[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Kevin Bowling]

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Hi,

Interested in some perspective here since the list has influential Linux
people like Ted Tso.

Linux has been described as influenced by Minix and System V.  The Minix
connection is well discussed.  The SysV connection something something
Linus had access to a spec manual.  But I’d guess reality would be more
gradual — new contributors that liked CSRG BSD would have mostly gravitated
to the continuations in 386/BSDi/Net/Free that were concurrent to early and
formative Linux development.. so there’d be an implicit vacuum of BSD
people for Linux development.

What I am curious about is the continuing ignorance of BSD ideas.  Linux
isn’t exactly insular; a lot of critical people and components came much
later on from other SysV flavors (lvm, jfs, xfs, RCU)

The kinds of BSD things I am talking about are ufs, kqueue, jails, pf,
Capsicum.  Linux has grown alternatives, but with sometimes willful
ignorance of other technology. It seems clear epoll was not a good design
from the start.  Despite jails not being taken to the logical conclusion of
modern containers like zones, the architecture is fundamentally closer
aligned to how people want to securely use containers versus namespaces and
cgroups. And Google ported Capscicum to Linux but it’s basically been
ignored in lieu of nebulous concepts like seccomp.  And then there seems to
be outright hostility toward other platforms from the postmodern generation
with things like systemd.

This seems strange to me as BSD people are generally open to other /ideas/,
we have to be careful with Linux code due to license incompatibility, but
the converse is does not seem true either in interest in other ideas or
license hampering code flow.

The history of UNIX is spectacularly successful because different groups
got together at the table and agreeed on the ideas.  Is there room for that
in the modern era where Linux is the monopoly OS?  The Austin Group is
still a thing but it’s not clear people in any of the Freenix communities
really care about evolving the standards.  I get that, but not so much
completely burrying ones head in the sand to what other OSes are doing.  Is
there any future for UNIX as an “open system” in this climate or are people
going to go there separate ways?

Regards,
Kevin
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[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Larry McVoy]

I think it's a culture thing.  My experience is formed somewhat from
recent interactions with Netflix but it goes all the way back to 386BSD
and the {Free,Net,Open}BSD after that.  Dragonfly might be an exception
but I haven't engaged with them enough to know. I've engaged with all
the other BSDs.  Or tried to.

There is an east coast culture and there is a west coast culture when it
comes to society (not talking about computers here).

The east coast is the ivy league, and it is about who you know.  Who your
family is.  Look at the Bush family, as much as George wanted to be a
Texan, he's east coast ivy league.  If you are in that club, you are in,
doesn't matter if you have talent or not, you are in.

The west coast doesn't have the prestige of all the east coast elites,
it's the new kid.  So on the west coast, all that anyone cares about is
can you get shit done?  You can be a nobody but if you make shit happen,
you are in.

Linux is like the west coast.  Maybe not so much today, but certainly
back at the start and for a long time, all that anyone cared about was
"is your code good".  And I think they still have that attitude though
it's somewhat harder to break in.

BSD is like the east coast, and still is to this day.  It's a club.  In
order to be in that club you have to be somebody that somebody knows.
I have to say that I think the BSD culture is pretty toxic.  It's an
old boy's club and that limits the success it can have.  Because, as we
all know, the people that move things forward are mostly the young unknown
kids that we send out to solve a problem that we think can't be solved.
And yet, once in a while they do solve one.  The BSD community seems to
only want proven people in their group, which is fine at one level, but
rules out the new people that solve the unsolvable.

Given the differences, and believe me, Linus and crew are aware of the
differences, the Linux guys aren't that interested in the BSD stuff.
Why should they be?  What does BSD bring to the table for Linux?

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.
Nanobsd and the other firewall distributions work well in low memory
machines.

Here's a personal example of the differences.  When I was looking at
working with Netflix I emailed McKuisik to ask him about some UFS stuff.
And this was me, I know Kirk, I've been to his house, had wine with him
and Eric.  No reply.  Ok, I'm old and washed up, I get it.

