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FreeBSD, Stealthy Open Source Project
zam4ever writes "Sean Michael Kerner has written an article on how FreeBSD has become a Stealth-Growth Open Source Project with various reasons outlined for FreeBSD's growth over the last years."
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Quandt also contends that FreeBSD is not currently on the same level as Linux when it comes to supporting heavy enterprise workloads...
:)
I was almost certain this paragraph was going to end praising FreeBSD over Linux, and I was slightly suprised to see this was not the case. FreeBSD's ability to cope with extremely high workloads is often cited as one of the reasons to use it over Linux in such environments.
However, I don't remember ever seeing any evidence of this, except that FreeBSD has proven itself time and time again on some of the largest, busiest internet sites. It'd be interesting to see how the two compared side-by-side in a real production environment. Perhaps someone can convince Yahoo to switch to Linux for a day
</ BSD advocacy >
I know for damn sure I'm one of those who's gonna seriously love having a 5-STABLE branch. :)
Damn tho, they need to stop talking to Linux people for these articles. I'm sick of hearing the GPL partyline.
If the article says "leverage the strengths" it's not for me.
FreeBSD is used on over 95 of the top 100 servers (greatest average uptime). FreeBSD is tested and true on the server-side in a way few linux distrobutions can claim. The closest any distro has come to actually matching reliability with FreeBSD is Debian. But even then, FreeBSD is still light-years ahead. I'm not really sure what inspired this article, but a simple google search reveals that BSD is the route most major corporations are taking with servers. So while I do appreciate GNU/GPL support, try to be less blatant. ;)
Woah, 3 devils on the main page (for me at least), all posted within a few minutes. Is BSD dying faster today or are they simply on Speed?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Uh oh. I read the sentence "Linux actually inherits a lot of BSD code" and immdiately thought of Ken Brown. Ken, if you're reading this (or having it translated into a version using only monosyllabic words) be advised that the preceding quote refers to GNU/Linux, not the Linux kernel that Linux wrote in a year.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
Though he acknowledged that a FreeBSD license can be simple to deal with, he thinks the GPL (define) license, under which the Linux kernel is licensed, fosters a better sense of community.
Right.
Hahahaha! I just RTFA and it's all based that piece of shitty non news that was posted in the BSD section a couple of days ago.
According to Netcraft, over one million new domains were hosted on FreeBSD over the last year, bringing the total number in its survey of companies using the Unix-variant OS to over 2.5 million.
Never mind the millions of new domains are just yahoo subdomains. *BSD's reliance on a few big vendors are the very reason why it's on such a downward spiral. If one of those do the Linux switch then Pffffft...
Face it, zealots. BSD is dribbling down the drain, like Janet Leigh's blood in Psycho. And just like Leigh in that movie..BSD is already, INEVITABLY, dead. Wake up.
Hope this helps.
That they're being accused of dying almost every other day on /.
WTF? Over?
It is now official. FreeBSD is Undead.
It has long been argued that FreeBSD is dead, but now new evidence is coming to light that it has been resurrected, and like a zombie process is lurching across the Unix landscape once again.
Recent growth in FreeBSD's market share, as reported by Slashdot, is evidence that a Faustian pact with the daemons has been made. Stay tuned for more on this recent development...
If Open(Free)BSD would give me HEAD, I'd use AND recommend it to my friends!!!!
-Fanks
The place is called the "Open Source" Development Labs.....got it.
Bill Weinberg then is quoted: "our mandate centers around Linux."
Then why is the place called "Open Source Development Labs"? Why is it not called the more honest "Linux Development Labs"? Why the deception?
over one million new domains were hosted on FreeBSD over the last year
Since OS X (Darwin) is based on FreeBSD, does this mean that the Netcraft figures counted OS X Server hosts as FreeBSD?
But why hasn't FreeBSD become as widespread as Linux? The answers may lie in its history.
That's roughly like asking: why do people eat less chocolate than they eat potatoes?
The answer is not history, it's that they are different kinds of "products" with different strengths and weaknesses.
I admin a web server at my university. I have to say *knock on wood* that it has stayed up and not been cracked into (yet). Unlike the previous web server running slowlaris 8, which has been broken into several times. We also have a linux server for the computer science majors, that also has been broken into. freebsd seems to be pretty solid in my experience. anyone have diffrent or same experinces as this?
