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FreeBSD Core Team elections complete
imp writes "The regular elections for the FreeBSD governing board has completed. The new core team is the same as the old core team, with Scott Long replacing Greg Lehey after his resignation earlier in the year. Details can be found here."
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 OS hobbyist dillatant dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
New Core Team
=============
watson (196)
imp (181)
peter (164)
jhb (146)
murray (137)
wes (128)
scottl (125)
markm (109)
kuriyama (100)
Runners up
==========
marcel (98)
dfr (92)
obrien (68)
jmallett (47)
mux (47)
green (44)
cperciva (42)
alfred (41)
gordon (38)
benno (38)
krion (29)
josef (26)
hmp (21)
simon (16)
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Nuff said.
[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
PALLBEARERS
...FreeBSD's installer STILL hasn't been fixed to properly detect or accept correct disk geometries for IDE hard drives.
Oh well. It's not like getting the OS to actually install or cooperate with the BIOS is important or anything.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The toast is part of this complete breakfast.
"The regular elections for the FreeBSD governing board has completed."
Should be "The regular elections have completed."
That is all.
"If his patent is granted, Barrows hopes that when people make out their will, they also leave a parting video with their lawyer," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.
The hollow, talking tombstone will include a flat touch screen and will house a computer with a microchip memory or hard disk. It will be powered by electricity from the cemetery's lighting system.
The plan will not be the first electronically enhanced tombstone. An American company has a patent on a gravestone that will display photographs of the deceased and tributes from friends, according to the magazine.
But the Barrows plan will go one further by including contributions actually from the deceased.
"It's history from the horse's mouth," he said, "and the message is FreeBSD is dying."
Not that this news matters anyway *BSD is dead.
Haha, -1 Troll, here I come!
*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 personae?
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.
Here are their names. I guess the election page didn't want us to know how to find their postal addresses to track em down. 'No you can't take a nap, get coding!'. J/K thanks for all the development, you rock.
Greg Lehey [grog]
Warner Losh [imp]
John Baldwin [jhb]
Jun Kuriyama [kuriyama]
Mark Murray [markm]
Murray Stokely [murray]
Peter Wemm [peter]
Robert Watson [rwatson]
Wes Peters [wes]
Actually, using "dangerously dedicated" should remove any pesky geometry problems. He should try that. (If you don't have to dual boot on that machine).
I had a heck of a problem getting the goemetry right with my newest home box and its 120GB drive. If you must dual boot (and therefore need the right geometry in the fdisk partition table) you should try to get a second opinion from various other utitilites and then enter it manually. The Partition Magic DOS disks finally gave me something good.
I've installed FreeBSD on dozens of different machines and this was the only time sysinstall guessed wrong.
K.C.
That sucks. When the hell is it coming out, anyway?
I'm thinking about trying FreeBSD for the first time (currently using Slackware) and I was wondering how good it is as a desktop as far as responsiveness and low latency compared to Linux with the 2.6 kernel?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!