I emailed Linus about the Spectre/Meltdown stuff, asking him if I should
release some before/after LMbench results.  Got a reply in about 20
minutes where he outlined where things where, where they were going,
talked about his stuff getting to the intel CEO, etc, etc.  Linus and
I could be enemies because of Git/BK but Linus doesn't care about that,
he responded because I had a valid question.  

I've tried to have the same conversation with BSD people and I was 
ignored.  +1 Linux.

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.

I'd love to hear Ted's take, it might be very different.

--lm

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[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.]

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 11:11 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:

> 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.


Though even in the early days of Linux, it could run in a slightly smaller
footprint. It just grew more quickly than BSD, though retained a better way
to subset that let it retain much of the lower end that BSD had grown too
large for for many years.

> 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.
>

Honestly, most of the heavy BSD contributors do just that. There's drama
here and there, but it's mostly away from larger contributors...  And so it
goes...


> 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.
>

Yet, according to Sandvine, Netflix serves 35% of peak internet traffic,
all from FreeBSD. Go figure :)


> 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.]
>

Warner
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[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[George Michaelson]

Van Jacobsen did most of his ?ESNET? funded work on TCP/IP on BSD. He
was associated with Berkeley. When BSD fragmented and there were 3,
getting traction for rapid adoption of IP stack changes became hard.
He worked on his suite of Mbone tools for a while, then gave up.

He popped up again around the time codel was beginning, with random
early drop (RED) changes, and they made BSD. But, things began to be
released in linux kernels faster. BBR was a killer moment: its out in
all modern Linux. Its barely adopted in FreeBSD, and the issues around
BBR, Codel, models are being chained into the floor by interminable
discussions (I am possibly wrong here, but this is the sense I get)

Three or four smart guys at Swinburne were working on a really nice
agile stack for IP changes in BSD. THey lost funds and traction and
the team is now at Netflix.

FQ-Codel aimed to home routers. Home routers for some reason are linux
down the line. I also don't understand this: NetBSD would have been a
fine model for tiny memory footprint SoC but somehow, it just didn't
work out that way. Likewise the PI. I know NetBSD works, but somehow,
its not on the main release cycle of the PI people. Its sideline.

NAS people still like BSD. I think a lot of Open Source NAS projects
wanted better underlying Disk IO models than Linux had, and ZFS, but
now ZFS is in Linux.. I think the writing might be on the wall there.

Juniper was (I believe) very BSD friendly. I don't know now. Was.




On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 4:29 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 11:11 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> Though even in the early days of Linux, it could run in a slightly smaller
> footprint. It just grew more quickly than BSD, though retained a better way
> to subset that let it retain much of the lower end that BSD had grown too
> large for for many years.
>
>> > 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.
>
>
> Honestly, most of the heavy BSD contributors do just that. There's drama
> here and there, but it's mostly away from larger contributors...  And so it
> goes...
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> Yet, according to Sandvine, Netflix serves 35% of peak internet traffic, all
> from FreeBSD. Go figure :)
>
>>
>> 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.]
>
>
> Warner

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[George Michaelson]

the other odd thing here is that Kirk McKusick used to pop up at lots
of places teaching. He is enormously engaging and a good presenter and
people love to hear about Filesystem design and models of virtual
filesystem.. but at the end of the day if they don't run the BSD
kernel, or code, then its .. kind of off-beam. I bet he could still
fill a room of people, but I doubt the room would equate to the volume
of linux nodes run inside DC.

Bhyve is a really nice virtualization model. It has zero traction.
Docker is it. Docker on Bhyve was mooted and died. CePH is barely on
BSD, 3-5 years down the track. So thats almost the entire world of
Docker -> Kubernetes you can't run, and the data/science world of
giant distributed filestores you can't run. Sucks to be a BSD nerd at
this point, because nobody wants you.

