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Wind River To Stop Selling BSD/OS
David writes "According to an article on Bsdnewsletter.com, OS company Wind River has said it will be stopping sales of BSD/OS on this December 31st, and product support exactly one year thereafter. Only 15 more weeks to grab the final 5.1 update before this piece of history might be gone forever..."
And no one cares. I have the feeling this may be the last season of Enterprise, especially now that they'll be up against WB's powerhouse, Smallville.
-10 redundant
-20 double redunant
HAHAHA u fAIL IT!!!!
no FP 4 U!!!
YHBT! YHL! HAND!
+1, Insightful
YHBT! YHL! FOAD!
I received the email first thing in the morning from the IT department. Our network would be undergoing a major overhaul to correct the ad hoc growth it had experienced in the last year, and starting next week Internet access would be sporadic. There would also be a new firewall and security measures, replacing the old OpenBSD system I'd managed to get installed last Spring. Happy for the heads-up, I went to work right away to make sure Linux had no place on our network.
Since the Open Source Mullet had been canned, a new threat had arisen at my workplace: the Fat Perl Hacker had assumed most of the Open Source Mullet's system and network administration duties, and it was no mystery to anyone at my workplace that he had a hard-on for Linux tucked away under his enormous, cascading gut. Since he was a major suck-up and workaholic, he had a lot more credibility than the Open Source Mullet-- this would be a real challenge for once.
That night, I went to work on my strategy. First, I would document the changes in Linux and OpenBSD since a year ago when we last went with a security plan. Linux was still at version 2.4, while OpenBSD had raced from version 2.8 to 3.1-- a major revision! This was good so far, and I included the relevant diffs for each. I wondered what the Fat Perl Hacker was up to and pushed ahead with my preparations.
Tuesday morning, I went to talk with the VP of Operations, who had final say on the network project. I wouldn't leave anything to chance. But after chatting with him for a few minutes, I learned of a major monkey-wrench I hadn't expected: instead of a Unix firewall system, he was planning on installing a dedicated firewall box-- running Windows XP Server. Thankful for my fortuitous social engineering, I went back to my desk and began making over my strategy to deal with this new threat. Not only would I have to deal with Linux, I'd have to eschew the Windows option now.
Sitting in front of my iBook after work, I realized that taking on Windows XP in the same manner I was going to deal with Linux would be foolish if not wasteful. Obviously the Windows option was not about numbers, anecdotes, or experience. It was a bean-counting decision and all of the security statistics in the world wouldn't matter. Since I hadn't the foggiest about how our accountants viewed the whole operation and didn't have time to learn, I'd have implement a rapid-fire real-life assault on the Windows box, which was sitting on the VP's desk awaiting its place on the network. It was time to put on my Black Hat, and that night I stayed up until 02:00 researching Windows XP vulnerabilities. Linux would have to wait.
With just two days before the network changeover was to take place, I marched into work Wednesday morning knowing that what I did in the next few hours would decide the fate of our network security. To my surprise, just moments after I had sat down, the Fat Perl Hacker asked me to join him for a cigarette outside-- away from the ears and eyes of the office. 15 minutes later, I was fully aware of the precarious situation I was in.
Joining forces with the Fat Perl Hacker was something I had thought about but hadn't wanted to consider. It was a double-edged sword, and I wasn't about to kid myself. Although I am damn good, he had another full decade of experience over me and that included office politics. If we aided each other I ran the risk of pushing for Linux, even if inadvertently. And I certainly wasn't about to reveal my anti-Linux research to him. After doing some quick scheming, I agreed to help the Fat Perl Hacker dissuade the VP from using Windows XP-- but I had my own twist to what would follow after. Knowing my shortcomings, I decided to do the only thing that would give me an edge. And that was doing something that I knew better than anyone else at my office: playing dirty.
After a power-lunch of strategizing, the Fat Perl Hacker and I went to work on cracking the Windows XP box into oblivion. We then called back
The real irony here is that you've now become the troll and don't seem to realize it. Looks like Darl's come out on the moral high-ground in this case at least.
or is kuro5hin.org really gay?
-10000 outsourced to India
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Don't feed the trolls.
Damn, I /miss/ those two!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Great story dude!
I thought to myself, the *BSD is dying trolls are going to have a field day.
Don't go there eh? Well, we'll just see about that!
*click*
Oh my god! My eyes! I'm blind! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents [theos.com] on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the generous goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that
dear *rolls,
dancing on this like it is the grave of all that is BSD is silly.... How many obscure linux distros die every day? Do you see them posted as major defeats to linux?
I am not a BSD user, but netcraft stats and Mac OSX are proof of it's technical sucess. The simple fact is if we want free software to succeed then there have to be choices, one of those choices is the BSD license that allows for projects like Mac OSX.
Recently I have been considering a move into some high end DV editing. There is nothing, nothing in the linux world that compares to Final Cut Pro 4 or Adobe Premier on the mac.... it would not be possible to use these technologies in a *nix environment if it were not for BSD-style licensing.
The simple fact is, most of us live in a capitalist economies - and one can only act within the environment one is given. In the future I would like to use GNU everything, but you can't leap to the end-point so quickly, there are steps inbetween that you can't skip (something to be said for communist experiments of the USSR and China here).
Well, your post deserves funny moderation -- but not for the tubgirl referene.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I miss OOG and "the Haiku guy". There were giants in the earth in those days.
I spoke to someone at Wind River and they told me that they are killing OSEKworks, and that it'll be like BSD/OS where they'll support it for 1 more year. I don't know if they have made that announcement public however. This was serveral weeks before this announcement. It looks like they are putting all their efforts into VxWorks.
Its simple.
Penis birds, hot grits and all other mannners of crap here have been stopped by management.
The BSD crap is allowed to happen because of an idea that if you push down the other OSes that are not Linux, Linux wins.
Management of this site has to make a decision to be rid of the BSD trolls.
Don't forget "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS!"
Of course, since that's in all caps, I need to put this in to defeat the lameness filter.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Thanks...I think.
:-)
Man, the mods are funny. The real goatse link is at +1 Troll with 50% Informative and my not-the-bad-tubgirl link is at -1 Troll. (For those who were afraid to click, the Google image search linked doesn't have anything gross, just a couple of almost-not-safe-for-work pics and a few safe ones.) At least I had a +1 funny for a little while.
Should probably post this as anonymous, but what the heck..two more -1 Offtopic's on the way. Enjoy.
It's a TROLL, you idiot JERKOFFS! It's NOTHING but FLAMEBAIT! Jesus FUCKING Christ. All you SCRIPT KIDDIES masturbating too fucking HARD to NOTICE??? Holy fucking SHIT. FLAMEBAIT. TROLL. Funny? Not really!