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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!swidir.switch.ch!newsfeed.ACO.net!news.tuwien.ac.at!not-for-mail From: martin@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at (Martin Birgmeier) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: The Future of FreeBSD... Date: 20 Jul 1995 08:42:22 +0200 Organization: Dept. of Comm. Engr., Tech. Univ. of Vienna, Austria Lines: 59 Message-ID: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at Hi fellow FreeBSD aficionados, being one of them (i.e. FreeBSD aficionado), during the past year or so I got the very strong impression that the FreeBSD effort is most likely going to die, for at least two reasons: 1) For whatever reasons, Linux has a much larger user *and* developer base than FreeBSD, and therefore can provide *high quality* software at a much faster rate. 2) FreeBSD developers are more or less reinventing the wheel, and even that wheel is basically from the stone-age of OSs as well... I understand that there is going a large amount of effort into making FreeBSD an advanced Unix system (unified buffer cache comes to mind), but basically it's still the same old story. Therefore, also during the past months, several ideas sprang up in my mind, which I would like to share with the rest of the net community: 1) In order to separate FreeBSD from the rest of the free Unix efforts, merge with Lites as developed by Johannes Helander *as soon as possible* (though I admit I don't know how possible this is at all, comparing with the state of affairs regarding the two BSD camps). This, in my opinion, would give FreeBSD the necessary edge over its competitors to stay alive and healthy; it might also help Lites to gain a wider user base. The remaining ideas might not be so important, but here they go anyway: 2) Reorganize the sup tree such that it is not ordered by subdirectories, but rather by functionality groups. With the current setup, you basically can fetch either everything or nothing, except maybe for the games and ports sections. 3) Introduce the ELF binaries format. I don't know much about it, but it seems to be the way of the future for various reasons. 4) Try to reach an agreement with the NetBSD developers on as common a source tree as possible, such that mutual fertilization can be achieved more easily. In my opinion it would be best to really have a physically common tree, with mirrors to the development groups. This is just my two cents... and please don't tell me that I may just step forward and implement my proposals myself - I don't have the time for that, although I'd certainly like to do it. Besides - I don't know how well known is the book by Antoine de Saint Exupery, `The Little Prince', but anyways, the major message of that book is that you are responsible for the persons whom you have made to believe/rely on you. In the same vein I dare to say that the FreeBSD developers are in a way responsible for their product on which many people rely/which many people enjoy. As a humble contributor of a tiny piece of *BSD code, Martin -- Martin Birgmeier Martin.Birgmeier@nt.tuwien.ac.at Technische Universitaet Wien mbirgmei@email.tuwien.ac.at Institut fuer Nachrichtentechnik und Hochfrequenztechnik