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."
86 comments
Viewable by non-subscribers!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
LOL! Slahsdot is teh Br0k3
5.2
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Is this going to be the stable release for the 5.x series? I really do hope so, it also seems kinda conveinient that its set for a similar release date as linux 2.6.0, looking forward to installing this anyway, cvsup isnt really an option down a 56k line!
*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
Update: 5.2-BETA released
by
cperciva
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Note that this is different from the name being inserted into the CVS tree -- 5.2-BETA is now available for installation via all the usual mechanisms (ISO image, FTP install, etc), without requiring a preexisting system.
Developer laments What Killed FreeBSD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· 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
A Lesson From The Ashes
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
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.
Elegy for *BSD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
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.
STRANGE ATTRACTORS
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
All species are subject to cycles of sustained growth and sudden calamity.
It is a rhythm as old as life itself, and is an integral part of the
evolutionary process.
The classical symptoms of a species in crisis
include:
Increased aggression
Sexual dysfunction
And disease.
It is a fact: *BSD is dying
Troll-in-one for the gay Linux fanboy wankers
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
All the *BSD is dying posts are contained in this one post to spare the BSD section of the heavy trolling. If you have mod points and you're a wanking Linux fagboy whose momma never loved him, please mod this up so that everybody will know your dark and dirty private fantasy -- that *BSD is dying, and that you masturbate like a monkey on drugs! There's no need to post your own trolls, as they will only be redundant and you'll make yourself look even more like an asshole than you already are!
Oh, and if I've missed any, please add your troll as a reply and I'll include it in the next Troll-in-one. Keep your flames to yourself -- I already know you have a distorted psychological need to imagine BSD as dying because it only helps to relieve the cognitive dissonance you are currently experiencing with Linux. In reality, though, it only shows a deep-seated jealousy towards BSD, which you'll go to any lengths to deny.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
The *BSD Wailing Song
What's left for me to see In my ship I sailed so far What can the answer be Don't know what the questions are. And after all I've done Still I cannot feel the sun Tell me save me In the end our lost souls must repent. I must know it is for certain Can it be the final curtain As long as the wind will blow I'll be searching high and low. Who knows what's really true They say the end is so near Why are we all so cruel We just fill ourselves with fear. And heaven and hell will turn All that we love shall burn Hear me trust me In the end our lost sould must repent. I must know it is for certain Can it be the final curtain As long as the wind will blow I'll be searching high and low Final curtain Final curtain
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
flask of ripe urine pressed to bsd lips bsd drink up
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
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 machines 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.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Almost everyone knows 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 erosion 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
Re:Troll-in-one for the gay Linux fanboy wankers
by
Grifter
·
· Score: -1, Troll
wow, never seen somebody spend soo much time trying to kill an os. Krazy... anyways, i was wondering where i go to sign up to be a linux fag and a monkey wackin off on drugs... you seem to know so much i was just wondering where you went?
PETA alert: Dead Meat
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
*BSD is dead meat, as they are wont to say say in
the butcher trade.
Calling all PETA members. Come in, please . . . *BSD is dying . ..
The Roadmap at FreeBSD.org says that RELENG_5 will arrive with 5.3. I've pasted the gist of it below.
"The original schedule of releasing FreeBSD 5.2 and branching RELENG_5 in September 2003 is being pushed back due to the complexity of the remaining tasks. The new schedule follows:
* Nov 5, 2003: 5.2-BETA, general code freeze
* Nov 19, 2003: 5.2-RC1, RELENG_5_2 branched
* Nov 27, 2003: 5.2-RC2
* Dec 2, 2003: 5.2-RELEASE
* Mar 1, 2004: 5.3-BETA, general code freeze
* Mar 15, 2004: 5.3-RC1, RELENG_5 and RELENG_5_3 branched
* Mar 22, 2004: 5.3-RC2
* Mar 29, 2004: 5.3-RELEASE"
Read it in full at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/5-roadmap/
Obviously this is still the Beta, but the plan is to eventually make 5.2 the start of the production/stable branch. I imagine that the final decision won't be made until after 5.2 has been moved out of Beta and officially released for a while. . . while the testing and Beta period catches a lot of things, there are always bugs that only crop up under the heavier/more diverse use that a final, official release brings. I would wait until 5.2 has been in full release for a couple months, and watch the incoming bug reports to see if there is something that specifically affects you, and after that I'd deem it ready to move things to.
