Why did NetBSD and FreeBSD diverge?
howa...@well.com
to make sense of it all. Both split off from 386BSD in 1993. That much
everyone seems to agree on. As near as I can tell, FreeBSD split in
mid-1993 and NetBSD in earler 1993. But why didn't the FreeBSD group just
become a 385-militant wing of the NetBSD development effort? Why was a
different project needed?
Thank you, J~
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fr...@reyes.somos.net
> I was sitting here reading the histories of FreeBSD and NetBSD and trying
> to make sense of it all. Both split off from 386BSD in 1993. That much
> everyone seems to agree on. As near as I can tell, FreeBSD split in
> mid-1993 and NetBSD in earler 1993. But why didn't the FreeBSD group just
> become a 385-militant wing of the NetBSD development effort? Why was a
> different project needed?
Politics, different points of views, big egos...(one, some or all of
those) The same goes for why OpenBSD came to be and why there are still 3
BSDs.
What I never understood is why "officially" they don't coperate more with
each other. I believe that unoficially some of the developers
work/help/contribute to more than one of the BSDs.
Does anyone know what ever happened to the push for an unified port
system?
n...@freebsd.org
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, James Howard wrote:
>
> > I was sitting here reading the histories of FreeBSD and NetBSD and trying
> > to make sense of it all. Both split off from 386BSD in 1993. That much
> > everyone seems to agree on. As near as I can tell, FreeBSD split in
> > mid-1993 and NetBSD in earler 1993. But why didn't the FreeBSD group just
> > become a 385-militant wing of the NetBSD development effort? Why was a
> > different project needed?
>
> Politics, different points of views, big egos...(one, some or all of
> those) The same goes for why OpenBSD came to be and why there are still 3
> BSDs.
>
> What I never understood is why "officially" they don't coperate more with
> each other. I believe that unoficially some of the developers
> work/help/contribute to more than one of the BSDs.
Lots of the developers work on more than one BSD. What would you like
to see in order to make that 'official'?
> Does anyone know what ever happened to the push for an unified port
> system?
N
--
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open...@email.com
On 17 Jan, James Howard wrote:
> I was sitting here reading the histories of FreeBSD and NetBSD and trying
> to make sense of it all. Both split off from 386BSD in 1993. That much
> everyone seems to agree on. As near as I can tell, FreeBSD split in
> mid-1993 and NetBSD in earler 1993. But why didn't the FreeBSD group just
> become a 385-militant wing of the NetBSD development effort? Why was a
> different project needed?
>
Actually at that time NetBSD was the militant wing.
386BSD, and I believe I was the last hold out for it, biggest problem
was the authors themselves. While the are extremely talented people
the times were filled with much mistrust.
Some facts:
An offical patch-kit run by many of the members of FreeBSD was the
pre-cursor to both FreeBSD and NetBSD, as well as OpenBSD.
At one time everyone worked on 386BSD, but again, as you'll
find on many history articles the authors were very un-responsive.
When NetBSD broke off it was considered militant. The was partly
because Chris Demitrious did not get along with people. Other people
were upset becuase their patches (submissions to the patchkit effort)
were not accept. There was much ill feelings. Chris is now a different
person, I think he learned things. Those other peoples are now
the core team at NetBSD.
Theo de Raadt was the most militant, hence the hard-line at OpenBSD.
NetBSD people, as they tell it, just want Theo to not yell at people.
He considered it censorship (see recent DDJ article).
Many other fact worked their way in. Aside from the stuff I've
mentioned, there is still lots of ill feelings towards the authors
of 386BSD. Another factor is BSDi. Many individual (most not now
at BSDi) actually started rumors and incited mis-trust.
AT&T also added pressure at the time by claiming Unix was a
National (treasure??) and therefore should be consider un-exportable.
This in a similar way as we have controls over munitions.
This notion was defeated in the courts, but by an out-of-court
settlement. Part of the settlement did not allow anyone
to talk about it.
AT&T sold Unix to Novell for $1 Billion dollars in the middle
of this and in reallity it was Novell that settled. BTW, this
$1B almost bankrupted(sp?) Novell.
There is more to this story, but let's wait for the denials
to come in first. :-)
Jessem.
howa...@well.com
> Many other fact worked their way in. Aside from the stuff I've
> mentioned, there is still lots of ill feelings towards the authors
> of 386BSD. Another factor is BSDi. Many individual (most not now
> at BSDi) actually started rumors and incited mis-trust.
(Brief background, I am bored. I noticed a trend that everytime someone
mentions BSD on Slashdot, someone asks what the differences are between
the BSDs, aside from hype. I am trying to resolve that question.)
So at this point, I am trying to figure out why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't
pool resource early. I know why OpenBSD exists so that is not a question
(though great quotes are appreciated:).
Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD? And what was BSDi doing at the
time?
Jamie
da...@fundy.ca
> (Brief background, I am bored. I noticed a trend that everytime someone
> mentions BSD on Slashdot, someone asks what the differences are between
> the BSDs, aside from hype. I am trying to resolve that question.)
>
> So at this point, I am trying to figure out why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't
> pool resource early.
I wasn't involved - here's my understanding from the discussions I've
seen.
Well, for the Kernel, that woudn't have been possible - FreeBSD didn't
want to be slowed down by doing all that 'portability' stuff, and NetBSD
wasn't willing to be Intel only.
In userland, there probably could have been (and still could be?) more
co-development and sharing.
> Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD? And what was BSDi doing at the
> time?
It was a project to do the port, it was never something he had intended
to maintain - he didn't 'pull' support, he just refused to get suckered
into ongoing work he didn't want to do.
BSDi was fighting the USL lawsuit I believe.
--
David Maxwell, da...@vex.net|da...@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville
pf...@pitt.edu
James Howard wrote:
>
...
>
> So at this point, I am trying to figure out why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't
> pool resource early. I know why OpenBSD exists so that is not a question
> (though great quotes are appreciated:).
>
Because we were trying to implement the "multipath optimization
method" (AKA MOM). This method, coldly thought up by the early BSD
gurus after consultations with the Usenet oracle, gave us the option
to explore different optimization and CI paths without the bothersome
requirement of sharing the same tree. The methods of crosspolination
and evolution by friendly competition were developed simultaneously...
> Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD? And what was BSDi doing at the
> time?
>
There are three possible explanations;
1) The guy was a genius, he surely had more important things to do
(for humanity not just for hackers !).
2) He was busy reading a joke list from some kid in Finland building a
Toy OS.
3) There's the legend that there are some secret tapes with his last
developments waiting to be released until the world were "ready".
BSDi was debugging Jolitz' code and pondering how to take over the
world...They sued AT&T first you know... they were also setting out
the last details of the MOM theory.
that's what I've concluded after years of carefully reading the
archives and interpreting ...
Pedro.
fr...@reyes.somos.net
>> What I never understood is why "officially" they don't coperate more with
>> each other. I believe that unoficially some of the developers
>> work/help/contribute to more than one of the BSDs.
>
>Lots of the developers work on more than one BSD. What would you like
>to see in order to make that 'official'?
