Re: http://www.freebsd.org/marketing/os-comparison.html

On 08/30/11 21:59, Chris Brennan wrote:
> On 8/30/2011 2:48 PM, Sean M. Collins wrote:
>> On 8/27/11 3:32 PM, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>> Agreed. Things have changed quite a bit in the last decade.
>> I think that it also clashes with the positive tone that (I've
>> experienced) in most of the website copy, discussions on this mailing
>> list, and other parts of the FreeBSD project.
>>
>> We have an awesome project, we don't really need to put down everyone
>> else to make ourselves look good.
>>
> I wasn't implying a putdown and I don't think Garrett Cooper was either,
> he was merely pointing out that the technology in use today (Tuesday,
> August 30th, 2011) varies, radically from when
> http://www.freebsd.org/marketing/os-comparison.html was written way
> back, sometime in the year 2000.
>
> The comparison being called for to be updated, needn't be that type of
> comparison. If in the end, FreeBSD comes out as truly and honestly
> better then so be it, it turns out to be the under-appreciated underdog,
> then so be it too. An argument made (by us, the FreeBSD community) to
> point out the pros and cons of common OS types would undoubtedly hurt
> and benefit us as a project, but it would also illustrate why FreeBSD is
> good for applications A-F[1], Linux is good for A-F[1] (but for
> different reasons), OS-X is good for applications A-C and Microsoft
> Windows is good for A-C.
>
> This is a volunteer project that takes in some monetary values for
> certain things, but is largely a non-profit/not-for-profit organization
> aimed at providing a service. Clearly and objectively defining where we
> stand against our competition should be a major (but not or if not, take
> your pick) a priority of the project as a whole. If no one else has done
> it, then we should. Just because we can (and maybe because we should,
> just because we can).
>
> Oliver Heartmann has made some good points, but I tend to disagree with
> his philosophy. Such a project as this needn't be centered around a
> monetary base. This isn't a project to start mass-marketing FreeBSD to
> the mindless masses, but to provide prospective to the Server OS
> Communities, not to alienate someone because we think we're better. I
> also disagree with his idea that 'we should let sleeping dogs lie' and
> not bother to do any of this. It's something we (as a community-driven
> project) should have done a long time ago.

Well, there must be a misunderstanding! I never wished FreeBSD be centered
around a monetary basis, I'm parsecs away from that! I tend to bring up
arguments against commercial focussing.

The BSD operating systems earned a great legacy from academic research
and even today we all profit from this very academic fundament: focus on
exact, clean code. Perfection over the simple dirty "just works" hacks
(I connote Linux with this kind of philosophy and I recall myself an 
interview
between Theo de Raad (OpenBSD) and Linus Torvalds (Linux) in which 
Torvalds stated
that he's not eagerly after perfection and he's accepting some flaws if 
the overall
system works - so or similar).
On the contrary without money -  no professional developer. And as we 
see (and suffer),
KMS implementation suffers from a professional developer. Most benefits 
Linux got
in the past years came from commercial development. Even ZFS is 
developed by a
former, now "oracled" commercial company. And this also forces the next 
question: why
has DragonFly BSD got a HAMMER filesystem developed by someone 
non-profit-developing?

My English may be bad and sometimes some misunderstandings arise from 
that. I didn't
mean "let sleeping dogs lie". At the moment it is even for someone who 
was for 15 years with
FreeBSD hard to accept, that there is no reason to start with FreeBSD as 
a server platform,
if the workstations have also to be driven by a non-Windows OS and the 
support for
fast graphics is really essential! Guys, I have a bunch of AMD/ATi 
HD48XX graphics
cards running with FreeBSD and I do not dare to logoff the X11 system 
since then the whole
system freezes and need to be reset. This situation lasts now for two 
years and i wrote a lot of
PRs. In the first place, this isn't a OS fault, is X11. But on the 
second view the situation seems more
complicated and interwined. Just the development on X11 has made rapid 
progress towards new
KMS architectures and the stuff I understand to less of to talk in 
detail about, but I suffer the
consequences. For years I ran a whole computer lab and server platform 
with number cruncher
for the meteorological department of an university. After 2003 the 
situation changed dramatically
and today, where CUDA is all over the place, there is no server left 
because even the server
platform suffer from some academic aspects. And we need to face the truth.
FreeBSD lives also from a braod basis of acceptance and popularity. If 
it is only a beloved project by some
eccentrics and geeks keen on development, then the system loose touch to 
the ground of needs.
This is overexaggerated, surely, but I see a slight tendency in some 
srings of arguments. Linux also
is a open and free "project", but it has a wider and borader acceptance 
now. The question is why.
Windows - a couriosity itself. Unstable, breaking, dump as a brick, a 
honeycomb for every
virus or trojan horse crossing this galaxy - but is is by the vast 
amount of installations the majority!
People like obviously crashing systems and the challenge of being 
"crucified" by vanishing reports,
documents, thesis, reports ...

well, my words are not as polished as the contributor of the former 
message. But at last, one
further experience.

My today's department is involved in a big outer-space probe mission. 
Lots of data arriving ESA's
and NASA's datacenter every day get copied to our facility. I run some 
FreeBSD server boxes on
cheap hardware as well as on expensive hardware and the oberall 
responsivness of the FreeBSD boxes
is much worse than those of the Linux boxes. But on the contrary, the 
RedHat installations suffer from
sporadic non-responsive automounter filesystems, NFS problems and 
sometimes a vad network
load-behaviour under heavy load. Even my simple ZFS installations 
showed, that with mucgh less
efford security and data consistency could be acchived with a even much 
simpler to administer
operating system. But no one listend! The admin claims to have several 
certificates in adminsitering
Linux - made via Web. In the opinion of those who make decissions (about 
live and death, that's
the profession of older professores around here!) this piece of toilette 
paper is more worth than
a university degree in computer science, even with the major in 
operating systems.
What I want to say is: the mission is impossible if there is not a bit 
of progress in popular fields ...

so ... I'm exhasuted
>
> What I do agree with in his views is that such a project should contain
> some historical perspective, we should always remember where we came
> from, it's a fundamental aspect to remember so we know where we are
> going, but that shouldn't be the only factor, at the very basic, we also
> need to know where we stand at present, not just in cold, hard,
> unfeeling numbers. But a project that thrives on diversity, much as the
> societies we live in. Arguments will rise, tempers will flare, people
> might leave (and fork, as is their right), but FreeBSD will still be
> here, no less then it was before (except in a slightly diminished
> user-base for a while).
>
> This said, everyone on these mailing lists has an experience that can be
> contributed to this project[2]. It does not have to be limited to just
> the FreeBSD Developers describing why we're superior to any other OS
> (and it rightly shouldn't be just their opinion). In reality, it should
> be a hodgepodge of opinion from every walk of life. Every person that
> has participated in this discussion has had different experiences with
> Microsoft products, BSD products, Apple products and Linux products. And
> those opinions and experiences are what's going to count.
>
> I think I've run out of steam for the moment ... so I shall stop here.
>
> [1] Any X-Y definition is not meant to provide any form of clearly
> defined values to any one OS but to illustrate hypothetical examples.
> [2] I repeatedly defined this discussion as project because I couldn't
> think of a different term to use that would aptly and/or correctly
> describe this discussion.