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BSD Operating Systems

New FreeBSD Core Team Elected 107

Posted by Hemos from the ensuring-for-the-future dept.
BSD-Pat writes "A new FreeBSD core team has been elected for the first time in the project's history. The BSDToday article can be found here. I'm personally excited that this seems to open up the playing field for developers to get involved on a deeper level with FreeBSD and choose the direction to take for the future." Update: 10/14 01:44 PM by H :BSD-Pat sent an update saying that the story was actually broken by Daily Daemon News.
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New FreeBSD Core Team Elected More

New FreeBSD Core Team Elected

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  • Its true though. Is it potshotting to point out flaws in something else? When MS says "Windows is a much more robust enterprise computing solution than Linux" they are taking potshots. When someone points out an actual flaw in a plan or design (like when Mindcraft pointed out that the TCP/IP stack needed some work for high-end hardware) then it is totally valid and in fact useful. In the case of mindcraft, the kernel developers took a look at the problems and fixed it.
  • "Why do we need all of this friggin OSes... can't we get a bunch of developers to work together on ONE ALL AROUND GOOD/STABLE OS?! Unix, Linux, BSD, Windows, DOS, MacOS/System whats the fuggin point?! All of these have benefits in one way or another, why not merge 'em *hint*hint*.."

    Well, because they are developed under different paradigms. Most of us like UNIXes because of stability, and predicatable behavior, as well as a development paradigm that has been around since something like 1969.

    Windows seems to be popular because of how it got its foothold, with business applications like Office. This seems to prompt professionals to want that same look and feel at home, so they use it at home too.

    Macintosh System, now renamed "MacOS", seems to have developed it's foothold in the early non-corporate enthusiast, the type who would have had a Osbourne or an Imsai, who wanted it to malarkey with and not have to go to "Big Blue"...

    and I don't know WHAT was going on with OS/2... Remember, it was actually developed by Microsoft originally, or at least part of it was, so maybe that's where IBM wanted a GUI to go.

    I don't think we'll ever have ONE operating system, and I don't want one. I want to not use the boring, rigid, buggy OS with a pretty interface pumped out for the general populace when I can use something better.
  • punch clock. go home.

  • Re:A whole new team and still not one woman? (Score:3)

    by MikeTheYak ( 123496 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @11:31AM (#707485)
    Would you consider this a problem of supply or demand? I don't know what the BSD culture is like, but I don't know any male geeks offhand who don't like the idea of female geeks. Calling it an "old boys' network" kind of implies that men are somehow trying to exclude women from the game, but in my experience there just aren't that many female players.
  • Welcome to democracy. Nothing is stopping people from voting for a woman to be on the core team. Perhaps they were more concerned with voting for people based on their programming skills and familiarity with the code base rather than whether they have a vagina or not. If you were an active FreeBSD committer and the FreeBSD committers didn't vote for you, that's an issue you'd have to take up with them. Maybe the problem is a disproportionate number of women are actually contributing CODE to FreeBSD. If you aren't doing that you wouldn't have gotten a vote to cast in the core team election. Simple as that. So, go drum up some chicks and start writing code for FreeBSD, maybe you can overthrow those pesky males. ;-)
  • What's important is not whether Geeks can or do revel in their small window for revenge on the general population. What's important is that they must, for they (we) are human too. We are human! There, I've said it. We suffer from the same pangs of conscience as the rest of you, and we suffer from the same base desires. Look no further than to the porn consumption among my brethren. We may stalk at night for fear of the light (and who can blame us, regarding our nocturnal occupations), but it is no less than the jocks and [l]users who helped mould us into what we are today.

    How dare they not RTFM, indeed! We were the ones who wrote the FM.
  • ``Try the chick at purebsd.com''

    Otherwise known as Jenny McCarthy :-P

    --
  • According to The Daemon's Advocate [daemonnews.org]
    Let's consider another comparison: others have asked ``how many women are on the core team?''.

    The answer, both before and after, is ``none''. This isn't discrimination: we currently have no female committers, so it's just not possible. For whatever reason, hacking remains a very predominantly male business.

    Obviously it makes sense to select the "politicians" from the group of people that are interested in participating in the project. If no women were interested in participating, it is unsurprising that none were available for selection.

    The problem, if it be considered such, does not lie in the selection of the FreeBSD core team, but rather way back when people decide what sorts of things they want to get involved with. Where there weren't any women that put FreeBSD on their lists.

  • How is that a disadvantage? Seems to me that the colorized filenames are almost unreadaber, or I need better monitors ;)
  • It occurs to me that they may not have actually *heard* of BSD, or they may not wish to confuse their audience by introducing another word they don't know. If you're suggesting that the author has something against Walnut Creek, I'd guess that it was more of an approximation for simplicity's sake.

  • Re:Okay.... why? (Score:3)

    by nxsy ( 7618 ) <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> on Friday October 13, 2000 @12:42PM (#707492) Homepage
    I think it all boiled down to concerns that the core team weren't doing enough, that they were doing too much, that they were too closed off from the rest of the committers, that there were some people not doing any work just lurking there, and that some new blood would probably help revitalise things.

    The idea for the new "democratically elected" core is that it will be re-elected on a regular basis (I can't remember exactly, but something like one or two years), and that it will allow people to get time off, take a break, return to real work without the overhead of core, and allow new, fresh, and revitalised blood back onto core.

    I'm a FreeBSD committer, and my opinion is that is good - some core team members have been hanging on just because they were afraid no new blood would replace them - earlier this year a core member left core so he could concentrate on "real hacking" instead, and wasn't replaced. The new blood means people more motivated and eager, and often with more time and new perspectives.

  • Re:BE (Score:2)

    by be-fan ( 61476 )
    "I sent email to [LINUS] a couple of years ago, offering to help, buy stock, port something, whatever. Never heard anything back. So fuck [him] ... (mother joke deleted) ... and the horses [he] rides in on. Fuck [him] [] with a wire brush!"