A list, even if minimal, of things which the "architects" (i.e.
core on FreeBSD, don't know it's equivalent on NetBSD) agreed to
at least consider the other OS. I am not saying they should
consult each other for everything, but they could at least keep
in other in mind that would be great.
>> Does anyone know what ever happened to the push for an unified port
>> system?
>
> http://www.openpackages.org/
That is a very good start on "bringing the BSDs together".
francisco
Moderator of the Corporate BSD list
http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate
open...@email.com
On 17 Jan, James Howard wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2001 open...@email.com wrote:
>
>> Many other fact worked their way in. Aside from the stuff I've
>> mentioned, there is still lots of ill feelings towards the authors
>> of 386BSD. Another factor is BSDi. Many individual (most not now
>> at BSDi) actually started rumors and incited mis-trust.
>
> (Brief background, I am bored. I noticed a trend that everytime someone
> mentions BSD on Slashdot, someone asks what the differences are between
> the BSDs, aside from hype. I am trying to resolve that question.)
>
Okay.
> So at this point, I am trying to figure out why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't
> pool resource early. I know why OpenBSD exists so that is not a question
> (though great quotes are appreciated:).
>
Again, the start was 386BSD, then the "Unoffical Patch Kit".
The UPK was written by Terry Lambert, then run by Dave Burgess
and later Rodney Grimes. Jordan Hubbart was also a main person into.
Jordan was one of the founders of FreeBSD.
NetBSD pulled out early from the 386BSD effort. Their direction
was based on BSD tradition; make run on everything. Again, they
left mostly because of tensions between the authors of 386BSD
and the UPK. That is, people were making fixes to 386BSD, but
the only way to incorporate them for more that 1 1/2 year was
the UPK.
The UPK had many problems it was a disaster (Sorry Terry).
The UPK was never intended to run for more than a few months,
but one (1) year later it was the only to get things to work.
> Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD? And what was BSDi doing at the
> time?
>
Originally Bill Jolitz worked and had shares in BSDi (he may still
have claims) BSDi was started with the code that Bill had returned
to UCB. However, problems started when Rob Kolstad (then CEO) and
others started activites of a gray nature (Sorry can't follow up on
this). Bill while a great technologist had words with BSDi, pulled
out of BSDi, mysteriously had his UCB accounts canceled and eventually
got some help from UCSF.
Some time later my partner John Sokol ran into Bill Jolitz.
As it turns out a class mate of Bill's told John.
John had been working on an "un-encumbered" version of
Unix with several people. Because of the mess, John agreed to
help Bill, but Bill place several restrictions on the help.
One restriction was not to release the code until Bill felt
it was ready.
Unfortuneally, here is where the story turns. Chris Demetrious,
a founder of NetBSD, release the code prematurely. This upset
many people, including BSDi, AT&T and UCB. But the cat was
out of the bag and we had to move. The "unoffical" release
was further furstrated when corrupt copies mysteriously made
it on to Chris's version, and versions stored at UCB.
The incident was quickly followed up with an offical 0.0
release. This release while workable had a very poorly written
floppy driver that furstrated the release. The release version
was patch in 0.1 with version that were in MS-DOS file format
(128k chunks I think) that allowed people to at last be able
to get it running.
Note: the previous version was an all or nothing release.
That is, once you started from the first diskette and
completed with the 20th diskette, if anything went wrong
you had to start over.
With the 0.1 release, at least people could work and move
forward, but many drivers and the VM had problems - hence
the UPK.
As time went on and AT&T filed suite against BSDi, and
UCB against AT&T. The situation got ugly. John Sokol
got a visit from the Stanford University President.
Bill Jolitz had a cross burned on his lawn. Dave Burgess,
then in the US ARMY, got a visit from the Military Police.
Needless to say, there was alot of tension at the time.
As you might imagine retreat was a good option for all.
Bill and Lynn Jolitz found refuge in completing their
book, The Basic Kernel: Source Code Secrets. They also
worked on finishing the offical 1.0 version. However,
Bill in his entusasium wanted to make it the best he
could and I'm told he swapped out the Virtual Memory
system twice.
As time went on, but well before 1.0, a Newsgroup formed
and Chris Demetrious became the Moderator. The group
was form as a support mechanisum(sp?) for Bill.
However, individuals (no longer at BSDi) continously
sent messages to cause insurrection and undermined
trust in the community. Eventually, NetBSD was formed
because of the reasons I stated earlier.
FreeBSD form later but many of the original FreeBSD
people were upset at the NetBSD people becuase
they still wanted to support Bill. Eventually
I was the last person standing in support of Bill
and the tension and flames wars (at that time)
centered around anything I said or did.
Most of the bad blood was (and still is) because
of how code contribtions are handled. The result
as you can see is both groups have Open CVS trees,
unheard of before then, and Open PRs (Problem Reports).
In addition, no one person can stop a piece of code
and no one person has a final say so.
It is well understood, if you don't like the situation,
write your own. This stances comes mostly from Bill Jolitz
because that was his final words when 1.0 was finally
released.
In a sense, alot of the bad blood is Bill's fault, but
other people (including myself) must share the blame.
I could have done more at the time to mend fences, but
I knew that the community could not move forward
without a commone enemy. The eventually found one.
It was Bill and Lynn Jolitz, the original authors
of 386BSD.
So, today myself and other people you would not expect
are trying to get the community back together.
I can mention Rick Moen of the Cabal, and Ernest
Prabhakar Appple's Open Source Project Manager.
Together they and other people I should mention are
working hard to get the groups back together, but
as I've said, there is too much bad blood out there.
Best Regards,
Jessem.
tlam...@primenet.com
> > So at this point, I am trying to figure out why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't
> > pool resource early. I know why OpenBSD exists so that is not a question
> > (though great quotes are appreciated:).
>
> Again, the start was 386BSD, then the "Unoffical Patch Kit".
> The UPK was written by Terry Lambert, then run by Dave Burgess
> and later Rodney Grimes. Jordan Hubbart was also a main person into.
> Jordan was one of the founders of FreeBSD.
Rodney Grimes, then Nate Williams and Jordan Hubbard. Dave
Burgess took over the "Unofficial FAQ" from me before I handed
off the patchkit.
As a rule of thumb, unless I'm passionate about the subject (and
so can't trust it to someone else), I have this tendency to get
things that I think are neat or need to work to the point where
they work, and then find someone to hand them to so I can go on
to the next thing on my "important things that won't otherwise
get done" list.
> NetBSD pulled out early from the 386BSD effort. Their direction
> was based on BSD tradition; make run on everything. Again, they
> left mostly because of tensions between the authors of 386BSD
> and the UPK. That is, people were making fixes to 386BSD, but
> the only way to incorporate them for more that 1 1/2 year was
> the UPK.
>
> The UPK had many problems it was a disaster (Sorry Terry).
> The UPK was never intended to run for more than a few months,
> but one (1) year later it was the only to get things to work.
It was a very basic version control system, which relied on a
human being, rather than software, to ensure that order of
operation was maintained.
