What they've done is actually quite cool. They have linked the crypto libraries to stubs, and the stubs reference either the US or export versions of the crypto libraries (as appropriate for your system), and if you don't have either installed they issue an error message that tells you how to install them.
This is handled automatically during the normal install procedure, so the right crypto stuff is grabbed from the right archive site, and it all just plain works.
Way cool, and a leg up on even OpenBSD as far as this is concerned! -- Brad Knowles
For one thing, it's relatively stable and scalable.
This is why companies like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, and the world's largest anonymous ftp server (ftp.cdrom.com, a.k.a., ftp.freesoftware.com) use it. Note that slashdot uses FreeBSD for certain functions, and the staff have spoken highly of it.
Because of the BSD license, it's easier for companies to take it and make embedded systems out of it. This is why companies like IBM/Whistle use it in the InterJet and InterJet II, not to mention the GNATbox, the NetWolves FoxBox, the Stallion ePipe, etc....
So, since you get your mail at hotmail.com, you can thank FreeBSD for being so stable and scalable! -- Brad Knowles
How is that a "feat"? AFAICS, it just illustrates the weakness of the BSD license: Anyone could easily keep a closed-source OS competitive with an open-source template that was free for the taking. What was that somebody said about "Microsoft's" implementation of DNS (or whatever it was) in Windows 2000...?
Obviously you don't have much experience with actually participating in Open Source development of operating systems.
The reality of it is that people who take a freely available OS with a BSD-style license and then add on their own proprietary enhancements, have a real problem with having to constantly re-apply those patches every time the freely available version is updated. As a result, they usually are actively interested in getting those changes re-incorporated into the base system, so that they don't have to continue to maintain their own private branch.
The primary problem that maintainers of code with BSD-style licenses have is that sometimes the changes are quite big, and the maintainers are usually unpaid volunteers, thus making it rather difficult for them to incorporate changes of that scale.
These kinds of problems are precisely what the merger between BSDI and Walnut Creek will help solve, since they will now have some real money to be able to pay some programmers to take all these changes from all these various different sources and start serious work on incorporating them into the FreeBSD baseline. -- Brad Knowles
Work is already underway to improve the sound card support in FreeBSD. It will be quite improved in 4.0-RELEASE, and I expect it to get even better in 4.1-RELEASE, etc....
Promotion is going to be a very big part of this merger. I think we all recognize the success that Linux has had, and we want to do the same (or better;-) with FreeBSD -- Brad Knowles
Providing support is one thing that BSDI is very good at. They have an army of engineers that can go out on-site to install, configure, reconfigure, fix, or replace components involving BSD/OS, and they have folks to provide 24x7 telephone support, or whatever level of support contract you want to sign (and pay for).
This is one of the really huge things that the merged company will get even better at, as it will be able to grow very quickly from an infusion of venture capital, and therefore be able to hire even more engineers and telephone support staff, etc.... -- Brad Knowles
There's also going to be a port to PowerPC (in part, to support the MacOS X/Darwin effort, I would assume), they're looking at doing lots more "appliances" (e.g., Whistle/IBM InterJet II, Stallion ePipe, NetWolves FoxBox, and even perhaps going after the higher-end market like the NFS/CFS and web proxy cache servers from Network Appliance).
They're also going to be pushing partnerships & co-marketing a lot harder, as well as a branding and pre-installation program so that you can make sure that the machine you buy is 100% compatible with FreeBSD, or you can even get FreeBSD pre-installed on the machine.
There's a lot more that they're going to be doing. I'm just waiting for the updated plans to be posted to the web pages of Jordan K. Hubbard, CTO of Walnut Creek and soon to be CTO of the merged BSD, Inc. -- Brad Knowles
No, 4.0-RELEASE will not be held up by this merger.
You may start to see some BSDI code being integrated in the coming months, but the two codebases probably won't be completely merged for at least a year or perhaps two. This means that 5.0-RELEASE or perhaps 6.0-RELEASE would be the first realistic version that would be completely merged. -- Brad Knowles
The other merger is that of the codebases of BSD/OS and FreeBSD. This merger will occur over (hopefully) the next year and result in a single operating system, still named FreeBSD. FreeBSD will remain completely open source and primarily under the BSD license, as it is today. Certain commercial drivers and components of BSD/OS which remain under NDA will be administered by BSD Inc. as add-on components. These components, along with the commercial backing, will be the value-added features separating FreeBSD from BSD/OS, which will continue as a commercial product (with FreeBSD at the core).
