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NetBSD Packages Collection No Longer Frozen
jschauma writes "As many users will probably have noticed by the increase in recent pkgsrc
commits, the NetBSD
Packages Collection freeze is now officially over.
Starting October
6th, 2003 and lasting almost two months, the NetBSD Packages
team concentrated upon stabilizing the over 4,000
software packages and the pkgsrc
infrastructure to prepare for a stable pkgsrc branch. During that time, the
number of broken packages during a i386 bulk build was brought down to a mere
15, and a large number of PRs was closed.
A new branch with the tag ``pkgsrc-2003Q4'' was created, allowing our users to
maintain a highly stabilized third-party software package managment
environment, as only pullups of significant importance (such as security
issues) are applied to this branch."
Chock full of hearty goodness...
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. 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 of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
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.
...The cyrogenics have failed
The driver of the bus was negotiating a bend in the road when he lost control of the vehicle which skidded and crashed into a gorge, nearly 200 feet below. Residents of nearby villages and authorities found 22 bodies. BSD was among the dead. Its corpse has gone unclaimed, leading to speculation that BSD was indeed an orphan. Calls to former spouse Wind River went unreturned.
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 was stiff. Very common with corpses.
FOAD
It will be many centuries before technology can breath new life into a corpse.
Arousing the Stallion
Stallions are aroused by the smell of horse pussy above all else. If you have access to a mare, then gentle her till she will let you finger her...then coat your fingers with her juice.
Never. *BSD is dying, don't you know?
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.
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.
All our times have come
Here but now they're gone
Mac OS don't fear the reaper
Nor do the windows, SUN or the rain..we can be like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper
Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper
We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper
BSD's bought the farm....
Distro is done
Here but now they're gone
Romeo and Juliet
Are together in eternity...Romeo and Juliet
40,000 server crashes every day...Like Romeo and Juliet
40,000 workstations reformatted everyday...Redefine happiness
Another 40,000 coming everyday...We can be like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper
Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper
We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper
BSD's bought the farm...
Love of two is one
Here but now they're gone
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn't log on
Then the file was opened the wind appeared
The mobo blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith appeared...saying don't be afraid
Come on baby...and she had no fear
And she ran to them...then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye...she had become like they are
She had taken their hand...she had become like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper "
Somewhere, in a lonely hospital room,
*BSD is dying
The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers
Please put all horse pussy and cock posts under this one, thanks!
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac with Panther preview (a 8600/300 w/64 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.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It