[HN Gopher] As a longtime BSD user, I have my doubts about our f...
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As a longtime BSD user, I have my doubts about our future
Author : protomyth
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-05-15 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reddit.com)
| ajross wrote:
| I love that the numbered points 1-3 go on and on about the
| dangers of "Linuxisms" and the need to use BSD as a desktop vs.
| MacOS and the problems with taking a patched ZFS-on-Linux as the
| reference upstream. Basically the standard list of purity
| arguments one sees, nothing special.
|
| Then number four: "We need to stay out of the politics of the
| larger FOSS scene"
|
| Dude... (And yes, I know that the author means "politics" in a
| different sense. But still.)
| thijsvandien wrote:
| I wish for BSD to stay around forever. Sure, on desktop it's a
| tricky option, but neither Linux meets my standards there. For
| server use, it's unmatched IMO. A polished product meant to be
| relied on; well-organized and pleasantly conservative--what works
| keeps working, what's learnt stays useful. Really hoping this
| sentiment won't gain too much ground.
| diegocg wrote:
| Adoption of ZFS has been a real problem for BSDs. In one hand,
| ZFS gives them a good storage stack. In the other hand, it does
| not have BSD license, it does not integrate well with the rest of
| the kernel, and it does not differentiate them from any Linux
| distro with ZoL packages.
|
| They should come up with a new file system of their own, for all
| BSDs, or try to use Hammer, and stop using someone's else file
| system.
| mikem170 wrote:
| OpenBSD defaults to the BSD Fast File System (FFS).
|
| FeeBSD defaults to the Unix File System (UFS).
| seoaeu wrote:
| > We are all adults, we know what is and isn't generally
| acceptable on the internet.
|
| > I also, once upon a time, maintained some ports before getting
| banned for "conduct issues" shortly after John Marino left
| FreeBSD
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you are getting
| banned for "conduct issues" perhaps you don't actually know what
| is and isn't acceptable.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| He says elsewhere in that thread that he was a gamergate
| person, which checks out.
| enriquto wrote:
| I don't understand their problems with firefox. I'm a happy user
| of plain firefox (ESR) on OpenBSD. What are they talking about?
| rjsw wrote:
| I run it on NetBSD (without dbus) fine as well.
| na85 wrote:
| I think the poster is not seeing the forest for the trees. BSD
| has no real use case except as a way to subsidize giant megacorp
| development with volunteer work.
|
| Linux, for all its warts, is superior to BSD in nearly every way
| that matters to application developers and to companies who need
| a server OS. The areas in which BSD is superior to Linux simply
| aren't important enough to justify using BSD, unless you are a
| corporate parasite like Sony and need an operating system with a
| parasitism-enabling license but don't want to pay for more than a
| handful of developers.
|
| The market just doesn't seem big enough to support Linux and a
| handful of BSDs, and at the end of the day that's the real reason
| why BSD appears to be dying, because there's no reason to reach
| for BSD when Debian and Slackware exist.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| I tell people who want to make money off of FOSS to license as
| GPLv3 or AGPLv3. Offer a commercial license for money. Some
| people see megacorps' aversion to GPL and license as BSD,
| trying to believe that megacorp will come along and decide to
| hire them or pay them a retainer, despite the many instances of
| Amazon, Google, et al. ripping off some random permissively
| licensed project.
|
| There was previously a post on HN about this.
| eecc wrote:
| So much this, well said. Only issue is with SASS strip-miners
| muscling you out of your commercial license space. On the one
| hand Amazon adoption certifies the success of your product,
| on the other it puts any ambition of financial return to
| rest.
| wmf wrote:
| Are there any megacorps using BSD other than Netflix?
| mrighele wrote:
| AFAIK WhatsApp used to be Erlang on FreeBSD, not sure if it
| is still the case (maybe, Facebook is a big FreeBSD sponsor)
| throw0101a wrote:
| Dell EMC with Isilon, NetApp, Juniper mentioned:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_Fre
| e...
|
| You'll see regular "Sponsored by" lines in FreeBSD commit
| messages from Intel, Chelsio, Mellanox/NVidia for their
| products. Also:
|
| * https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sony is pretty notorious for flipping BSD technology into
| products. The PS2 and PS3 are notorious for having large
| portions of their software derived from FreeBSD
| onethought wrote:
| Apple do right?
| rmwaite wrote:
| Lots of things build on top of BSD. JunOS for example is the
| software that powers Juniper network devices and is based on
| FreeBSD (which depending on the platform may itself run in a
| VM on top of Linux).
| di4na wrote:
| Sony ?
| turminal wrote:
| Giving up on something like that is quite narrow minded.
| Diversity matters and monoculture is almost never a good thing.
| The fact that there are open operating systems other than Linux
| makes Linux better too.
| inamiyar wrote:
| Overall a good post - but I'm not a fan of the constant off-hand
| jabs at codes of conduct from someone who got banned for "conduct
| issues."
|
| " But if everyone got offended and quit a project over someone
| saying mean 30 years ago, all FOSS would have quickly died out. "
|
| The snowflakes are invading FOSS and trying to take it out! We
| must protect ourselves!
| moron4hire wrote:
| My experience has been, for each toxic person you eliminate,
| there are ten decent people waiting in the wings to replace
| them. The toxic folks are actively harming the project by
| keeping people away.
| enriquto wrote:
| can you point to a few concrete examples? (which are already
| public, please don't "out" anybody)
| MBCook wrote:
| Good people don't wanna work with problematic people.
|
| Look at what's going on at Basecamp. When it came out just
| how problematic they were and if they weren't willing to
| fix things, they lost 30% of their employees. Reportedly
| it's now up to 40-something percent.
| refenestrator wrote:
| 'Problematic' is such a fantastic word. Labelling a
| person, in whole, as 'problematic' but we're the nice and
| inclusive ones.