Contrary to your repeated opinion of my intent in writing the
scripts which created, managed, and installed the patches, the
software itself was intended to last a very long time. It is
still in use today at at least 6 commercial organizations, none
of which, incidently, I ever worked for: the code was adopted
on its merits.
The patchkit had several attributes:
o It ensured patch application would not fail due to
conflicting authors changes to the same file.
o It was the only realistic method of integrating lots
of Usenet-posted patches, without retarding progress
by setting up a control hierarchy, like the one in
effect in all longer-lived open source projects today.
NB: 386BSD lived a very long time -- from the
establishment of the first patchkit release,
through to the establishment of the FreeBSD
0.1 (quickly, 1.0) source tree, all public
work on 386BSD was done in the context of
Usenet postings and/or patchkit patches --
quite fine with the patchkit.
o It worked around the "damage" of the actual source
code control system being unavailable to all but a
few people.
NB: Linux _still_ uses a limited availability
("keys to the kingdom") model; this works
for them because Linux, being only a kernel,
is orders of magnitude less code than any
BSD system. For all its faults, Linus is
sincerely wrong about his arguments against
source control -- though there are valid
ones, as the next point shows, Linus never,
to my knowledge, actually points to them,
since they are points against having a
"Linus" figure, as well.
o It required that patch conflict domains be well-known
on a per file basis, so that application of patches
could be serialized based on the topology of their
affect.
NB: CVS has this attribute; use of CVS, like use
of the patchkit, constrains BSD growth in
many ways, including acting as a brake on
not only the rate of growth, but the rate of
growth of the rate of growth. If I had been
aware of "mutual security" games at the time
I created it, I would have picked a different
approach, which did not have a centralized
control constraint as an emergent property,
and there would probably not be a "core team"
structure today, nor would having "commit
priviledges" be such a big deal (or stumbling
block, depending on your point of view).
o Developement under its auspices significantly
outstripped the ability of Bill Jolitz to keep up
with the work, as anything other than an editor,
a role for which he was unprepared.
NB: This is a good thing: all works should outlive
their authors utility; we have an Internet
today, despite the regrettable deaths of John
Postel and Richard Stevens, precisely because they
built things to last, instead of for their own
aggrandization. This process is called "monument
building", and engineers who do other than
likewise are diddling themselves.
o It had no sense of history: there was no modification
history, other than ordering, and there was no real
accreditation.
NB: This is good; it keeps away people who are in
it for ego. Unfortunately, it also attracts
those same people, since it provided a chokepoint
that was insufficiently decentralized to survive
an egomaniac. Like Linux, FreeBSD has been very
lucky, but not as lucky as it could have been,
lacking such a chokepoint in the incarnations of
its organization.
It's also bad, if you want to protect public
projects from intentional disruption, by Luddites
or power-seekers who look to wield power for its
own sake. Again, luck has played a role here,
since the organizational incarnations we've seen
haven't required perfect altruism in order to
continue to at least function.
o It was still to slow, for some people.
NB: Another bad point; I mostly blame this on the
implicit serialization of operations, which means
CVS has the same problem: FreeBSD, under CVS, has
occasionally been too slow for people, including
myself on several occasions.
Larry McVoy's source code control system, and
Perforce's system, both overcome this problem, by
offering the capability for multiple lines of
developement (often abbreviated on Larry's mailing
lists as "LODs"). Unfortunately, both systems
attach unacceptable economic restrictions on the
use of their software for overcoming this problem
in the BSDs, since they add cost to commercial use,
but don't incent the projects themselves, which
have already adjusted to the concept, and are
unlikely to change without incentive (no BSD
project, so far as I have been able to tell, seems
to see increased rate of growth or rate of increase
in rate of growth as incentive; mostly they view
both as a threat. Of course, that's what they've
been trained to do, by their initial choice of
tools).
So the patchkit was not a failure, it was an experiment, and it
had perhaps too much success, particularly as a braking system
where people wanted a "downhill racer", and a multiplier of
effort, where other people wanted an "atomic pile" instead of
a "nuke".
--
As an aside:
Actually, I view the whole thing as a useful applied sociology
experiment, from which much useful information derived. If I
had the academic credentials as a social scientist to be seriously
published in the field, or wasn't busy with other things to the
point of being unable to waste time acquiring them, I'd write
several papers on the topic. As it is, I've shared the models and
information with others (including the Sante Fe Institute and
the Foresight Institute) who had an interest and appeared to
understand them, so I'm not a single chokepoint myself.
I've since used the information gained to successfully identify
the minimum amount of effort required to trigger four still-viable
Open Source software projects, and some of the people whom I
shared information with have triggered no less than six others.
--
The commentary by "Jesse M" in response to these questions failed
to answer them...
> > Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD?
Bill Jolitz supported Lynne Jolitz after a Usenet tirade that,
while understandable, under the circumstances of the time, a
lot of people took personally. One of the things he did as
part of this support of his wife was to revoke the right of the
patchkit people to use the "386BSD" name for a "386BSD 0.5
interim release". Rather than waste the work, which was quite
substantial, they followed the NetBSD example and committed the
code to a CVS tree, and released FreeBSD instead.
In retrospect, my public advice to Bill Jolitz to trademark the
name "386BSD", which everyone assumed he had done, when he was
revoking rights to use the name, was probably a bad move.
> > And what was BSDi doing at the time?
BSDI was pursuing a commercial version of BSD, as well as
fending off a lawsuit brought on by their waking up the USL
lawyers with their "1-800-ITS-UNIX" phone number, which the
USL lawyers hated, since lawyers don't understand the concept
of namespaces (see ".COM" for other examples of the trademark
namespace being applied to orthogonal namespaces).
Once awake, the USL lawyers refused to go back to sleep,
even after the phone number "problem" was fixed, since the
law is used as a business weapon, as well as making trademarks
into a defensive obligation.
I can't speak to the agendas involved; I have no idea why UCB
did not rip USL a new one, since MIT offered to bankroll them,
including putting their patent portfolio behind the effort
(anyone with a patent portfolio large enough can find infringement
by anyone with a technology dependent business; patents were being
granted despite obviousness even back then, and the problem has
only gotten worse since then, with the patenting of algorithms as
if they were processes).
[ ... 386BSD ... ]
> With the 0.1 release, at least people could work and move
> forward, but many drivers and the VM had problems - hence
> the UPK.
Actually, the patchkit solved a _lot_ of problems people had
with the 386BSD 0.1 distribution. Only a few of these were
related to something other than the distribution structure,
which was the biggest problem most people had with the 0.1
release
Yeah, I know the VM system was a problem: I did the first
public patch for it with my first FAQ release (it was in the
top three original reasons for the FAQ). But most people had
a problem with having to wait for the promised "0.2 release",
which was supposed to incorporate most of the Usenet patches,
but which never materialized. The promises of "soon now" and
the faith in Bill frimly taking the steering wheel of the bus
(eventually) was the reason I labelled both the FAQ and the
patchkit as "unofficial": I did so with the full expectation
that "official" replacements would be forthcoming.