The thing that sells me for FreeBSD in corporate environments is that FreeBSD is an operating system. The same group of people do the kernel *and* the OS. I've put a lot of FreeBSD boxes in production corporate environments, and I've never been bitten by the choice of OS, so I've become a pretty loyal punter. On the other hand, I just can't bring myself to put any OS that uses the linux *kernel* (there isn't an OS called 'linux' as best as I can tell) on a production enviroment - I've always had the impression that the Linuxes are all terribly fragmented, incoherent, and you never know what you're getting.
(by about now, all the script kids with mod points have cluelessly clicked the 'flamebait' button already... should I bother going on?!!! :-) )
In other news, I've become a really big fan of Gentoo Linux... it's just brilliant. I'm using it all kinds of non-production environments, and loving every minute of it. Bottom line though, it's too hard to sell something that is just a kernel as stable, reliable, and suitable for business.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I think we have seen some corruption problems over the net. Somehow SOLARIS was switched out with the word 'FreeBSD'. So the real statement is 'SOLARIS is dead'.
Sun seems to have realized this, so they say that SOLARIS will be open sourced. Why not? Then we'll see where they (Sun) took the code.. or, oh wait..
This isn't offtopic, it is funny. It is making fun of the usual "FreeBSD is Dead" trolls, in light of the evidence in this story that FreeBSD is rising in popularity.
FreeBSD is a "stealthy" open source project in the same way the Brooklyn Bridge is a "stealthy" public works project:
It's been there forever, doing its job, fully appreciated only by an informed minority.
PS: Neither are for sale. :-)
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I have several corporate systems consisting of Sun E10k hosts, Linux, and FreeBSD systems. In my experience, FreeBSD performs very well under heavy load, on par with Solaris and slightly better than Linux. Not that I'm downing Linux; Each OS has strengths and weaknesses, but the author seemed to indicate that FreeBSD was not suitable for corporate use and I believe that it is.
Don't things often swell up when they die?
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Until the BSDs get current Java support, I can't use it.
Agile Artisans
According to Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), which bills itself as a "center of gravity" for Linux development, Free BSD is on a separate path compared to Linux. Then why aren't they called the Linux Development Labs?
Let me say that I'm a happy Linux user, with 3 systems, each working fairly well (only one is in constant use; the others I use for fun). In my experience Linux is a very robust system (I've tried Gentoo and Red Hat, with Gentoo being my favorite), but I also tried OpenBSD. It gave me the feeling that if I got to know it better, then it would be great. But I wasn't into running a big server, so I left it alone. At some point, I would like to try FreeBSD, because it has a great reputation. I don't have the hardware right now, but I heard about a FreeBSD LiveCD that I would like to know more about. Why do open-source projects bicker among each other so much? Think "Life of Brian": Brian: "People, people, we should be fighting the common enemy." Fighters: "The Judean People's Front!" Brian: "No! The Romans!" Until Windows is brought down to an equal level, there is no reason to compete among Open OSs. After all, the *NIX (or *BSD) motto is: do one thing, do it well.
As far as stability and consistancey goes, only Debian-Stable approaches BSD, because Debian enforces a strict development and testing process (as opposed to adding in just any random unstable bleeding edge package because it is "new").
Where Linux does badly is in "out of memory" situations. I doubt a load average of 7 will, by itself, kill any system, but I've seen Linux boxes become unusable because of memory leaks -- hard reboot required, or equally bad, eventually some random processes get killed that bring the machine back up but all those processes have to be restarted by hand. Ditto if all those processes contributing to the load average of 7 required a huge chunk of memory. FreeBSD shines in this situation. If you configure enough swap space, it will usually get through somehow, if not, it will kill the offending process but not butcher the system.
WARNING: This post contains what may be perceived as FreeBSD criticism and GNU/Linux advocacy. However, I have an open mind and would like to hear constructive responses to the issues I raise. I like FreeBSD, I just like Debian GNU/Linux and NetBSD better.
I wonder what FreeBSD really has to offer that makes it better than the competition.
It doesn't enjoy the popularity and mindshare that GNU/Linux enjoys. People in the server world sometimes prefer it, but outside of this world Open Source = Linux (and, usually, = Red Hat), and FreeBSD is unheard of.
It uses a much more monolithic kernel than Linux, making it lose some flexibility. You wouldn't really want to use FreeBSD for an embedded system. (And I mean really low-end, not "we call it embedded because it's small, but it's actually powerful enough to run a desktop OS".) Linux and NetBSD are more suitable choices here.