FreeBSD is dying
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
You don't keed to be Kreskin
to look into FreeBSD's future. Even a child knows
that FreeBSD is dying. All
major marketing surveys show that FreeBSD has steadily declined in market
share. FreeBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are
very dim.
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.
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.
In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is
a dead man walking. It's a fact: FreeBSD is dying.
Does anyone know why the PowerPC port is moving so slow?
Because it is a new port for FreeBSD. Because it isn't x86. Because you aren't contributing code to the port:)
It really is a recent port. Give it a little time and the pace of the project should pick up.
-sirket
Re:PowerPC
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
"anyone know why the PowerPC port is moving so slow?"
It's hard to move when you're dead. Rigor mortis is a bitch.
Re:PowerPC
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Because much people (ehem, many programmers and developers) has i486, i586, AMD K5, i686, AMD K6, P IV, K7,..
And little people (ehem, few programmers and developers) has variants of PowerPC when www.pegasosppc.comwas emerged.
So, porting PowerPC will be very slow:(
open4free
Re:PowerPC
by
saintlupus
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It really is a recent port. Give it a little time and the pace of the project should pick up.
I asked Jordan Hubbard about this in a feedback session at WWDC earlier this year. He said that if the project isn't dead yet, it's certainly coughing up blood and clutching its chest.
Not too promising. The trolls might finally have a dead BSD to point at.
I recall in an interview with the FreeBSD core team them saying that if you want to run a *BSD on a desktop box, you should run MacOS X, rather than anything else. FreeBSD was targetting the server and workstation markets. Given the obvous respect the core team has for OS X, I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason for the lack of progress is that they don't see a point in the port.
Perhaps if non-Apple (and hence non OS X) PPC hardware were more common then interest may be greater. FreeBSD on an IBM PPC 970 based blade would make a really nice server platform, and may become a focus in the future.
It's not so recent
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
Goes back a while actually. The real reason that the PowerPC port is lagging is that it has one developer.
Lagging PowerPC port problem
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Funny
"Goes back a while actually. The real reason that the PowerPC port is lagging is that it has one developer."
That problem takes care of itself. Once the developer has a complete version, it means that 1/3 of all the PowerPC users will already have the *BSD port. It will be a simple matter for him to give it to the other two.
You can'tr kill the dead
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
You can't kill that which is dead: if it is dead, it is dead. We do not come to praise *BSD, but to bury it.
Merge of Darwin msdosfs, other fixes Not done Apple's Darwin operating system has fairly extensive improvements to msdosfs and other kernel services; these fixes must be reviewed and merged to the FreeBSD tree.
Since one reason the GPL people attack the BSD license so much is that it doesn't require give backs, it's good to see some people do the right thing.
Re:Merge from Apple
by
Brandybuck
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Sometimes when you don't treat people like potential criminals, you'll find that they "do the right thing" without being asked.
-- Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:Merge from Apple
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
well one SA, one patch, and one port of msdosfs isnt bad at all, as we know apple doesnt make any money with the MacoSX sales..... =)
but its ok, last thing we want to see is freebsd ads around the corner, i would prefer to see apple move with litigation support to bsd developers if sco moves forward with that III reich offensive
i know they pay some checks to contribs, but lets keep it that way or move the line a little closer but with caution. Theres no need to jeopardize this great OS, that is freebsd, by marketing procedures, or financial growth
Re:Merge from Apple
by
Groganz
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not to mention any improvements that FreeBSD developers make on top of that can be feed back into Darwin, and so it goes on. And noone has stolen any code:P
For crying out loud!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
You may be able to beat a dead horse, but you sure as hell can't kill it all over again.
dying in the BSD ghetto
by
Anonymous Coward
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· 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.
*BSD: Think of it as evolution in action
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
...Merge of Darwin msdosfs, other fixes...
Funny you should mention Darwin. The death of BSD is just an example of "survival of the fittest". Cyber-Darwinism. Adapt or die.
Re:*BSD: Think of it as evolution in action
by
cant_get_a_good_nick
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· 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....
Nice for the family
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
It is nice that they are releasing the body in time for Christmas. That way, no one will have to take any extra time off for the funeral.
Re:Nice for the family
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah, I reckon. It's nice to have the body of your OS this Christmas to celerbrate the release of FreeBSD 5.2. We thank you on behalf of the better part of the open source community.
this is not -STABLE yet.
by
anarcat
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· Score: 5, Informative
For folks wondering if this is a production release or whatnot, you might like to read the 5-STABLE roadmap, more specifically, the 5-STABLE schedule.
-- Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
Sheriff posts lookout for fugitive BSD developer
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
Area horse owners, especially those around Echo Lake, may want to
keep a close eye on their equine companions after two recent instances of
abuse and theft.
A naked man was found having intercourse with a
horse in a stable on McCaffery Road around 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 17. Flathead
County Sheriff Jim Dupont said the man, still nude, fled on foot when
the owner of the horse entered the stable.
"He left his boots
and a bottle of hand lotion behind," Dupont said.
Also found were a Yoda doll, Crisco,
and a ticket marked "FreeBSD anniversary party".
Sheriff's deputies concur that the suspect is an unemployed BSD developer.
The incident came just days after a Flathead County deputy reported
his horse missing. The horse had apparently been taken from its stable
near Echo Lake early in the weekend. The horse was back in its
stable by late in the weekend with traces of lanolin around its rectum,
Dupont said.
"It appears we have a serial horse rapist," Dupont
said. The sheriff's office is investigating, and Dupont advised
horse owners to be vigilant.
"BSD is dying, and there is nothing that these BSD
weirdos won't do in an act of desperation", he concluded.
What I know about BSD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
1. You can not play games on it. 2. It cannot be used by my grandma. 3. It lacks a GUI of any note. 4. There is no support available for it. 5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes. 6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform. 7. You have to compile everything and know C. 8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor. 9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux. 10.It is dying.
At last, a new BSD troll!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
Very nice. I look forward to seeing it 5,000 times.
Hard Times for *BSD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: -1, Troll
Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why?
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 personas?
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.
Re:Sheriff posts lookout for fugitive BSD develope
by
Incompetent+Troll
·
· Score: -1
Sheriff's deputies concur that the suspect is an unemployed BSD developer.
Sorry, this is a complete redundancy.
FreeBSD and its many flaws
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Troll
FreeBSD suffers from a couple of serious process flaws -- it is an
operating system which is truly at home neither in the open-source nor
the proprietary markets primarily because, although the source is open,
the development team is not. Furthermore the license allows proprietary
software to "steal" source code and use it. The combination of these
problems leads to a somewhat inferior OS.
Now, Apache uses a BSD
style license but they have an open development model which allows them to
take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of
their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist
which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open
source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the
reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing
hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in
part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is
a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not
due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat,
but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly
copied by their competitors AND they essentially lack the developer
pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the
Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to
save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the
development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In
many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I
don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into
competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result,
even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die
outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
I must speak out about *BSD!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
I must make it clear that:
1) *BSD is associated with the Devil (see mascot). 2) *BSD promotes anti-social behaviour. 3) *BSD encourages a homosexual lifestyle. 4) *BSD stands for destruction of the economy. 5) *BSD attacks the average man in the street. 6) *BSD allows no critisms of its mission. 7) *BSD harbours terrorists and other state enemies. 8) *BSD collects weapons of mass destruction. 9) *BSD believes in the enprisionment of mankind. 10) *BSD is dying.
It is with a heavy heart that we must report 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 token of adieu from the many fans of the deceased.
These dead were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.
A piece of wonderful descriptive art
by
RIP+*BSD+(It+still+s
·
· Score: -1, Troll
What We Knew All Along Has Been Confirmed
by
RIP+*BSD+(It+still+s
·
· Score: -1, Troll
It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying
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 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 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
Re:What We Knew All Along Has Been Confirmed
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Troll
See. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg. html
"Do not stand at my hard disk and forever weep. I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn's rain. When you reboot in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my hard disk and forever cry. I am not there. "
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.
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 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.
Re:5.2 et cvsup
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
cvsup is perfectly fine over dialup.... beats the heck out of downloading an ISO every release
Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
FreeBSD? In the immortal words of DeForest Kelley:
"It's dead, Jim."
Re:Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Dead? Thats funny. I'm using it right now to reply to your post. Seems plenty alive to me. Honestly...some of you Linux zealots are just as bad as the windows people. They all say "if it's not Windows I'm not using it!" In come the Linux zealots, the open source mirror image of the thing they despise, to proclaim "If it's not Linux...it's dead." Bah. You remind me of a bunch of shorts on the NASDAQ floor.
Re:Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Who said these are Linux zealots?
Re:Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Who said these are Linux zealots?
yeah its windows users that dont know that their tcp/ip stack is dead?
of course its linux users, ask any windows guy who is yelling, whining, advocating and bitching all the time ?!
