list has been reordered, and the first one wins. This sort of thing drives NT admins nuts. And there's no sign of it being fixed.

      --
      I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
    6. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Junior, BSD is dead. This implies FreeBSD is dead. What part of dead don't you understand?
      1. Grieve.
      2. Get over it.
      3. Move on.

      You're a big boy now. High time you started acting like one.

    7. Re:Now correct me if I'm wrong... by evilviper · · Score: 1
      But Windows NT has had ACLs for some time now.

      And Windows permissions are the single biggest pain in the ass of any permission system ever created.

      Want to add a new user to this folder and all sub-folders? Well TOO DAMN BAD! You almost always need to add the user to every single sub-folder manually. Of course, there are situations where the permission will filter down, but they are rare, and in that case, you haven't been using ACL's benefits, so you might as well have been using unix permissions. By god, I really don't know how MCSEs manage (actually I do, and the answer is that they don't, hence 99.999% of all Windows systems being very insecure).
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  4. Management cost vs. flexibility by Amit+J.+Patel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Flexible systems solve more of the initial problem but tend to be harder to manage. (Pick your favorite example: Linux vs. Mac, C++ vs. Java, Civilization vs. Quake, ...) What I worried about back when I used ACLs was that roles can change over time. Yes, I have some directory that Bob should have access to. Two months from now, Alice joins Bob's group and takes over his duties, so she needs access. Can Bob grant that access? Now what happens when Bob transfers to a different group? Who's going to go around checking all files accessible by Bob to determine which of them were accessible by him because he's working on some particular project and which were accessible because he's a good buddy of mine? What if you forget to do this?

    Keep it simple. If not for yourself, for your children, and your children's children.

    -- Amit (overgeneralizing)
    1. Re:Management cost vs. flexibility by Paul+Jakma · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, the answer is to assign the permission to a group, not to Bob directly. But, drat, then you are back to using groups. :)

      The prime problem which ACLs solve or rather work-around, is that users:

      - have no way to specify their own collection of users (they have to ask the admin to create a group)

      AND

      - a user can not chgrp a file to any group of which they are not a member (security)

      ACLs provide normal users a means to assign permissions to files by arbitrary users, and (iirc) arbitrary groups. But they are, as you point out, a management nightmare - while being a feature very few people actually need.

      --
      I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
    2. Re:Management cost vs. flexibility by Ataru · · Score: 1

      Roles can change over time, that is true.
      Under Un*x as far as I can see you have this "group" attribute that means that if you are a member of any group authorised to fuck with the file, you can fuck with the file.
      I'm sorry, this might have worked back in the day, when everyone was a beardy hacker, but nowadays it is asking for a bum-raping.
      ACLs, being a superset of the almost nothingness of Group Permissions, do have the disadvantage of being slightly more complicated. But then, the simpler system is obviously inadequate. That is a word that looks mis-spelled even if it isn't. Anyway, argue with that, muthafucka. Bo selecter.

  5. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    BSD is dying ;)

  6. My ACL for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Dead users - Allow
    Retard group - Allow
    Wankers(Owner) - Allow
    Sensible Users - Deny

    1. Re:My ACL for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Dead users - Allow
      Retard group - Allow
      Wankers(Owner) - Allow
      Sensible Users - Deny

      Its nice that you are setting up your computer so you can use it.

      Too bad this same set up lets you post public messages.

  7. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Does anybody know why it died? I really wanted to install it but from what I'm reading here, it would be about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

  8. Elegy For *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll


    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.

    1. Re:Elegy For *BSD by Ataru · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I use Linux
      They thought I was a fool
      But now I really realise
      I am a fucking tool

      I love Linus
      He is from Fin-a-land
      I love to lick his ringpiece
      It's not my favourite gland...

      But I want to suck his cock
      It's just like Blackpool Rock
      I want to make it pleas'r'ble
      I need him to explode

      In my orgy of Linux
      It's like the best of pinups
      Uh uh uh uh
      Uh uh uh uh

      UhUhUhUhUhUhhhhhhhhhh
      splidge
      fffufufufuuuuuuu uufufufufuffuuu

      uurrrrrgh

      I thank you!