NB: Actually, I'm proud of doing that: if it had been
successful, we'd probably have an organization that
would be much more helpful to people with problems,
and much less likely to say things like "you want it
fixed, where's the code, you whiney moron?". I'm
not that happy with the clique-ish nature of the
community that's developed, where everyone thinks
it's the order of the universe that "newbies must
pay their dues". The BSD community has grown to
resemble a college fraternity, with its own set of
"hazing" rules, which, thankfully, Linux and other
Open Source software projects seem to have sucessfully
avoided.
[ ... ]
> As time went on, but well before 1.0, a Newsgroup formed
> and Chris Demetrious became the Moderator. The group
> was form as a support mechanisum(sp?) for Bill.
The newsgroup was a side-note, and brought on mostly by a
hypersensitive attitude of legal political correctness,
which haunts its name to this day. The comp.unix.bsd group
was perfectly adequate to the job, and was used for it for
quite a long time.
> However, individuals (no longer at BSDi) continously
> sent messages to cause insurrection and undermined
> trust in the community. Eventually, NetBSD was formed
> because of the reasons I stated earlier.
NetBSD people were merely less patient with Bill's 0.2
release promises, and went off on their own much earlier.
> FreeBSD form later but many of the original FreeBSD
> people were upset at the NetBSD people becuase
> they still wanted to support Bill.
FreeBSD and NetBSD pretty much evolved independently, at
nearby times.
FreeBSD people were not upset at the NetBSD people, per se;
they merely didn't "rally to the flag", once a new banner
was declared. Much of that had to do with the work being
carried out by a small group, in nominal seclusion, to get
out from under what appeared to be the yoke of promises
which would never materialize, in their opinions. In fact,
they turned out to be right, but through no fault of their
own. There was only a minimal amount of friction, mostly
caused by people who didn't understand the necessity of the
serialization of the production of patchkit patches; this
went away for everyone but a few "stamp collector"
personalities (people who hold unreasonably strong grudges
forever) when the FreeBSD/386BSD 0.5 split occurred, which
was very shortly after the original (0.8) NetBSD release.
> In a sense, alot of the bad blood is Bill's fault, but
> other people (including myself) must share the blame.
> I could have done more at the time to mend fences, but
> I knew that the community could not move forward
> without a commone enemy. The eventually found one.
> It was Bill and Lynn Jolitz, the original authors
> of 386BSD.
I disagree. The "bad blood", what there is of it, is the
result of a fringe of volatile personalities, which have
mostly been purged from the natural chokepoints of the
various BSD-derived projects.
I really don't buy the "common enemy" theory for most
events in the Open Source community; the only place that
really applies is in a project "split", and that generally
only happens as a result of very strong ideological reasons.
One of the reasons I constantly caution against splits,
even though I clash as much as anyone, on ideological
grounds, is that the new project will _inevitably_ attract
the most volatile elements to itself; that's what has
historically happened in _any_ social schism, throughout
human history. You don't have to run an experiment too
many times before you can predict the outcome which will
result from running it yet again.
Without strong ideological reasons, coupled with the power
in the system being embedded in a much smaller group of
people with a conflicting ideology, you'll always end up
with a rabble. This is why the U.S. electoral system, as
strange as it looks, has been so successful, and why the
relatively recent "core team" reforms in FreeBSD have had
the effect of making it even more unlikely that there will
be a true "FreeBSD schism" in the near future.
> So, today myself and other people you would not expect
> are trying to get the community back together.
> I can mention Rick Moen of the Cabal, and Ernest
> Prabhakar Appple's Open Source Project Manager.
> Together they and other people I should mention are
> working hard to get the groups back together, but
> as I've said, there is too much bad blood out there.
Again, I must disagree. The U.S., Australia, and the U.K.
are the best of friends these days, but they hardly want
to become a single country. You don't need to point at
putative "bad blood" to explain why there are three
seperate and distinct groups.
I think the reason the "openports" thing hasn't really
gotten anywhere yet in displacing the ports trees of the
various projects, is that there is not demonstrable benefit
for the majority of the people doing the actualy work: the
people with the power to "officially" adopt it in place of
the existing systems currently in use by the various
projects. Like source code control systems, the people
involved have been "trained", by weeding out all of the
people who clash with the system, through self selection.
Just providing a replacement system is not sufficient
incentive to cause a change-over: the existing system is
metastable, and won't "tunnel" of its own accord, even though
it would mean moving to a state of _net_ lower energy, since
they are measuring their energy only in their own realm, and
the net value in all BSD realms is irrelevent to them.
Continuing with this example (once all subelements have been
integrated, there's really no difference between the projects,
and one will "fade away", should we ever get to that point),
you would need either buy-in from the principals in each of
the groups, or you would need to provide an _additional and
compelling benefit_ to overcome social inertia. I think it's
that simple: no "bad blood" need apply, as an explanation.
NB: If you're interested, the status quo here is called
a "Richardson Non-Linear Mutual Security Game"; an
analytical mechanics buff would recognize it as a
"damped driven harmonic oscillator", where the damping
force exceeds the driving force. If you understood
that, then it's also probably obvious to you now how
you could preterb two of the systems sufficiently to
force your new paradigm to be adopted naturally; it's
also probable that you'll recognize it involves at
least some work on your part.
Terry Lambert
te...@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
tlam...@primenet.com
> > resemble a college fraternity, with its own set of
> > "hazing" rules, which, thankfully, Linux and other
> > Open Source software projects seem to have sucessfully
> > avoided.
>
It's where you take the new guys and make them eat worms until
you feel they've eaten enough worms that they can be full
members of the club.
You can tell you are a full member of the club when you are
allowed take the new guys and make them eat worms until you
feel they've eaten enough worms that they can be full members
of the club.
Most military organizations have the same type of initation
rites, except the Rangers, where, when they take you and make
you eat worms, it's called "training", and you know what you
are getting into before you sign up for it.
Basically, it means "technically meaningless behaviour that
does nothing to advance the organization, which you are
nonetheless expected to engage in as part of the price of
participation, above and beyond the value of the effort which
you are willing to donate to the cause".
> > I think the reason the "openports" thing hasn't really
> > gotten anywhere yet in displacing the ports trees of the
> > various projects, is that there is not demonstrable benefit
> > for the majority of the people doing the actualy work:
>
> Do you mean openpackages.org? That project is still fairly
> new.
Yeah, "openpackages", thanks.
> We're not even at the stage of having a ports tree ready
> for public consumption.
That was rather my point. When you get to where you have a
ports tree ready for public consumption, how are you going to
get the projects to switch over to the new system? A lot of
people have an investment in continuing to do things the way
they have always done them, particularly the poor slobs^W^W
people who thanklessly^W cheerfully maintain individual ports,
and have an exiting investment in getting on a project specific
committers list, and have invested heavily in learning a project
specific way of doing a port.
Getting a ports tree ready for public consumption is probably
the least of the worries you are going to have to address,
unless you already have buy-in from at least two of the projects,
at least one of which is FreeBSD.