    Listen to yourself rant. Your just bitching because they rejected you. At that time period, Be was extremely supportive of developers. Ask anybody who has worked with them. Just because they didn't get to you doesn't mean that they are somehow evil. And www.beunited.org is a user group, and they are quite a friendly bunch over there.
  • It would be pretty impressive to come up with a female on a team out of a group of available nominees of all males.

    The reason the nominees are all male is because there aren't any repeat female contributors. I see no reason for this to be due to any cost of contributing, nor to any adverse behaviour, unless it was entirely private and not on the regular mailing lists, and the female in question not making a public announcement about it, which I doubt is the case.

    If that's not the case - if there is a cost to contributing, or there is negative behaviour that prevents you from contributing again, then kindly contact me directly (I'm nbm at FreeBSD.org), because I'd like to hear about it - bad reactions are not what anyone working on FreeBSD wants to happen to contributors.

    If anyone (male or female) wishes to contribute to FreeBSD, it's very easy, and they can feel free to ask me via email if they have any questions, preferably after reading the relevant documentation.

    Neil (nbm)
  • It seems that you are lumping together everything that you need to read the manual to use into the class of "hard to use". No doubt that's true for illiterates, but the rest of us really ought to be comfortable with the idea of learning (from a book, a class, or a friend) to do something before doing it.

    It happens that there are a lot of tasks that people do that are intrinsically simple, in that their entire effect can be effectively summarized by a button-sized icon or other simple visual widget: starting up a program, following a link, turning some text bold, and so on. For these tasks, "geeks" often use the same tools that others use. But there are other tasks that simply requie a more complex user interface: for example, the broad task of "getting the computer to do absolutely any specified task it can possibly do", for which you need that most powerful of interfaces, the programming language. And really, there isn't much range in between: either there's a simple and easy interface to do a very limited and specialized task (like the B button in a word processor) or there's a complex and powerful interface to accomplish a very general task -- simply because it's easier for human beings (all human beings -- geeks just happen to do it most often) to learn one powerful language that does everything than a bunch of less powerful languages that do a few things. Hence the fact that I speak English everywhere, rather than Storese for buying stuff, Bussish for asking about fares on public transit, and so on; and yet, to get the elevator to do what I want, I push a button.

    You called Emacs hard to use -- I don't think you know what you're talking about. If you just want to use it to do what Windows Notepad does, you certainly *can* manipulate it with just a mouse like you can NOTEPAD.EXE. The difference is that Emacs is capable of doing lots of other stuff if you learn the (very simple, unless you are extending it) language to speak to it. Emacs is in fact a beautiful example of a multilayered user interface: easy to start on (these days, anyway) and as powerful as you're willing to learn to make it.

    In general, when something has a GUI that J. Random Luser thinks is easy to use, that thing does a very simple and limited task. If that's all JRL needs, that's fine -- but I've written quite a lot of text with Emacs, and I know for sure that writers and editors would benefit enormously from things like i-search and regexp query-replace -- but Microsoft Word will never have them, because they can't be used effectively through a GUI. The relevant distincton in user interfaces is not between "normal people" and "those freaks who get off on programming" -- it's between people who use the computer a lot, and people who don't. People who use it only occasionally are happy with a simple but limited interface; people who use it for daily work need more power.

    So basically what I'm saying is that you're an idiot, and your mother wears combat boots. ;)

  • The problem is that the ascension of power is NEVER that easy. Not even Linux is immune from egoists, and if Linus goes away, there is going to be a major transition period while things readjust. As Linux becomes more popular, the "Grand Linux pooba" position will become more coveted. Take, for example, the US government (to strech a metaphor) The main reason why the US government is so phenominally stable is because everything is down on paper. There is none of this "I'd guess Alan Cox..." business. They have it mapped out very far. If this guy dies, this guy gets it. If he dies, this guy gets it. There is no ambiguity, and thus there is little chance of a power struggle. The point is that FreeBSD has plan of what to do if the leadership changes, and how to handle changes of leadership. A constitution if you will. Linux has no such plan, and is susceptible to the problems that come from not having a plan.
  • Or, to coin a phrase ala the Japaneese,
    "ultra-turbo-super-snarky-double-happy-conservat ive"
    To get an idea of good sueprlatives, look no further than our good friends in the Japaneese media industry.

  • Re:And (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Yeah, seriously, you tell them, man. Those Slashdot Moderators have NO sense of humor whatsoever, or we wouldn't have to have mod wars over funny posts, and whatnot.

    Actually, wait a minute, isn't it "Trolling At +2 Day", also known in some countries as "Friday"?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • "BSD is democracy - Linux is communism"

    Microsoft = Fascism (?)

    Actually, Linux is probably a democracy of elites, similar to what you saw in certain countries in a variety of forms during the middle ages and slightly later.

    The specific historic example is Poland, who also had the unfortunate element that all group decisions had to be unanimous. This was somewhat un-workable and un-fortunate. [The Linux community does not have this particular flaw.] It also deteriorated from a true brotherhood to a typical group of people trying protect their turf instead of the community, etc. [insert other political rants here]

    - - - - - - - -
    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."

  • There's no nude pics of her, and I lost the url or the pics she does have.. some BSD zealot probably has them, and she actually reads Slashdot, so I'll leave it up to one of them to post a URL or something. :)

  • When you put aside third party packages who have been audited, it's really roughly equal for advisories.

    Most of the latest FreeBSD base advisories applied to OpenBSD as well, such as the procfs vulnerability, except OpenBSD shipped with it off by default.

    Then there's OpenBSD's recent isc-dhcpd exploit (again not specific to OpenBSD, but what is?) and passwd exploit.

    I'm not saying that XYZ is more secure than OpenBSD, but there really is information on the table that would cause us to want to investigate more before any conclusions are drawn.

    As for FreeBSD specifically having better networking support, with the exception of the new zero-copy sockets, I don't think that the difference is really a major one. At this level it is not the TCP stack that holds you back.

  • >
    What kind of government is Linux?
    >Anarchist or Libertarian

    Anarchy means social structure without government or law and order. When was the last time anyone besides Linus committed a kernel change to the 2.4 kernel?

