*BSD News Article 47444


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From: michael@okjunc.junction.net (Michael Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD...
Date: 21 Jul 1995 07:35:34 GMT
Organization: Okanagan Internet Junction, Vernon B.C., Canada
Lines: 75
Message-ID: <3unlc6$2cf@felix.junction.net>
References: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at>
NNTP-Posting-Host: okjunc.junction.net

In article <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at>,
Martin Birgmeier <martin@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>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.              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Huh? What quality? Yes there is a lot of stuff that works just fine but 
about 95% of it runs on FreeBSD as well. In the quality department Linux 
still has its warts. Those of us who are using it commercially do not do 
so because of some vague characteristic like "high quality software". We 
do so because it generally works better than the alternatives we have 
tried for the tasks we use it for.

There are some things that FreeBSD does better like NFS. There are some 
things that SCO UNIX does better like running database servers. There are 
some things that Suns do better like office applications suites.

>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 think you have this backwards. FreeBSD is basically an enhanced port of 
BSD UNIX which has been running under many guises (like SunOS) for many, 
many years. Linux is the one that is reinventing the wheel.

>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).

As the world of computers grows bigger and bigger there is room for more 
and more niches. If people are having fun working on FreeBSD then that's 
what really counts. Some of those people are working on Linux too, not to 
mention holding down day jobs.

>This, in my opinion, would give FreeBSD the necessary edge over its
>competitors to stay alive and healthy; 

It is already alive and healthy and already has an edge. And it is not 
competing with Linux. The two efforts are complementary and heavily 
cross-fertilized.

>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.

I think this is precisely the opposite direction to go in. The NetBSD 
effort is to maintain a common port for several hardware platforms. The 
FreeBSD group is focussed on Intel and has a somewhat different focus 
because of the type of people who own Intel platforms, i.e. the masses. 
This is good and I would like to see FreeBSD move towards a system that 
is far easier to install and administer than any other UNIX has been in the 
past.

The BSD tradition right from the beginning was one of finding a better 
way to do the job and integrating it with the base UNIX system. That's 
why vi was developped even though ed was there and works just fine. There 
are many more examples of this. Perhaps it is time to start integrating 
tools like TCL/Tk and expect and PERL into the system in the same way 
that X and USENET and vi have been added.

>This is just my two cents... 

Mine too.


-- 
Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-542-4130
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael@memra.com