I'm running iSCSI backed from NetAPP for ZFS via FreeBSD. The ZFS is
rock solid. the iSCSI sucks, and can't do sensible dual channel
bonding, and a bunch of things in my life might be easier if I moved
it to Linux.  I run another 10-15 nodes as FreeBSD and I have to run
one as Debian to get BBR to get data from intractably slow ssh/rsync
feeds, on BSD or.. use this one Linux node and get a 10x speedup. Its
very hard to ignore this as a real-world signal of failure. (rsync
over ssh is hell, and there are much better models but this one is
bankable with other people)

right now, as a BSD bigot in a technology company, I'm in a group of
one. Its lonely, its cold, and its going to be a long slow winter (to
quote bill murray from groundhog day, kinda)

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 4:36 PM, George Michaelson <ggm at algebras.org> wrote:
> Van Jacobsen did most of his ?ESNET? funded work on TCP/IP on BSD. He
> was associated with Berkeley. When BSD fragmented and there were 3,
> getting traction for rapid adoption of IP stack changes became hard.
> He worked on his suite of Mbone tools for a while, then gave up.
>
> He popped up again around the time codel was beginning, with random
> early drop (RED) changes, and they made BSD. But, things began to be
> released in linux kernels faster. BBR was a killer moment: its out in
> all modern Linux. Its barely adopted in FreeBSD, and the issues around
> BBR, Codel, models are being chained into the floor by interminable
> discussions (I am possibly wrong here, but this is the sense I get)
>
> Three or four smart guys at Swinburne were working on a really nice
> agile stack for IP changes in BSD. THey lost funds and traction and
> the team is now at Netflix.
>
> FQ-Codel aimed to home routers. Home routers for some reason are linux
> down the line. I also don't understand this: NetBSD would have been a
> fine model for tiny memory footprint SoC but somehow, it just didn't
> work out that way. Likewise the PI. I know NetBSD works, but somehow,
> its not on the main release cycle of the PI people. Its sideline.
>
> NAS people still like BSD. I think a lot of Open Source NAS projects
> wanted better underlying Disk IO models than Linux had, and ZFS, but
> now ZFS is in Linux.. I think the writing might be on the wall there.
>
> Juniper was (I believe) very BSD friendly. I don't know now. Was.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 4:29 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 11:11 PM, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Though even in the early days of Linux, it could run in a slightly smaller
>> footprint. It just grew more quickly than BSD, though retained a better way
>> to subset that let it retain much of the lower end that BSD had grown too
>> large for for many years.
>>
>>> > 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.
>>
>>
>> Honestly, most of the heavy BSD contributors do just that. There's drama
>> here and there, but it's mostly away from larger contributors...  And so it
>> goes...
>>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Yet, according to Sandvine, Netflix serves 35% of peak internet traffic, all
>> from FreeBSD. Go figure :)
>>
>>>
>>> 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.]
>>
>>
>> Warner

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 10:11:20PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
> 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.

Because I'm old and tired and not really interested in playing that 
game?

And because if BSD wants to succeed it's doing it wrong.  I'm not Mr
Big Shot but I do have a track record of being somewhat clueful.  If
I'm not good enough for BSD how will unknown people fare?

But I think we're pretty far into the weeds, don't want to give
Warren more gray hairs so perhaps this is better if it is taken
off list.

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
  ...
 |Here's a personal example of the differences.  When I was looking at
 |working with Netflix I emailed McKuisik to ask him about some UFS stuff.
 |And this was me, I know Kirk, I've been to his house, had wine with him
 |and Eric.  No reply.  Ok, I'm old and washed up, I get it.

Even though i have read your message as a maybe even ironic
sharpening, i feel i have to step in and find this hard to
believe.  Maybe there have been technical reasons.  To me micro
micro always an overwhelming experience to receive answers or
mails in general from people of this league, with such names, etc.
This is truly academical spirit.  And you can even make errors, as
long as you can explain why you thought what turned out to be an
error was the way to go.  McKusick?  No...

 |I emailed Linus about the Spectre/Meltdown stuff, asking him if I should
 |release some before/after LMbench results.  Got a reply in about 20
 |minutes where he outlined where things where, where they were going,
 |talked about his stuff getting to the intel CEO, etc, etc.  Linus and
 |I could be enemies because of Git/BK but Linus doesn't care about that,
 |he responded because I had a valid question.  
 |
 |I've tried to have the same conversation with BSD people and I was 
 |ignored.  +1 Linux.