It's not an impossible task, but you need to address the
biggest issues first, in order to minimize risk to the point
of getting sufficient volunteer effort to get something ready,
and it's very hard to nail down a commitment from a BSD project
from people who have the power to make them, without presenting
a fait accompli. The main watershed event will be when one of
the projects drops their packaging system, and all "cvsup"
for that project is from your site instead of the project
specific site.
Don't worry about it; it was just a handy example, and you
already have Satoshi and some of the others on board, so it's
probably not as much of a political uphill battle as it seems
from the outside (which is what made it a good example).
As a pointer of the type that I hinted at: a compelling value
that you could add would be browser-based installation, using
your own web server (or mirrors) that have a MIME-type that
runs a signature validation program based on certificates of
known signers, so the installations can be done as "root"
with a single click for install. Another value would be to
do a local browser plug-in to seperate "installed" and
"uninstalled" views, but you could do that by downloading the
certificate signed signature first, and then checking for an
exisitng install based on that (but it's less pretty), or by
using a local hierarchy ("file browse") in order to get the
same effect.
It's pretty trivial to do all of these things, if you require
OpenSSH and some other things to be installed before you go
(you would need to patch the local copy of the MIME types for
the browser to invoke your scripts, though...).
open...@email.com
On 18 Jan, Dan Langille wrote:
> On 18 Jan 2001, at 6:26, Terry Lambert wrote:
>> The BSD community has grown to
>> resemble a college fraternity, with its own set of
>> "hazing" rules, which, thankfully, Linux and other
>> Open Source software projects seem to have sucessfully
>> avoided.
>
> Could you please elaborate on the "hazing" rules?
>
Sure watch this.
Those who thought they could simply become scientist
by enter CSRG have be fallen to reallity. It is now their
role in life to track bugs and repeat the "see I told you so"
retoritc.
Jessem.
open...@email.com
On 18 Jan, Terry Lambert wrote:
> More corrections...
>
>> AT&T sold Unix to Novell for $1 Billion dollars in the middle
>> of this and in reallity it was Novell that settled. BTW, this
>> $1B almost bankrupted(sp?) Novell.
>
> Novell bought USL for $80M, which is only 8% of the figure
> you quote. This is the same price they charged Sun to get
> out of royalty payments, and the later sale of USL to SCO was
> nothing but gravy for them: very good ROI, in fact.
>
The figure I'm quoting was one I was given.
If it is incorrect, then I need to get the correcting
reference. Both John and I are working on a History of BSD.
As such, the correct nature of facts becomes us.
If you can please Terry, and reference information, rather
that word of mouth, would assist us greatly.
> The $1B purchase made at around the same time was the purchase
> of Word Perfect. Along with AppWare (another company started
Terry, I've forwarded this information to John as a
possible error in our notes.
Best Regards,
tlam...@primenet.com
> >> of this and in reallity it was Novell that settled. BTW, this
> >> $1B almost bankrupted(sp?) Novell.
> >
> > Novell bought USL for $80M, which is only 8% of the figure
> > you quote. This is the same price they charged Sun to get
> > out of royalty payments, and the later sale of USL to SCO was
> > nothing but gravy for them: very good ROI, in fact.
>
> The figure I'm quoting was one I was given.
> If it is incorrect, then I need to get the correcting
> reference. Both John and I are working on a History of BSD.
> As such, the correct nature of facts becomes us.
>
> If you can please Terry, and reference information, rather
> that word of mouth, would assist us greatly.
I got "uncooked" numbers, as a senior employee with stock, so
it's not exactly "word of mouth". 8-).
Not only that, Novell almost made 100% ROI in one year.
> > The $1B purchase made at around the same time was the purchase
> > of Word Perfect. Along with AppWare (another company started
> Terry, I've forwarded this information to John as a
> possible error in our notes.
See:
http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.b43.htm#191stPage
The $268.7 includes a $9.4M debt assumption, does not include
the $80.5M Sun paid, does not include net sales by USL, and
the value of the Novell stock at the time the transaction
actually went through.
I guess you could subtract out the earlier "investment in USL",
which was actually a stock swap so that both companies had
some skin in the game over Univel, so I think it shouldn't
count as anything but a $17M paper cost.
See also pg193 for income figures (you have to multiply the
missing percentage, but it's simple algebra):
http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.b43.htm#193rdPage
Not including the overvaluation, the cost was $178.8M. If
you include what Word Perfect did to the Novell stock, the
cost drops to about $87.3M; I guess it depends on how you
want to cook the books...
For more more fun, look at the 1992 numbers for the VAX/VMS
deal; I was one of 3 engineers responsible for that nice $15M
number. Robert Withrow, also a FreeBSD person, was on the
DEC side of that deal, as their primary (IMO) engineering
contribution...
I figure that I personally paid for almost 6% of the USL
purchase with around one year of work, and between the 3
of us, it was over 17%.
Terry Lambert
te...@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
n...@freebsd.org
> Actually, I view the whole thing as a useful applied sociology
> experiment, from which much useful information derived. If I
> had the academic credentials as a social scientist to be seriously
> published in the field, or wasn't busy with other things to the
> point of being unable to waste time acquiring them, I'd write
> several papers on the topic.
That didn't prevent ESR from trying. . .
N
--
Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95.
Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission,
hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless.
Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
-- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery
open...@email.com
On 18 Jan, Terry Lambert wrote:
>> >> AT&T sold Unix to Novell for $1 Billion dollars in the middle
>> >> of this and in reallity it was Novell that settled. BTW, this
>> >> $1B almost bankrupted(sp?) Novell.
>> >
>> > Novell bought USL for $80M, which is only 8% of the figure
>> > you quote. This is the same price they charged Sun to get
>> > out of royalty payments, and the later sale of USL to SCO was
>> > nothing but gravy for them: very good ROI, in fact.
>>
>> The figure I'm quoting was one I was given.
>> If it is incorrect, then I need to get the correcting
>> reference. Both John and I are working on a History of BSD.
>> As such, the correct nature of facts becomes us.
>>
>> If you can please Terry, and reference information, rather
>> that word of mouth, would assist us greatly.
>
> I got "uncooked" numbers, as a senior employee with stock, so
> it's not exactly "word of mouth". 8-).
>
> Not only that, Novell almost made 100% ROI in one year.
>
>
>> > The $1B purchase made at around the same time was the purchase
>> > of Word Perfect. Along with AppWare (another company started
>> Terry, I've forwarded this information to John as a
>> possible error in our notes.
>
> See:
>
>...[Trimmed]...
>
Thanks, Terry. I've forward the information to John. Concrete
information will help us paint the picture correctly. :-)
Jessem.
cfuh...@tfcci.com
Howdy,
I'm trying to represent, in my mind, the "BSD Family Tree" and have come
up with the following ASCII drawing based on discussions here. Please
note:
* I am not an artist :)
* I am assuming that OpenBSD split from NetBSD after BSD 4.4-Lite was
release. I am using the "dotted" lines to show BSD 4.4-Lite's
influence on Net- and FreeBSD.
