From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 14065 invoked from network); 3 Jun 2022 23:48:32 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 3 Jun 2022 23:48:32 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94C38421F5; Sat, 4 Jun 2022 09:48:27 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A51FB421F3 for ; Sat, 4 Jun 2022 09:48:22 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 2E8C735E1C0; Fri, 3 Jun 2022 16:48:22 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2022 16:48:22 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Warner Losh Message-ID: <20220603234822.GV10240@mcvoy.com> References: <20220603202330.f4spdxyn34uiyy5v@illithid> <20220603213215.GO10240@mcvoy.com> <20220603214032.GQ10240@mcvoy.com> <20220603223014.GS10240@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: V6J24IONJ7MZZG4Q4DXSVOAFNB5QG3ZT X-Message-ID-Hash: V6J24IONJ7MZZG4Q4DXSVOAFNB5QG3ZT X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Fwd: [simh] Announcing the Open SIMH project List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Fri, Jun 03, 2022 at 04:52:52PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: > > The problem is there was {386,Net,Free,Open,DragonFly}BSD where there > > should have just been "BSD". One, not a bunch. > > > > Except from 1993-1996 there were only two of those BSDs. NetBSD and FreeBSD > forked in 1993 due to the inability of the patchkit to adequately cover the > problems > in 386BSD governance. Um, so there were 3: 386, Net and Free. That's already 2 too many. > > Where do you think Linux would be if there was {A,B,C,D,E,F,G}Linux? > > There is one kernel. One and only one. With everyone working on that > > one kernel. > > Except there never really was only one kernel. There have been hundreds > of forks of the Linux kernel over the years. Most of them have been > commercial > of some flavor (Redhat, Debian, OpenSUSE, MontaVista, WindRiver, Android > etc) > had hundreds or thousands of patches on the base Linux kernel for a long > time > and trying to move from one to another if you also had patches was a > nightmare. So I had a successful commercial product that ran on all of those variants without issue. I supported linux on everything from ARM to IBM's z-system mainframes and all the arches inbetween. I think I have one #ifdef SPARC in there because there was a cache flush bug but that was a hardware issue, not a software issue. I also supported {Free,Net,Open}BSD and I had way more problems with them than I did with Linux. > Kernel.org has kept going, and many of the chanages from these systems were > lost. > Some were not as good as what came in upstream, while others were encumbered > by commercial contracts that made them unappealing to upstream. True, many > of > them did wind up in kernel.org, but to say there aren't forks in Linux is > stretching > reality a bit... There is one kernel development stream that matters. RedHat knows that if they don't get their stuff into Linus' tree, they have a nightmare on their hands. That's why RedHat paid so many of the kernel developers. Sure, there are forks, but there is one tree that matters, and that is Linus' tree. You can't say that about BSD and that is the problem in it's entirety. If I want to change BSD, which one? > Even today, with the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to pin which of these > facts on the ground was the biggest driver for most people... For me, I gave up when there was no longer one BSD, there was one Linux. --lm