Fewer drivers are available (especially those available as binary modules for Linux). Many applications developed for the GNU system won't work on a vanilla FreeBSD system. While this is the applications' fault, it still is a disadvantage for FreeBSD. It also has fewer binary packages available than Debian GNU/Linux.
It loses against Linux and NetBSD in terms of supported architectures.
It loses against Linux and NetBSD in this benchmark.
FreeBSD systems are easy to administer using ports, but the same can be said of other BSDs. There are Linux distributions using ports (or variants thereof), and apt is at least as convenient.
So what is left? FreeBSD (and also NetBSD) definitely has a more professional feel about it than many Linux distros. It has also proven itself many times in server environments. However, with GNU/Linux (at least Debian) beating it in technical and usability aspects, are these emotions really warranted? Then there is the license. I don't think either license (BSD or GPL) can be said to be better than the other, but there must be cases where the BSD license is to be preferred, so the license could be an argument. Is that what it all comes down to, then?
PS. I've heard many people complain about the Debian installer (the one used in woody), and I've heard the FreeBSD installer time and time again. Personally, I find the Debian installer vastly superior to FreeBSD's (which has failed a number of times, and given me a hard time making the right choices, especially when partitioning). Yes, I am a Debian zealot, but let me add that the installer I've liked best is OpenBSD's.
So, what's up with the FreeBSD installer being easy to use (except for me) and the Debian installer being hard to use (except for people who read the messages it gives you)? Is it really me, or are they measured against different standards (FreeBSD being for more technically apt people than GNU/Linux)?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
FreeBSD isn't transitively "stealthy" (the onus is on the mainstream media), it just isn't widely regarded as having the potential to challenge Microsoft on the desktop, and there has never been a FreeBSD IPO announcement. From the mass media's perspective, what layperson wants to read about FreeBSD's growth in the server market (or overall greatness) unless they can take advantage of it?
You lied to me, Slashdot troll, you lied!
Next someone will tell me Natalie Portman doesn't have any hot grits down her pants.
I'm losing my innocence.
A few hundred words of copy from a Linux advocate with a few choice quotes from a BSD advocate for balance. Other than the once-a-month "there is more than linux in open-source operating systems" there is not really that much in this article that is NEWS or worth reading.
Did anyone else pick up from the article that BSD was gaining vs Linux because it did not have the GPL legal baggage?
I never would have found it otherwise!
``How about a under 500 word license VS over 2,500 word license?''
May I recommend my own tutorial operating system? It has a kernel providing basic console services, and it's in the public domain. License: 0 words. Obviously, it smokes the BSDs, GNU/Linux, Windows, and all the rest!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I was a big RedHat/Linux user until about 5 or so years ago. I got sick of:
* The constantly changing startup environment and filesystem layout. I started typing "evolving", but that implies it was small changes for the better, not wholesale changes which weren't always for the worse.
* Kernel upgrades became a big nuisance, requiring me to track down a whole bunch of userland applications that needed updating for the kernel. to be usable (psutils, for one). Why the kernel and key kernel applications aren't packaged together is beyond me.
* The installer became more and more piggish, adding X11 elements even when I specifically told it not to. The portions were hard to remove, since they almost always were snared in RPM dependencies.
* RPM itself wasn't bad, but what DID drive me nuts about binary packages was the total absence of build documentation. So many UNIX applications have significant build-time options which are never documented in RPM. SRPM helped, but it was still an annoyance.
FreeBSD just seems how it *should* be. The filesystem and startup environment isn't static, but doesn't make wholesale changes. The entire system is rebuildable from source, applications are transparently and easily buildable from source thanks to ports.
FreeBSD's installer could be improved, though. sysinstall needs to be reinvented and perhaps have picobsd merged into it. I'd love to be able to install a variable-sized FreeBSD for firewall or appliance-type installs.
The article ignores the biggest obstacle that *BSD faced in its early days, which gave Linux a big head start: the AT&T lawsuit.
The FUD was flying and unlike today's situation with the SCO attacks, the open source model was not well known, and the idea of a free *BSD was not as established as Linux is today. The suit was eventually taken care of (AT&T had violated UCB's license terms, heh, heh) but the damage to *BSD's momentum was done, and Linux had taken a mindshare lead.