* I can't remember if there were any interim releases between Net/2 and
4.4-Lite
* I am not placing Apple's Darwin on here. I *think* it's based off of
FreeBSD and, if so, I'll be happy to add it.
* While this drawing loosely illustrates the time line, it is not, by
any means, "to scale".
* I am not responsible if your e-mail package munges the drawing. It
looked okay in pine dammit so it should look okay in yours ;)
Please feel free to e-mail me any glaring mistakes and I'll be happy to
repost this.
+-----------+
| BSD Net/2 |
+-----------+
| |
+-----------+ |
| 368BSD | +-----------+
+-----------+ |BSD4.4 Lite| - - - +
| | +-----------+
| | |
| +-----------+
| | NetBSD | < - - - - - - - +
| +-----------+
| | |
+-----------+ |
| FreeBSD | < - - | - - - - - - - - +
+-----------+ |
+-----------+
| OpenBSD |
+-----------+
--
Chris Fuhrman | Twenty First Century Communications
cfuh...@tfcci.com | Software Engineer
(W) 614-442-1215 x271 |
(F) 614-442-5662 | PGP/GPG Public Key Available on Request
hubert...@informatik.fh-regensburg.de
> I'm trying to represent, in my mind, the "BSD Family Tree" and have come
> up with the following ASCII drawing based on discussions here. Please
> note:
See: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/history.html
Please keep me off the CC: list!!!
- Hubert
--
Hubert Feyrer <hubert...@informatik.fh-regensburg.de>
kei...@iteration.net
| I'm trying to represent, in my mind, the "BSD Family Tree" and have come
| up with the following ASCII drawing based on discussions here. Please
| note:
/usr/share/misc/bsd-family-tree :)
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| kei...@peorth.iteration.net | kei...@bsdconspiracy.net |
| http://peorth.iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
cfuh...@tfcci.com
On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> See: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/history.html
>
This includes pretty much more than I could in any ASCII-art diagram *g*
Even includes the latest releases of the Linux kernel, NetBSD, FreeBSD,
and OpenBSD :)
--
Chris Fuhrman | Twenty First Century Communications
cfuh...@tfcci.com | Software Engineer
(W) 614-442-1215 x271 |
(F) 614-442-5662 | PGP/GPG Public Key Available on Request
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majo...@FreeBSD.org
howa...@well.com
> I'm trying to represent, in my mind, the "BSD Family Tree" and have come
Hey, that's my working title! It sucks too, so suggestions are
welcome. As soon as I have a completed draft, I will be posting it.
But something is missing here, I have seen several long postings on
software development methodology and the history of BSD in the 90s. This
is overkill, I am look for 100 words or less (less is more) which can say
shortly why NetBSD and FreeBSD didn't join forces early on. A full
history of BSD or Unix is far beyond the scope of my project. I also want
to avoid inflaming or opening up old wounds, but I also want to make sure
I don't lie to the reader. :)
Jamie
br...@lariat.org
>As an aside:
>
>Actually, I view the whole thing as a useful applied sociology
>experiment, from which much useful information derived. If I
>had the academic credentials as a social scientist to be seriously
>published in the field, or wasn't busy with other things to the
>point of being unable to waste time acquiring them, I'd write
>several papers on the topic.
A lack of credentials -- or a lack of ethics -- hasn't stopped
one Eric Raymond from writing papers on this topic, most of
them self-serving propaganda. You SHOULD publish, Terry; you
make a lot more sense than Eric and wouldn't simply be out to
increase the value of your stock.
--Brett
gr...@lemis.com
>
> Why did Jolitz pull support from 386BSD? And what was BSDi doing at
> the time?
OK, let's look at some time lines. I'm currently travelling, so I
don't have hard facts to back up all these statements, which are from
my recollection. Feel free to counter them with facts.
pre-1990: Some people at the Computer Sciences Research Group in
Berkeley realized that the days of the CSRG were numbered,
and work on releasing the Berkeley code in unencumbered
form, primarily for people who wanted TCP/IP stacks. The
result was the Berkeley Networking Tape, later called
Net/1. It didn't pretend to be an operating system, but it
was a complete TCP/IP stack.
Still at Berkeley, Bill Jolitz and some others work towards
porting 4.3BSD Reno to the 386, and making the result
unencumbered. They failed, but Bill described the work in a
very detailed series of articles in Dr. Dobbs Journal,
starting (I think) in early 1991.
mid-1991: The CSRG released Net/2, the unfinished attempt at a 4.3BSD
port to the 80386. A large proportion of the CSRG members,
including Mike Karels, Kirk McKusick, Chris Torek and Bill
Jolitz, join up with some others, notably (at a later date;
I think 1 December 1991) Rob Kolstad, to create a company
called Berkeley Software Design Inc. (BSDI) to market this
software. Quite early on people started writing the
abbreviation as "BSDi", but they didn't in fact lower-case
the i until April 2000.
It's not clear what Bill Jolitz thought the goals of BSDI
were. Rob Kolstad told me that he got very upset towards
the end of the year because BSDI wanted to charge money for
the system. It's not clear how he thought they were going
to be viable without doing so, but he left BSDI on 1
December 1991, not before he had destroyed all his work.
Feb 1992: BSDI releases the first Beta versions of their commercial
operating system, BSD/386.
Mar 1992: Bill Jolitz releases the first alpha version (0.0) of his
free operating system, 386BSD.
14 July: Bill Jolitz releases version 0.1 of 386BSD.
At this point, BSD/386 was quite a usable system. I was
running both Interactive UNIX/386, a System V.3.2
derivative, and BSD/386 0.3.3, and the BSD/386 was already
much more polished than Interactive. By all accounts 386BSD
was still a disaster. I once started trying to install it,
but didn't get very far.
Apr 1993: NetBSD 0.8 came out.
Dec 1993: FreeBSD 1.0 came out.
End 1995: Dr. Dobbs markets "386BSD 1.0" on CD-ROM for $99, promising
support. It was a disaster, no support was forthcoming, and
the documentation was in a proprietary Microsoft format. I
don't know that anybody ever got it running: by that time
FreeBSD and NetBSD were just too far ahead, and the CDs were
a lot cheaper.
So why did Bill "pull support"? I don't think he did. He never
offered any support, and much of the ill-feeling came from people who
thought that he should put their patches back into the base. That
would have been a sensible thing to do, of course, but he obviously
didn't want to do it. I suspect that he found the whole thing had
grown over his head. In hindsight, it's surprising that it took so
long for the NetBSD and FreeBSD people to get started. If it had
happened earlier, it's possible that people might have got over their
differences and formed a united BSD project. I don't know if that
would have brought better results.
Greg
--
Finger gr...@lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
gr...@lemis.com
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2001 17:52:44 +0000, Nik Clayton wrote:
>
>>> What I never understood is why "officially" they don't coperate more with
>>> each other. I believe that unoficially some of the developers
>>> work/help/contribute to more than one of the BSDs.
