Printable View
I have been reading more and more about BSD taking turns for the worst. Ultimately leading to its demise. Between interal conflicts and a diminishing code base what is the fate the once flourshing open project. I have toyed with netBSD and freeBSD and was impressed.I am just looking for opinions wether the project will halt or if someone will come and pick up the ball. Can the Open Source Community learn from BSDs mistakes?
Where did you read about this? I would like to read it. Give us a link or links please.
Thanks in advance.
Where did you read that indeed!? AFAIK, bsd is still going strong, OpenBSD for example is getting better everyday..
IMHO, it's the rest of the opensource community that's got to learn from (Open)BSD!
Ammo
i would like to know the link as well ?
as for any BSD i think they are as popular as ever for ppl who like power in there system just my 0.02p
edit and i dont think they will go bankrupt and shut down IMO
Actual Article:
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 [mit.edu] 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.
but what site did u read that from? did u get it in an email ? plz provide a link or an explanation to where the article came from
p,s im not flaming you just like to read it from the horses mouth
That was an email from [email protected]
There are many interesting articles that come across their wires. This is just one I would like to share with the community. It is just that this topic is coming up more and more.
thanks for replying with a source :) at least ppl know where it comes from know
Not a problem, in the future I will remember to site the source on the first time 'round. :)
All right, take the time to re-read the article...
NO WHERE in there are actuall indications that BSD is going sour...
Half the article is a historical recount of BSD's creation... screwed by an obviously biased editorial style.
The other half is a mix of personal attacks and one-wayed quotes that aren't debated at all, just taken for granted as is..
"Don't believe their hype"!!?!? And what's to say that this isn't hype??? Oh of course, I forgot, Eric Raymond, is the all knowing god of computer technologies so he must be right...Quote:
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
Besides, go read some Linux source codes and some OpenBSD source, then decide for yourself if the code is indeed cleaner...
"Nullified"?? How could an achievement be nullified by letting other people use it freely, without holding them to any other legal blah blah? Besides, knowing that your well written code is used by others (your TCP/IP stack being used by millions of windows users for example) is all the aknowledgment those developpers need.Quote:
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.
Ha! Hi think this is proof enough that this article is just some ill-faithed "PR bull".Quote:
Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
<biased comment>It's funny how you don't see this coming from the BSD side...</biased comment>
Says who?Quote:
They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality
Anyways, sorry if I got a little carried away... it's just that those kind of disguised flames just piss me off.
Ammo
I have to agree with ammo...
I'm hearing of more and more people (friends and the like) changing from windows and/or Linux to FreeBSD (or OpenBSD) because of the stability, security, and strong development community. BSD is not going away (at least not for a very long time).
I figure this comes from one of two directions:
1. Perhaps the author of that "article" was upset over the depreciated pace of the improvments for NetBSD, but to put that in a correct perspective, the development community of NetBSD is MUCH smaller than that of OpenBSD or FreeBSD and so getting the code reworked takes more time. Even then, NetBSD isn't going to go away anytime soon either.
2. Either parties from the Microsoft side or the Linux side are waging "verbal warfare" in an attempt to scare people who would be interested in spending their time on one of the BSD projects. Even though this may sound foolish even to mention, you'd be surprised what "fans" will do for their teams (even MS :))...
Garbage in, garbage out. Don't believe everything you read. Pull out the scales and weigh it in the balance. On my scale, that article weighs in at a whopping "absurd."
Mayhaps you should grab a copy of one of the lastest -stables and play with it to see for yourself whether or not the BSD communities are really "falling apart."
IMHO, the rest of the OS development world (not only just the open source world) will still be learning from the BSD projects for a long time to come.
Best!
Rev.
I am not stating that I support that article in anyway, I just thought of it as an interesting POV. And yes it needs to be debated. I feel that BSD developers are holding strong and advancing. I mean the BSD community has doubled in the last few years and I don't see signs of demise, but still had to inquire because there are more and more of these articles surfacing. It seems like the general feeling is that just because user base goes up doesn't mean that quality code goes with it. I also feel that BSD isn't getting the props it deserves. But then again what else is new in the open source world. Linux is finally getting some share of the market and people throw it into the crosshairs. Thanks for the acknowledgement of the TCP/IP stack code. Mr. Gates has had his hands in open source time and time again. That is just IMHO
I think that article was pretty clearly written by someone with an axe to grind..... the facts are mostly correct, but the interpretation of them is totally twisted and the conclusions are wholly unsupportable.
I think Ammo is 100% correct in his assessment. Although the majority of the open-source community doesn't fall into this category, there are a few people out there who see Linux and the BSDs as rivals instead of partners working toward a common goal, and will try to spread FUD at every turn. That's what this sounds like to me.
BSD isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
i think that artical is talking about 4.4BSD, the os actually written at berkeley. they ran out of money, so they released the source code as "FreeBSD" with a licence to let anybody do whatever they want with it, except for sue berkeley (of course everyone did anyway).
so BSD and FreeBSD aren't technically the same thing, even though they are.
Yes, I think this was just one of the "common misconceptions" that "FreeBSD is BSD" and yet another person(s) that is upset with the current direction/ideas/whatever with the FreeBSD crowd/movement. Remember, imminent demise of FreeBSD was predicted by some when the great Theo de Raadt was ousted from the project. Well, Theo went on to create OpenBSD and the FreeBSD project continued to go on just fine...Quote:
Originally posted here by Jabberwocky
i think that artical is talking about 4.4BSD, the os actually written at berkeley. they ran out of money, so they released the source code as "FreeBSD" with a licence to let anybody do whatever they want with it, except for sue berkeley (of course everyone did anyway).
so BSD and FreeBSD aren't technically the same thing, even though they are.
Seemingly atypically, "BSD" actually refers to the common system/kernel architecture on a UN*X system... FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and BSDi are all branches of code off the 4.3BSD Reno kernel (if memory serves correctly). Similiarly, people like Sun have taken some of the original code (anyone remember Solaris 1, AKA Sun 4.3x -- and the still lingering /usr/ucb tree?).
In any case, I think that things are "just fine" and it's some other sensationalist a**hole that doesn't realize that things will just go on based solely on the nature of the project... someone else will step up to the plate and fill the voids and life will go on... people have way-too-much invested in things like *BSD to let many of the top three slip too far off the radar.
Draziw, you're confusing FreeBSD with NetBSD... Theo a founder of NetBSD and OpenBSD branched from NetBSD, not FreeBSD...
Ammo
Doh! You are right - my bad, I stand corrected. OpenBSD and FreeBSD seem to share bug fixes in their respective source trees, but yes... Theo was kind of "pushed out of" the NetBSD project. Thanks for catching that and setting me/us straight - greenies for you!Quote:
Originally posted here by ammo
Draziw, you're confusing FreeBSD with NetBSD... Theo a founder of NetBSD and OpenBSD branched from NetBSD, not FreeBSD...
Ammo
I serioulsy doubt that any BSD is gonna croak. I agree with Ammo. :)