[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[bakul@bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)]

On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:44:48 -0800 Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy writes:
> 
> It's a bummer because BSD brings minimalism to the table.  You can run
> a BSD machine in 128MB and it works.  Hell, it used to work great in 4MB.

I think this is the crux of the issue. As a group gets bigger,
minimalism is hard to maintain. To have a fighting chance you
have inculcate new people in the same minimalism culture and
that takes time. This puts a higher bar to entry.

> The BSD stuff isn't being taken seriously because the BSD people aren't
> interested in taking new people seriously.  Which is a shame because the
> work that Netflix and other BSD people have done is really cool.

If you think what BSD folks have done is cool, just join in.
Why not ignore the personalities and the popularity contest.

Regardless of how we got here, the reality is that BSD at this
point has a tiny footprint in the market.  Even Linux has a
small footprint in the desktop + laptop market, compared to
Windows and Mac. BSD isn't even counted separately any more
there. In the server market Linux is basically it. In the
cloud market it is mostly Linux (almost all of it, if you
don't count Azure). In the Mobile+desktop+laptop market, other
than Android, Linux is under 1%. BSD numbers are just in the
noise.

The reality is that BSD just doesn't matter to most folks. The
same with minimalism. So it goes. [And neither fact matters to
me for my non-pay work.]