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Third NetBSD Hackathon Summary

Posted by kdawson on from the fun-in-the-channel dept.

jschauma writes, "The third NetBSD Hackathon was held on Saturday and Sunday, November 25th and 26th, 2006. NetBSD users and developers met on IRC to prepare NetBSD for the upcoming re-branching of NetBSD 4.0. Approximately thirty NetBSD developers and more than 140 NetBSD users joined in on the two days, paying particular attention to improving install documentation and ensuring build stability. A Wiki page as a TODO list was used for the first time, an approach that is likely to be used in future hackathons. All in all, over 200 bugs have been worked on in those two days and while not all of the critical showstoppers could be fixed, valuable progress was made in identifying root causes."

15 comments

  1. Nice to see Wiki software used by Alkivar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's really nice to see Wiki software used for it's original purpose, and used properly. Hopefully the NetBSD team continues to keep a wiki in mind during the next hackathon.

    1. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 0, Troll

      If only this was a sign that the "a wiki is the solution to EVERYTHING" mentality is dying off.

      Mini-rant mode --

      Open Source pet-peeve: using a wiki for documentation. Expecting the users (the oh-so-often-spoken-of "community") to write your documentation for you is lazy. I know developers usually prefer not to deal with documentation. I understand the appeal of throwing something out there and having the users document it so you don't have to. But please, PLEASE, let the wiki-as-documentation phenomenon die. There's nothing more annoying than trying to find out how to do something and get a one sentence "this entry is a stub, you can add more!" comment. If I KNEW how to use that feature, I wouldn't be searching for it.

    2. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by TCM · · Score: 2, Informative
      Open Source pet-peeve: using a wiki for documentation. Expecting the users (the oh-so-often-spoken-of "community") to write your documentation for you is lazy.
      I'm with you. There's nothing worse than projects who seem to have no design plan and just code ahead. Documentation is lacking and you have users guessing about the features. Most prominent example in my eyes is Asterisk.

      Fortunately, wikis were used for this event only. I can understand that they wanted to have a process that allows for fast changes when doing such events.

      Normally, NetBSD documentation is first class, be it man pages or documentation on their homepage. It's one of the few Open Source systems that properly documents everything. The whole NetBSD homepage is managed with CVS and written using DocBook I think. AFAIK they need to checkin to CVS and rebuild the relevant parts of their homepage with a "make" to change anything.

      So for an event that lasts 3 days and where people need a rapidly changing status overview, the usual documentation progress probably was too slow.
      --
      Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
    3. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by nacturation · · Score: 1

      It's really nice to see Wiki software used for it's original purpose, and used properly.Unfortunately I can't edit your post to correct the typo.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    4. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 1

      No argument with how it was used in this case -- its a great example of when a wiki truely is a useful collaboration tool, and NetBSD does generally have good documentation.

    5. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by fotbr · · Score: 1

      Yay, I'm a troll because I don't think a wiki is the magical solution to everything!

      It has its place. But it makes a piss-poor substitution for real documentation.

    6. Re:Nice to see Wiki software used by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand what is wrong with hi's original statement.

  2. Laugh at me if you must... by mythosaz · · Score: 0

    ...not noticing this was bsd.slashdot, instead of games.slashdot, I was tricked into clicking on the link by my hopes of hearing that someone recovered the Amulet of Yendor and taken it to the astral plane :(

    1. Re:Laugh at me if you must... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry,
      YASS (Yet Another Stupid Summary).

  3. i wish i had the time by eneville · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i wish i had the time to actually contribute, or even read the netbsd kernel. it's got a lot of potential. sometimes i wonder how the linux kernel became more popular than the bsds. net/open do seem more stable in some ways.

    --
    Why UNIX?
    1. Re:i wish i had the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      "sometimes i wonder how the linux kernel became more popular than the bsds."Simple. BSD campmembers dug themselves into that hole; if they had avoided being disagreeable and snobbish, perhaps more users would have considered trying out the product. There is very little mindshare left for them to claim.

      Moral: Biting n00bs breeds bad karma.

    2. Re:i wish i had the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1
      sometimes i wonder how the linux kernel became more popular than the bsds. net/open do seem more stable in some ways.

      The Linux kernel attracted a lot of good developers because of the userland software, the good leadership, and perhaps most importantly because it wasn't steeped in the kind of tradition that made the BSD people resistant to change. I won't disagree that NetBSD/OpenBSD may be more stable in certain respects, but the popularity of the Linux kernel definitely has to do with the fact that it is technically superior to the (Net|Open|Free)BSD kernel in nearly every metric, and has had the upper hand in terms of performance for ten years already.
  4. *BSD is Dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    It is now 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 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 dying

  5. What's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why do the NetBSD hackers continue on? Everyone agrees that NetBSD is an abortion of an OS. Even its founding father has disowned it. If only the NetBSD dilettante dabblers would abandon their cult and instead build upon success, such as Linux. Linux won the open source OS war. We all need to realize that. Stop the wasted effort, NetBSD hackers.

  6. *BSD is D - E - A - D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deal with it, losers.