There's no sense pushing around a lot of bits if you don't have to, and while you can make the rest of everything pretty fast by periodically dumping dynamic content to static pages and serving them up with Zeus or khttpd, reserving PHP3 or mod_perl use for the very few things that really must be completely dynamic each and every time, and you can use Layer 4 switches to load-balance between servers at a site, and distribute your servers around the world and distribute the load to the closest unloaded server by using customized nameservers, the graphics is at least one thing that can be solved by using the Akamai network. -- Brad Knowles
Of course, don't search just slashdot for articles like this. Also search the archives of papers that have been presented at various USENIX/SAGE conferences (in particular, LISA), and other USENIX publications, starting at http://www.usenix.org/publicat ions/publications.html.
That's just a sampling of the sorts of research that you should START with. Of course, to do this right, you'll need to do much, much more. -- Brad Knowles
Thing is, Darwin is basically FreeBSD on top of a Mach kernel -- it even says so on the Inside MacOS X page. Apple has also committed to continue to keep the appropriate parts of Darwin in sync with FreeBSD. So porting Darwin doesn't buy you much of anything -- you've got FreeBSD (and other implementations of BSD) on x86 anyway.
What I suspect you really want is MacOS X on x86, and that is something that only Apple can port, if they choose to do so. -- Brad Knowles
My understanding is that ActiveX is actual binary code, so you'd basically have to incorporate Windows95/98/NT/2000 into your OS in order to succeed at doing ActiveX. In fact, I believe that Linux already has something along these lines -- it's called "Wine".
Besides, even if you could succeed at making this happen, Micro$oft would be sure to change the code slightly so as to break your version, and if it hurts some of their customers in the process, well what do they care?
No, this is a fundamentally unworkable plan. -- Brad Knowles
One of the most fundamental points in all "Newbie FAQs" regarding electronic communications is that there is a lot of context lost when compared to even just talking to someone on the phone, much less talking to them in person. You can't hear their tone of voice, you can't hear their speech patterns, you can't get a feeling for what kind of emotions they're feeling (and trying to convey), etc....
Even videoconferencing falls short.
We frequently forget how important all these factors are in communications, because we have found ways to try to convey that sort of information electronically, using in-band methods such as smileys;-), SHOUTING, etc.... However, it never really can compare to listening and talking to people in person.
Besides, how else are you going to meet people like Phil Zimmerman and get to personally thank the guy for everything he has done in the field of personal privacy and encryption rights? I don't know if Phil is going to be there this year, but he was really popular at SANE'98.
Who knows who you might meet and really get a chance to enjoy sitting down and having a beer (or whatever) with, if you don't attend? -- Brad Knowles
If you look at the invited talk abstract from Barbara Dijker, you will notice that she is covering wireless Internet issues.
As for the rest, the Program Committee can only select from the material that is made available to them, and if we'd had good submissions on IPv6 or QOS, then they would be on the schedule. Heck, given how much we are personally interested in these topics, if we'd gotten any kind of submission on them, it would probably be on the schedule.
If you think that the program is light in certain areas, I'd encourage you to submit an abstract for a refereed paper or invited talk for SANE 2001, because community involvement is the only way that the conference will improve. -- Brad Knowles
It would appear that these documents are actually PDFs, when you drill all the way down through the various web pages.
I am now in the process of downloading what I believe to be the PDFs for the report in question, and if/when these files are downloaded, I will upload them in other places and let you folks know where they are. -- Brad Knowles
If I can manage to download a copy of it, I'll try to put a mirror up in the US. And then I'll try to explain the traffic to my ISP.;-) -- Brad Knowles
So far, it looks like traceroutes die at pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145). I'm guessing that their leased line has rolled over and died, or perhaps is so congested that it just can't possibly deal with the traffic.
Tracerouting from an account I have in the US (with an ISP that is an Above.Net customer), it looks like packets die at the same place -- pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145).
I'll see if I can find some information for them at RIPE that might tell me more about who their provider is and perhaps what alternate routes might be.