LINUx users!:D
depiste no windows users post on slashdot! (im so sure of that as bush is of WMD in iraq)
*shrugs*
Re:Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Who said these are Linux zealots?
Who says it is a THEY?
I don't see these posts on daily.daemonnews.org.
Re:Notable quotables
by
tarius8105
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Honestly...some of you Linux zealots are just as bad as the windows people.
I like to view Linux zealots as the little children playing soldier in a sandbox, "You're Dead!" "No I'm not dead, I'm superman!" "No! I am superman"...If you dont know what I'm referring to, Linux people are the only ones who refer that their OS is the best in the world and nothing can top it:)
Re:Notable quotables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You remind me of a bunch of shorts on the NASDAQ floor.
Uh, there is no "floor" on which short sellers could stand on, at Nasdaq. It is after all a fully electronic exchange. Remember electrons? Those things in wires? Tough to stand on! -- a regular short seller
Oh yeah, FreeBSD rocks! You're soaking in it...
It's over. The thrill is gone.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Troll
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 endeavor 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 legitimize 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.
haiku
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Troll
flask of ripe urine
pressed to dead bsd lips
bsd drink up
FreeBSD is an excellent server OS
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
... my friend's company runs 30 Internet servers on FreeBSD, very reliable with long uptime!
Too little, too late
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to
save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the
development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In
many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I
don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into
competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result,
even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die
outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
I look forward to FreeBSD 5.2
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
FreeBSD has been the most stable OS we have ever used, it keeps getting better!
Keep up the good work!
FreeBSD 5.2 will make Linux freaks......
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
..... pull their hair out!
Linux has a longs way to go to catch up to FreeBSD!
No wonder Yahoo.com runs on FreeBSD!
Re:FreeBSD 5.2 will make Linux freaks......
by
MikeCapone
·
· Score: 1
Care to give some examples to back up your claim?
Oh, and Google runs on Linux. Checkmate.
(I'm just kidding -- I'm not really into the holy war myself... Both Linux and *BSD are great)
Re:FreeBSD 5.2 will make Linux freaks......
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Yeah Google runs on RedHat. But Yahoo is still the biggest website in the world and it runs on FreeBSD. And so does ftp.cdrom.com which is biggest ftp website in the world too. No matter what everyone says, BSDs are stil the big boys. Check it out here: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html I don't see any non BSD systems in there, not even linux. Do you? I think that speaks for itself. One word: BSD.
FreeBSD is great!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Slashdot Mirror
LOL! Slahsdot is teh Br0k3
Is this going to be the stable release for the 5.x series? I really do hope so, it also seems kinda conveinient that its set for a similar release date as linux 2.6.0, looking forward to installing this anyway, cvsup isnt really an option down a 56k line!
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
A couple hours ago, 5.2-BETA was officially released.
Note that this is different from the name being inserted into the CVS tree -- 5.2-BETA is now available for installation via all the usual mechanisms (ISO image, FTP install, etc), without requiring a preexisting system.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
[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
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.
It is a rhythm as old as life itself, and is an integral part of the evolutionary process.
The classical symptoms of a species in crisis include:
- Increased aggression
- Sexual dysfunction
-
And disease.
It is a fact: *BSD is dyingAll the *BSD is dying posts are contained in this one post to spare the BSD section of the heavy trolling. If you have mod points and you're a wanking Linux fagboy whose momma never loved him, please mod this up so that everybody will know your dark and dirty private fantasy -- that *BSD is dying, and that you masturbate like a monkey on drugs! There's no need to post your own trolls, as they will only be redundant and you'll make yourself look even more like an asshole than you already are!
Oh, and if I've missed any, please add your troll as a reply and I'll include it in the next Troll-in-one. Keep your flames to yourself -- I already know you have a distorted psychological need to imagine BSD as dying because it only helps to relieve the cognitive dissonance you are currently experiencing with Linux. In reality, though, it only shows a deep-seated jealousy towards BSD, which you'll go to any lengths to deny.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
The *BSD Wailing Song
What's left for me to see
In my ship I sailed so far
What can the answer be
Don't know what the questions are.
And after all I've done
Still I cannot feel the sun
Tell me save me
In the end our lost souls must repent.
I must know it is for certain
Can it be the final curtain
As long as the wind will blow
I'll be searching high and low.
Who knows what's really true
They say the end is so near
Why are we all so cruel
We just fill ourselves with fear.
And heaven and hell will turn
All that we love shall burn
Hear me trust me
In the end our lost sould must repent.
