BSD Unification?

Copyright © 1998 Chris Coleman

There has been a lot of talk lately on the various advocacy lists concerning a "Merging" or a unification of the various BSDs. This appears to stem from views expressed by Linux enthusiasts that BSD has splintered and is failing because of it. I thought about this for a while, then I looked up "Linux" on www.yahoo.com today to see what I would find.. There were hosts of general sites related to all sorts of various Linux news and information. So I tried a similar search, this time looking for "BSD". Guess what I found. Four distinct sites: BSDI, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The only other sites were news groups and one on the history of the BSD T-shirt.

As near as I could tell, the closest thing BSD has to a "common" image is the BSD Daemon. I wasn't very impressed.

Linux has us beat in one extremely important area: they present a "united front" to the general public. Even though there are several distributions of Linux, the world at large sees them as a single entity. It has been noted that this is partly due to the fact that they have a single kernel, controlled by Linus, and the distributions are only the userland code.

Yet, where is BSD in all this? Where is our Unity and Cooperation? Each of our distinct groups has quite a bit of unity? hmm....
Divided as we are, I only saw two possible options to obtain the unity Linux has:

1. Strategically eliminate the other two Open Source BSDs.
2. Cooperate.

The Daemon News has been a landmark in cooperation between the three groups of Open Source BSD Operating systems. Everyone has pitched in to work towards a common goal. There has been very little bickering. Most people have gone out of their way to make sure their articles are correct on all three systems.

At the very beginning of this project, it was easy to tell which BSD a person was affiliated with. Now, as we work closer as a team, it is becoming very difficult to tell who is associated with a particular BSD.

However, this isn't enough. There were two things suggested in the mailing lists that don't require "commit" privileges or any special sanctioning by the various BSD groups:

A Cooperative Marketing Strategy, especially things that provide services to BSD as a whole, such as:

• The Daemon News Online Magazine.
• A user posted News site similar to slash-dot.

(I have seen them popping up for the individual sites, but not BSD in general yet)
• A web-ring of BSD sites that help people find resources.
• Create a BSD web site.
• Add a BSD link to your web site.
• Etc...

A BSD Team comparing and unifying source code between the various camps.

• Using 'diff -u' find changes in source code files of the same name.
• Adopt changes from best implementation.
• Submit changes for review to developers of *BSD.

Other suggestions were also made that might take more work and cooperation, but are good nonetheless:

• Unified Ports / Packaging System
• Common Installation Procedure
• Common Documentation Project.
• Full binary compatibility

Remember, this is cooperation between the BSD groups, the principles that the Daemon News was founded upon. I know it can work, it just takes people who will act. Or maybe I should rethink that elimination option... :-)

Chris Coleman chris@vmunix.com