Well, Matthew Dillon of DragonFly BSD had an initial Meltdown
mitigation in no later but January 5th (and finished on 01-11),
and also posted long explanatory and benchmarking etc. mails.
Later Maxime Villard of NetBSD also posted, a bit cryptic.  Also
on one of the BSD lists, i forgot which, there i saw the link to
the ARM document which was the very best read on this topic in all
that terrible mess of noise surrounding these issues.
So no real need for conversation if the work is done.

 |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

I would agree, but i guess it depends on the people whether that
is true or not. ^.^

 |work that Netflix and other BSD people have done is really cool.

I disagree for the non-software related part.  I am damn happy
that we in Germany have TV under public law.  Where programs of
quality can be made, programs which will never make any money, and
maybe even do not get a price.  Non-trivial programs.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 04:07:06PM +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>   ...
>  |Here's a personal example of the differences.  When I was looking at
>  |working with Netflix I emailed McKuisik to ask him about some UFS stuff.
>  |And this was me, I know Kirk, I've been to his house, had wine with him
>  |and Eric.  No reply.  Ok, I'm old and washed up, I get it.
> 
> Even though i have read your message as a maybe even ironic
> sharpening, i feel i have to step in and find this hard to
> believe.  Maybe there have been technical reasons.  

I didn't really mean to shine a light on Kirk, I like Kirk, I'm one of
the few people besides Kirk to work on UFS.

That said, I stand by what I said, it's what happened.  And it seems to
be reflective of the BSD "culture", it appears to be the opposite of
inclusive.  Disappointing.

Linux has a very different culture.  Everyone is welcome and they
maintain sanity largely via Linus willing to call a spade a spade.
He doesn't suffer fools but he's willing to engage with anyone until
they prove themselves to be a fool and nothing more.

[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 8:29 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 04:07:06PM +0100, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> > Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >   ...
> >  |Here's a personal example of the differences.  When I was looking at
> >  |working with Netflix I emailed McKuisik to ask him about some UFS
> stuff.
> >  |And this was me, I know Kirk, I've been to his house, had wine with him
> >  |and Eric.  No reply.  Ok, I'm old and washed up, I get it.
> >
> > Even though i have read your message as a maybe even ironic
> > sharpening, i feel i have to step in and find this hard to
> > believe.  Maybe there have been technical reasons.
>
> I didn't really mean to shine a light on Kirk, I like Kirk, I'm one of
> the few people besides Kirk to work on UFS.
>

There's about a dozen. They talk. Even Kirk. But you can't expect people
whose time is their own to reply to you on a short timeline. It's not a
reasonable expectation.

That said, I stand by what I said, it's what happened.  And it seems to
> be reflective of the BSD "culture", it appears to be the opposite of
> inclusive.  Disappointing.
>

I've had a completely different experience. But when people don't answer, I
ask again. I just just go off and sulk that they were mean to me.


> Linux has a very different culture.  Everyone is welcome and they
> maintain sanity largely via Linus willing to call a spade a spade.
> He doesn't suffer fools but he's willing to engage with anyone until
> they prove themselves to be a fool and nothing more.
>

Sure, if you love a toxic culture that's hard to break through the machismo
when the anointed ones are wrong....

Needless to say, I have a completely different perspective and
two-decades-long experience with BSD and its collaboration.

Warner
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[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[Theodore Ts'o]

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On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 01:39:25AM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> Linux has been described as influenced by Minix and System V.  The Minix
> connection is well discussed.  The SysV connection something something
> Linus had access to a spec manual.

For many of us it was POSIX.1 1990.  I implemented Job Control from
the POSIX.1 spec, and then recompiled bash, and it worked the first
time out of the box.  The Berkeley man pages are not bad, but the
POSIX spec was much more of a formal POSIX spec.

