[TUHS] Dynamics between BSD and Linux

[ggm@algebras.org (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