    Sounds like centralized control to me.

  • article on why the new CORE (Score:3)

    by nconway ( 86640 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @11:11AM (#707503)
    There's an interesting article @ Daemonews here: http://www.daemonnews.org/200010 /da dvocate.html [daemonnews.org]. It's a short summary of the history of BSD, the various leadership approaches (NetBSD's + FreeBSD's CORE, Linux's benevolent dictator, OpenBSD's hybrid), and other cool stuff. I recommend it.

  • freebsd and how it compares (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13, 2000 @11:12AM (#707504)
    hi all (george here)

    maybe you will remember that microsoft had some goons KILL my nephew's dog. maybe you also remember that i vowed revenge by trying out some other operation systems other than microsoft (windows or nt or 2000.) well this really tall guy at starbucks said i should try FREEBSD. normally i would have ignored him but he was really very tall. so i went to cheap bytes.com and got some FREEBSD cds sent to me.

    well my first impression was that my wife liked it, she REALLY thought the free bsd devil was cute. she said "george what a cute devil." well i felt like slapping her because just because they have a cute mascot doesn't mean they have a GOOD operation system. but anyway i said "well now let's just wait and see how it works." after all LINUX has this penguin and my wife gets all blubbery at wildlife so if she thought the demon was cute she probably would go apecrap over the penguin because it is smiling.

    now anyway i loaded up the cd and turned on the machine. normally when you install new software from the cd you click on start and then click run and then type "d:" and look for setup.exe. well i was like NOW WHAT IN THE HELL. for some reason this was not there. so i went down to SEARS and asked a nice man with an afro if there was anything i should do, he looked at me like he wanted to kill me, so i got out of there real quick.

    any way there was a READ ME file on the cd that i imported into word and it said that i should do this, that and the other thing. so i tried to follow the instructions but what is this about hard disk and partition. PARTITION is what separates cubicals at work. well i didn't know what in the hell so i just tried making some floppies. well that didn't work either. so then what i did is played SOLITAIRE (VEGAS scoring, not standard scoring.) but i (george) lost.

    so in conclusion FREEBSD has a long way to go before it is ready to be used by normal people.

    -gbd
  • Unfortunately, I can't find any details about how the elections were handled. Specifically, I'm interested in /who/ was a candidate. Perhaps there were no female candidates (which could be for a variety of reasons, of course) to choose from?
    Incidentally, I remember seeing an article on a similar topic many moons ago. It was something like 'Why aren't there many females involved in open source projects.' Lemme check quickly.
    Here's one link:
    http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/09/19/1326246 .shtml
    (I did a search for 'women' with all/all/all)

    My initial (and cynical?) guess is that all projects are naturally insular and nature and tend to promote those who (a) are oldbies and (b) "like me", therefor naturally excluding newbies and anyone not "like me".
  • And why aren't there any female players? We must look to the underlying social conditions behind these empirical facts. Judging from my neighbors, there are millions of female MSWindows users, but you would assert that there isn't a single qualified and motivated female BSD user? It just doesn't add up.
  • Much has been made of the difference between men and women (or the lack thereof) but one difference that seems to pop up no matter what rag is running the latest "women in computing" story, is that as a general rule, women tend to see computers as means to an end, while men tend to see computers as an end unto themselves. Whether this is biological, phsychological, or imagined, isn't important. What it does do is explain why there are so many women who are *users* and not as many who are *hackers* (hackers, by definition, being the ones more likely to be interested in Alternative Operating systems). To sum up: to say that there is no woman *qualified* to be part of the BSD core group is blatantly false, I know too many female programmers myself. However, to say that there is a disproportionate ratio of women users vs. women hackers is undeniably true, and thereby leads to a shortage of women in *every* corner of Alt. Os. land. The qualified women are undoubtably programming some routers for Cisco, putting in 80 hour weeks like the rest of us, and just plain don't have the time. I, on the other hand, have the time and interest, but not the skill :-)

    Hope this perspective clears things up a little, and I also hope I was PC enough (tho. I'll get flamed now for being too PC :-P)
  • What do you want to bet the loosers (assuming there are any) spinn off their own BSD derivative?

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D

  • According to the article linked to by comment #46, the reason there aren't any female members of the core team is because there aren't currently any females who contribute on a regular enough basis to be considered.


    -RickHunter

  • Re:Potshots? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The biggest problem with the "being hit by a bus" scenario is that if Linus gets hit by a bus then someone has to head over to his house and request access to his computer.
    AFAIK, Linus has the final say in what goes into the kernel because his computer is the only one that has the current "official" development copy. I'm sure that if the bus incident happened, the people surrounding Linus could get together and work something out, but because they all report to Linus as opposed to each other in regards to what the latest kernel will have, there will be a major transition period.

    With FreeBSD, the plane can go down with the entire core team and all the commit people, and the community still has access to the CVS servers. Sure there will also be a transition period, but at least you'd have access to the code.

    I wonder how many Linux people realize how much access the *BSD people have to the source. The definitive guide to FreeBSD, "The Complete FreeBSD," even shows, in newbie terms, how to automate your system to do a nightly fetch of the latest *everything* and then do a world build. It would be like having the exact same kernel that Linus is working on right now along with every patch applied by all the developers--no 2.2.18pre or whatever the scheme is!
  • There can't be a woman on core, because core are a subset of committers, and there are no female committers.

    That there is no female committers could imply two things - that there is a bias against women in FreeBSD core, or a lack of female contributors. It's most likely the second. There just aren't any returning female contributors, and committers are generally people who contribute over and again and show they know what they're doing by finding bugs and solutions in a few areas.

    If any girls or women would like to get involved with FreeBSD, there are good entry spots in ports, documentation (in-depth kernel and user), filesystems, and for people who develop a good understanding of kernel internals (which, I admit I don't have, which is why I took the easy route and write documentation and ports).