Recently I've actually been trying to determine which would be better for new low cost servers, FreeBSD or a hardened Gentoo style Linux system. I like BOTH OS's (imagine that), and just want to use what works best for the application. Unfortunately, the net is flooded with fanatical cult-like debates and arguments that seem to only prove ignorance on both sides. Does anyone have any compelling reasons to use FreeBSD over modern Linux? Sure, FreeBSD has proven itself as being the best in the past and certainly isn't a poor choice, but I want to know what's best NOW. The above mentioned benchmarks favour Linux.. are there others to confirm this?
``After all, the *NIX (or *BSD) motto is: do one thing, do it well.''
I think the arguing goes really well.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Maybe somebody can correct me if I'm wrong (and I know they will), but I don't think I've ever seen binary incompatibility brought on by a minor version increment in FreeBSD. With glibc, it seems that moving from say 2.2 to 2.3 is guaranteed to break your binaries unless you install the compatibility patch or re-compile.
was after a 7ong give BSD credit
Heh heh... so thats it... Darl is a Daemon Worshipper too!!!! We're takin' the crown back, boys!
A lot of "Daemon worshipper since ever" and "Tried Linux, didn't like it" in here. Some "Like both". A few trolls have been modded down.
But when looking at it, *BSD users are throwing praise at each others in here. It's not like anyone is arguing in here, because mostly people with the same opinion responded to the article.
But no one is really talking about why Linux has more market/mind share. Or why the kernel developers for Linux have created a technologically similar kernel without having a head start (i.e. a full UNIX kernel). Or why - if any *nix - is taught, nearly always Linux is taught at universities. What made Linux the platform of choice for so many people in so "little" time?
These are not flames. These are questions I'd really like answers for. And maybe the *BSD communities should have them, to take advantage of that knowledge!
Nothing gained from 20 somewhat posts of the style "I like the ports tree", "Me, too!".
Start asking: "Why isn't *BSD dominating the *nix world now?" Don't answer: "It doesn't want to." Because that's not true. Hear yourselves talk. You want to! But you don't.
So why? Don't give me the USL/Novell case. In the time from 1991-1993 Linux had not become a comparable kernel, it became after.
Is it the license? The more chaotic collaboration? Linus' personality? The anti-Windows stance? The urge for people to develop something new (that lured more developers)? Why is (almost virtually etc.) nobody talking of a FreeBSD desktop?
As long as a lot of people talk about history, or past successes, or think along "I always have done it that way / have used it" nothing is won for *BSD in terms of "innovation" (it hurts to write it). *BSD needs some new answers to the Linux question, not some self-content same ol', same ol'.
If *BSD asked these questions, found the answers for them, and used them, it actually again become the most-used *nix system.
Ever see those movies Airplane and Airplane 2? You know how there's those scenes where everyone forms a line to bitch-slap a hysterical passenger? Well that's what's going on here with all the "No" replies I'm getting. I already got a satisfactory boolean answer with the first posted reply- enough already! I was just wondering if OS X Server was getting market share but appeared as FreeBSD online, the way Safari identifies itself as Mozilla to web servers. I was just curious. I got responses from people who know their stuff. The matter is closed. Move along.
I love the BSDs, first played with them when Linux was a toy. When we were evaluating OSes for our Web Servers, we installed an OpenBSD machine and a Redhat machine and went to lunch. When I got back from lunch, before we could go to work, I was fielding calls that my new Redhat machines was launching attacks in Germany. We decided not to use Redhat at that point.
We recently started playing with FreeBSD 5 and RHEL 3 for comparisons... Quite frankly, I MUCH prefer the BSD ports to up2date, they are terrific. Both OSes are pretty good in the performance departments (OpenBSD while a rock, just couldn't perform).
Why did I switch to Redhat?
Redhat is simply moving in a direction that I like. Getting the machines to talk to our LDAP Server and Kerberos KDC (an OS X Server that does our central directory system) is a joke, as was straight LDAP before we started playing with Kerberos.
Adding software is a bit easier in BSD-land, because if I need to switch compile-time options, the ports are MUCH easier to work with than SRPMS. Granted that compiling source on Linux is easier, because most developers target Linux first, however, source tarballs are great for testing, not so great to roll out and keep track of across my networks.
Redhat support, while pretty mediocre at the low-end (RHEL 3.0 ES, $350/machine or so), I can put support requests in and get a response over time and get things escalated to engineering. With Apple Support, it's even worse, I can fill something out on Apple's bug report/feature request site, but I can't find out if they are doing anything on it.
