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FreeBSD Status Report for 2005 Q2
koinu writes "FreeBSD Status Report for the second quarter 2005 has been published by Scott Long. It gives a more precise description of what is being done on the 18 Summer Of Code projects." From the post: "The Google Summer of Code project has also generated quite a bit of
excitement. FreeBSD has been granted 18 funded mentorship spots, the
fourth most of all of participating organizations. Projects being
worked on range from UFS Journalling to porting the new BSDInstaller
to redesigning the venerable www.FreeBSD.org website."
1st?
...boned?
Whaaa.... I just installed 5.4 and they're already thinking of jumping ship to a PRODUCTION version of FreeBSD 6.0 already?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Big Sack of Doodoo
Now that we've got that out of the way, I say we dedicate the rest of the comments to posting song lyrics, necro-erotica and ascii art.
FreeBSD status: still dead
The first guy on the list, Anders Persson, works in the same lab as I do and I had no idea he had a SoC project.
I need to get outside my cubicle more...
- shadowmatter
...Akbar!
*pushes detonator*
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 [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] 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 dbblers. *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
in spite of attempts to contain it at a private tracker that does not exist the straigh to dvd family guy movie that's due out in a couple of months is nowe available on bittorrent networks and usenet
called stewie griffin the untold story or somethinhg. funny shit. get it while the gettins good.
...dead?
SOMEBODY needs to have their asses royally kicked for letting 5.x out into the wild. From what I understand, both Matt Dillion and Jordan Hubbard both started saying they "have experience with a 4.4BSD derived OS" instead of "involved for x years with the FreeBSD project" simply because they're so ashamed of what FreeBSD has come to stand for: Piss Poor Quality.
What? BSD is still alive? You mean all the stuff I read on slashdot isn't true?
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
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 [samag.com] [samag.com]
in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to
be a Kreskin [amdest.com] [amdest.com] 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 dbblers. *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
FACT: BSD Trolls on Slashdot are 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
Hey man, it's Anonymous Coward. I'm sorry I said that I boned your operating system.
Is the wireless networking just someone scratching his own itch?
I had sort of a hazy idea of what FreeBSD is all about and it didn't include wireless. Maybe I've got the wrong idea about wireless. (Wireless == desktop (y/n)) Anyway I thought wireless was not required for a 'serious' OS.
What am I missing here?
I heard Netcraft even confirmed it.
you made it totally worth my time.
I though soft updates made journaling unneeded and everything slower?
Please enlighten.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
I think it's not fair to mark this as Google.
:)
Sure google's doing a lot to *many* OSS projects out theres - but the news article was about BSD, should be marked the reliable 'red' devil (uh.. daemon).
I guess half the comments would be about this
-1: Redundant
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
For FreeBSD, that was the last of the Mohicans. That should be in the status report.
I can't believe that this post is already at +2, with Informative mods. This is just another Anonymous Coward trying to post another "BSD is Dying" troll, just in a different way by posting some developer's dissatisfaction with BSD. If this were the real Mike Smith, then he would have signed in. "The End of FreeBSD"? Hardly. FreeBSD is growing in nice numbers, and FreeBSD is getting better with every release.
But in Soviet Russia BSD (Open, Net and Free) confirms Netcraft is dead!!!!
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
I actually laughed out loud. Praise be to Allah!
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Are these just trolls figuring it would easy to spark a Linux/Bsd or XBsd vs YBsd flamewar here...
Or is there a deeper reason for the dissension that I'm not aware of.
If it's just trolls, they and the moderators are working unusually hard at fighting each other.
I was thinking of putting some flavor of *nix on a spare machine at home. But the more I read /., the more I am leaning towards just letting the spare machine be a piece of non-functional furniture.
It is like going into some mythical hamburger joint intendding to get a burger and being confronted with a menu of 8000 burgers. And many of those burgers have multiple versions. "Chunky Munkey Burger V5.3"
I gotta get more of a real life. Call me offtopic or whatever.
There is softupdates, which orders things a bit. After a crash, there should be (knock on wood) only a few minor errors related to free space not being marked free.
There is sync, the traditional and fairly slow way. This generally provides unneeded determinism for directory operations. Normally we want as many pre-crash changes as possible, not just ones that can be made in perfect order. Some very unportable BSD software relys on sync behavior.
There is async, which plays fast and loose with everything. This works rather poorly on FreeBSD. It is likely that fsck will make a mess on boot, and illogically an async mount is slower than a softupdates mount. Linux has a nearly-true async, the default for ext2, that is very fast. (if an app explicitly requests a sync, the request is not ignored) The ext2 fsck is also extremely reliable, allowing for recovery of async filesystems that would be unheard of in the BSD world.
So that is:
- async
- sync
- soft updates
- full data journalling
- ordered data journalling
- metadata journalling
(and the patented obsolete delayed ordered writes from SysV, if I remember right)The really strange thing is that sometimes heavy-duty journalling can be fastest. This is often the case with mail servers which explicitly sync data to disk. A full-data journalling filesystem (as ext3 can be) may legitimately report completion as soon as the data hits the log, which is a nice big linear disk write. Other filesystems, though faster for normal use, will have to seek all over the disk before they can legitimately report completion.