| zxzax wrote:
| For one, problematic refers to a behavior, not a person.
| If you find your behavior is causing problems for people,
| you can change that behavior (I encourage all
| employees/owners with a commitment to problem-solving to
| do this).
|
| For two, when the word is used in the context of
| inclusivity, usually the problem is that someone is
| behaving in a way that's exclusionary -- it's not being
| nice to encourage them to continue that behavior.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Labelling someone problematic is super exclusionary.
| Usually more so than the 'problematic' behavior.
|
| Take a step back and it's cliques all the way down.
| zxzax wrote:
| That's putting the cart before the horse -- in that
| context you would only see it used when the person's
| behavior already is super exclusionary. It's specifically
| used to describe that exclusionary behavior that has
| already happened.
| lostinquebec wrote:
| That's not an example because:
|
| 1. Basecamp is not OSS, and the people involved were all
| employees.
|
| 2. As employees, if you worked with someone for years,"it
| came out just how problematic they were" is a stretch.
| stoolpigeon wrote:
| From the post and op's comments - they really hate a lot of
| stuff. I find that people like this who can't really handle
| changes they don't like have a tough time communicating about it
| in an effective way or doing anything about it that is
| meaningful. Mostly I see them try to stir up trouble that could
| have a negative impact on the people actually doing things and
| that's about it.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Here are various problems and I can't use the proposed
| solutions for unmentionable reasons."
|
| Maybe Netcraft can be reached for comment on whether BSD is
| alive.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| As a very generic and simple computer person, BSD was off the
| table for me the moment I had to bother with the terminal to
| install it with a gui environment. Unlike Linux, BSD has a high
| barrier to entry similar to arch. And frankly, work, school, and
| social life take priority over learning how to install an OS that
| requires more maintenance and messing around to get things to
| work than even an unstable Linux distro.
|
| I really do like the idea of BSD and have several major OS
| choices, but honestly Linux seems to be the solution for most
| "third way" OS problems until programming a new OS becomes common
| like 100+ years down the road. BSD just failed where Linux
| succeeded in being able to easily pull in the lazy nerds like me.
| Short of a basic terminal command and simple troubleshooting of
| course. BSD is like arch level of difficulty and maintenance and
| I don't care for it. Also it's kind of ironic that he bashes
| macOS when historically it's the successor of BSD. What it gets
| right, this guy complains about. It's simple, I don't need to
| worry about any of the issues he mentioned, and it's reliable.
| The reason other BSDs aren't is because you have to waste time
| making you're system work first before you can do anything else
| unlike almost every other major OS.
| pwdisswordfish8 wrote:
| > I really do like the idea of BSD
|
| What do you consider to be the idea of BSD?
| turminal wrote:
| I think the linux community really should listen to those
| criticisms, not only for BSD users' good but for their own as
| well.
|
| Unfortunately linux community is not a well defined term anymore,
| because there are too many people and interests involved.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I don't see much future for BSD at this point - and I say that as
| someone who had their MBR overwritten by 386BSD core dumping once
| upon a time. I love BSD, and it's simplicity, but outside of
| dedicated appliances, I think general purpose UNIX is long
| settled.
|
| What's more is that Docker has become the one true way to
| distribute software for enterprises. The dependency and package
| management problems are not optional anymore, and the lack of a
| consistent structure makes image based deployments inevitable.
| Yes, someone will immediately bring up that BSD had these
| features first, but it ignores the two advantages of universal
| distribution and simplicity that Docker built.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Isn't Docker dying?
| wmf wrote:
| Docker(tm) is dying but docker (e.g. k8s on containerd) is
| bigger than ever.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| What do you mean by Docker(tm)?
| rrdharan wrote:
| The company, as opposed to the distribution format/
| mechanism.
| jl6 wrote:
| Calls macOS's interface "fischer price", and complains about
| elitism in the same sentence...
|
| What this guy is observing is that BSD is a subculture getting
| swallowed by a dominant monoculture. There are a few strategies
| for dealing with this - one is to accept fate, give up, and join
| the monoculture. Another is to find a core differentiating
| purpose, rally around that, and hope that the monoculture sees
| you as complementary. This harder path does mean foregoing the
| benefits of economies of scale, such as having lots of other
| people writing drivers for you for free.
|
| So what is the core differentiating purpose of BSD that will win
| the hearts of developers and convince them to turn their efforts
| towards it?
| ksec wrote:
| >As a longtime BSD user....
|
| >I've used FreeBSD since 2013, NetBSD since 2015.....
|
| May be it is me, but I expect _long time_ to be _at least_ a
| decade for OS. Especially for a "category" of OS.
|
| > OpenZFS
|
| I do sort of understand the issue especially with OpenZFS. The
| change-log always mentions fixes were specifically for FreeBSD.
| Usually I am pessimistic in these scenario as part of a possible
| EEE cycle. But I do think OpenZFS, or ZFS needs FreeBSD to
| survive. As long as the economics and political support are
| there, It should be fine.
|
| And despite being a fan of BSD, there are increasingly less
| reason to go with BSD as all technical, and financial benefits
| gravitate towards linux. Minix is dead [1] because of similar
| reason.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26451540
| noT1 wrote:
| "As a user, I'm entitled to others building a system that adheres
| to my elitist perspective."
| mnd999 wrote:
| Lots of good points there, I'm a long time FreeBSD user too and I
| kinda feel the same about the continuing dependence on Linux in
| so many areas. I switched to Arch Linux for my day to day a
| couple of years ago, everything works better. It's very hard to
| innovate when all your major drivers are lifted from elsewhere.
|
| I have less sympathy on the codes of conduct complaint. Codes of
| conduct are pretty straightforward to follow.
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