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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.development:1805 comp.unix.bsd:13452 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!EU.net!ieunet!news.ieunet.ie!jkh From: jkh@whisker.hubbard.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Could the BSD 4.4 Lite be a new beginning? Date: 15 Feb 1994 01:05:24 GMT Organization: Jordan Hubbard Lines: 120 Distribution: world Message-ID: <JKH.94Feb15010524@whisker.hubbard.ie> References: <HSU.94Feb14043905@laphroaig.cs.hut.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: whisker.hubbard.ie In-reply-to: hsu@cs.hut.fi's message of 14 Feb 1994 02:39:07 GMT Several people have already responded to this, either to give some likely reasons why it probably wouldn't work (Paul V) or to beat the drum for one of the *BSD variants - something I won't criticise since the folks in question are understandably proud of their efforts, but beating the drum admittedly does not quite answer the questions posed here. As one of the 3 founders of FreeBSD, and somebody who's also sacrificed countless hours, spent significant amounts of personal cash and lost far too much sleep for "the cause" of a freely available BSD, just let me toss in my two cents into the pot. First off, let me just say that I think it's a little unfair of Paul to label us collectively as "BSD cowboys" (or the great BSD unwashed), the image being that of some wild and wooly group of hackers who hack on BSD for the sheer joy of screwing with it (or screwing it up). From his perspective as a paid BSDI consultant, it's perhaps easy to look down his nose at those who are doing it for less well defined reasons and no obvious financial reward - we're not making money, we must be doing it for the raw thrills and public adulation, right? Not necessarily. To really understand why we're doing what we're doing, it is important to understand how the *BSD groups came about in the first place. Nobody just woke up one morning and thought "Hey, think I'll get seriously involved in pushing out an operating system release! For no money! Yeah, that should wreck my social life real good! :-)". No. What happened was one Bill Jolitz, who *did* wake up one morning with that thought, and out came 386BSD 0.0, followed shortly by 0.1. For those of us who still saw Linux as a very embryonic UNIX variant (which it definately was, back then), 386BSD appeared as something promising to look significantly more like the versions of UNIX we were all used to, and we jumped at it. The problem was that 386BSD was a diamond in the rough [some would call that charitable, but let's be kind] and it required a lot of patches to fix all the various bugs that brought it frequently and grindingly to a halt, thus evolved the "Unofficial Patchkit". Please note that at this stage none of us were thinking of ourselves as "CSRG wannabees" or "The next wearers of the BSD mantle" (I shudder to even contemplate it), we simply wanted an operating system that was free, could be talked about openly with other enthusiasts (without having to demand a signed copy of a license agreement before exchanging sources), and enabled us to escape the scourge of SCO and SVR4 on our PC's. We weren't looking to win any religious wars, or become figureheads for any larger effort, we just wanted the bits! Of course, real life generally doesn't let you get away with a free lunch for very long, and before we knew it the patchkit had become a full-time job. Life without it was unthinkable, since utter chaos was the only alternative and Bill Jolitz had all but deserted us after 0.1 (and is still AWOL, over 2 years later). What were we to do? We'd already invested significant time and effort into fixing up 386BSD and people were relying on us (the patchkit coordinators) to try and make some sense of it all. Well, after several changes in "patchkit leadership" and a growing mountain of patches, we found ourselves faced with only one real alternative - another release. It was sheer chance that the minds of several folks at Berkeley were moving along similar lines right about the time that the patchkit moderators were throwing up their hands and deciding to go for another release of their own. Which effort came first is a matter of debate and completely unimportant, what is important is the fact that the "split" was not by design, it was simply a result of the chaotic times we were in and a complete lack of information on what was "real" and what wasn't - were the Berkeley folks serious (I.E. "real")? Were we? Would Bill J. come back, as he kept promising, and release 0.2 to save us all the time and grief? Nothing was certain until it had progressed along almost to its conclusion, by which time it was a little late for U-turns. To all of our credit, we did spend significant time and effort in discussions of how we might merge the FreeBSD and NetBSD groups, but was here that the lamentable (and far too frequently reported) ego problems surfaced and got in our way. However, fraternal problems aside, we're still much the same groups we always were - volunteers, many of us with full-time jobs and long careers in the computer industry, banging out the bits because we want to use them ourselves and because no one else is doing it. If someone came along tomorrow with a serious BSD consortium promising a full-source, freely available version of 4.4 BSD with support for all the various and sundry PC peripherals (which is the hard part - your average SPARCstation is a cake-walk by comparison, and changes very slowly once made to work), then I'd throw my full weight behind it in a heartbeat. Do you think I'd want to continue giving up my nights and weekends if some former god of BSD from CSRG got up and promised to give up _his_ nights and weekends to deliver to me an operating system of higher quality, integration and user focus? Hell no - I'd breath a long heartfelt sigh of relief, sit down in the bleachers and hold out my hands for the tape - "gimme - my turn to sit down". The same goes for getting a UCB/CSRG/BSDI person to help coordinate changes - I'd LOVE such a thing, and would jump through hoops to coordinate the FreeBSD side of it, but the chances of something like this happening are close to nil. So unless Santa Claus comes early this year, I'll continue to do what I can do ensure that our own "BSD for the PC" work goes forward. I'll also continue to welcome the participation of anyone cares to contribute anything of their own without using the opportunity to try and impress me with their brilliance, deride the efforts of others, or inflict their bad day on our group of long-suffering volunteers. Life is too short, and there's only a certain amount of grief one will tolerate for free! :) If you think you see a method I've missed that won't generate a lot of extra work for us, and doesn't subject me to more ego-friction grief, then by all means please let me know! Lest I end this on a bad note, let me take this last paragraph to say that just about everyone who has worked with or used FreeBSD (I cannot speak for NetBSD, though I'm sure they feel similarly) has been really terrific - we put in a lot of work, and it's not always a bowl of cherries, but every once in awhile we get somebody who's using a FreeBSD box to do something really interesting, or is teaching a group of students about operating systems design on an inexpensive cluster of PCs, and they tell us how much they're enjoying the fruits of our labors. At those times, it seems worth the effort again! :-) Jordan Hubbard (FreeBSD core group) -- Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Electric Bivalves Anonymous On the net, no one can hear you scream.