Modern hardware screws all of this up horribly though. As the XFS developers discovered to their horror, power loss will corrupt data in memory or in transit to the disk before it stops the disk from operating. (yes, even when using appropriate fence or flush operations) Uh oh...
"I've been able to patch boxes running or 4.x for quite a while now, but jumping from 4 to 5, or in this case from 5 to 6 requires a complete reinstall."
It's very hard for me to believe that you've been running FreeBSD servers for years, and don't know that version to version upgrades can be done with minimal pain. Upgrades from one version of FreeBSD to another *do not* require complete reinstalls.
Yes, a 4.x to 5.x upgrade has the potential to be tricky, due to the major changes involved, but upgrading from 5.x to 6.x will not be a nearly as hairy.
Take a look at this email from one of the FreeBSD developers, in response to a question just like yours.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I think I speak for the rest of the Slashdot community when I say I am tired of the "*BSD sucks" and "*BSD is dying" posts I see. I view at -1 threshold because I don't care for someone else deciding what I should read, but I get annoyed when I see Anonymous Cowards posting these obligatory trolls. Netcraft confirms that *BSD is not dead. Some of the sites with the highest uptimes are running *BSD. I run NetBSD and OpenBSD on servers/firewall, and Gentoo Linux on my desktops, so I am not a *BSD elitest either.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
aw c'mon, just grab a splat-nix that sounds hip/interesting/mysterious to you and go with it, whatever flavor of splat-nix you choose they'll be plenty of zealots who'll make you feel like you did the right thing. They're all cool in their own way, they're free, and you learn one you've learned 80% of the others. The same software will more than likely run on all of them. I don't know why you got modded down, there ARE more Linux distros out there than any one person could name, and 3 no wait 4 BSD and now opensolaris...I could see why someone would throw up their hands and say WTF??!!
also...With Apple giving up on it, is it really worthwhile to develop a PowerPC port? IBM and others will still sell PowerPC hardware, but it's not going to be a major desktop/small server platform anymore. Big server and embedded, sure, but the middle is going away and FreeBSD lives in the middle ground.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
of th3 war8ing
...BSD users see cvsup, make *world, and mergemaster.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Oh come on. It's no more annoying than any of the many other trolls and LAME jokes here at Slashdot, and certainly LESS annoying than the Gay Nigger thing (and certainly less offensive). It's also less annoying than all the questionable "editing" that goes on here, what with all the dupes and crap stories. Learn to mentally filter out trolls and none of them will bother you, your blood pressure will be lower, and your quality of life will in general be higher. Just let it go, that's the price you pay for surfing a public forum.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Yeah, I wouldn't use a car right now, because so many people use different makes and models that it all seems pointless. In the light 99% of them choosing the wrong model, I guess the right decision is not to use any of them at all!
"Old man yells at systemd"
It's not just the write cache. In fact, it's not
that at all, because I stated that appropriate
fence or flush operations are being used.
Power is cut. The motherboard chips start to
suffer a bit, corrupting data as it moves over
the various busses. Meanwhile, the disk is doing
just fine. Corrupt data arrives at the disk, and
is stored as it arrives.
Ouch. Bummer. What are you going to do? Cry?
Really fancy filesystems tend to fall apart
when they get corrupted a bit. Filesystems
with less imaginative designs may be fixable.
Perhaps you'd better checksum your data.
Better yet, do like Google. Replicate your
data at many different physical locations.
(still with a checksum, just in case)
Google did bring in some $90000 worth of support through their Summer of Code project.
Not to mention the remaining 1.91M they spent on other projects. FreeBSD just one of about 40 projects mentoring 400 students. The Nmap Security Scanner project is mentoring 10 of them, who have already produced great work! A list of their credentials and projects is available here. I'll give an update on their progress at my Defcon Presentation this Friday at 10AM.
Meanwhile, many of the other SoC mentors have posted details on the projects being worked on. For example,
- NetBSD
- Gaim
- Inksape
- MozDev
- WinLibre (with pics!).
Cheers,Fyodor @ Insecure.Org
I like to think of FreeBSD as starting to become what Linux could have if Linux hadn't fragmented into a million distributions that did nothing but squabble and spit at each other.
Linux always went with flashy pointless features and many advocates became obsessed with it "taking the desktop" from Windows. I almost feel like Linux lost it's way as it could never shake off the inferiority complex about Windows having a larger install base.
Meanwhile FreeBSD has felt no pressure to compete and has been moving in it's own direction in it's own time. As a result, using it feels more consistent, more of an integrated whole than a grab-bag jumble of distributions that all do things differently. Sure, this means that it's slightly more boring than Linux, but it also gets in the way slightly less. It's the OS of choice for many who just want to get on and do some work (or simply browse the web and write email) in a pleasant and mature Unix environment (which is even capable of running games - with the Linux translation layer it's even capable of running the Linux version of Unreal Tournament with full OpenGL acceleration).