It's a dilemma for a small company, you don't have the money to get the GOOD support from a top company, but dealing with a small company may get you personal service, but not the capabilities of the big boys.
FreeBSD is a GREAT system, and the ports/packages are a DREAM to work with.
The greatest thing about a BSD is how streamlined/stripped down the core is, then it is off to ports to configure.
The worst thing about a BSD is how streamlined/stripped down the core is, as making network configuration changes is just harder/more time-consuming, with multiple files to change.
FreeBSD, great OS, just not offering the easy-to-use Enterprise features that Redhat provides. Without the easy integration, it just isn't as easy for my little business to take advantage of everything that I can with Redhat.
Who the fuck moderated as insightful? This shitskull is speaking BS and it doesn't make ANY sense. Fucking retard go and lick your mom's shithole godamn jesus christ cocksucker.
But even then, FreeBSD is still light-years ahead
Ya, and that is why you just got SMP today..... while the linux community had it (8 years back that I can personally remember). Thats a lot of light-years.
I hope that was blatant enough for you. I have been running gnu/linux on my smp machines for many many years, and they do quite well (I program applications that perform md5 sums (a very proc and mem intensive app), and you can really tell the difference between a single and a double proc system).
Breakfast served all day!
The answer is No.
[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
Also if you notice the The socket benchmark, FreeBSD was optimized for when a process allocates in excess of 3500 sockets. Also in Measuring HTTP request latency you can see that there is optimization for when there have been in excess of 4000 requests. These types of clever optimizations are what sets FreeBSD apart.
Also keep in mind that absolute magnitude is not what is really important in these test results. The idea is that if your software scales well, you just get enough hardware to handle what you expect as worst case. The nice thing is that FreeBSD has some optimizations that are directed for scaling even better under some particular high load cases.
I would not say from these tests that FreeBSD performed much worse than Linux. In fact mmap syscalls are not actually used much except for mapping in dynamic libraries on many server type loads.
That's OpenBSD. Damn, man, it's two articles down on the front page.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
If you asked me whether it was a good idea to use FreeBSD on a desktop, I'd say "no." Any Linux distribution would get the same answer as well. However, for the production environment I highly recommend either Free or Open BSDs. as somebody who works on Linux and BSD servers, I prefer BSD.
The weird thing about BSD is that it does not want to dominate the market. It does work well and for some reason there is no hype associate with it. Linux, on the other hand, is overhyped in my opinion. IBM and Novell have been running an avid ad compaign in order to push their Linux solutions, Linux has a somewhat odd *fellowship* among its users and it seems that there are several distros that receive a good amount of support. Still, I prefer FreeBSD.
From my point of view, it is really easy to manage BSDs. Ports collection makes it possible for me to tweak out installs for my system before they even happen. If I want to use binaries, I can do "pkg_add -r" as well. Generally, I find FreeBSD to be a more polished operating system. The installation process seems to be very straightforward and I simply love updating the source and the ports tree from CVS.
Kernel security levels is the other thing that I like about FreeBSD. Also, I do like that it comes with its own compiler and that I can do a lot of stuff w/o installing tons of GNU libraries. But then again, this is just my opinion. Yours might be different. It seems to me that BSDs are better prepared for production environments by default. What do you think?
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.
The names match. The code never did. Alan Cox once
asked Berkeley to use the BSD code under the GPL
and was turned down. Thus, the BSD code could not
be used.
It's obvious if you look at the old code. BSD has
a VAX heratage, where pages were 512 bytes and
memory was costly. Thus BSD used the mbuf, with a
linked list of little memory blocks. Linux used the
skbuf, which involved a nice linear chunk of memory
for better performance on a PC.
FreeBSD is great, but I don't see as much hardware support as in Linux. I installed FreeBSD 5.2.1 on my box alongside Linux. I chose 5.2.1 because it supported all my hardware, while the 4.x didn't.
I liked the elegance, but it was REALLY unstable (worse than Win98), crashing all the time and requiring hard-reboots.
I'll try it again when 5.x-STABLE is released.
First of all, the AT&T suit was UNlike the SCO suit in that BSD did actually contain AT&T copyrighted material, and that took several years to remove.
Second, the BSD community forked like 6 times in the early years, and the resulting flamewars and nasty attitutes probably contributed much more to Linux getting a head start than the AT&T suit.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
If you mean consistency of user interfaces and package versions, I guess you are right. In terms of crash-proofness, you may not.
