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Date: Wed, 02 Apr 1997 19:11:31 -0600
From: prw@cyberwar.com
Subject: *BSD Unification?
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc
Message-ID: <860029226.1885@dejanews.com>
Organization: Misaktonic University
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In light of Larry McVoy's recent comments, I think it might be
appropriate to discuss (and perhaps bring closure to this argument
once and for all) the idea that it'd be better if all of the BSD camps
worked in unison rather than on separate projects. This issue is
brought up time and time again, but it never seems to be given the
attention it warrants.
I must pose a question to all of the *BSD developers: At this
point in time, is it at all possible for the various *BSD teams to
work in conjunction? When I ask this, I am assuming that petty
differences will not be included in the equation. If the answer is
"yes", or even "possibly", then why isn't every effort being made to
do this? Is it simply that egos are getting in the way, as many have
said accusingly, or is there a valid reason behind this? The BSD
multiplicity issue should really be dealt with once and for all. At
current, things are comparable to the expanding universe theory, with
all of the systems moving further and further apart. Will the end
result be that they all end up as distant and obscure memories?
I have heard people say that the presence of multiple BSD
systems is comparable to the fact that there are multiple Linux
distributions. I disagree wholeheartedly with this notion. The Linux
distributions share the same kernel, while with BSD there are now
three separate teams working on three separate kernels. Is this not a
waste of resources? If it doesn't *have* to be done this way, then it
really shouldn't. Speaking of Linux, I hope to discourage those who
respond to this article from saying things like "Well why not just
dump BSD altogether and support Linux, since it has more
marketshare", because one of the most significant differences between
*BSD and Linux is philosophical. Some people just do not want to
write GPL'ed code, so working on Linux isn't an option.
It has also been said that because the *BSD projects borrow
from each other's code, the presence of multiple core groups actually
benefits the whole community. While this is true in one respect, it's
still a tenuous argument. Yes, being able to borrow source is nice,
but the fact that at some point the same work (more or less) is going
to have to be done by more than one person/group leads one to believe
that this hampers development, rather than enhancing it.
All of the *BSD systems have merit. NetBSD has ports to a
wide variety of systems. FreeBSD is perhaps the best UNIX-like system
out there for 80x86 systems. (Although some followers of a Finnish
kernel hacker would disagree.) OpenBSD has made various improvements
to the NetBSD code it's based on, as well as giving system security
the attention it deserves. One must ask: Are there any fundamental
differences between the various systems that would prevent the source
base from being unified? Or are there reasons why one group wouldn't
want to include the code of the others? For example, say that we were
going to build upon the FreeBSD source--would it be a task of immense
difficulty to integrate the multi-architecture code in {Net, Open}BSD?
I know that the developers are quite capable, but is doing such a
thing more trouble than it's worth? Would it simply be easier to
write this code from scratch (well, not from scratch, but I assume you
know what I mean) rather than merging the sources? If so, that'd
bring closure to the whole argument right there. Have the source
bases become so different that it'd be pointless for the developers of
the respective *BSD camps to work together?
I hope I've raised some valid points. Further discussion,
especially from the core team members and developers would be
appreciated.
---
Philip R. Wilson - <prw@cyberwar.com>
WWW: http://www.cyberwar.com/~prw
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