  9. Why *BSD died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dead

    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

    1. Re:Why *BSD died by Ataru · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Fact me 'til I fart.
      Bitch.

    2. Re:Why *BSD died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why in the hell would anybody still reply to a *BSD is dying troll?

    3. Re:Why *BSD died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why the hell would anyone touch your feces infested cock?

    4. Re:Why *BSD died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ooh, Anonymous Coward, you're so brave. I've always wanted to be like you.

    5. Re:Why *BSD died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hoping to effect change?

      (If this was a VA Reseach/VA Linux/whatever they are now is dead post, the adminstration on /. would stop it)

  10. Developer lashes out: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    The End of FreeBSD

    [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.

  11. What We Can Learn From BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    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.

  12. BSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this BSD box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machine's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that BSD is a "superior" machine.

    BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

    1. Re:BSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dunno, the trolls aren't as creative, but the OS is pretty solid.

    2. Re:BSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The drives probably running in PIO4, if you're too stupid to RTFM you probably should check the man pages, etc. Or switch to an equally crappy Linux distro such as Roothat.

      *BSD is for the enterprise, not some stupid Linux fuckhead that runs it on their desktop and complains about it being slow becasue its not configured properley.

  13. How dead is BSD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    BSD is as dead as an AIDS homo sucking on a 70 KVolt
    high tension cable with a ground wire shoved up his ass.

    Lights out for BSD.

    1. Re:How dead is BSD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you feel better now? Have you considered how sad your life is? Give some thought to what mistakes you've made to bring you to this point. I wish you the best.

  14. helpful steps you can take ease your sorrow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Although it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take ease your sorrow:
    • deal with the inevitable.
    • grieve for your loss.
    • move on. Never let your emotions get mixed up with something as silly as a computer operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on. Hope this helps.
  15. ACL's rock. by craig2787 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I had a directory that I wanted 777 for all but user www. The solution was simple with ACL's; it eliminated the need for adding a new group for one measly dir.

    Go ACL's!

    1. Re:ACL's rock. by aminorex · · Score: 2, Funny

      You don't need ACLs in the OS for that.
      You need an ACL veneer over user/group
      permissions that dynamically allocates a
      new group as required in order to fulfill
      the constraints you specify.

      ACLs are one honking big bird to swallow
      in order to take care of the fly you
      swallowed earlier. I don't know why you
      swallowed the fly.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:ACL's rock. by craig2787 · · Score: 1

      I completely do not understand your post. I'm not even going to paste fragments to clarify, because I'd be pasting the whole thing. ACLs are cool beans, ok? Just leave it be, you'll be alright.

  16. printable version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    thanks for linking to the printable version, saves me a click!

  17. Default permissions by Col.+Klink+(retired) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not like FreeBSD is the first to have ACLs. Solaris and Linux both support them as well.

    One thing I like under Solaris ACLs is you can set a "default" permission. I always have my default umask set to 027, but I do some collaborative work in some shared directories and it's nice to be able to force any files created in that directory to be writeable by the group. ACLs on Solaris completely ignore the umask.

    Under Linux, however, the ACLs work with the umask. I can set default permissions for a directory to be group read-only and files created by someone with a 007 umask will be set to read-only, but I can't do the opposite.

    I believe Linux is doing the POSIXly correct thing, but I don't find it very useful.

    --

    -- Don't Tase me, bro!

    1. Re:Default permissions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe Linux is doing the POSIXly correct thing, but I don't find it very useful.

      Considering ACLs are built-into FreeBSD 5.X, and the Linux thing is a 'work in progress patch', it is not suprising the Linux ACL isn't useful.

    2. Re:Default permissions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You got your umask set to 027? Do you know what that means? luser!

    3. Re:Default permissions by someonehasmyname · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use that umask also. It means that files he creates are automatically chmodded to 640 and directories are automatically chmodded to 750.

