Subject: Merging BSD/OS and FreeBSD (was: BSD SUPPLIERS UNITE TO DELIVER THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR INTERNET OPERATING SYSTEMS) Message-ID: <20010101134204.S3496@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <KGEMJPAPKMOLJIBIKPBDIELKCAAA.ewilson@frontline.net>; from ewilson@frontline.net on Sun, Dec 31, 2000 at 06:52:45PM -0500 References: <KGEMJPAPKMOLJIBIKPBDIELKCAAA.ewilson@frontline.net>
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On Sunday, 31 December 2000 at 18:52:45 -0500, Ernest G. Wilson II wrote: > To anyone at BSDi or FreeBSD, > > I read this news release last spring: (March 10, 2000) > http://www.bsdi.com/news/press/20000310 > >> From this quote: > "BSDi intends to form a united front for the BSD operating systems. The > company will deliver, support and enhance both BSD/OS and FreeBSD. BSDi and > the FreeBSD Project are jointly evaluating the technology and market > requirements for merging parts of the code bases for the two operating > systems." > > Specifically: > "merging parts of the code bases for the two operating systems" > > My questions: > 1.) Has any merging of the two code bases taken place yet? Yes. > 2.) Is merging still the plan? No. > 3.) If it is still the plan to merge, when? > 4.) Is there any place for more information on the merger? > I was already here: http://www.bsdi.com/news/misc/ > but the info is very vague, > and the "Open Source" link on your page is broken: > http://www.bsdi.com/news/open > 5.) When/Where can we begin to evaluate the merged code as a beta, alpha or > other? As soon as you like. It's in FreeBSD-CURRENT. Note the caveats about using -CURRENT before you jump in with your eyes shut. I don't think that there's any doubt that it would be desirable to merge BSD/OS and FreeBSD. The question is, how desirable is it? We imported the BSD/OS SMPng (New Generation SMP) code into FreeBSD, and it was like pulling teeth. Since BSD/386 and 386BSD were released, back in 1992, the systems have developed in their own ways, and though you won't see much difference in the user interface, under the hood it's a whole different story. I spent most of July analysing the differences between FreeBSD 4-STABLE, FreeBSD 5-CURRENT, BSD/OS 4.1, BSD/OS 5 Intel and BSD/OS 5 Sparc. Out of that I had to extract the pieces which would fit together; it's like a multidimensional jigsaw puzzle. We could easily spend several man years merging the systems into one new system, which by that time would be out of date and have no advantages over what we have now. What I think we *will* see is that both operating systems develop towards a common goal, at least as far as the user-visible parts are concerned. > 6.) The BSDi website mentions and links to FreeBSD site (although very > little), but the FreeBSD site does not seem to acknowledge BSDi > anywhere, Is there bad blood or hard feelings between the two camps? > It seems like these two worlds are not united. No, it's just that nobody has got round to updating the web pages yet. There's lots of stuff like that that we'd like to do. > 7.) Since the merge announcement last spring, I have been waiting for > a media blitz and huge out pouring from the BSD community to > position itself better than Linux, is this likely to happen? No, I don't think so, at least not in the near future. BSD is primarily a technical community; we don't have the resources to market BSD against Linux. People are coming round to realizing that BSD has advantages, and one of these days somebody will jump on the bandwagon. Until then, we'll just carry on writing the best code we know how to do. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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