    The groups are occasionally a bit odd-ball, but avoid known trolls and get to know the more approachable people, and you're going to enjoy the community aspects (mailing lists, &c.) and the technical aspects (by getting someone you know to help review and commit your changes).

    FreeBSD isn't particularly insular, there is increasingly younger (youngest committer is 16, I think) and newbie-er committers - the key is to contribute and not be aggressive and attacking if there is review and your solution is found wanting. We want your help, but we also want the correct solutions. If you think we're ignoring you, then send a reminder to your problem report every once in a while - chances are people are incredibly busy.
  • why is it everytime theres a BSD (or other none-Linux OS) article we get cheap potshots made by Linux zealots and they get moderated up as funny?
  • Well, if you look at the recent listing of Infoworld Innovators, you'll notice the only woman on it is Hedy Lamar. I think it was just cause they liked her movies.

    So, we shouldn't be surprised when BSD ends up electing "guys who look like me". This is why I normally vote against Old White Guys on Boards of Directors, even if some day I'll be one of those people. Since I know most other voters will vote for them.

  • Bondage, Domination and Sadism Union?

    No wonder their logo is a demon!

    OH! typo! Never mind. ;)
  • Regular contributions are like more than three to five contributions ever. Or, rather, if it were defined that way, there would probably still be no regular female contributors.

    Regular contributors become committers if they show they're able, and an existing committer asks if they're willing and they accept, and there is no veto by core (can't say I know of any recently).

    Personally, I don't think there's any bias against women in the combined committer group, even if it's possible there is in one or a few individuals, and there certainly isn't any with me. It's all business - do the work, get the rewards, even if at first it's just recognition and praise. There is plenty of scope for new contributors, if you're having trouble looking for stuff to do, feel free to contact me. (nbm at FreeBSD.org)

  • Hey! (Score:1)

    by MO! ( 13886 )
    He's wearing sneakers!!!

  • Linus is the King.

    Why I oughta...

  • Linus isn't important because of the code he writes. It is just a small part of the code written today. He isn't even important because of the administrative and coordination work he does. Other people could do that, probably even better.

    He is important because of the respect he commands. Even when other developers disagree with his technical decisions, no matter how strongly, they don't challenge his right to make these decisions.

    This mean we don't get real source forks. Of course, we get lots of minor forks, when people need to add features and fix bugs for another schedule than Linus they have to fork the code. But these forks are clearly so, they define themselves compared to the main trunk, and there is no debate about what is the main trunk.

    If Linus was kidnapped by flying saucers[2], and Dave Miller and Alan Cox disagreed about the future of Linux, there would no longer be clear what the "real" Linux was. Alan's or Miller's?
    Or what would make them more real than all the practical branches?

    --
    Per A.

    [1] Well, I just did, but I like catchy headlines.
    [2] Hope that is less morbid.
  • Please... Everyone who submits patches would just resubmit to the new "leader", patched against the most recently blessed kernel. Just as it is now. The question is really one of who will lead; I'd guess Alan Cox, with a "cabinet" of others. This is a bogus argument.

  • They should have waited a month. (Score:3)

    by slickwillie ( 34689 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:44AM (#707521)
    Then Al Gore could have been elected, after he loses that other election. After all, he did invent FreeBSD, didn't he?
  • AFAIK, there is one non native English speakers among the non-elected. Mind you, there is a healthy number of non-americans among elected and non-elected.

    The results, to me, seems reflect how active the candidates have been in the FreeBSD technical mailing lists and commit logs, and how important their contributions have been.

    And I'd wager at least one of the non-elected would have been elected had he not spent some months away from FreeBSD in this past year.

    So it comes down to lack of non-native english speakers candidates. Since any committer was allowed to become a candidate, and FreeBSD has a good number of committers who are non-native english speakers, I have to wonder why that was so.
  • This is all exceedingly morbid, so let's just suppose Linus walks off in a huff, rather than being hit by a bus. It happens to the best of us :-)

    The most work that could be lost would be the difference between the last "testing" release and what Linus has on his computer. In general this is less than a month's work. Today, there is a 10-day difference between the 2.4.0-test9 rekease and whatever has been done since.

    But in fact, what would be lost is much less than that, because most of the deltas would be in the hands of the other developers who wrote them, and in the hands of second-stage coordinators like Alan Cox.

    All of this hit-by-a-bus talk is pure guff.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Well, I would say something about slightly overweight penguins, but....

    (to quote Linus)

    "Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had. -- Linus Torvalds"
    (not like anyone's ever head that one before :) )
    - - - - - - - - -
  • Why does every BSD article I have ever read deem it necessary to take potshots at Linux?

    In this case, they're touting how much better then BSD development model is than Linux.

    Lame.

  • Hmm. (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Well, a couple of the old core members are still around, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the others still contributed, and eventually got changes folded in.

    Really, this isn't that different from how Linux kernel development works, or CVS access in most projects are handled: only a few people are allowed to commit changes. This is just a bit more formalized.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Let's hope the team can make some real progress on FreeBSD and make something similar to that amazing RedHat daemon that autoupdates components automatically. Seriously though, I like the direction FreeBSD is moving in and did my first FreeBSD install starting with v4.0 and thought it was quite good.

  • Little changeover (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:43AM (#707528)
    One thing I noticed, there wasn't much changeover in the core members. I noticed the names were reordered, but many names were the same.

    I thought that this was interesting, apparently there was a lot of satisfaction with the initial team.

    Would someone more involved with the process explain how this worked? Who could vote, etc?

    Alex

  • Okay.... why? (Score:3)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:46AM (#707529) Homepage

    Maybe I'm missing something. (I don't follow very closely the "people-related" aspects of projects that I'm not involved in.)

    Why did they need a new core? Do they have a term of office which expired? Was there a popular uprising and overthrow of the oppressive bourgeoisie? (Considering that some of the former members are on the list of new members, probably not...)

    Some of us non-FreeBSD users are curious.

  • but the penguin could definitely be considered cute...but anyone who thinks that an overweight naked demon is cute has problems...or is saddam hussein.