      "man umask" will tell you that you need to subtract the desired permissions from 777 to get the appropriate umask value.

      You use numbers and not "chmod a+rw", right?

      --
      Common sense is not so common.
    4. Re:Default permissions by Nothinman · · Score: 1

      Are you using ACLs on XFS or another filesystem? I believe the XFS ACL implementation does support a default ACL, atleast in 2.4. With all the integration in 2.6 I'm not sure if that option survived.

    5. Re:Default permissions by Col.+Klink+(retired) · · Score: 2, Informative
      I'm using ACLs under ext3. It supports "default" ACLs, just not the same way Solaris does. Actually, the Solaris 2.6 man page for setfacl says:
      If a file is created in a directory that contains default ACL entries, the newly created file will have permissions generated according to the intersection of umask(1), the default ACL entries, and the permissions requested at creation time.
      However, the setfacl man page under Solaris 9 say:
      The umask(1) will not be applied if the directory contains default ACL entries.
      Despite the fact the 2.6 and 9 have opposite descriptions of their behavior, both 2.6 and 9 behave as described in the Sol 9 man page. Linux behaves as the Sol 2.6 man page describes.
      --

      -- Don't Tase me, bro!

  18. Oh suck my salty nuts.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet you owning a fucking mac as well.

    Bloody *BSD users - mindless zealots.

    1. Re:Oh suck my salty nuts.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh suck my salty nuts..

      Bathe more often.

      It will reduce your offensive BO.

  19. Slashdot ACLs ? by noselasd · · Score: 3, Funny

    Isn't it time Slashdot make use of ACL's to prevent the "*BSD is dying trolls" ?

    1. Re:Slashdot ACLs ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

  20. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    24658
  21. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    5961
  22. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    14124
  23. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    7443
  24. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    16743
  25. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    5970
  26. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    18310
  27. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    17814
  28. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    29177
  29. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    9822
  30. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    14487
  31. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    29528
  32. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    18950
  33. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    5661
  34. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    17474
  35. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    7194
  36. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    24548
  37. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    27171
  38. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    20969
  39. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    3708
  40. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    27904
  41. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    21812
  42. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    15356
  43. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    2618
  44. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    11326
  45. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    16947
  46. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    1094
  47. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silenty rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    1706
  48. Netware ACLs were best ever by swb · · Score: 3, Informative

    Netware ACLs were the best and simplest to work with. I still miss them. For those with no Netware experience, directories had the following attributes:

    Read, Write, Create, Erase, Modify, File scan (see directory contents), Access control (ability to change attributes for these properties for yourself or others), and Supervisory which enabled turning any of these bits on or off regardless of their status.

    IIRC, RF was the default permission. Subdirectories always inhereited the permissions of their parents, although the above permissions could be selectively blocked from inheritance.

    My favorite feature (which if 2K had would make life lots easier), was directory traversal rights were automatic. If I as a user have RWCEMF rights to directory BAR located in directory tree /usr/local/foobar/foo/bar but am explicitely excluded from rights to foobar/ and foo/, I can still get to my directory and only see just the directories I need to navigate the file system.

    Systems without traversal rights like this require some pretty convoluted logic to make them work, like home folders in Win2k. You need to make HOME readable to everyone so it can be mounted and people can find their home directories, but each user home directory needs inheritance blocked and specific user rights assigned. In Netware rights, you just grant the user rights to their directory, admin rights to HOME, and inheritance and directory traversal make it work.

    I hope BSDs ACLs include automatic minimal traversal rights and inheritance.

    1. Re:Netware ACLs were best ever by __past__ · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As far as I can see, the ACLs in FreeBSD/UFS2 (following the POSIX.1e proposal) just know the traditional read-write-execute/search permissions, only with more fine-grained possibilities to assign these rights to users and groups. However, the FreeBSD implementation seems to be flexible enough to support additional flags - in fact, the acl(3) manpage explicitly mentions nonportable functions for Netware style ACLs (and some others, like NTFS). I have no idea how to actually use that, however.

