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NetBSD in 2003 - Annual NetBSD Status Report

Posted by michael on from the rules-of-order dept.

jschauma writes "On February 7th, The NetBSD Foundation held it's annual meeting, during which the developers discussed, among other things, how NetBSD progressed over the last year and what things are planned for the comming year. The Annual NetBSD Status Report summarizes this meeting and provides an overview of past, present and future of the NetBSD Project, the NetBSD operating system, pkgsrc and the NetBSD Foundation both in general and from the perspective of each group, to give users and people interested in NetBSD insight into the project. Please join our mailing lists for participating in ongoing discussion, and see our web site for more information about the NetBSD project, http://www.NetBSD.org."

5 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. good report by H4x0r+Jim+Duggan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a pity such annual reports aren't more common among free software projects.

    One funny thing is that the pkgsrc section mentions a patch in the GNATS database to allow pkgsrc to run on GNU Hurd systems! (it already runs on GNU/Linux)

    I doubt any established distros are going to ditch their existing package systems, but if a new distro was to begin (as a non-Debian testbed for GNU/Hurd) - it would be worthwhile evaluating the *BSD package systems.

    --
    Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
  2. NetBSD Status Report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's been over an hour since posting and it's pretty empty here so far... Any else out there.. out there... there..? Hello?..ello..llo..lo? In all seriousness, is there any reason to really use NetBSD over even FreeBSD unless you have some extravagantly ancient hardware?

    1. Re:NetBSD Status Report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      True, this is the main reason why FreeBSD decided to get more Tier 1 architectures, because portability is a good debugging tool.

    2. Re:NetBSD Status Report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Portable code tends to be rather clean code.
      Clean code tends to run better and have fewer bugs.

      Yep. One of the more interesting ones to me was the new RC system, which when implemented on Vax was very noticably slower than the old one. I remember reading the whole thread on ways to resolve it. No flame wars, no little ranting "children", just a solid technical discussion on ways to fix it.

      It points out things when something that maybe adds .1 seconds to your startup on a fast x86 box adds *minutes* to the startup on your old Vax. Things like that might never have been noticed without it being so portable, and it leads to better code/performance for *all* platforms.

      Plus, having the same PCI card driver on your PC and your PPC Mac makes for easier fixes. Find a bug, fix it in one place, and all PCI platforms are fixed.

      I run NetBSD everywhere I can. The people on the boards are generally always very "professional", I don't see people getting flamed for asking "stupid" questions, and in general I see a lot of thought going into the *design* before things get implemented. I always find the Linux approach of "just start coding, figure it out as you go" to be a recipe for bad things... like a VM change in the middle of the 2.4 chain. Sorry, I want risk, I'll run -current. I want stability, I run a normal release. Never gotten bit on NetBSD yet.

  3. Is Linux a 501(c)(3) like NetBSD? by nutznboltz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is important in the US since if you are a citizen there and you donate more than a certain amount per year to 501(c)(3) chartible organizations combined and you turn in all the receipts you can complete write the donations off on your taxes and get the money back either as a refund or in lieu of taxes paid.