  • Why not they elect a combined developers body? They can use such ocasions to propose a union of BDS flavors of operating systems. I think all the separation is not in favor of a prosperous and triving BDS comunity.
  • Define regular.

    The BSD rules say that you must have committed at least once in the twelve months previous to the election.

    Committers don't meet face to face. No will know your gender unless you tell them. Demonstrate that your code is good and worthwhile and you'll get to be a committers. Commit at least once a year and you'll get to vote.

    Simple.
  • You obviously did not read the article, or if you did, failed to understand it. They only claimed that the development model was *different*, not better. The listed numerous problems with the model. In fact, they even had a large sidebar from Theo stating that OpenBSD had a better model because it had a "benevolent dictator" form.
  • Its true though. Is it potshotting to point out flaws in something else?
    No, it's not; but even if Linus got hit by a bus tomorrow, Linux wouldn't die. It's got too much critical mass. (One could make the same assertion about the aftermath of the FreeBSD core team going down in the same plane crash.) Sure, there would be some confusion at first, but Linux's central developers would most likely pick a new leader, or move to a group-managed model like FreeBSD or Apache.

    I suppose I was a bit reactionary at first. I use (and admin) Linux and took it as a slight. That's not to say, though, that I haven't had a hankering to try {Free,Open}BSD as of late, as soon as I can get a spare box to try it on.

    --

  • So, development could go from "hyper-conservative" to "ultra-conservative"?

  • Here we go.. only found 1 pic searching on google..

    link [xmission.com]

    Kinda blurry, but any chick dressing up in a devil costume that's a geek to boot has my vote.

  • Try the chick at purebsd.com [purebsd.com]
  • So how does one defrag your filesystem
  • I reject the statement that there are any number of people who are "allowed" to modify a Free Software product, either Linux or a BSD. If some core team stops working, another team would arise whether or not they are allowed. This has certainly been the case with *BSD, hasn't it? Otherwise, we'd still be waiting for Jolitz to do something.

    As far as I can tell, neither Linus nor the FreeBSD core team have much power to compel. People go along with them because they want to do so, and if they had good reasons to do otherwise, they would

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • Re:Little changeover (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out The Daemon's Advocate [daemonnews.org] for the details. As for the composition of the core team, for those who won't follow the link: - it now has only 9 members(down from 15) - of the old 15, either 7 or 8 ran and only 5 were elected(article says two weren't, 5+2=7, but also said 8 stood for election...go figure) - 5 members of the old core team had a non-English native language where now 1 member has a non-English native language - 7 members of the old team were outside the US where now only two are The elections are held every two years.
  • The seperation is not like the linux distro chaos. Theese are three distinct OSes which all go back to the same core. From there they have differing priorities. Depending on what you need each of the BSD's can meet your needs. And there's alot of code sharing going on between the BSD's, hell openBSD's ppc port is heavily based on the netbsd one.
  • It's time for Geeks to grow up. It's time to stop trying to get your own back at users.

    We like to watch pathetic lusers squirm when they can't figure out something!
    We design overly complex user interfaces that require YEARS and YEARS to learn!
    You know why? JOB SECURITY! As long as you pathetic fools can't RTFM, you need US for support!

    And you lowly users can't do a thing about it beacause...

    YOU CAN'T CODE! BWAHAHAHAHA!

    --K
    Troll? Funny? Insightful? YOU MAKE THE CALL!
    ---
  • >When MS says "Windows is a much more robust
    >enterprise computing solution than Linux" they
    >are taking potshots.

    Actually, that is not saying much of anything. What little information its trying to impart is called "lying".
  • Open source software development is a very democratic world. Anybody can start a project and throw it up on SourceForge, and anybody can e-mail a patch to the maintainer of a project. I don't think there are many barriers to participating in a project if a person has the necessary talent and inclination. For whatever reason, women as a group just seem less inclined to take an interest in geeky things, and BSD pushes the edge of the geek envelope. That doesn't mean it's the fault of the people who do take an active interest.

    As far as the underlying reasons for the disparity, I don't have an answer. It may be cultural. It may be biological. I don't think I'm qualified to say one way or the other. I do think, at least in this case, that women have a great opportunity which they simply are not taking advantage of. It's a shame that more women choose not to explore the geek fringe, but I think the problem is much more one of women simply choosing not to take that path than men trying to hold them back.

  • Re:Hmm. (Score:1)

    by nxsy ( 7618 )
    Nope, this is nothing like either.

    The 225 or so committers that were around at the time of the nominations (there are 233 now, and yeah, I'm one of them) were allowed to vote for the core team.

    Any of those 233 committers can commit changes, core is just there to perform some more complex functions, like settling disputes.

    The leaving core members are still committers, they were just lucky to escape and get a bit of a holiday.
  • I think it's best to keep tools separated. Have a lot of tools specifically tailored to one job, rather than one tool tailored to many jobs. Trying to merge all the different OSes together would create such a hulking OS, that nothing would ever get accomplished.
  • Thats cause women can't write code! :) Oh I'm going to hell for saying that....

  • Well, it sounds like you are yearning to try out the Z Shell [zsh.org]. While it's not as simple as you'd like it does have enough features that make problems like the above go away. And it's not csh or tcsh, which is good.

    For instance, instead of using find, you have the option to use "recursive globbing". So you can grep through all the include files by doing:

    % egrep 'SIGHUP' /usr/include/**/*.h
  • I hope this new team's imput is used in the OS X development.
  • 1. People wasn't satisfied with the previous core team. No specific reason. Some grudges existed among some committers, but it was more a general feeling of dissatisfaction than anything specific.

    2. People wanted to continue to have a core team. People was generally happy with the general organization, so there wasn't any need to a restructuring that would remove the core team altogether. As a matter of fact, most of those who expressed themselves believed that no other project has a better organization.

    Thus, it was decided to change the core team. The method people seemed to prefer was elections, and after months of discussions and reviews and votes, this was done.

    What more do you want to know?
  • the reason there aren't any female members of the core team is because there aren't currently any females who contribute on a regular enough basis to be considered.