>>
>> Lots of the developers work on more than one BSD. What would you like
>> to see in order to make that 'official'?
>
> A list, even if minimal, of things which the "architects" (i.e.
> core on FreeBSD, don't know it's equivalent on NetBSD)
The NetBSD core group. But, like the FreeBSD core team, they're not
the architects. The committers are the architects.
> agreed to at least consider the other OS. I am not saying they
> should consult each other for everything, but they could at least
> keep in other in mind that would be great.
Well, I agree with Nik that things are getting a lot closer. But I
think that the way to come closer together is for the individual
subprojects to work together. And I think that's happening.
Greg
--
Finger gr...@lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
kr...@catonic.net
> A lack of credentials -- or a lack of ethics -- hasn't stopped
> one Eric Raymond from writing papers on this topic, most of
> them self-serving propaganda.
No offense Brett, but I imagine some people are thinking the same thing
about you.
(Before you start to rip into me, realize that I do not have you
kill-filed, unlike others. Hint Hint.)
-----
Kris Kirby, KE4AHR | TGIFreeBSD... 'Nuff said.
<kr...@nospam.catonic.net> |
-------------------------------------------------------
"Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."
pf...@pitt.edu
Greg Lehey wrote:
>
...
>
> > agreed to at least consider the other OS. I am not saying they
> > should consult each other for everything, but they could at least
> > keep in other in mind that would be great.
>
> Well, I agree with Nik that things are getting a lot closer. But I
> think that the way to come closer together is for the individual
> subprojects to work together. And I think that's happening.
>
A comment from an outsider: The codebases are converging slowly but
around the same principles. UBC and SMP, altough still early on
NetBSD, FreeBSD's initial multiplatform support, and the concept of
auditing derived from OpenBSD, are signs that the projects are sharing
objectives (maybe) for the first time.
Having three BSD camps has been great...did you notice that NetBSD's
development spurred when OpenBSD was created?? Maybe it's the time for
a unified "Free" BSD, maybe not.
This is just my personal view, and I don't really know the actors
here, but I don't see OpenBSD folding back into any other project.
While difficult, I would see NetBSD merging with FreeBSD in a
future..how far? nobody knows... when people have worked on a great
project for so many years it's difficult to move another camp
suddenly.
cheers,
Pedro.
br...@lariat.org
>Could you please elaborate on the "hazing" rules?
Try some of the flames, etc. to which I've been subjected
over time. And I wasn't even trying to become a committer
(I program in C when I *have* to, not because I like to).
--Brett
br...@lariat.org
>No offense Brett, but I imagine some people are thinking the same thing
>about you.
>
>(Before you start to rip into me, realize that I do not have you
>kill-filed, unlike others. Hint Hint.)
I'm glad you don't. But your statement is not fair. Unlike ESR,
I care about ethics and am not merely trying to promote my own
financial success at my colleagues' expense.
As for the kill files: this is part of the hazing/shunning that
was alluded to in earlier messages in this thread. It's a power
game.
r...@freebsd.org
On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 09:56:34PM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
> As for the kill files: this is part of the hazing/shunning that
> was alluded to in earlier messages in this thread. It's a power
> game.
ROTFL...
Brett, I think you need to lighten your view of the world. The kill
files are there because people do this for fun, and reading a your
rants, flames and paranoid delusions just isn't fun!
Regards,
-Jeremy
--
FreeBSD - Because the best things in life are free...
http://www.freebsd.org/
br...@lariat.org
>Brett, I think you need to lighten your view of the world. The kill
>files are there because people do this for fun, and reading a your
>rants, flames and paranoid delusions just isn't fun!
I see that you don't believe I've completed the obligatory
"hazing" yet.
--Brett
rs...@physics.iisc.ernet.in
> At 11:21 PM 1/18/2001, Jeremy Lea wrote:
>
> >Brett, I think you need to lighten your view of the world. The kill
> >files are there because people do this for fun, and reading a your
> >rants, flames and paranoid delusions just isn't fun!
>
> I see that you don't believe I've completed the obligatory
> "hazing" yet.
You mean, you think reading your rants, flames and paranoid
delusions *is* fun?
Rahul.
br...@lariat.org
>You mean, you think reading your rants, flames and paranoid
>delusions *is* fun?
Another fun aspect of the hazing: those doing it have a
tendency to "pile on."
--Brett
rs...@physics.iisc.ernet.in
> At 11:27 PM 1/18/2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
>
> >You mean, you think reading your rants, flames and paranoid
> >delusions *is* fun?
>
> Another fun aspect of the hazing: those doing it have a
> tendency to "pile on."
I'm not hazing. How could I? You've been around on the FreeBSD lists
much longer than me...
I was perfectly serious, and so is everyone else who you think is
hazing you.
Rahul
br...@lariat.org
>I was perfectly serious, and so is everyone else who you think is
>hazing you.
You're being rude, annoying and childish. Quit playing schoolyard
games.
--Brett Glass
grey...@starwolf.com
# Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 23:25:18 -0700
# From: Brett Glass <br...@lariat.org>
# To: Jeremy Lea <r...@FreeBSD.ORG>
# Cc: Kris Kirby <kr...@catonic.net>, freebs...@FreeBSD.ORG,
# netbsd-...@NetBSD.ORG
# Subject: Re: Why did NetBSD and FreeBSD diverge?
#
# At 11:21 PM 1/18/2001, Jeremy Lea wrote:
#
# >Brett, I think you need to lighten your view of the world. The kill
# >files are there because people do this for fun, and reading a your
# >rants, flames and paranoid delusions just isn't fun!
#
# I see that you don't believe I've completed the obligatory
# "hazing" yet.
Beg pardon, good sirs, but is this what usually happens on the FreeBSD
lists, or is this back-and-forth merely an anomaly provided for the
amusement of the casually-included NetBSD crowd?
When there was a statement made about "hazing", it was made to sound
as though it covered both NetBSD and FreeBSD. Observing the ping-pong
match in progress, I think I can safely say that the newbies in NetBSD
are treated with much less of a hazing than they are in FreeBSD. Why
this is, I'm not sure.
Regarding ego-boo, anyone who's ever contributed code is not exempt.
How many people look at something they've written or patched and
smiled as it worked? I know I do that. In the grand scheme of things,
it's insignificant -- nobody knows (or cares) that I submitted the code.
It works, and that's all that matters, and that's just fine with me,
especially considering that I'm not a brilliant coder and can't do device
drivers.
Regarding the splits: I was only present for the Net/Open split, and
I must confess I was a bit dismayed that it happened. In doing my part
to try and step in and avert the split, I received no less than several
very good pixel-lashings from parties involved and have probably succeeded
in alienating several people. So much for good intentions, but life goes
on.
You have no idea how many times I've mentioned that I'm tangentially
involved with BSD (read: I use it and occasionally submit problems and,
even less frequently, code to fix them) and been accosted for having such
hostile mailing lists. I ask "Which BSD are you talking about?"
