5 ms·

But now you have a more fragmented BSD market.

by MuffinFlavored 8y ago

eatonphil 8y ago
Kinda. Work is frequently shared between the big ones (video and network drivers for instance).
- MuffinFlavored 8y ago
  but like, how much further along would hard things like video/network drivers be if instead of managing 3 separate "everything else", it was just 1? think of the time and effort in documenting all of their code, compiling, getting hosting set up. bootloaders, different filesystems, different libc implementations, different command line tool implementations. all to have an opinion?
  - ansible 8y ago
    Eh, there are a number of strong personalities involved in all three projects, and they all have their own priorities. So some kind of split was a natural outcome. As a consequence, all three projects have their own focus (formed in part by the existence of the other projects), and that's good too.
  - aquabeagle 8y ago
    all to have an opinion? One could say that about any industry/market. Differences of opinions and beliefs and interests are what create choice and drive innovation.
    - MuffinFlavored 8y ago
      but in the open source software industry, where most people are volunteering, it makes sense to try to be more efficient and not have 100 Linux distributions and 5 BSD flavors or at least, it makes sense to me but I guess contributors are free to spend their time however they please
      - yellowapple 8y ago
        OpenBSD and NetBSD have different priorities; NetBSD wants to run on every device possible, while OpenBSD wants to be simple and secure. It'd be more efficient to fork off and let them focus on those priorities (and cross-pollinate where it actually makes sense to cross-pollinate) than to expect those often-conflicting priorities to always have to be balanced throughout the entirety of development. Same goes for Linux distros (albeit to a lesser extent, since "compatibility with software written for bigger distros" tends to be an implicit design goal for smaller distros), or for illumos distros (OpenIndiana is very different from SmartOS).

But now you have a more fragmented BSD market.

eatonphil 8y ago

Kinda. Work is frequently shared between the big ones (video and network drivers for instance).

MuffinFlavored 8y ago
but like, how much further along would hard things like video/network drivers be if instead of managing 3 separate "everything else", it was just 1? think of the time and effort in documenting all of their code, compiling, getting hosting set up. bootloaders, different filesystems, different libc implementations, different command line tool implementations. all to have an opinion?
- ansible 8y ago
  Eh, there are a number of strong personalities involved in all three projects, and they all have their own priorities. So some kind of split was a natural outcome. As a consequence, all three projects have their own focus (formed in part by the existence of the other projects), and that's good too.
- aquabeagle 8y ago
  all to have an opinion? One could say that about any industry/market. Differences of opinions and beliefs and interests are what create choice and drive innovation.
  - MuffinFlavored 8y ago
    but in the open source software industry, where most people are volunteering, it makes sense to try to be more efficient and not have 100 Linux distributions and 5 BSD flavors or at least, it makes sense to me but I guess contributors are free to spend their time however they please
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      OpenBSD and NetBSD have different priorities; NetBSD wants to run on every device possible, while OpenBSD wants to be simple and secure. It'd be more efficient to fork off and let them focus on those priorities (and cross-pollinate where it actually makes sense to cross-pollinate) than to expect those often-conflicting priorities to always have to be balanced throughout the entirety of development. Same goes for Linux distros (albeit to a lesser extent, since "compatibility with software written for bigger distros" tends to be an implicit design goal for smaller distros), or for illumos distros (OpenIndiana is very different from SmartOS).