Nope. It looks like Uunet is their only provider in Belgium, and they don't appear to have a backup route that I can find. I wonder if perhaps they might be interested in a backup from the largest residential ISP in the country?;-) -- Brad Knowles
It would appear that you haven't done your research on the RBL (presumably you mean the MAPS RBL, the Mail Abuse Protection System Realtime Blackhole List).
Don't get me wrong, it's a good effort, but Paul Vixie himself believes it to be a crude and poor solution for the problem, and a temporary hack at best.
In order to get on the MAPS RBL, you not only have to be running an open relay (or third-party relay), you have to be widely abused to send junkmail (let's not call it spam, please -- that's a USENET term), and you have to be openly and patently unwilling or unable to configure your mail server to close the open/third-party relay hole, or you are an active junkmailer yourself.
In order to get off the MAPS RBL, you just need to demonstrate that you're willing to operate in good faith and start work to close your open/third-party relay hole, or stop your junkmail activities.
The MAPS RSS (Realtime Spam-Stopper) list is a little less difficult to get onto -- you just have to actually be abused to send out junkmail. The ORBS (Open Relay Blocking System) is even easier to get onto -- you just have to have a machine that appears to be an open/third-party relay, or hosted on a network that blocks access to the ORBS relay tester (e.g., all AboveNet customers).
Of course, there's also the MAPS DUL (Dial-Up List), which gives you the netblocks of the dial-up networks for most of the large providers around the world, because as ISPs shut down their open/third-party relays, their customers are taking to trying to send junkmail directly from their dial-up account to other open/third-party relay servers around the world.
They have to contend with the lawsuits of the "permatemp" employees. They have to contend with the rebates being offered and redeemed at full retail prices. They have to continue to try to do business, while they've got this monkey on their back.
They may be completely OBE (overtaken by events) by the time the break-up is final, but would they have been OBE if the suit hadn't been filed in the first place?
Sometimes the important thing is not the final outcome, but the path and time it took to get there, and the resources the other guy had to spend in the process.
The advantage is that it slows them down. They have to contend with the lawsuits of the "permatemp" employees. They have to contend with the rebates being offered and redeemed at full retail prices. They have to continue to try to do business, while they've got this monkey on their back. They may be completely OBE (overtaken by events) by the time the break-up is final, but would they have been OBE if the suit hadn't been filed in the first place? Sometimes the important thing is not the final outcome, but the path and time it took to get there, and the resources the other guy had to spend in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
What they've done is actually quite cool. They have linked the crypto libraries to stubs, and the stubs reference either the US or export versions of the crypto libraries (as appropriate for your system), and if you don't have either installed they issue an error message that tells you how to install them.
This is handled automatically during the normal install procedure, so the right crypto stuff is grabbed from the right archive site, and it all just plain works.
Way cool, and a leg up on even OpenBSD as far as this is concerned!
--
Brad Knowles
For one thing, it's relatively stable and scalable.
This is why companies like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, and the world's largest anonymous ftp server (ftp.cdrom.com, a.k.a., ftp.freesoftware.com) use it. Note that slashdot uses FreeBSD for certain functions, and the staff have spoken highly of it.
Because of the BSD license, it's easier for companies to take it and make embedded systems out of it. This is why companies like IBM/Whistle use it in the InterJet and InterJet II, not to mention the GNATbox, the NetWolves FoxBox, the Stallion ePipe, etc....
So, since you get your mail at hotmail.com, you can thank FreeBSD for being so stable and scalable!
--
Brad Knowles
- How is that a "feat"? AFAICS, it just illustrates the weakness of the BSD license: Anyone could easily keep a closed-source OS competitive with an open-source template that was free for the taking. What was that somebody said about "Microsoft's" implementation of DNS (or whatever it was) in Windows 2000...?
Obviously you don't have much experience with actually participating in Open Source development of operating systems.The reality of it is that people who take a freely available OS with a BSD-style license and then add on their own proprietary enhancements, have a real problem with having to constantly re-apply those patches every time the freely available version is updated. As a result, they usually are actively interested in getting those changes re-incorporated into the base system, so that they don't have to continue to maintain their own private branch.
The primary problem that maintainers of code with BSD-style licenses have is that sometimes the changes are quite big, and the maintainers are usually unpaid volunteers, thus making it rather difficult for them to incorporate changes of that scale.
