Why not?

[Joshua Tinnin]

On Saturday 12 March 2005 09:38 am, Aperez <alfredoj69 at 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.
>
> My question is this:
>
> Why not all three teams work together for just one BSD version?
>
> 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).

The way I look at it is this (these are the circumstances which matter 
to me - YMMV). When I want to install BSD on embedded hardware or Apple 
hardware, I use NetBSD. When I want to install BSD on a box to use as a 
dedicated firewall, network logging/snort machine, or other security 
apparatus, I use OpenBSD. When I want to install BSD on a box to use as 
a server or a desktop/workstation, I install FreeBSD.

When I want to use Linux as a desktop (I haven't installed any Linux 
servers for a while now), I use Slackware. If I recommend a beginner 
Linux distro to a newbie, it's usually Mandrake or SuSE. If I recommend 
an enterprise Linux distro, it's usually RedHat. If I recommend a Linux 
distro that is for more experienced users, I'd recommend Debian, Gentoo 
or (my personal preference) Slackware. However, if any of those people 
are comfortable with *nix but are looking for something different, like 
maybe they would appreciate an OS developed cohesively, rather than a 
kernel with various distros which add any of a variety of userland 
tools, I recommend FreeBSD. If they find they like it, then I tell them 
about the more specialized flavors.

Linus is free to disagree with the direction BSD has taken over the 
years. However, I'm a bit surprised he's knocking the forking of code. 
Isn't that an inherent strength of open source? He's free to develop in 
his own manner, which has proven to be successful for his particular 
concept, but it's strength is that it's chaotic and allows a variety of 
userland configurations and setups. BSD is more disciplined but rigid 
in its choice of userland tools, which is its strength. The issue of 
code forking is ancillary, and the history is somewhat political, but 
the teams all share code and concepts.

I'm not sure why this is a problem for anyone. However, if you think, as 
an example, Theo de Raadt should give up OpenBSD and come back to 
develop for FreeBSD, then feel free to drop him an email, as well as 
the core FreeBSD team. Oh, and make sure to let us know how it goes ;)

- jt