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EuroBSDCon 2004
Anonymous Reward writes "During the final weekend of October, nearly 200 people attended EuroBSDCon in Karlsruhe, Germany. The event offered a keynote by Apple's Jordan Hubbard, 23 talks organized in two tracks, a social event inside Luigi Colani's exhibition, and multiple coffee breaks to socialize. ONLamp.com has just published a report with funny pics..."
D-E-A-D!
I think that it would be a very interesting thing to have a conference where as many developers as possible get together for a week long party and idea mixer.
One where the developers of things like OpenBGPd could talk straight to the developers of FreeBSD about how to properly integrate it, showing what was done to make it all work on OpenBSD and getting it to on FreeBSD.
Where people that make the systems and tools are face to face with one another and actually interact. How better can anyone spot the various pros and cons of the BSDs and improve on them then bringing together the people that work on the different codebases and getting them to talk and read eachother's stuff.
I am not saying that putting Darren Reed and Daniel Hartmeier in seats right next to each other would be the best thing, but getting people together really could help out the quality of all the projects.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Jordan Hubbard is most definately *NOT* 23...
More proof that BSD are a lively corpse : "By the way, some time ago I heard an advocacy speech by Murray Stokely who said something amazing that I think we should write everywhere. If you take Linux as a unique movement, then it is bigger than FreeBSD, but if you take each distribution (per Netcraft's Linux OS detection statistics), then FreeBSD has more users than Red Hat. Did you know that?"
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 the Amazing 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 dead
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.
*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.
No surprise that Research conducted at Harvard in year *2000* (here's the full text) tells a different story: BSD's Soft Updates technology is on par with journaling on the whole, and in many cases it provides superior performance.
It's nice to see the GNU fans spreading FUD about BSD (this, and the whole "BSD is dying" campaign). One might wonder what's the difference between GNU and the big and evil corporations they hate so much, since they're using the same dishonest marketing techniques - and spreading FUD is really the most disgusting.
Luckily, the OS world hasn't been monopolized yet by FUD-spreading corporations and FUD-spreading communists. There still is BSD - and it's here to stay. :)
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
[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
Pros, Priests and Zealots : The Three Faces of Linux
By Rob Enderle
TechNewsWorld
10/20/03 1:32 PM PT
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/31899.html
Last week, in writing the column "Zen and the Art of Being Happy with Microsoft," I began to see parallels between Microsoft's image problem and my own view of the Linux community. Much as the Linux community sees just one aspect of Microsoft, the bad one, I tend to see just one aspect of the Linux community.
Generally speaking, our view of a person, initiative or company often comes from select perceptions. If you read Slashdot, for example, even regular participants seem to comment that much of the discussion there is not based on what people have personally perceived but on what they have read about others people's perceptions. Often, even these perceptions are based on second- or third-hand knowledge. My impression is that the vast majority of folks who are critical of my own columns have actually done a very good job avoiding actually reading them.
But just as many perceptions are colored by the opinions of what appears to be a large number of uninformed individuals, my perceptions -- and the perceptions of several of us in the media -- are colored in much the same way, and probably by some of the same people. So I thought it might be useful to share how my perception of Linux has been created over the last several months by a minority of those who back Linux. In reading this column, many of you might see similarities to how you formed impressions about Apple, Linux and even Microsoft.
In thinking through this issue, I've come to learn there are three general types of folks who write to me about open-source software: Pros, Priests and Zealots. My opinions of open-source software have been formed, to a large extent, on the basis of the activities of the Zealots. As you read this, put yourself in the position of an analyst or journalist faced with meeting similar people and ask yourself which group would have the greatest impact on your beliefs.
Linux Pros
The Pros are platform agnostic. They just want to get the job done, and when they write to me they simply want to make sure I'm well-founded in my position before they take what I've said and use it to back a decision.
The Pros generally see things like the SCO legal action as someone else's problem and have done their best to distance themselves from any related issues. They don't love Linux or Windows. They are simply focused on finding the right tool for the job.
Rather than picking and promoting a single platform, these Pros are the most likely to tell me of things I could have been more critical of on both platforms. Also, they actually spend time discussing what they like about both platforms. These Pros are balanced and opinionated but not religious. In other words, these are people I would either like to work for or have work for me.
These folks will spend an inordinate amount of time helping me understand the daily problems they face and helping me see what is important to them. If they favor any platform, it is often BSD because it is simply less distracting than any of the other platforms while retaining many of the advantages associated with Unix and open-source software.
In addition to being Linux or BSD experts, the Pros often call themselves Windows experts and generally live in mixed environments -- not because of some diversity driver, but because the environment grew up this way and is running just fine, and because fixing something that isn't broken isn't a priority for them.
Linux Priests
The Priests are nice people, but no matter what the question is, open-source software and Linux are the answers. Discussions with Linux Priests are more like one-sided lectures than give-and-take conversations. Priests can write page upon page of dogma, referencing link after link of online material, and they tend to be long on beliefs but short on facts.
What facts the Priests do have seem t
Hmm, yes very true very true. ...to anything.
But why is OpenBSD so slow, and does not scale well compared to
Like NetBSD in general is much faster and so is FreeBSD 4.x(5.x is still beta with dodgy scheduler issues).
Linux kernel 2.6 is a worry, but very fast, so whats left.
In any case thank you for the great programs provided by openbsd to the other more mature, stable nixes.
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=131228&cid =10982290