Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:06:20 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Aperez <alfredoj69@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why not? Message-ID: <20050312200619.GB77874@gothmog.gr> In-Reply-To: <20050312123840.19848c79.alfredoj69@gmail.com> References: <20050312123840.19848c79.alfredoj69@gmail.com>
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On 2005-03-12 12:38, Aperez <alfredoj69@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everybdody > > I read an interview of Linus Torvald made by Linux Magazine. In that > interview Linus mentioned the following: > > "On the other hand, no, Linux does not have that stupid notion of > having totally separate kernel development for different issues. If > you want a secure BSD, you get OpenBSD; if you want a usable BSD, you > get FreeBSD; and if you want BSD on other architectures, you get > NetBSD. That___s just idiotic, to have different teams worry about > different things." > > I dont want to critize what Linus stated above. However, I find a very > valid point when he says that every BSD version team is woking in > different directions. The important detail, I guess, that makes Linus wrong or at least not entirely correct in making this statement is that the three BSD-derived systems he mentions are different systems altogether. They are *NOT* different sets of packages collected and distributed around the same kernel. The same can be said about Linux distributions; some times even more so. One cannot compare any version of Slackware Linux vs. Redhat Linux vs. Mandrake vs. SuSE vs. Gentoo vs. Ubuntu vs. the Linux distribution "de jour". At any given point in time, one can find Linux distributions that come with kernel version 2.2, others with 2.4, a third group coming with some minor release of 2.6.x, etc. Having said that, I don't see why Linux can be considered as "one system". Even if it were, I don't see why four different systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Dragonfly BSD) are bad because they are not "one system". Not to mention, that this is partly wrong because the BSD systems -- the internals of their kernels put aside for a while -- have a great deal of similarities between then; many more than any randomly chosen set of Linux distributions. What Linus fails to see when he makes comments like the one above are some very crucial points: - A "system" is not just its kernel. - Linux "systems" have a lot more differences than he implies. - The BSD systems, when seen as a whole and not just as a kernel, have many more similarities among them than any set of at least two different Linux systems. > My question is this: > Why not all three teams work together for just one BSD version? They do, in fact. A lot more than Linus implies. They just use their different BSD systems to develop the things they most like. Very often, what new features developed on one BSD system is ported or copied over to other BSD systems. Bug fixes that are made on one of the BSDs are many times fixed in a short time in other BSDs too. > At the moment there are three groups of developers and users working > in the same issues. I think if we should all work together and create > well rounded BSD version for us users and corporate clients. Imagine a > BSD version that is portable (NetBSD), that is very secured (OpenBSD) > and that is a good Destop solution (FreeBSD). Diversity is not bad. Linus is just wrong in stating that the BSDs are somehow silly for not making the One, True BSD(TM)(C)(R). - Giorgos
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