I tried to install FreeBSD 5.2.1 a few weeks ago and the installer had a kernel panic. Now you may say that's not the stable branch, but I've heard bad things about 4.8, too, stability-wise (sure, it may work for many, depending on their hardware configuration etc). I do know some options you can enable in Linux 2.6.6 which will make your system unstable (e.g., unfortunately, XFS, if mounted), but I never had an installer crash.
I love C++
I think I can answer this to some extend, or at least narrow it down a bit.
;-), but it was not at all known in the hobbyist/hacker/entrepeneur side of society, while Linux was. Grass roots and all that.
USL/Novel ended after 1993 IIRC and then the thing needed to be repaired and re-gather steam.
There was mailnly the lite and the net tapes to work with at this point from what I understand.
The dot com boom came much later (your reasoning has a time gap).
There was a split, actually NetBSD got established (from net) just before FreeBSD (from lite). Around 1995 ish the dot com boom started its rally. But the big linux boost was more like 98/99 along with the peak of the dot com dreams.
Meantime ISPs were starting up, many of which mom and pops. The interesting question is why the (new) techies went mostly for Linux (slack, debian, redhat).
Meantime the web started to roll. The first and perhaps last profitable web business is... porn. But they mostly went with FreeBSD, as did yahoo. So if power horses were needed they used BSD. Or if they weren't upstarts and had cash it was Solaris or something. A lot of this was already there when small upstart ISPs got around.
It cannot be argued that BSD was still completely in shambles at that point in time. So I have to agree with OP, although it can't be denied that the USL/UBC suit did a lot of harm and wasted a lot of time. It can't be the sole reason if it was good enough for Yahoo to use in, say, '96.
I think the real difference is in BSDs academic nature, which in the early 90s probably meant that it was only known at colleges (and at Sun, IBM and all of course, even at SCO at that time
If you're still with me, here's some things to muse about: did the GNU tools/userland and philosophy inspire a new (or older but "left out") generation enough to be a main factor? After all, "linux" is generally associated with "freedom" (which must have 42 definitions) and the C-64 generation (home computers), while BSD is associated with "unix", and by association "mainframes", and "70s". Anything but home computers.
And of course Linux was the antidote to "unix" before it became the proclaimed antidode to Microsoft. All things at its time folks... No doubt BSD will be humping along also.
So, wrapping it all up somewhat, after thinking this through, would the main difference have been that Linux and GNU became the haven of "the outcasts" (very generally speaking) versus the establishment (including universities and professional -- read unix -- IT in general) at a time when just that was needed? Compare with a goldrush or anything alike at any time and place when the jackpot just gets hit if you like, it's the practical opportunists that hit the jackpot, not the academics. So I'd say that it's a mixture of time and place, of ability (good enough), of availability and exposure (the Internet arrived, remember), and of attitude/character/social factors/counterculture and everything of the audience. I suppose also the desire to use this new Internet (and what was before, the phone hacking folks for example must have gotton onto the Net around the same time) to use the possibility to get in contact with likeminded people and if you initially have small circles they tend to find eachother and mingle.
I realize that this is much more grey in reality and nowadays in some ways the opposite seems to be going on in terms of Linux vs BSD relatively speaking, as perceptions and the whole situation concerning Linux versus the Status Quo has changed dramatically. And of course BSD can make good use of most software developed on/for Linux, especially on the desktop, and so while the Linux desktop matures, so does the BSD desktop. And that's good. We all win.
FYI, I have personally (seriously) used Debian 1998 to late 2000 and then tried FreeBSD and stuck with it since.
And I won't go into licensing. I do think that the GPL (or rather it's loudspeakers) cleverly appeal to both socialist-
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: X.org will not include support *BSD. The newly formed group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
Oops! :)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They most certainly are small-timers. By "major corporations", one typically means companies like BP, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Dow, Boeing, McDonald's, GM, and so on.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
All I know is that I don't even know how many times I tried before I successfully rebuilt the Linux kernel from scratch. The first time I did this with FreeBSD I was successful. The reason is that the documentation for FreeBSD is better. Better man pages, it's easier to find online info at freebsd.org than searching for a particular part of the ldp and just better quality. This conversation is starting to make me wonder why I let gentoo pull me back to linux and why am I using Suse now.
