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From: vixie@vix.com (Paul A Vixie)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Could the BSD 4.4 Lite be a new beginning?
Date: 13 Feb 94 19:10:19
Organization: Vixie Enterprises
Lines: 52
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <VIXIE.94Feb13191019@office.home.vix.com>
References: <HSU.94Feb14043905@laphroaig.cs.hut.fi>
NNTP-Posting-Host: office.home.vix.com
In-reply-to: hsu@cs.hut.fi's message of 14 Feb 1994 02:39:07 GMT
I've been thinking about this for a long time. I would support a BSD Consortium
if such is created; however, there are several reasons why our situation
differs sufficiently from X11 and the X Consortium that it'll be very hard
to get a BSD Consortium in place. Here's my thinking, starting with X11
differences.
1. vendor support. almost all X Consortium members (which in turn means:
X Consortium funding sources) are system vendors who want to ship X11
with their systems and see this as a cheaper/better alternative to doing
their own incompatible window system. i do not see a corresponding list
of system vendors eager to stop shipping their own proprietary UNIX-like
operating systems in favor of something based on the output of a proposed
BSD Consortium.
2. egos. even with CSRG, who is fairly introfocused and apolitical, i suspect
that each BNR2-derived system (BSDi, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and to some extent,
Linux) will pick and choose from what they see in 4.4-lite and put in only
the things that won't overwrite the parts of the system that each group has
done a lot of work on and therefore has a strong personal interest in. even
if those conflict areas have already resulted in lots of code being "donated"
to CSRG, sometimes CSRG has to do something "else" for whatever reason and
in those instances i know of specific strong personalities in each of the
BNR2-derivative camps who will say "sorry, i don't agree, we're not moving
that part of our system to 4.4-lite". a BSD Consortium would have a hard
time staying relevant since so many BSD folks are wild-assed cowboys who
want to be different sometimes just to be different. again, the X Consortium
has less trouble with this because the people _in_ the X Consortium wrote
most of the code that they ship. folks outside the X Consortium pretty much
_expect_ that the system's interface and architecture will continue to evolve
and they _trust_ the people in the X Consortium to "do the right thing". I
don't see enough of the CSRG team (even counting emeritus members) remaining
who would want to be a part of a BSD Consortium; therefore the people who
would form the BSD Consortium would have a large credibility problem with
the great unwashed mass of BSD cowboys.
All that aside, I think this is a great idea and if I thought I could make it
work (that is, not go bankrupt in the first year) I'd give it a go. But it's
hard to do it without funding, and the people who would need to fund a BSD
Consortium are all out there chasing OSF/1 and SVR4 as their O S strategy. We
are working on a "public internet software consortium" for various components
like BIND that still tend to have "one true version", cast in the image of the
highly successful GateD Consortium. but a Consortium covering all of BSD seems
impossible for several reasons, some commercial, some political, all shown
above.
Vendors with interest in funding this sort of activity are welcome speak up
and prove me wrong, of course...
--
Paul Vixie
Redwood City, CA Also: <comp-sources-unix@uunet.uu.net>, <vixie@bsdi.com>,
decwrl!vixie!paul <ftpmail-admin@pa.dec.com>, <vixie@sony.com>,
<paul@vix.com> <{bind-workers,objectivism}-request@vix.com>