      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
    2. Re:Netware ACLs were best ever by swb · · Score: 1

      More fine-grained rights are nice, but they're probably not necessary, since you can pretty easily roll Netware's WCEM into unix W.

      What really makes the magic IMHO is inheritance and dynamic traversal rights (on-demand X right). You can make a sensible rights policy with RWX, but without traversal you end up doing some crazy stuff to make it work.

  49. Old news... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have no idea about Windows NT, but "real" operating systems of yore such as Honeywell's ancient GCOS (usually referred to as God's Chosen Operating System) back in the late 70s and early 80s, PRIME's PRIMOS (1980s) and Data General's AOS/VS (1980s) and AOS/VS2 (early 1990s) all had effective implementations of ACLs. Nothing new here.

    1. Re:Old news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      This bitch is dead.

      Fact: *BSD is dying

  50. BSD IS DEAD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    _d8b____________________d8b_______d8,
    _?88____________________88P______`8P
    __88b__________________d88
    __888888b__.d888b,_d888888________88b_.d888b,
    __88P_`?8b_?8b,___d8P'_?88________88P_?8b,
    _d88,__d88___`?8b_88b__,88b______d88____`?8b
    d88'`?88P'`?888P'_`?88P'`88b____d88'_`?888P'

    ______d8b________________________d8b
    ______88P________________________88P
    _____d88________________________d88
    _d888888___d8888b_d888b8b___d888888
    d8P'_?88__d8b_,dPd8P'_?88__d8P'_?88
    88b__,88b_88b____88b__,88b_88b__,88b
    `?88P'`88b`?888P'`?88P'`88b`?88P'`88b

  51. What can learn about *BSD's Failure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    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.

  52. BSD IN TEH GHETTO (Props to GNAA) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll


    BSD you grow in the ghetto, living second rate
    And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate.
    The places you play and where you stay
    Looks like one great big alley way.
    You'll admire all the numberbook takers,
    Thugs, BSD pimps and pushers, and the big money makers.

  53. Elegy for the beloved *BSD. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll


    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.

  54. The Failure of *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    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.

  55. Unix needs ACL's by big-magic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's face it. We've all known that the classical Unix security model (uid/gid) was not fine-grained enough for modern usage. But the problem has always been that the alternatives were complicated. That is the standard argument against ACL's. The reality is that this is a messy problem that doesn't have any elegant solutions. If there was a simple solution, someone would have found it by now. So, the best thing to do is to implement the current solution (ACL's) and make it work as smoothly as possible.

    I'm definitely not a Microsoft fan. But one quality of Microsoft that I admire is that they are not afraid to move forward in situations where there are no clean solutions. By contrast, the Unix community often gets bogged down in such situation and is unable to make progress for long periods of time. I realize this is somewhat unfair, since Microsoft developers get paid to do this grunt work. But if Linux/*BSD wants to compete directly with Microsft (as many advocates claim), it must do the same.

    1. Re:Unix needs ACL's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I'm definitely not a Microsoft fan.

      And you don't need to be one to know that ACL's have a VMS history long before Microsoft added them.

    2. Re:Unix needs ACL's by big-magic · · Score: 1

      I wasn't implying that Microsoft created the idea. ACL's are not the only situation where Micrsoft has forged ahead when there is no simple solution (while the Unix developers are left behind arguing about the "right" solution). As a matter of fact, there is probably lot of things the Unix community could learn by taking a second look at the details of VMS, OS/360, and other "old" technology. In particular, I've always thought we had a lot more to learn from the mainframe world.

    3. Re:Unix needs ACL's by guacamole · · Score: 1

      _UNIX_ has had ACLs for a decade now (Solaris, HPUX, AIX, IRIX, etc). It's only the open source unix offshots like Linux or *BSD are getting them too only now.

    4. Re:Unix needs ACL's by I_am_the_man · · Score: 1

      "ACL's are not the only situation where Micrsoft has forged ahead..."

      If you consider what MS has for their ACL's as "forged ahead" then you are mistaken. There is nothing intuative or easy about Microsoft's maze of file permissions and layers of confusion.