I agree that many people consider Linux from an anti-Windows stance. Most articles written about Linux in the "mainstream" press have one of two topics:
;)
"Will Linux replace Windows on the Desktop?"
"Will Linux make a dent in Bill Gates' earnings?"
But I think there is another thing about it:
The *BSD developer community - and I really don't know, whether rightly so or not - is often painted as being elitist. Maybe the open and friendly approach of Linus to kernel development was an inspiration for many people wanting to have their try at kernel development. (Like me - I'm currently porting a VME bus driver to PowerPC, and "porting" Linux to a single-board computer)
When most of your contributons are done for free by people committed to the idea of free/open software, a bad/eltitist reputation can be the worst thing to have.
Like with XFree86 - the project seems to be despised by nearly everyone who was denied the approval of the inner circle. You rarely read "good press" about XFree, depite all of its technological merits (I'd prefer a GUI without a client/server over network principle a lot, still).
Maybe this is all about outside perception and reputation. I don't pretend to know it.
Actually you are deluding yourself by mixing up the features of OpenBSD and FreeBSD. OpenBSD is not really very efficient. And FreeBSD is not nearly as secure as OpenBSD.
You can't mix both up just to make a point. It's more like this:
Guess why the penguin is popular. It seems to have the same priorities most people have, in the same order.
How do you exect Large Corperations to trust somthng that has a devil as its mascot, they all find a stuffed pengin much more conforting for some reason
If the intention of the open source community is to create an OS to rival Windows, wouldn't it be better if the BSD developers developed Linux instead - if you're trying to compete with the world's largest company, it's best to be united. BSD is dying, but Linux continues to grow.
I think this is a problem with open source. Although I love the idea of free software (although warez is also free), it seems that it lacks the unity that a paid and united company can have.
It is too bad that because BSD is dying no one will benefit from the wasted effort. We should have known better.
Consider this: computers are getting more and more popular; they are being integrated into more aspects of our lives than they ever were before, and now it's standard for people to own them. Another interesting combination is that personal computers have gotten cheaper and more powerful at the same time.
Of course, none of this is a new development; people could have and were saying these sorts of things over a decade ago, but the good thing is that it's still true.
What's newer is the fact that open source seems to have escalated since then; every day it keeps becoming a bigger and bigger deal. More large companies are working with it than ever before, development has increased, and code maturity levels are always rising. A linux system installed today is something really different than what I started out using only three years ago.
Okay, so what does this all mean, and what does it have to do with BSD? Well, nobody will deny that linux is the big thing, and, while linux gets most of the press, BSD has always been around, and BSD is always being further developed and improved upon at a rate not at all unlike linux. What's good for one open source software product is good for another, and it seems that BSD is chugging right along with the rest of them.
I don't have data like Netcraft does, and it's a mistake to make hard conclusions based on pseronal experience, but I've spent a bit of time on the #freebsd channel on freenode, and from that alone I see FreeBSD adoption/development taking place. Any time I go in there (the channel is a little crowded), there is always somebody there who has questions about FreeBSD; some of them are curious about it, some are trying to install it for the first time, some are new to their systems and need help getting started with a particular task, and some are a little bit more experienced but are still pressing forward with something new. These people are always there. Talking to some of them, you'd find that most were people who had been using linux and started using FreeBSD after hearing good things about it or simply developing an interest in something new.
When people aren't talking about learning FreeBSD, they are talking about projected development, new features, etc. And this is all very apt because new developments in this modern operating system have proliferated (just look at all the changes in the FreeBSD new technology release).
I can imagine how people might consider BSD to be something traditionally "old-fashioned", but to me it's about as shiny and new as linux, and I regard both systems with equal fervor.
Just to block criticism I already see coming, all of those ported apps are built into packages, and all are available, out of the box, via pkg-add in freebsd. The project has a whole cluster dedicated to building packages, and it also acts as quality control for the ports system: if an app doesn't build, it smacks the ports people in the face.
Ok, but how widespread are commercialized BSDs like BSD/OS, or whatever BSD commercializing attempts there are? (I really want to know)
And you can surely find BSD the same way in the Enterprise as you can find Debian: under a vendor name. Debian itself isn't used, but "enhanced versions" can be bought like from Xandros.
Shouldn't be too different for BSD, should it?
Talk about missing the whole point of the movie. Reg (John Cleese) asks "What have the Romans ever done for us?", expecting shouts of "Nothing!" instead gets "Roads", "Sanitation", "Education"...
Oh yea...
