thelinuxlink.net

Over the past several weeks, I've been playing around with some BSD's -- Free and Open -- and have found them to be very intriguing. Good stuff going on in those camps. I've also been taking the time to go back and listen to the BSDTalk podcast from the beginning, knowing that you are having Will, the BSDTalk host, on TLLTS this week. Will does a really great job with his podcast, and I like how each episode is like 15-20 minutes long. It makes catching up very easy. He really packs some great interviews in his show.

Anyway, a couple of interesting things have jumped out at me after listening to most of Will's interviews with various BSD developers and others. One is just how many of these BSD folks use Mac OS X as their primary desktop environment. I know OS X is BSD-based, and some of them mention that as one of the reasons they use it, but I still find it interesting that many of them don't use BSD on the desktop or even Linux.

I also find it interesting that there is a sort of ... negative feeling towards Linux. On several occasions the people Will has interviewed have made off-handed remarks about Linux's instability, or poor code, or disorganization etc. I have no idea if that perception is shared by many people in the BSD camp, but it definitely comes out in some of the interviews. And maybe for good reason, I don't know -- I'm not passing judgment on the comments, just noting their existence.

I'd love to hear you guys ask Will about his thoughts on these issues, i.e. whether BSD developers and users tend to shy away from BSD and/or Linux on the desktop and whether OS X has a strong following. Also, whether there is a tendency for BSD developers to think that Linux is subpar in some manner, and if so, why.

fantastic questions chess; you echo some of my sentiments too. We will surely cover these topics.

Chess wrote:I also find it interesting that there is a sort of ... negative feeling towards Linux. On several occasions the people Will has interviewed have made off-handed remarks about Linux's instability, or poor code, or disorganization etc. I have no idea if that perception is shared by many people in the BSD camp, but it definitely comes out in some of the interviews. And maybe for good reason, I don't know -- I'm not passing judgment on the comments, just noting their existence.

I am not a programmer, but this came up after a LUG meeting recently. An individual who understands Linux very well, uses Linux all the time, and presents on Linux commented that the code in the BSD's tends to be much better organized and cleaner than Linux. He said that a big reason for this is that the BSD's are an operating system, where Linux is the kernel. He said the whole system from top to bottom is designed to work together, and be clean. A Linux Distro is more the sum total of lots of different parts. So as a result you loose some of the code clarity that you have in the BSD's. I guess a good example of this would be OpenBSD's desire not to simply using free and open source programs, but to recode them in a way that is in line with the OpenBSD design standards. It also seems as if the bar for gaining commit status is much higher on the BSD's than for individual Linux projects. He also noted that from top to bottom the BSD's are designed as an Operating System by Computer Scientists where Linux certainly has parts that are designed in this way, other parts come from people who are scratching their own itch.

Those ideas were presented by someone who is a respected Linux programmer and system administrator in our LUG. He knows Linux and the BSD's better than anyone else I have met. Now he didn't say that made the BSD's necessarily better than Linux. As I mentioned most of his work is done in Linux.

I know Will is also a big user of Linux as well, using last time I heard Linux on his desktop and OpenBSD on his servers.

Another good question, would be to ask Will how his show has been received in the BSD community. Do they feel it is needed? Do they like the format? Does he get a lot of cross promotion from within the community for his show?

It would be interesting to find out some of his personal uses of Linux and BSD, because he doesn't talk about that a lot in his show. Has his use of BSD grown in his personal and professional life because of doing BSDtalk and coming into greater contact with the BSD community? Does he find himself turning to BSD's more often to solve a problem or to offer a solution since he started the show?

How in the world does he have time to do so many interviews and shows during the week?

I think very highly of Will, so I'm really looking forward to Wednesday.

Chess wrote:One is just how many of these BSD folks use Mac OS X as their primary desktop environment. I know OS X is BSD-based, and some of them mention that as one of the reasons they use it, but I still find it interesting that many of them don't use BSD on the desktop or even Linux.

I agree, and you don't see a lot of them (Except for the OpenBSD guys) complaining about proprietary drivers etc. like Richard Stallman and Theo de Raadt does.
If you listen to Will's interview with Kirk McKusick (I think it's episode 17), he mentions that the BSD guys originally considered the GPL, but felt it was too restrictive, and that since BSD has been developed with the government money (aka the tax payers' money) they didn't have the right to place a lot of restrictions on the code.

Chess wrote:I also find it interesting that there is a sort of ... negative feeling towards Linux. On several occasions the people Will has interviewed have made off-handed remarks about Linux's instability, or poor code, or disorganization etc. I have no idea if that perception is shared by many people in the BSD camp, but it definitely comes out in some of the interviews. And maybe for good reason, I don't know -- I'm not passing judgment on the comments, just noting their existence.

If you listen to the interview with Matt Olander from iXsystems, you'll hear him describe his experience with Red Hat Linux years ago.
Also, he mentions how BSD might be more appealing to companies as more GPL violation suits go through the court system, I that frankly struck me as the BSD people willingly giving up their freedom (As Richard Stallman would put it) for more market share. I guess a lot of them are in the open source camp, rather than a semi-free software camp. In their CD set inlay, OpenBSD does use the term free software, however I know their implied definition of it is a little different from the FSF's definition. Here's a quote from Theo de Raadt (Leader of OpenBSD) that I grabbed off of Wikiquote:
"But software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia."

Chess wrote:I'd love to hear you guys ask Will about his thoughts on these issues, i.e. whether BSD developers and users tend to shy away from BSD and/or Linux on the desktop and whether OS X has a strong following. Also, whether there is a tendency for BSD developers to think that Linux is subpar in some manner, and if so, why.

The people that just need a primary desktop that "just works" I find it interesting that they rather use a proprietary one rather than an open source one. I know that BSD people like the feeling of Mac OS X having a lot of the BSD stuff in there, but it's still a little something I find funny.