I'm told either OpenBSD or FreeBSD. I think I've had a small percentage
of them report being on NetBSD, so we're not on a high horse over here,
especially when stuff that smells like System V or Solaris decides to
ride into town. We have our very own System V advocate, and that creates
some rather...um...lively discussions, especially when people are forced
to look at why they object to importing the mechanism in question ("Does
it suck because it's technically unsound, or does it suck just because
it's System V?")
[Are there any TOTALLY uninitiated people out there who are unaware of
the rivalry between the SysV camp and the BSD camp? Ask someone sometime
on either side of the fence for why their way is better, but get the
other side of the story, too, and make your own decisions.]
Sorry to ramble; someone just happened to twiddle the boot flag on
something that's been compiling on the hard drive that is my brain...
# --Brett
--*greywolf;
--
*BSD is much like a tipi: No windows, no gates, and an apache inside.
j...@freebsd.org
On 19-Jan-01 Brett Glass wrote:
> At 03:58 PM 1/18/2001, Kris Kirby wrote:
>
>>No offense Brett, but I imagine some people are thinking the same thing
>>about you.
>>
>>(Before you start to rip into me, realize that I do not have you
>>kill-filed, unlike others. Hint Hint.)
>
> I'm glad you don't. But your statement is not fair. Unlike ESR,
> I care about ethics and am not merely trying to promote my own
> financial success at my colleagues' expense.
>
> As for the kill files: this is part of the hazing/shunning that
> was alluded to in earlier messages in this thread. It's a power
> game.
Actually, that is because many people have noticed that you tend to say the
same thing over and over, and since they don't agree with you, they'd just as
soon not see the same thing that they disagree with over and over. As a
committer, I can safely say that no hazing took place for me to become a
committer. I know that hazing is and is not: I was in both a military college
and a fraternity at school. :) What is true is that FreeBSD is rather bottom
heavy (lots of coders). However, part of this derives from its nature: the
reason people are committers is because they can add something to the
repository. Things like articles in magazines aren't stored in the CVS
repository, so they don't lend themselves to gaining commit access as it were.
Neither does QA type work. However, these items are just as essential as the
stuff that is in the repo. One thing that would be helpful is to find ways to
reward this work similar to the ways that we reward people who submit code.
For example, a @FreeBSD.org mail address and/or homepage. Hopefully, such
would encourage peopel to do stuff like QA, which we sorely need more of.
However, there is one way in which FreeBSD is kind of like a frat, and that is
that the community attracts people that are somewhat similar. This is true for
almost any organization. When a company hires people, it wants to hire people
who fit in with the existing culture, not someone who will just cause constant
uproars. I'm afraid, Brett, that some people find you to be at odds with large
portions of the rest of the community, which is why you haven't garnered as
wide acceptance as you would like.
> --Brett
--
John Baldwin <j...@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/
s...@chemicalterrorism.com
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fre...@FreeBSD.ORG
[mailto:owner-fre...@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Brett Glass
Sent: 19 January 2001 06:55
To: Rahul Siddharthan
Cc: Jeremy Lea; Kris Kirby; freebs...@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Why did NetBSD and FreeBSD diverge?
n...@mithrandr.moria.org
> >You mean, you think reading your rants, flames and paranoid
> >delusions *is* fun?
>
> Another fun aspect of the hazing: those doing it have a
> tendency to "pile on."
I know this runs the risk of starting a "Brett vs. World" pile-on, and
it was indeed inspired in part by the behaviour that Brett describes (I
assume in a deprecatory manner), but since we're spouting about social
groups, entrance, hazing, and so forth...
Part of many groups, is the person who never realises that people in the
group really don't approve of his behaviour, and _really_ don't agree
with his rhetoric, despite his numerous anonymous referrals to people
who do. The possible reasons he gives to himself are either mass
delusion or mass stupidity within the members of the group. Of course
they want him to behave this way; they'd be stupid not to.
This person sometimes, but not always, complains about how the group
shouldn't badmouth him to within the group, or with others, and accuses
them of backstabbing his attempts to do "what the group really wants,
but just doesn't know it".
What this person doesn't really understand is that he isn't showing the
respect of the group necessary to have reciprocal respect. While it's
usual for groups to have members of varying beliefs, it is unusual for
groups to allow in members who show fundamentalist tendencies in areas
where there are varying beliefs within the population and push that
vision as a vision for the entire group. If this fundamentalist nature
also continues to drive new members of the group, this compounds the
hesitancy to admit this person as a member to the group. This person
tends to not to realise the group exists for purposes other than which
he believes it should have, and tends not to change his views.
I'm not a qualified student of social science, but I have seen this
within two groups of which I am a member (a militant feminist and an
anti-discrimination group, and an anti-religious person in a an
organisation opposing the benefits accorded to certain religious groups
at a university).
I also managed to realise I was inhibiting my own entry into a group due
to my drive for a belief that was not yet even thought about, let alone
shared. However, upon realisation, I toned down the rhetoric, and
joined the group for the sake of the group, not my personal causes, as
the group exists for its own purposes, not necessarily my own.
Subsequently, those purposes have become increasingly similar to mine,
as I contribute to the group, and prove my worth as a member of the
group, and with the natural sharing and modification of views of members
in the group.
(I'll make this on-topic by mentioning that this has to do with BSD
advocacy. Or something.)
Neil
--
Neil Blakey-Milner
n...@mithrandr.moria.org
d...@langille.org
> I know this runs the risk of starting a "Brett vs. World" pile-on, and
> it was indeed inspired in part by the behaviour that Brett describes (I
> assume in a deprecatory manner), but since we're spouting about social
> groups, entrance, hazing, and so forth...
Brett, don't be offended. Don't reply. Don't start justifying anything.
Just take what Neil has said and digest it. For a few weeks.
And please don't reply to me either. Thanks.
--
Dan Langille
pgpkey - finger d...@unixathome.org | http://unixathome.org/finger.php
n...@freebsd.org
> heavy (lots of coders). However, part of this derives from its nature: the
> reason people are committers is because they can add something to the
> repository. Things like articles in magazines aren't stored in the CVS
> were.
Oh yes they are. doc/<lang>/articles/.
There's a distinct lack of people handling them at the moment, and my
spare time is somewhat limited at the moment, but the facility is there.
N
--
Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95.
Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission,
hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless.
Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.
-- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery
j...@freebsd.org
On 19-Jan-01 Nik Clayton wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 12:29:33AM -0800, John Baldwin wrote:
>> heavy (lots of coders). However, part of this derives from its nature: the
>> reason people are committers is because they can add something to the
>> repository. Things like articles in magazines aren't stored in the CVS
>> repository, so they don't lend themselve s to gaining commit access as it
>> were.
>
> Oh yes they are. doc/<lang>/articles/.
>
> There's a distinct lack of people handling them at the moment, and my
> spare time is somewhat limited at the moment, but the facility is there.
Erm, so far we haven't had copies of articles sent in to DDJ, which is what I
was hinting at. I was not aware that we wished to import such things. My
point was more that there are things that one can do to contribute to the
project that aren't rewarded with committership at the moment. If that makes
any sense.
--
John Baldwin <j...@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/