    Define regular. I've served on boards with women, and even been the token white male at times, and one thing I noticed was that, in general, women have stuff happen. They have kids, their parents get sick, whatever. The net amount of work produced by the women is pretty much the same as that of the men, but it's taken as an indicator by men that the women aren't serious enough.

    So, maybe you need to ask - is this a reasonable restriction?

    Just being a Devil's Advocate, after all ...
  • How is Linus important? Well, he's criticialy important to Tove and the kids. He is not so important to future development of the kernel. He's an excellent coordinator, and a person who merits a lot of respect, but Linus does not write the kernel, a whole bunch of people do that together.

    Talk about him getting hit by a bus is absurdly morbid and is getting to be very tiresome, too. He could simply decide to go on to something else. If he did so, one of the other well-known kernel developers would step into his place. Alan could do it in a blink, but he's not the only one.

    If you study the kernel development, you will find that it is at least as decentralized as that of any BSD if not more. The fact that there is one figurehead does not change the fact that the kernel development is actually carried out with no formal organization whatsoever, and it works darned well without one.

    Another point that people don't think about enough is that these kernels will be finished eventually. Development will go on to something new. Free Software is forever, but Linux, Unix, and BSD are just steps on the way.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • there was some problem about exhausting the money supply and a suggestion I look into the REAL_GREEN_THIRD_PARTY stack instead.

  • > Where only the elite or commiters are allowed to vote

    Just like the US of A. Where only US-Americans are allowed to vote.

    Or France, where only Frenchmen are allowed to vote.

    Or [put in your favourite democracy here] where only [name the inhabitants of the country] are allowed to vote.

    The FreeBSD core team steers the process of FreeBSD developement, so why should any outsider (i.e. non-developer) be allowed to vote?

  • Women's Guide on Getting Elected for FreeBSD Core (Score:3)

    by dcs ( 42578 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @01:57AM (#707556)
    1. Become a FreeBSD committer.

    This is most easily done by sending enough Problem Reports (see send-pr(1)) that the poor bastards who get to commit all your stuff for you gets tired of it and asks the core team to have brought as a committer.

    Committers usually fit in one of the following profiles:

    1a. Doc Committers are documentation freaks who go through the handbook, the faq, the web site, the man pages, etc, and actually fix things, add things, etc. There are even the occasional maniacs who track down code hackers and extract, with the help of red hot irons, iron maidens and similar instruments, information required to document a feature.

    Suggestion: read freebsd-questions. Make a note of frequently asked questions, and check the answers to it. Write the Q/A to the FAQ. send-pr(1).

    1b. Ports committers. These are complete freaks who seems not to have a thing to do in life besides surf the Internet looking for the most arcane pieces of software, and the "port" them to FreeBSD.

    Suggestion: look at the software you use that has yet to be part of the FreeBSD ports collection. Read the porters handbook. Follow the instructions in writing the port to FreeBSD (this is often very easy!). send-pr(1).

    1c. The code hacker. These are the completely insane persons who go to the trouble of writing code to help the lives of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people around the world, often without getting a single thank you note of recognition. Not only that, but they are often being chased around by docs committers who make use of extremely painful methods to extract information about what they have just written, as if they could remember that! Well, not often enough, actually, but still...

    Sugestion: Do you have a problem you need solving, a bug that needs fixing, or a feature you want? Well, write the code for it, and send-pr(1).

    2. Become well-known. This is actually easily done. Subscribe and be vocal in -hackers, -current, -stable, -arch and, perhaps a few more choice lists such as -ports, -doc, -scsi, -fs, -mobile, -small, -questions, -chat, -advocacy, besides the ones you'll already find yourself subscribed to, like -committers.

    You don't need to be a genius. Listen, present your opinion when an opinion is being asked for, and speak of technical matters when your knowledge enables you to. Never be afraid to ask. Try to avoid flame wars.

    3. Candidate yourself to core. This can only be done once every two years, but there is no further requirement aside from being a (active?) committer.

    Since you are a woman and there is little female blood around, chances are you'll get elected simply because of gender. Of course, that will happen IF people know you from the mailing lists and commit logs, and you haven't pissed off everyone. But since each committer gets nine votes, I'd wager the chances of them choosing to vote for you just to provide some "balance" is rather large.
  • This is great news. Many developers (and administrators) have found that FreeBSD meets their specific needs better than linux and making FreeBSD more available can only have a positive effect. There is certainly room for both FreeBSD and linux in the unix-like os world.

    -Moondog
  • There are female FreeBSD users, and a good many deal of them are experts in one cs field or another. Why none of them has ever come forth as a committer candidate, if nothing else... beats me.

    They can certainly often be found on the secret virtual dens of FreeBSD committers around the net.
  • I think we should go for the naked BSD chick, myself.
  • Geek geek Matt Bruce geek geek Henrietta Pussycat geek geek Presidents of the United States of America geek Kitty?

    Katz, is that you? ;)


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
  • Oh, come on now, all of you! Almost all new committers are selected simply for the patches they sent. Just check http://www.freebsd.org/support.html#gnats, and count the number of patches submitted by woman, and you'll see it is no "old boys club" that's preventing women from becoming committers.
  • I do know of female BSD users, but no serious contributors (yet). Take the "daemon babe" that the immature slashdot population always raves about; she's a user.
  • BSD is democracy
    Linux is communism

    What kind of economy is BSD?
    What kind of government is Linux?
  • I think you're a bit oversensitive on the issue. Exactly what do you disagree with?
  • I dislike most of my pics. ;)
    I do read slashdot, but I always miss my invocations until a friend or random person on efnet alerts me that I've been mentioned again.

    Anyway. deviltry.net should eventually leak into existance. Someday. I'll keep the collections of the pics there, probably even the truly scary ones.

    Headed off to BSDCon next week, yay!

    -Ceren
    FreeBSD's "Strange Attractor."