These kinds of problems are precisely what the merger between BSDI and Walnut Creek will help solve, since they will now have some real money to be able to pay some programmers to take all these changes from all these various different sources and start serious work on incorporating them into the FreeBSD baseline.
--
Brad Knowles
Promotion is going to be a very big part of this merger. I think we all recognize the success that Linux has had, and we want to do the same (or better ;-) with FreeBSD
--
Brad Knowles
This is one of the really huge things that the merged company will get even better at, as it will be able to grow very quickly from an infusion of venture capital, and therefore be able to hire even more engineers and telephone support staff, etc....
--
Brad Knowles
They're also going to be pushing partnerships & co-marketing a lot harder, as well as a branding and pre-installation program so that you can make sure that the machine you buy is 100% compatible with FreeBSD, or you can even get FreeBSD pre-installed on the machine.
There's a lot more that they're going to be doing. I'm just waiting for the updated plans to be posted to the web pages of Jordan K. Hubbard, CTO of Walnut Creek and soon to be CTO of the merged BSD, Inc.
--
Brad Knowles
You may start to see some BSDI code being integrated in the coming months, but the two codebases probably won't be completely merged for at least a year or perhaps two. This means that 5.0-RELEASE or perhaps 6.0-RELEASE would be the first realistic version that would be completely merged.
--
Brad Knowles
No, it won't be moving. Read the announcement at http://www.daemonnews.org/200003/merge r.html.
--
Brad Knowles
I quote:
--
Brad Knowles
There's no sense pushing around a lot of bits if you don't have to, and while you can make the rest of everything pretty fast by periodically dumping dynamic content to static pages and serving them up with Zeus or khttpd, reserving PHP3 or mod_perl use for the very few things that really must be completely dynamic each and every time, and you can use Layer 4 switches to load-balance between servers at a site, and distribute your servers around the world and distribute the load to the closest unloaded server by using customized nameservers, the graphics is at least one thing that can be solved by using the Akamai network.
--
Brad Knowles
Of course, don't search just slashdot for articles like this. Also search the archives of papers that have been presented at various USENIX/SAGE conferences (in particular, LISA), and other USENIX publications, starting at http://www.usenix.org/publicat ions/publications.html.
You will also want to use index sites such as Yahoo! and Excite, as well as search engines like Google, Altavista, and Hotbot, not to mention community directory projects such as dmoz Open Directory.
That's just a sampling of the sorts of research that you should START with. Of course, to do this right, you'll need to do much, much more.
--
Brad Knowles
What I suspect you really want is MacOS X on x86, and that is something that only Apple can port, if they choose to do so.
--
Brad Knowles
My understanding is that ActiveX is actual binary code, so you'd basically have to incorporate Windows95/98/NT/2000 into your OS in order to succeed at doing ActiveX. In fact, I believe that Linux already has something along these lines -- it's called "Wine".
Besides, even if you could succeed at making this happen, Micro$oft would be sure to change the code slightly so as to break your version, and if it hurts some of their customers in the process, well what do they care?
No, this is a fundamentally unworkable plan.
--
Brad Knowles
One of the most fundamental points in all "Newbie FAQs" regarding electronic communications is that there is a lot of context lost when compared to even just talking to someone on the phone, much less talking to them in person. You can't hear their tone of voice, you can't hear their speech patterns, you can't get a feeling for what kind of emotions they're feeling (and trying to convey), etc....
;-), SHOUTING, etc.... However, it never really can compare to listening and talking to people in person.
Even videoconferencing falls short.
We frequently forget how important all these factors are in communications, because we have found ways to try to convey that sort of information electronically, using in-band methods such as smileys
Besides, how else are you going to meet people like Phil Zimmerman and get to personally thank the guy for everything he has done in the field of personal privacy and encryption rights? I don't know if Phil is going to be there this year, but he was really popular at SANE'98.
Who knows who you might meet and really get a chance to enjoy sitting down and having a beer (or whatever) with, if you don't attend?
--
Brad Knowles
As for the rest, the Program Committee can only select from the material that is made available to them, and if we'd had good submissions on IPv6 or QOS, then they would be on the schedule. Heck, given how much we are personally interested in these topics, if we'd gotten any kind of submission on them, it would probably be on the schedule.