  56. Sad by Quill_28 · · Score: 1

    Good Lord, there are more -1 posts on this article, than 0-5 posts.

    So many losers so few BSD's articles.

    1. Re:Sad by The+Munger · · Score: 0, Troll

      You'd be a sore loser too if your operating system was dying ;-)

      --
      Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
  57. Teh loser is you (Parent should be -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    . 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.

  58. Girl hooked on *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    SEATTLE - A Federal Way, Wash., girl on a fishing trip with her family reeled in something right out of a science fiction film. Believe it or not, she caught a two-footed fish with a big horn.

    8-year-old Otilia Grasan was fishing with her family this week when she caught the strangest fish she had ever seen.

    "I was thinking that it might be a good pet and put it in the fish tank," said Otilia. "When it came up in the water the eyes were really glowing and the whole tail was glowing too. So I thought it was gonna glow in the dark." Fresh from the family freezer, Otilia showed off her catch, an odd looking fish about 18 inches long.

    You'd think a two-footed fish with a big, weird horn would be a rare discovery, but the truth is there are actually thousands of them in Puget Sound.

    Turns out the mysterious creature is a distant member of the shark family with a decidedly unglamorous name.

    "Yeah, this is the spotted ratfish [i.e. BSD trout]," said Wayne Palsson, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

    The so-called "feet" are actually modified fins used to latch onto females, helping big ratfish make little ratfish. The same goes for that handsome horn.

    And while many crave crab legs and buffalo wings, if someone offers you some fresh caught "fish feet," keep walking. Health officials say ratfish is poisonous and should not be eaten.

  59. BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is indeed anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 extremely 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. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  60. *BSD Lament by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    The End of FreeBSD
    [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

  61. Keys to Powerful Living by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Then Jesus told them, "I assure you, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, 'May God lift you up and throw you into the sea,' and it will happen. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" (Matthew 21:21).
  62. ACL's . .Good and Bad by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    95% of the time they just increase overhead for the admins, but for that 5% that you really NEED them for, they are a godsend...

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:ACL's . .Good and Bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I really don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this BSD box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

      In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

      I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machine's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that BSD is a "superior" machine.

      BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

    2. Re:ACL's . .Good and Bad by I_am_the_man · · Score: 1

      Can you say Troll?

  63. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It hurts 'n' stuff.

  64. OT: moderation correction by nutznboltz · · Score: 1

    oops, I mouse-o'ed while moderating. This post exists only to cancel that moderation.

  65. Access control lists no, mandatory security yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Access control lists are a primitive in search of a security policy. You don't want users, or even sysadmins, manipulating them directly. You want some defined security policy that they enforce, with tools that insure that all the access control lists are consistent with the security policy.

    Mandatory security is the way to go. NSA Secure Linux and LOMAC are the best known steps in that direction. LOMAC, from Network Associates, was a big step in the right direction. NA did that for Linux, made it open source, but stopped development a while back, possibly because Microsoft got nervous about improved Linux security. (Microsoft is known to have lobbied heavily against NSA Secure Linux.)

    The problem with mandatory security is that it really works. You then have to go and fix all the tools that cross security boundaries and shouldn't.

    The key project here would be to take NSA Secure Linux or LOMAC and make a mail server, a DNS server, and Apache work within the restrictions. That would be very, very useful.

  66. Bob Hope joins the BSD team by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    We must report with a heavy heart that Bob "I'm still dead" Hope has gone on to join the "B" team.
    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.
  67. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will only be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  68. Reducing redundancy when explaining ACLs by SlashCrunchPop · · Score: 1

    I was using ACLs long before I began using FreeBSD and I've reduced my explanation of ACLs to the uninitiated to the following dialogue:

    Mike: "My mama didn't raise no fool!"
    Bob: "So who raised you, then?"

    Show me a shorter explanation of ACLs and I will post a troll about Linux. Oh, wait, this was it.

  69. Fact: FreeBSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Heads up! Repeat:
    Fact: FreeBSD is dying
  70. B - S - D - E - A - D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Subject says it all.