The beastie boot menu.

[Eric Kjeldergaard]

> > My problem isn't that user-friendliness isn't a design goal for
> > FreeBSD: [...]
> 
> Hmm, interesting that you should mention that.  I think the basic
> underlying reason why FreeBSD is floundering is precisely because it
> doesn't have *any* clear design goals anymore.
> 
> By "design goal" I don't mean "push down Giant" or "support NDIS
> drivers," I mean something more general; a philosophy, a vision.
> 
> As the .sig (cheesy as it is) says, OpenBSD is the most secure OS;
> NetBSD is the most portable.  These are clear, straightforward visions.
> 
> But what then is FreeBSD?  The same .sig calls it "the most powerful."
> And what does that mean?  Highest performance?  Most stable?  Easiest to
> use?  Most featureful?  Fewest bugs?  Most accessible?  Most conformant
> to standards?  Plays nicest with other OSes?  Largest package system?
> 
> Does anyone know?
> 
> Only core is in a position to say officially, I suppose.  All I can say
> is that until they do, I think FreeBSD will continue to flounder.  Blind
> men versus an elephant: it's really hard to unify a volunteer effort to
> a common purpose when you don't really have a clear idea of what your
> common purpose is and/or you haven't communicated it clearly.  It's a
> *lot* easier to contribute to something that's been well-defined.
> 

Well, I should say that the FreeBSD team has made an official
statement regarding that.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/introduction.html#FREEBSD-GOALS

This seems to outline the goals of FreeBSD.  Now it is true that these
goals are a bit "vague", but that is because FreeBSD is what we OSSers
call very very large. Really a full featured OS with Kernel and
Userland is a very large and very broad undertaking.  There are
literally thousands of things that need to be worked towards and many
of them are on a daily basis.  Security is of course prominent, and
performance is constant.  Stability is one of the areas that FreeBSD
has always excelled.  The adherance to standards often gives the
people of our community a "This is the way our fathers did it"
attitude, but is not something to be moved away from.  But that leaves
us back where we started, at your question.  What is the purpose of
FreeBSD.

This FAQ is answered in a larger sense right there in FreeBSD's FAQs
page (the link I posted).  FreeBSD is in place to provide an operating
system consisting of good, usable, flexible code that can be used by
anyone who desires to use it and in (nearly) whatever way that person
sees fit.  It is to this end, I feel, that the contributors write good
clean hardware support and implement new and exciting technologies. 
To this end that they write the most powerful operating system in the
world.  Not necessarily powerful because of how the operating system
runs, but powerful in its ideology.

-- 
If I write a signature, my emails will appear more personalised.