  • Potshots? (Score:4)

    by locutus074 ( 137331 ) on Friday October 13, 2000 @10:53AM (#707566)
    ..."I like to compare FreeBSD's structure (like an archery target -- core in the middle, committers in the next ring, and users in the outermost ring) to Linux's [structure]. Linus is Linux's 'core' (at least when we're talking about the kernel)."

    "In this way, Linux's 'core' is not fault tolerant. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is much better equipped to survive the loss of a core member. ..."

    Hmm, taking potshots at a more popular OS? Even though I'll probably get modded to hell and back, this says to me that FreeBSD:Linux::Linux:Windows. :-/

    Of course, this assertion has already been disproven at Segfault [segfault.org], not once [segfault.org], but twice [segfault.org]. ;-)

    --

  • I believe that only people with FreeBSD CVS commit access were able to vote.

  • I got my picture taken with her in NY!

  • hmmm... and what about joe?
  • Oh gee. I joined the kernel mailing list well before the Linux virtual memory implementation was able to support Electric Fence, and of course that was my first concern at the time. That might have been 1994 or even 1993. I think Lars was running the list server then. It was well before 1.0 was released. I remember the 0.96 series, I'm not sure how much farther back from that I started.

    Yes, he's really good. I've spent time with Alan and David, I've watched Alan's work from the time he started thinking about working on AX.25 in the kernel (I discouraged him at the time, thinking him a clueless newbie - my mistake) and David for quite a while, too. Both of them can do the job, and there are other people who can do as well.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • > The very fact that Geeks prefer to use such an arcane operating system as UNIX proves my point further.

    "Your" point has been made time, and time again. Indeed, it's true that many do get off on communicating with their system through arcane symbols. As we all know, Unix is *chock full* of the arcane. Personally, I've been typing garbage like this all day:

    % yes | rm -R *; cp /tmp/logs/* .
    % zgrep `ls`/err_log.Z ERR > isTemp
    % p | g `which fvwm`

    It's only years of experience that makes me comfortable throwing around this kind of syntax. And that "mastery" does periodically give me a little thrill. What geek doesn't want to be a wizard? Mythical wizards weave intricate and arcane commands to coaxe demons to do their bidding. Unix wizards weave intricate and arcane commands to coaxe daemons to do their bidding. The analogy is so tight that "Unix wizard" is a term used even outside of geek circles.

    ...but feeling like a wizard doesn't completely overcome the frustration of a poorly designed interface. Daily, I curse tcsh command syntax. It's overly complicated, inconsistent and kludgey. I yearn for something better. Just this afternoon I downloaded and compiled rc. For those who don't know, rc is the shell used in the Plan/9 operating system that Bell Labs created to replace Unix. The shell is an attempt to "clean up" bourne, and make it more consistent. Great idea...now if only people would use it...

    Taking this from rambling to a point ... I think that while most all geeks *do* enjoy complexity, far from all enjoy *senseless* complexity. Complexity in a tool is only acceptable if it allows for more complete control of the problem. It is a rush to understand the full power of an intricate tool. It is at best a relief when you uncover the pointless and silly incompatibilities that have been causing you headaches.

    I, for one, believe that Unix userland could use a serious overhaul at the command line level. 'find' is an extremely nasty program (it attempts to solve too many problems at once, if you ask me), and I think 'grep' could be made a lot friendlier without losing any power. The shells could have simpler and more consistent syntax for backquoting, and creating lists...

    Anyway...not *all* of us are content with the complexity of Unix. Even wizards get sick of niggly details...

    --Lenny

  • We must look to the underlying social conditions behind these empirical facts.
    "Hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the social and economic differences in our society!"

    Don't know why it reminded me of that, but it did.

  • Re:Linus' Importance is Overstated (Score:4)

    by nxsy ( 7618 ) <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> on Friday October 13, 2000 @06:02PM (#707573) Homepage
    Hi again Bruce,

    Feel free to reject the statement that any number of people are "allowed to modify a Free Software product, either Linux or a BSD". I didn't say anything about the restrictions regarding the modifications of copies of the source code that is distributed in the official projects.

    There are two possible meanings of (for example) "FreeBSD source code", depending on stress:

    The _FreeBSD_ source code is "The source code to the FreeBSD operating system, that is used to generate FreeBSD install CDs, is available in the FreeBSD cvs tree". In this case, no, you can't modify the _FreeBSD_ source code, because you don't have commit privilege - the 233 committers in FreeBSD can, though.

    Or, the FreeBSD _source_code_ is "The source code to the FreeBSD operating system, freely available for anyone to use, whose modification need not occur in the active FreeBSD project, and can indeed be used in other projects". In this case, you're totally free to modify the source code. However, you are not modifying the source code to the actual FreeBSD operating system, just a local copy. You can feel free to submit patches back if you like.

    The same applies to Linux - you can play all you like with the code with the usual restrictions, but you need to get Linus to accept it if you want it to become part of the Linux kernel. You can modify your own copies of it, but you need his permission and intercession for you to indirectly modify the actual Linux kernel source code, as distributed in tarballs.

    I can't believe you're talking about the second meaning, since it's obvious I'm not talking about it in my comment - I specifically talk about direct modification of the FreeBSD source in CVS, and the modification of the Linux kernel in the tarballs.

    In the first case, and as you later continue, the core team or Linus do indeed have no way to compel people to make changes to the "offical" distribution formats of FreeBSD (cvs) or Linux (tarball), nor do they have any power to compel people not to make their changes in other formats, such as local copies or other projects (subject to licensing).

    The thing is - if everyone disagreed with Linus, would it still be Linux? Linux is a registered trademark of Linus, and as such, if people run off and do other work, it is not the "official" Linux tarball, and it would need to be renamed, unless Linus gave his approval.

    I'm not sure if Mr. Jolitz trademarked 386BSD, but he certainly would not have allowed the upstart NetBSD and FreeBSD teams to continue calling themselves "386BSD" - that was his baby. Hence the renaming. FreeBSD is a registered trademark too, so if the FreeBSD core (who hold it with permission of the trademark owner) were deemed too slow or old or whatever to do real work, the disillusioned could form another system, but not "FreeBSD".

