Posted by
timothy
on from the how-many-shopping-days-left dept.
ocipio writes "FreeBSD 5.2 is scheduled to be released by Christmas. Recently marked 5.2-BETA, the ports tree is in a freeze and developers are asking for testing. A TODO list is available for those interested."
Viewable by non-subscribers!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
LOL! Slahsdot is teh Br0k3
*BSD is dying
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling
bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD
market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of
all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states
that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've
known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by
failing dead last
in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to
be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's
future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't
be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very
bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red
ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having
lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time
FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point
more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's
keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there
are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of
OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are
about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume
of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put
FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 =
36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out
of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI
is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major
surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and
its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will
be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle
could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Developer laments What Killed FreeBSD
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
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.
I
Re:*BSD: Think of it as evolution in action
by
cant_get_a_good_nick
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
A troll who actually read my post, and made a post from it? Personally I think it's really pathetic.
Trolls should either be:
FUNNY!!!
The Monty Python parrot bit is good. I laughed when someone trolled with a phrase from "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash. Even a post run through jive or kraut would be cool the first time. DO SOMETHING CREATIVE.
Some dumbfuck trollbot so at least there was some thought into auto-replying to slashdot. You may have had to read some perldoc.pod about libwww or whatever, and spent 5 or 10 minutes checking CGI docs. But even these are pathetic... the nut has already been cracked. The great skill in posting to a forum specifically designed for people to post has somehow been acquired before you picked up "learn Perl in 21 days".
Get a freaken life. Why does being able to post about an OS entertain you all that much? Didn't your momma show you enough love as a child? The direction of the Universe is chaos and entropy. You getting your jolleys on how you're "giving it to Slashdot, giving it to *BSD" is stupid, you're just another cog in the machine. Anyone can spraypaint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. It takes a real genius to paint it in the first place.
And of course, rants like these are just what the trolls want, so I'm fuelling the problem, yadda yadda....
At last, a new BSD troll!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Very nice. I look forward to seeing it 5,000 times.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL! Slahsdot is teh Br0k3
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
[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
Trolls should either be:
The Monty Python parrot bit is good. I laughed when someone trolled with a phrase from "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash. Even a post run through jive or kraut would be cool the first time. DO SOMETHING CREATIVE.
Get a freaken life. Why does being able to post about an OS entertain you all that much? Didn't your momma show you enough love as a child? The direction of the Universe is chaos and entropy. You getting your jolleys on how you're "giving it to Slashdot, giving it to *BSD" is stupid, you're just another cog in the machine. Anyone can spraypaint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. It takes a real genius to paint it in the first place.
And of course, rants like these are just what the trolls want, so I'm fuelling the problem, yadda yadda....
Very nice. I look forward to seeing it 5,000 times.