I must know it is for certain
Can it be the final curtain
As long as the wind will blow
I'll be searching high and low
Final curtain
Final curtain
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
pressed to bsd lips
bsd drink up
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
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 machines 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.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Almost everyone knows 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 erosion 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
Calling all PETA members. Come in, please . . . *BSD is dying . . .
Now that it's 5.2, is it safe to move mission critical systems from 4.x ?
Pretty Pictures!
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.
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. In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking. It's a fact: FreeBSD is dying.
Does anyone know why the PowerPC port is moving so slow?
Is this going to be an open-casket release, or a closed casket release? Is a wake planned for the night before?
With any luck, this will be the best Christmas EVER!!!
A new box has been released and is recommended for running your *BSD.
Please click here for more details.
Goes back a while actually. The real reason that the PowerPC port is lagging is that it has one developer.
"Goes back a while actually. The real reason that the PowerPC port is lagging is that it has one developer."
That problem takes care of itself. Once the developer has a complete version, it means that 1/3 of all the PowerPC users will already have the *BSD port. It will be a simple matter for him to give it to the other two.
You can't kill that which is dead: if it is dead, it is dead. We do not come to praise *BSD, but to bury it.
From the TODO:
Merge of Darwin msdosfs, other fixes
Not done
Apple's Darwin operating system has fairly extensive improvements to msdosfs and other kernel services; these fixes must be reviewed and merged to the FreeBSD tree.
Since one reason the GPL people attack the BSD license so much is that it doesn't require give backs, it's good to see some people do the right thing.
You may be able to beat a dead horse, but you sure as hell can't kill it all over again.
...Merge of Darwin msdosfs, other fixes...
Funny you should mention Darwin. The death of BSD is just an example of "survival of the fittest". Cyber-Darwinism. Adapt or die.
I don't see anything stating whether this will be another new technology release or production release. Anyone here know what it'll be?
It is nice that they are releasing the body in time for Christmas. That way, no one will have to take any extra time off for the funeral.
For folks wondering if this is a production release or whatnot, you might like to read the 5-STABLE roadmap, more specifically, the 5-STABLE schedule.
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
Area horse owners, especially those around Echo Lake, may want to keep a close eye on their equine companions after two recent instances of abuse and theft.
A naked man was found having intercourse with a horse in a stable on McCaffery Road around 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 17. Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont said the man, still nude, fled on foot when the owner of the horse entered the stable.
"He left his boots and a bottle of hand lotion behind," Dupont said.
Also found were a Yoda doll, Crisco, and a ticket marked "FreeBSD anniversary party". Sheriff's deputies concur that the suspect is an unemployed BSD developer.
The incident came just days after a Flathead County deputy reported his horse missing. The horse had apparently been taken from its stable near Echo Lake early in the weekend. The horse was back in its stable by late in the weekend with traces of lanolin around its rectum, Dupont said.
"It appears we have a serial horse rapist," Dupont said. The sheriff's office is investigating, and Dupont advised horse owners to be vigilant. "BSD is dying, and there is nothing that these BSD weirdos won't do in an act of desperation", he concluded.
1. You can not play games on it.
2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
4. There is no support available for it.
5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
7. You have to compile everything and know C.
8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
10.It is dying.
Very nice. I look forward to seeing it 5,000 times.
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.
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they essentially lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
I must make it clear that:
1) *BSD is associated with the Devil (see mascot).
2) *BSD promotes anti-social behaviour.
3) *BSD encourages a homosexual lifestyle.
4) *BSD stands for destruction of the economy.
5) *BSD attacks the average man in the street.
6) *BSD allows no critisms of its mission.
7) *BSD harbours terrorists and other state enemies.
8) *BSD collects weapons of mass destruction.
9) *BSD believes in the enprisionment of mankind.
10) *BSD is dying.
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 token of adieu from the many fans of the deceased.These dead were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.
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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 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 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
"Do not stand at my hard disk and forever weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you reboot in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my hard disk and forever cry.
I am not there. "
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.
Now I know what to buy everyone for Christmas!
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
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 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.
cvsup is perfectly fine over dialup .... beats the heck out of downloading an ISO every release
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 legitimize 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.
... my friend's company runs 30 Internet servers on FreeBSD, very reliable with long uptime!
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
FreeBSD has been the most stable OS we have ever used, it keeps getting better! Keep up the good work!
..... pull their hair out! Linux has a longs way to go to catch up to FreeBSD! No wonder Yahoo.com runs on FreeBSD!
'nuff said!!!!