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From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is NetBSD alive?
Date: 3 Jun 1997 13:45:03 -0400
Organization: Panix
Lines: 136
Message-ID: <5n1l6v$lln@panix2.panix.com>
References: <01bc6c60$f76eb860$5f030514@yosemite> <EB670F.Frx@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com
X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:6043
In article <EB670F.Frx@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Richard Tobin <richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <01bc6c60$f76eb860$5f030514@yosemite> "Dave Schaumann" <dschauma@csci.csc.com> writes:
>>However, I find the lack of traffic in this group troubling.
>>Are the other *BSD variants so much better?
>
>I think the low traffic reflects a smaller user community. If you
>only expect to be using x86 machines, I'd recommend FreeBSD for that
>reason. If you use FreeBSD, there will be lots of people using
>exactly the same release as you, which is very useful. On the other
>hand, if you intend to use anything other other than x86 then NetBSD
>(or OpenBSD) is the answer.
Certainly we have a smaller user community than FreeBSD. We don't go out of
our way to bend MI abstractions to fit the i386 -- never really have; FreeBSD
is better about this now, but they haven't always been -- and thousands of
device drivers for Neato Keen Stuff isn't a top priority, either. So you'll
find less i386 NetBSD users than FreeBSD users, because many users don't care
about clean machine-independent abstractions, and many users also seem to have
this funny desire to have support for their wacky, already-paid-for hardware,
even if that support doesn't always work 100%, rather than to build machines
just to run NetBSD, even if they'd perform better and wouldn't cost any, or
much, more.
On the other hand, we run on a *lot* more hardware, and so I don't feel so bad
about it. :-) Despite the avid claims, and some degree of good hard effort, I
don't think you'll see FreeBSD on the Alpha any time in the particularly near
future. NetBSD's cleanliness makes it a lot easier to port and maintain on
multiple architectures, and we work hard to keep it that way.
And, frankly, I think it runs Just Fine on my i386. :-) I have sane hardware,
so FreeBSD wouldn't offer me much of a benefit, and then I'd have to keep at
least two totally separate source trees around, since I "occasionally" use
other computers, too. (My desktop machine is an Alpha, and I run or have
recently run five different ports of NetBSD in my machine room at work.)
Please bear in mind that we actively ask NetBSD users to use the
mailing-lists, *not* the newsgroup, so the low traffic may not reflect
anything in particular except that. :-)
[...]
>A personal view (though I know some other people who share it): the
I *don't* share it. I like the FreeBSD people -- which I think is a very
common sentiment among the NetBSD developers; certainly we've many of us sat
down and had quite a bit of food and beer with them at various conferences
recently -- and as far as I know, they like us. I'd say we're both pretty
friendly on the whole, and then I'd say that there are a few people working on
each project who can be somewhat gruff and difficult until you get to know
them. I'd be surprised if the FreeBSD developers who'e actualy met us (recall,
there are a *lot* more FreeBSD devlopers, because we run our projects very
differently) didn't say just about the same thing I just did here.
The FreeBSD people do a much more extensive (and better) job of public
relations than we do. We have a tendency to regard public relations as a
distraction and a nuisance, which may not be for the best -- but I don't think
that that really makes us any less "friendly" than the FreeBSD people, just
less noticeably so.
>FreeBSD people seem much friendlier than the NetBSD people. When the
>big split between NetBSD and FreeBSD happened, it wasn't really clear
>who was in the right; but given that NetBSD then split again in most
>acrimonious circumstances (to produce OpenBSD) it seems that the
>NetBSD people are terminally factional.
I think that that is a wholly unreasonable conclusion *and* a
misrepresentation of the relevant facts. Look, I'm sorry, but I think I
probably know more about what went on there than you do, and I don't think
it's exactly fair to take that "BSD is factional" gob of tar you got painted
with by the Linux weenies and smear it on NetBSD as a way to get part of it
off FreeBSD. I could remind you that I haven't seen Rod Grimes around the
FreeBSD fortifications much lately, but... why bother? Theo went off and did
his whole thing. We pretty much sighed and said "Okay, Theo, do your own
thing. Just please stop bothering us." Then ensued one of the most
unpleasant, bizarre, vicious periods of concentrated taunting and disruption
of discourse which I've ever seen in my life. I mean, you couldn't say
"NetBSD" in any newsgroup or mailing list at all without getting six or
half-a-dozen gratuitous swipes and insults thrown your way. In the spirit of
"friendliness" and "anti-factionality", what *ought* we have done?
I will remind you that Theo DeRaadt had been not-part-of-NetBSD for quite a
long time indeed before OpenBSD popped up. In fact, quite a few people were
spending quite a lot of time and effort trying to accomodate Theo and find a
way that he *could* be part of NetBSD when he got frustrated by what he saw as
a lack of progress and gave up. Was he right? Were the people on the other
side, the way he seems to see it, right? Who cares? I just don't think it's
relevant (and I am not going to discuss it in detail, either, so please don't
start).
Some people don't work well together. Some do. The phrase "terminally
factional" is an awfully heavy -- and ugly -- one to throw around, and I don't
really think it's fair to fling it at NetBSD like that; FreeBSD was a "NetBSD
faction" once, you know, and we're *all* ultimately just "factions" of 386BSD,
which was a "faction" of BSDI, at least to hear some people tell it.
But of course us factionalist losers are just a "faction" of UNIX anyway,
so... you know, I just can't *believe* the way we don't get along with those
poor saints working on MERT. Really.
I think the best evidence you can find of NetBSD's friendliness is that we do
work fairly closely with FreeBSD on some things, and plan to do so more often
in the future. There are individuals who are both FreeBSD and NetBSD
developers, and I don't think that they're treated at all as second-class
citizens of either camp.
>I ran NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9 then switched to FreeBSD, almost entirely
>because their serial driver worked better with cheap hardware.
It probably did, then. Of course, one of ours worked on the Z8530. :-)
So I rambled a lot. What's my point? This:
* Most NetBSD discussion goes on on the mailing lists. That's why
you won't find an enormous amount of it here.
* We are not horrible mean people who feast on the eyeballs of
newborn babes. We are just as not-horrible as the FreeBSD
people, though we're sometimes quieter about it.
* NetBSD is a fine, viable, multiplatform operating system based
on 4.4BSD. It will continue to be so for some time. However,
it is also staffed by *volunteers*. You should use NetBSD. You
should contribute code and other nice things to NetBSD. You should
serenade the NetBSD developers with wine, women, and song ("wine"
or "women" may not be appreciated by all developers, but I think
"song" is pretty universal, if you're concerned.) At the very
least, if you're reading this and you haven't lately, you should
check out http://www.netbsd.org. :-)
* Have a nice day.
--
Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com
"American culture, Disneyland freak show -- screen in your living room a
window for your tomb -- you can't compare to the world sitting there,
repress your insecurities, watching it scared..." -Operation Ivy