    I'm pretty sure you know all this, I just wanted for the slashdot readers to know that you were talking about something unrelated to my comment; your comment mostly discusses the advantages of open source development (freely available, or free-for-source-available-derivatives source) and the realities of open source projects (the inability to force cats^H^H^H^Hhackers to follow a given path).

    Cheers,

    Neil
  • To sum up: to say that there is no woman *qualified* to be part of the BSD core group is blatantly false, I know too many female programmers myself. However, to say that there is a disproportionate ratio of women users vs. women hackers is undeniably true, and thereby leads to a shortage of women in *every* corner of Alt. Os. land. The qualified women are undoubtably programming some routers for Cisco, putting in 80 hour weeks like the rest of us, and just plain don't have the time. I, on the other hand, have the time and interest, but not the skill :-)

    Two things:

    1. it is also highly likely that a man will overestimate his abilities and qualifications and submit himself and that a woman will underestimate her abilities and qualifications and not submit herself (recent Psychology Today article). In addition, if there are other qualified applicants, a man will still tend to apply, but a woman will frequently not apply.

    2. I think you're right that most of the qualified women are putting in 80 hour weeks, going home and doing another 20 hours, and just plain don't have the time.

  • Why did they need a new core? Do they have a term of office which expired? Was there a popular uprising and overthrow of the oppressive bourgeoisie?

    Greg Lehey's Daemon News article [daemonnews.org] addresses this question.

  • Anyone interested in the way the FreeBSD organization works might want to look at this URL. [daemonnews.org]
  • You know whoever the lame ass moderator is who gave me more negative karma, SCREW YOU!!! ok I wrote that for that other dude because I thought it was funny, I guess I could have emailed him, but SCREW YOU and your high horse attitude....lighten up...
  • The first paragraph needs to be in the article itself. :-) It answers my questions and fills in all the blanks. Thanks, nxsy, for the note!

  • Re:Linus' Importance is Overstated (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You're underestimating Linus. Are you on the Linux-Kernel mailing list? Do you read his day to day posts? He's certainly much much more than an administrator.

    Linus has a clear vision of the sort of code and coding style that he wants in the source tree. And he's very demanding about it. He rejects patches with extreme predjudice. He chews people out when they send him junk patches. He kicks peoples asses in public.

    ...And he does contribute code. I'm sure he doesnt do as much now, with his family and his work at Transmeta, but he does contribute.

    (for example, he wasnt happy with Inaky Gonzales' USB stack, so he just up and re-wrote the thing himself -- of course this is more than a year ago, and it has been modified. But in no way is the current Linux kernel "beyond him")

    If Linus left the picture, could Alan Cox or Dave Miller take over ? probably, but neither of them has exercised the discernment of the quality of code that he has. It's quite possible, that either of these guys would (inadvetently) run things into unmaintainability.

    I recall, in one of the many flame wars, some GGI bozo was wrangling w/ Linus. He made it plain: "The kernel isnt stable becasue it's a kernel, it's stable because I dont let junk, like what you're peddling, into the kernel"

    There's a lot of loons out their, with their pet projects, wanting to put their "bright ideas" into the kernel. We'd be much worse off if there wasnt a competent gatekeeper keeping them from getting their way.

  • Re:Linus' Importance is Overstated (Score:5)

    by nxsy ( 7618 ) <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> on Friday October 13, 2000 @01:59PM (#707584) Homepage
    Hi Bruce,

    Obviously "gets hit by a bus" is a metaphor, and it is not to be taken seriously. It means "becomes unavailable", and I think you'd agree that if Linus did become unavailable, there'd be quite a bit of upheaval. Nothing fatal I imagine, but some upheaval - whoever takes over would also probably get quite a bit of "But Linus would have done this..." coming his or her way.

    However, if one of the FreeBSD Core "became unavailable" because of other work, a change in direction, moving to another project, it wouldn't have nearly the effect. I imagine the most likely to cause the most upheaval is jkh. Whoever replaces the core member isn't likely to face "but foo would have done this..." arguments - core is about reaching concensus on issues that have escalated to that level - to settle disputes, add more committers, and very very occasionally decide policy. Everything else is based on rough concensus and working code in the project.

    I don't believe you can say that the Linux kernel development is "at least as decentralized", in the sense that at least 233 people can directly modify the FreeBSD source code, including kernel. There is no need for them to get formal review and acceptance by a single person before it is possibly to go in - it is simply expected that review is sought, that the code is tested, and that you know what you're doing, and that you notify the maintainers or active worker on the subsystem you're working with. Architectural changes are monitored by various people (as I imagine it is with Linux too), and any questionable code is (optionally) backed out and discussed. People who repeatedly refuse to get review and discuss changes would theoretically get their bits removed, but there hasn't been a case in the time I've been following the project.

    This is "decentralized", meaning ``withdrawn from a center or place of concentration; especially having power or function dispersed from a central to local authorities''. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but that's what it means - all changes are centralized through a point of concentration (Linus at the moment). The function of physically changing the code and generating the tarballs or whatever (since there's no versioning) falls with him.

    One could theoretically extend that to FreeBSD in the fact that changes have to be made via cvs (or locally with cvs) on the FreeBSD cvs server, but that's a little technical. The function of changing the code is performed by the committers - the rest is automated and not concentrated through a single reviewer and changer.

    Again, this is not a judgement, simply an observation. I don't think anyone in FreeBSD has the time and inclination to step up and manage every single change to the kernel, userland, documentation, or web site, so the functionally-decentralized distributed method probably suits FreeBSD.

    Neil
  • I'm not arguing for affirmative action among opensource development teams. Far from it. But it still bugs me that here an entire new team has been elected and yet there remains not a single female team member among them. Sure, I could do my part and try to join, but I bear that burden enough here on slashdot and I have my priorities; isn't there some female programmer willing to join the "old B [bsd.org] oy S [bsd.org] D [bsd.org] evelopment network?.

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