Re: Pkg-based base system.

Johan Pettersson <manlix_at_demonized.net> writes:

>> | Wouldn't it be nice to have ha pkg-based base system? 
>> | So you easily can remove parts from the base system, like 
>> | openssh, ipfw, ipf, bind, sendmail and so on. 
>> | This couldn't be too hard to implement. :)

Apparently it IS too hard, so let's dream of a system even harder to
implement.  Someone should (sic) do it so well and so flexibly that
almost all BSD users will want to use the same base system for which
they will select their favorite BSD kernel (eg, FreeBSD's or NetBSD's)
and their favorite applications (eg, one each of the most popular
MTAs, firewalls, and CD burners), so that we don't have four or more
teams maintaining and documenting a similar userland, while having the
many people interested in kernel development able to continue their
rather separate innovations.

That's my ideal.  I'm afraid that the reality will be that as Linux,
Sun, MSFT, and even Apple further dominate "the enterprise", the BSDs'
market/mind- share will make a serious decline as its developers
retire and move on to what's left in the enterprise, except that
NetBSD might manage a significant chunk of the embedded OS niche
(where Linux suffers from copyleft and a harder-to-port design) and
might even continue as a development platform for itself.  To
facilitate the later, it might help to take over FreeBSD's userland,
taking advantage of FreeBSD's better userland documentation.  (No, I
don't know how hard THAT would be.)