> But I’d guess reality would be more gradual — new contributors that
> liked CSRG BSD would have mostly gravitated to the continuations in
> 386/BSDi/Net/Free that were concurrent to early and formative Linux
> development.. so there’d be an implicit vacuum of BSD people for
> Linux development.

I'll note that my first experiencing hacking kernels was the BSD
4.3+Reno; but it was mostly what I perceived as the toxicity of a
certain core team member (way worse than the caricature of Linus as
portrayed by the press) that caused me to decide to stick with Linux
than with *BSD.

> The kinds of BSD things I am talking about are ufs, kqueue, jails, pf,
> Capsicum.  Linux has grown alternatives, but with sometimes willful
> ignorance of other technology. It seems clear epoll was not a good design
> from the start.

In some cases, the ideas were carefully considered, and they were
rejected.  For example, Soft Updates was one that we looked and we
decided that it was too complicated, and would restrict who could add
new features to the file system afterwards.  This LWN article, "Soft
Updates, Hard Problems"[1] was written much later, but it's a good
summary of our reasons.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/339337/

In other cases, it was a case of parallel evolution.  Work done on
epoll, was at least partially funded by IBM as part of the Linux
Scalability Effort, and the basic design had been fixed in advance.  I
wasn't working on that myself, but I vaguely recall that there were
potential Microsoft patent concerns that constrained the epoll design.

> Despite jails not being taken to the logical conclusion of
> modern containers like zones, the architecture is fundamentally closer
> aligned to how people want to securely use containers versus namespaces and
> cgroups.

The original goal of cgroups and namespace was not for
security/isolation.  Cgroups in particular was something Google had
implemented for to allow a large number of jobs on a single shared
system.  The jobs all belonged to different Google teams/product
groups, so mutually distrustful job owners weren't part of the design
requirements; efficiency to decrease compute TCO was the overarching
goal.

Using cgroups for containers is something that a startups like Docker
drove, and "time to market" and "keep the VC's happy" were far more
happy than to "delay product launch for years while we burn VC money
to reimplement BSD jails".

> This seems strange to me as BSD people are generally open to other /ideas/,
> we have to be careful with Linux code due to license incompatibility, but
> the converse is does not seem true either in interest in other ideas or
> license hampering code flow.

I'll note that I implemnted e2fsck using a lot of ideas about how to
speed up fsck for the BSD FFS from a paper published in the 1989
Usenix conference in Baltimore.  The core idea was to cache data and
cleverly reorder how various consistency checks were done by fsck so
that metadata blocks would not need read more than once in most cases.
These techniques sped up fsck by a factor of 2-3 I contacted the
author and was told those ideas were never picked up by BSD.  Oh well,
BSD's loss, Linux ext3's gain.  :-)

> The history of UNIX is spectacularly successful because different groups
> got together at the table and agreeed on the ideas.  Is there room for that
> in the modern era where Linux is the monopoly OS?  The Austin Group is
> still a thing but it’s not clear people in any of the Freenix communities
> really care about evolving the standards.  I get that, but not so much
> completely burrying ones head in the sand to what other OSes are doing.  Is
> there any future for UNIX as an “open system” in this climate or are people
> going to go there separate ways?

I don't think it's really about "wilful ignorance".  It's more about
economic considerations and what you can get your employer to pay for.
I can think of a lot of times were my design was driven by the amount
of headcount I could get authorized, and how much time I had before
code freeze for this year's Android release.

Some of these considerations don't apply if the work is done by
starving hobbiest, or by academics who can use cheap grad student
labor.  But I suspect here have also be cases where "minimal
publishable unit" has also driven the way certain work has landed
into, for example the Coda File System, which I was told "contained
the remanants of a dozen Ph.D. theses", and was the code was too ugly
and debt-ridden to be salvaged.  (Which is why Intermezzo was started;
alas, that never went anywhere.)

						- Ted