Lennart Poettering: BSD Isn't Relevant Anymore

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:32:25 -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> In short, some people chase the newest shiniest thing.  Others prefer to 
> stick with what works.  Often, the newest shiniest folks, after they've 
> gained some wisdom, move to the other camp.  So you could well see a 
> resurgence of BSD as Linux admins who've grown tired of its quirks but have 
> gained some unix skills start moving back toward the BSD side.

And to add this:

Sometimes, it's the "old guys" with their "outdated knowledge"
and "strange systems" that keep the obsoleted programs of the
shiny boxes on artificial life support, so that those who are
used to rely on that software that includes a "self destruct
mechanism" (see: planned obsolescense) can carry on using it,
believing it "just works" and "is everything that exists". :-)

Sadly, modern Linusi often don't encourage the user to gain
knowledge. Understandable - why should they? It's about "just
using", not about knowing anything, as (successfully) propagated
by the marketing mechanisms of other systems. The knowledge
you need to do work often is short-term knowledge: it's
useless as soon as a new product comes out, simply because
the new product "does everything better".

That's why you don't find a "perfect product", as you could
sell this one just ONCE. But just imagine you could sell a
car that never fails. When the market is saturated, you
don't sell anything anymore. So all the quirks, mistakes,
problems and bugs in a product do benefit the selling process
of the next product - which of course is promoted to be
"free of bugs" (like its predecessor was, and its successor
will be). And in regards of software, such a product would
be limited to a specific hardware platform, preventing any
improvements, maybe even hindering new innovative and useful
products entering the market.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...