"What has Microsoft ever done for us?" "Common Platform", "Organized Documentation (MSDN/Technet)", "Support", "Organized testing process and software development lifecycle", "Leadership".
Oh yea...
Microsofti ite Domum. Now write that 100 times. And if it is not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
There are a lot of chances to improve FreeBSD advocacy (and BSD in general). Simplest example, Ports/pkgsrc and Gentoo. Suddenly, Gentoo comes out, everyone start to use it, I hear a lot about it, wonderful. {Free,Net,Open}BSD had such facilities for around a *decade*, I belive. BSDs need marketing!
If you were raised by very Christian folks or live in a very Christian town and you want to rebel, sometimes Satanism does make more sense.
What's it like tinkering with bones of the dead? *BSD is dead - it has been dead a long, long time already. Jordan stabbed it in the back and stroke the final blow. Maybe the two *BSD users just missed the funerals.
When deciding on a new server platform, we set up two machines, a Linux machine and a Redhat machine. I was the BSD advocate, my partner was pushing RedHat.
/etc /usr/local/etc system was brilliantly simple. All told, to roll out my machines it would have been installing the 10 or 11 packages that I built out of the ports, plus my notes on the dozen of files to edit...
I absolutely GOT everything to work on FreeBSD. The
I 100% agree that FreeBSD's BSD based file system is MUCH nicer to work with than RedHat's SysV/BSD/RedHat-specific attrocity. Setting up multiple IPs is MUCH better under FreeBSD, because the BSD file format is straight-forward, and RedHat's system is EXTREMELY complex, however RedHat's tools do the job. While the purist in me agrees with you about X11, the realist in me realizes that that simply involves checking the box at install that says X11. When I need to remotely update a machine, I fire up X11 on my Mac, ssh -X, and away we go.
Where RedHat rocks is: authconfig
For my network, where we use LDAP + Kerberos (or LDAP w/ StartTLS if I haven't setup the Kerberos yet), authconfig which will do LDAP, Kerberos, Hesiod, or even SMB and set everything up.
With BSD, I am stuck doing everything "manually."
My biggest gripe in Unix (being an old NT guy) is Directory Services. On an NT network, everything uses the NT Directory by default... whether that be the local users, the domain users, or Active Directory (that I'm admittedly not familiar with). With Unix, every application seems to want its own users/groups by default.
A Directory Abstraction layer (like PAM is/tries to be... pam doesn't really support Kerberos or other slick stuff properly) is the first step, but applications should USE that. Then the Unix "simple tool" model would work, I could use flat files, a local database, a PostgreSQL database, a *shudder* MySQL "database," or LDAP, and all my applications would work. Instead I need to teach each service separately how to reach my LDAP server, that's insane.
Realistically, RedHat builds most things with MIT Kerberos built in, which is nice. With FreeBSD, I had to build everything myself from Ports, which isn't really a big deal. However, on each machine, I'd need to go in and remember/write down all the configuration stuff. With RedHat, authconfig does the hard stuff.
I'm in agreement that BSD is cleaner, no question. The difference is that my observation is that FreeBSD is used/developed by/for ISPs, Yahoo, and other "big players" on the Internet where BSD is King. RedHat is pushing their Linux-based system into corporate America. As a result, I get to get an Enterprise-friendly Unix for my small business, and free-ride of all the stuff RedHat implements solely so they can go for those big accounts.
I doubt that my experience is normal by any stretch. I run an OS X Network (because we all have local PostgreSQL Databases with Apache/PHP) with some Unix servers, and my Unix Servers need to play nicely with my OS X Server. However, it is typical in that even if you evaluate FreeBSD because it's "better," the fact is it doesn't function like any NOS that IT people are familiar with. RedHat, for all its Windows-like weirdness, fuctions like a NOS. Moving between NetWare, NT, and RedHat is pretty straight-forward. You use the new tools, but it is the same principles of setting up a network operating system. With FreeBSD, it is down to the metal and learning what each application does.
Alex
If you do a little research you will find FreeBSD 5.2 has three features that make it a lot better for running MySQL and similar packages:
1. jails for security
2. Native support for mandatory access control, again for security
3. Support for large (> 2GB> files that actually works and has proven to work for like over half a decade.
While running as well as on Linux in all other aspects.
If you don't understand the value of those things for a server that faces the web and has to deal with large databases then I suggest you go buy yourself a brain first and retry after that.