If you think that the program is light in certain areas, I'd encourage you to submit an abstract for a refereed paper or invited talk for SANE 2001, because community involvement is the only way that the conference will improve.
--
Brad Knowles
Cool. I didn't know that word about it had already gotten out. ;-)
--
Brad Knowles
You've got two choices:
1. Get an SCI clearance and learn the truth.
2. Read this report and related books, and learn a reasonable facsimile that has been pieced together from various parts.
--
Brad Knowles
Alternatively, go straight to http://www.shub-internet.org/eu/ and download them all for yourselves.
Please mirror these files widely, so that my poor little server isn't slashdotted out of existence!
--
Brad Knowles
It would appear that these documents are actually PDFs, when you drill all the way down through the various web pages.
I am now in the process of downloading what I believe to be the PDFs for the report in question, and if/when these files are downloaded, I will upload them in other places and let you folks know where they are.
--
Brad Knowles
If I can manage to download a copy of it, I'll try to put a mirror up in the US. And then I'll try to explain the traffic to my ISP. ;-)
--
Brad Knowles
See also the "Interception Capabilities 2000" report at http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/inte rception_capabilities_2000.htm and http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/ic2kreport.htm.
--
Brad Knowles
Yeah, I'm in Belgium too.
;-)
So far, it looks like traceroutes die at pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145). I'm guessing that their leased line has rolled over and died, or perhaps is so congested that it just can't possibly deal with the traffic.
Tracerouting from an account I have in the US (with an ISP that is an Above.Net customer), it looks like packets die at the same place -- pool02b-194-7-41-145.uunet.be (194.7.41.145).
I'll see if I can find some information for them at RIPE that might tell me more about who their provider is and perhaps what alternate routes might be.
Nope. It looks like Uunet is their only provider in Belgium, and they don't appear to have a backup route that I can find. I wonder if perhaps they might be interested in a backup from the largest residential ISP in the country?
--
Brad Knowles
Don't get me wrong, it's a good effort, but Paul Vixie himself believes it to be a crude and poor solution for the problem, and a temporary hack at best.
In order to get on the MAPS RBL, you not only have to be running an open relay (or third-party relay), you have to be widely abused to send junkmail (let's not call it spam, please -- that's a USENET term), and you have to be openly and patently unwilling or unable to configure your mail server to close the open/third-party relay hole, or you are an active junkmailer yourself.
In order to get off the MAPS RBL, you just need to demonstrate that you're willing to operate in good faith and start work to close your open/third-party relay hole, or stop your junkmail activities.
The MAPS RSS (Realtime Spam-Stopper) list is a little less difficult to get onto -- you just have to actually be abused to send out junkmail. The ORBS (Open Relay Blocking System) is even easier to get onto -- you just have to have a machine that appears to be an open/third-party relay, or hosted on a network that blocks access to the ORBS relay tester (e.g., all AboveNet customers).
Of course, there's also the MAPS DUL (Dial-Up List), which gives you the netblocks of the dial-up networks for most of the large providers around the world, because as ISPs shut down their open/third-party relays, their customers are taking to trying to send junkmail directly from their dial-up account to other open/third-party relay servers around the world.
If you want to properly understand all this, I suggest you visit http://maps.vix.com/ and http://www.orbs.org/.
The advantage is that it slows them down.
They have to contend with the lawsuits of the "permatemp" employees. They have to contend with the rebates being offered and redeemed at full retail prices. They have to continue to try to do business, while they've got this monkey on their back.
They may be completely OBE (overtaken by events) by the time the break-up is final, but would they have been OBE if the suit hadn't been filed in the first place?
Sometimes the important thing is not the final outcome, but the path and time it took to get there, and the resources the other guy had to spend in the process.
The advantage is that it slows them down. They have to contend with the lawsuits of the "permatemp" employees. They have to contend with the rebates being offered and redeemed at full retail prices. They have to continue to try to do business, while they've got this monkey on their back. They may be completely OBE (overtaken by events) by the time the break-up is final, but would they have been OBE if the suit hadn't been filed in the first place? Sometimes the important thing is not the final outcome, but the path and time it took to get there, and the resources the other guy had to spend in the process.