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Are the BSDs Dying? Some Security Researchers Think So (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: The BSDs have lost the battle for mindshare to Linux, and that may well bode ill for the future sustainability of the BSDs as viable, secure operating systems, writes CSO's JM Porup. The reason why is a familiar refrain: more eyeballs mean more secure code. Porup cites the work of Ilja von Sprundel, director of penetration testing at IOActive, who, noting the "small number of reported BSD kernel vulnerabilities compared to Linux," dug into BSD source code. His search 'easily' turned up about 115 kernel bugs. Porup looks at the relative security of OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD, the effect on Mac OS, and why, despite FreeBSD's relative popularity, OpenBSD may be the most likely to survive.
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *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] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.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 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.
I'd be more concerned about the effects of systemd on the Linux distributions. :)
While not an "official" BSD, OS X is based on NeXT which is based on BSD and it uses the MACH kernel.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The authorities here on Slashdot have repeatedly said that right now was the golden age of BSD due to Debian's adoption systemd. There are no Linux users left. BSD is the only system that remains in widespread use.
After Heartbleed and the other issues affecting OpenSSL, and Shellsheck affecting bash, why the hell would anyone still be pushing this disproven "more eyeballs" narrative?!
The OpenBSD project proves that security doesn't come from "more eyeballs". It comes from having software developers who know what they're doing, and who take their work very seriously, and who show immense discipline, and who don't put up with bullshit, and who put security first and foremost.
You could have two million "eyeballs" of offshore "programmers" in India looking at some code, and it will likely still end up being much less secure than code doing the same work but written by a couple of OpenBSD's developers.
Code quality doesn't come from the quantity of people looking at it. Code quality comes from the quality of the people working on it.
"Some" researchers are saying the BSDs are dying so it must be true, huh? "Read it on the internet, hot damn, must be true then." Bullshit! The BSDs have a large community that is passionate about their choice of operating system. I have been using OpenBSD since 1998 and I will only stop using it once the community completely collapses, development ceases, and the foundation folds. The day that happens, I will have to find another hobby altogether and just keep a smartphone and tablet handy. Learning and using OpenBSD has made me far more knowledgeable about computers, operating systems, networks, and security than any other platform out there. If it weren't for my college roommate introducing me to OpenBSD, I believe I would just be another Microsoft wanker. OpenBSD taught me how the internet works and opened a wealth of knowledge. OpenBSD turned me from a computer power user into a true System Administrator. Ever since that day when I asked my roommate just what the heck OpenBSD was, my life would never be the same.
Yep, those cloud environments will be self sustaining on hopes and dreams, and never need anyone with experience in UNIX to touch them. Cloud services run on what, Windows Server yeah? NO. WORRIES. /s
IMO:
BSDs have a superior architecture in many respects. This is especially true since the systemd takeover.
Administration on BSD servers just makes more sense. Linux seems to be all over the map. I think there are over 1000 Linux distros. Many distros want to change around the directory structure. Simple things, like starting services on bootup, and setting up static IP, become difficult with Linux because everybody wants to pull Linux in different direction - often for no good technical reason.
Linux certainly has advantages over BSD. But I think BSD gets a lot of stuff right.
Again: all JMHO.
First off, I submit that BSD is finding its home in appliances. FreeNAS and pfSense are both fairly popular, and both BSD based. Commercially, the Nintendo Switch is based on BSD, and Cisco, McAffee, and Juniper all have appliances using BSD at their core. Also, as others have pointed out, OSX.
That said, there are so many copy/paste tutorials for Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu and Raspbian. With BSD lagging behind severely, for every person who prefers BSD and can successfully use it to do what they need, there are five more less-technical users who are able to fall into the pit of success with a Bitnami or Turnkey Linux distribution.
BSD may well be superior for certain tasks, especially networking, but the fact of the matter is that expecting BSD to simultaneously be competitive in the numbers game against Linux when Linux has an ecosystem which BSD lacks. That ecosystem encourages users looking to get something done to use that product, rather than adhere to principles which otherwise have little effect on them. I know systemd is hated in these parts, almost universally, but if I need to spin up a Wordpress instance, it takes me ten minutes to grab Turnkey Linux and start addding my content, rather than the half hour or more it would take to spin up BSD, manually install an AMP stack, figure out the BSD equivalent of /var/www, Google all the MySQL commands to create the database at the CLI since I don't have Adminer or phpMyAdmin to do it, and then add Wordpress. As a non-developer and non-distributor, the BSD vs. GPL vs. MIT license situation affects me very little, so the fact that both Debian and BSD are free-as-in-beer means that they compete on how much of my time they take to spin up.
This is why I use pfSense and FreeNAS. It's also why most of my appliances are Turnkey Linux based.
It's not like BSD users go around saying "I run BSD" or that they leave ports open so that they can be electronically surveyed.
My SNES Classic runs BSD. Lots of routers, firewalls and NAS devices run BSD.
The thing with BSD is it gets professionally used, not professionally blogged. Maybe BSD should consider a marketing team is it's really an issue for them.
You know, some 20 years ago, I used to be a huge supporter of FreeBSD. I swore by the OS, and wouldn't touch anything else. A diehard fanboi. Then I asked for help with some legacy hardware and discovered the hostile elitism of BSD community.
They basically told me to make my own drivers and to fuck off. Yeah, not very helpful. I switched to Linux cuz it worked with my legacy hardware and never looked back.
Today I have zero respect for *BSD people and software. They can jump off a cliff and I'd just smile. I would sooner touch a Mac than a *BSD system. Treat people like shit, they might just be totally alienated from your offerings.