The Future of BSD?

by Brett Taylor brett@daemonnews.org

In the past year there have certainly been a number of big developments that have had a big influence (if only in the public perception) on BSD. Apple has released Darwin as Open Source and it's based on code taken from FreeBSD and NetBSD. Their new operating system, OS X, has this same BSD layer inside. Certainly that's going to increase the BSD user base, even if most of its users don't know about it.

Of course one of the biggest events was the announcement of the merger of BSDI and Walnut Creek (read more about this in Greg Lehey's Daemon's Advocate). As Greg notes, there was a lot of grumbling concerning what this would mean for FreeBSD since Walnut Creek has been the primary financial backer for the project, but also how this would affect NetBSD and OpenBSD. At this point I think it's far too early to make any serious predictions about what effects this is going to generate in the BSD world.

What can we say then about the future? Is it bright and rosy? If you look at most any Slashdot item that mentions BSD you'll see strong opinions from some (note I said some) Linux users that BSD should just roll over as Linux has already won. I don't know what they've won, but that's a separate issue I guess. I don't think it's good to have any one platform completely dominate the market. Many of these same people are Microsoft bashers because they feel Microsoft is completely controlling the market and is evil, and yet they want Linux to completely control the computer world (maybe Linus is a benevolent dictator). Regardless, I think that when someone like Apple steps in and uses BSD code it says something about the quality of the BSD codebase. Yes, it certainly made life easier for them since they were coming from NeXT (which was BSD-based), but if the code was poor they would have certainly gone some other way.

I like to think of myself as an optimist. I think with the merger and Apple's use of BSD code, we'll see more native software ported for the BSDs (Apple, if you're listening I'd like a Quicktime player - I'd even pay for it). I look forward to seeing the coming merge of code between the BSD/OS and FreeBSD codebases, but I won't be personally tracking -current unless I get another play machine to do it on - I'll watch from afar for now. :-) I also am looking forward to playing around with Darwin and Mac OS X (when it comes out) on my new iBook which should be here shortly. So let's look to the future with an optimistic eye - worry about the problems when they show up!

Just a couple quick announcements:

You'll notice that we have a new Newbies' Corner columnist on board with this issue. Jonathon McKitrick is a new FreeBSD user and if you are on the -questions mail list you've certainly seen his name. Being a new user, Jonathon can hopefully provide some new user insight that us old timers have forgotten (``when I was a youngster we had to learn graphics programming on an Apple IIe using machine code''). Welcome on board Jonathon.

Finally, a warm welcome back to Nik Clayton with his series on managing websites using CVS and make. I've personally been waiting for the next article, as have many other readers who've written us, for too long. If anyone can lend Nik a hand with household chores to free up some more writing time for him that would be great.