Silly Anonymous Coward Troll, stats are for ids.
With an installed base up from zero five years ago to about 10 Millon today and with another million added each quarter, the users of Mac OS X as well as any real armchair operating system aficionados would be surprised to hear that *BSD is anything but alive and kicking. It's certainly growing faster than any Un*x has ever grown in the past, and has a larger installed user base than any *nix ever.
Regarding the number of NetBSD posts to Usenet... good grief. This correlation can be easily explained by other factors. Most likely, NetBSD users are more mature both technically and emotionally, and don't participate in Usenet any longer. Perhaps they're too busy shipping gazillions of embedded devices to bother with a forum with such a poor signal to noise ratio as Usenet. They probably also have more education, drive nicer cars, and have 1.2 girlfriends (vs. 0.1 for the average AC Troll) .
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
So....Google's secret OS is going to be based off of FreeBSD?
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.
"And many of those burgers have multiple versions."
An OS that doesn't have multiple versions is an OS that died before they could start fixing the bugs. All the survivors have huge numbers of releases.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Here-here. It's also much less anoying than the "In Soviet Russia" reports run FreeBSD or whatever comments....
Surprising in view of the pleas in TFA for funding, and acknowledgements of where some came from, that nobody here sees a link between this and the true cost of software
... facts are facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Seem to remember from Apple's latest quarterly press conference they now have 16 million on OS X, and were growing at about 1.2 million for the last quarter.
The future is in beta
Personally, I am a little surprised that Launch.d is being ported to FreeBSD, as Luke Mewburn's rc.d is a very nice startup system. You can read more about rc.d here.
In Soviet Russia, FreeBSD trolls you !!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
But I thought...?
(Come on folks, eventually I'm going at least get at +1 Funny for that line...)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
There's very little evidence of a Google OS beyond the speculation of Google fanboys everywhere. I love them as much as the next guy, but this is just talk.
Additionally, Google's SoC is supporting other OSes as well, notably Fedora Core, Ubuntu Linux and NetBSD.
A complete list.
"I'm not dead yet!"
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
BSD works and our company's legal department did not even hesitate to approve using BSD licensed code in our systems. Prior efforts to get GPL licensed code into our shop failed to get an approval from our legal department.
I can't recall FreeBSD saying anything bad about shared libraries. Care to provide some proof?
FreeBSD did not disparage journalled file systems. They said soft updates gave most of the advantages without the cost, and may be faster. For some workloads soft updates are better, for some they are not, but until FreeBSD implemented them nobody knew.
FreeBSD was never against ELF. They just had no need - ELF solved some very real problems in the early versions of Linux, and because it was the standard when the linux developers went to fix those problems (back when linux was only a few years old) they went with ELF at the same time. FreeBSD did linking differently, and didn't have the problems early Linux did. The only reason FreeBSD now uses ELF is the GNU tools support ELF better. Otherwise the old FreeBSD a.out is just as good.
IDE disk drives are still bad. However they are cheap so everyone uses them. (the advantages of SCSI are rarely seen on home machines. High end servers still use SCSI for good reason)
I don't know where you got the idea that FreeBSD ever said anything against X.org, because they never did. The position is We don't care about what X server you run, but the X.org people seem like they might be more responsive to users, and that is a win, so we are going with X.org for all new versions. Because they are conservative about changes in general, they maintain XFree86 for old versions.
Is it just me or does this look like it's trying to implement a bunch of features on top of C for which standard C++ would be sufficient? They want an ingrained list type? Then, uh, use "list" in C++. I didn't look at it in detail, but from what I saw they could just use C++.
Unfortunately there seems to be some fun anti-C++ sentiment among many OSS developers, especially core developers who would probably say "ZOMG BLOAT WTFLOLOLZ." Of course, any remotely legitimate complaints could be addressed just by making your own kernel libs, which is already done with their C language counter-parts anyawy.
The Curfeu tolls the Knell of parting Day,
The lowing Herd winds slowly o'er the Lea,
The Plow-man homeward plods his weary Way,
And leaves the World to Darkness, and to me.
*BSD is dying
Now fades the glimmering Landscape on the Sight,
And all the Air a solemn Stillness holds;
Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight,
And drowsy Tinklings lull the distant Folds.
Save that from yonder Ivy-mantled Tow'r
*BSD is dying
bsd has some cool things. Ports KFA (Kick Fu&&& As). pkg_add is awsome. Linux is a little more hackable. Solaris as my unix mentor put it: "it's good because it has stock holders to report to, so it can only start to suck so much before it/company fials". However throught all of this I would like to know a an inteligent reason why on earth most (if not all) software is not open source, not nescosarily any particular licence. And I'd also like to know why hardware is not mandated to be open sourse. I meen think about it No specs meens hard to support, say if your in a shop and need to replace a battery or what not.