path: root/en_US.ISO8859-1/captions/2007/nycbsdcon/dixon-bsdisdying.sbv

0:00:07.329,0:00:13.679
You're here, Bob, of course. Bob is hot. Bob is very hot.

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Welcome to BSD is Dying.

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No, it's not dead yet,

0:00:15.779,0:00:16.529
we're getting there.

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Anybody out here last year?

0:00:18.949,0:00:24.939
Okay. I gave a really bad talk on pf, and I
appreciate Bob coming out and correcting me this year.

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Anyways, we should go and get started.

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BSD is Dying.

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What is BSD?

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I think most of us know, BSD is a derivative of UNIX.

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Okay, what is UNIX?

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UNIX is an

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operating system.

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What is an operating system?

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It runs computers.

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But, what is a computer?

0:00:56.610,0:01:03.610
It helps users accomplish tasks. What is a user?
A user is somebody biped 

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that stands up right sort of like me.

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Who am I? My name is Jason Dixon.

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First and foremost, a SysAdmin. I like to work on networks,

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firewalls. I like to tweak.

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No. Yes. 

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I'm a programmer, sort of. I enjoy

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Perl, Postgres,

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on Apache

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servers. I'm a consultant here. I'm an employee

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here, and a lover of

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BSD.

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Why am I here?

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That’s the question I've been asking myself all along.

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To talk about why BSD is dying. 

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Sex and greed. 

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Someone kick these guys out.

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Okay. So again, what is BSD? What is UNIX?
What is an operating system? What is a computer?

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Computer is a device that computes, especially a
programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed
mathematical or logical operations or that assembles,
stores, correlates, or

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otherwise processes

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information.

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This is a computer. This is also known as a

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computer. This is a really big computer.

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This is a big big computer, and sometimes,
it just can, well, compute

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But what does a computer really do?

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All right, it helps us write documents, 

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shopping lists. Sometimes, it can even delete documents.
It helps us work with email,

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surf the Web, movies,

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and listen to music.

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Oh, and yes, games.

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How? How does the computer let us do these

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things? Well, it takes the work

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and using the computer component, we can translate it
into machine language

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that is the foundation

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for kernel, libraries, userland applications,
otherwise known as an operating system. 

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like BSD.

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What is a kernel?

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It's a wonderful thing, it allows 

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The management of processes memory, peripheral devices,
and by extension, allows us to do networking, security, 

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work with disks and file systems, user interfaces,
userland applications, like

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people can write documents, check email, surf the Web,
watch movies, listen to music, and play games.

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and much, much more. 

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So, in summary, BSD

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is a UNIX-derived operating system 

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enables users to harness the power of a computer to process
information. It uses the kernel to manage processes memory,
and peripheral devices. And by extension, we can perform

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networking, enforce security, read from and write to storage
devices, and interface visually to applications like text
editors, mail clients, Web browsers, multimedia players, and

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games.

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In the beginning, I'm going to try and breeze through this,
people

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The Holy

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Trinity – MIT, Bell Labs, and GE created
a systems called Multics.

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This is a nice flash from the past.

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Life was good.

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No. No.

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Actually, it

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wasn’t. The Multics was a commercial

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failure. So, a couple of gentlemen like Ken Thompson and
Dennis Ritchie were not

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[xx] support, liked to play games. They worked at Bell Labs
and they had this game called

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Space Travel, which performed really

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really badly. So, what's…actually, I'm sorry

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it ran on a PDP-7.

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What is an assembly programmer to do when a game 
doesn’t work properly on the star board? He mauls

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it. So, in 1969, Ken Thompson

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and

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Sorry, came out with the Uniplexed Information 

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and Computing System. It was capable of supporting

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a number of users

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up to two.

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And by

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1970, UNIX was officially known as U-N-I-X Unix

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It ran on a PDP1145

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and was capable of text processing

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and had utilities like roff and a text editor.

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for the purpose of

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patents. By

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1973, they rewrote UNIX and a programming language called

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C which allowed AT&T to make the source code available
to let other

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people run it on their systems.

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By 1974, a gentleman by the name of Bob Fabry,
who was at the University

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of Cal Berkeley in their Computer Science Department 

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bought a copy of UNIX for $99.

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to run their PDP-11.

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By 1977, a gentleman named Bill Joy, a graduate

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student, distributed the Berkeley Software

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Distribution as 

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1BSD. It was on a tape media that contained the PASCAL

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compiler, the ex editor, and

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by 1978, it was known as 2BSD with

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vi, csh, and the list

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goes on. 

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By 4BSD, we had job control, delivermail, 

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precursor to sendmail, curses, libraries. 1981,

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4.1BSD, this one, we are recorded through VAX

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addressed a number of memory performance issues with UNIX on VAX 

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1983, 4.2BSD uses TCP/IP from BBN, 

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and also the Berkeley Fast File System from the

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gentleman, Kirk McKusick,

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who also brought us the original Beastie today.

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In 1986, 4.3BSD introduced performance improvements
over 4.2BSD

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By 1988, we had a list called 4.3BSD-Tahoe

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originally intended to run on the Power 6/32
“Tahoe” platform.

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That platform actually never came to fruition 

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but it did allow us to abstract some of the
machine-independent

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code which allowed it to become portable much later on.

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By 1989, there was

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Net/1, which separated the networking code

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from the AT&T UNIX code

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allowing for a permissive BSD license

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By 1990, 4.3BSD-Reno 

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introduced the MACH virtual files, MACH virtual

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memory system, Sun-compatible NFS

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However, it was known as a real 

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gamble, hence the Reno moniker.

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By 1991, we had

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Net/2 where all AT&T code and utilities were
replaced or removed

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and ran on the Intel 386

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and it became the basis for the 386BSD

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and BSD/386 releases.

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A gentleman by the name of Bill Jolitz

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behind 386

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BSD release, which eventually became the foundation for 

0:07:58.169,0:07:59.849
FreeBSD and NetBSD.

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And the

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BSD3, I'm sorry, the 386BSD, which later on became
BSD/OS by BSDI

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Exodus. Back in 1992, a wholly owned subsidiary of 

0:08:14.599,0:08:18.699
AT&T called Unix System Laboratories

0:08:18.699,0:08:20.389
decided to go after 

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BSDI for 

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I'm sorry,

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in New

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Jersey, as for an injunction against him due to various
what they consider proprietary 

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code in the

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BSD.

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This was one of their advertising things again, they used
this as the basis for the 

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lawsuit. I have 

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no idea what that’s for.

0:08:44.640,0:08:47.660


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Net/2 was basically, I'm sorry

0:08:52.440,0:08:55.809
the three BSDIs version of BSD OS is basically Net/2

0:08:55.809,0:08:58.239
+ 6 files that they had version from

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Bill Jolitz’s 386

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BSD. The lawsuit was, I'm sorry, the court settlement was

0:09:05.030,0:09:09.020
ruled over by a judge who denied the injunction 

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and asked them to narrow their

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complaint to recent California copyrights 
and the possibility of the loss of

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trade secrets. He also did a really great thing 
for BSD is that he hinted,

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that…actually by this

0:09:21.829,0:09:25.770
point, the University of California Berkeley had been
also added into the

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lawsuit. Well, he gave a hint to bring the case to the state

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court. So, 

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BSD laywers were pretty smart over at Cal and they decided
to make a run over to the state court by the next

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Monday to file a countersuit

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against USL,

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in the state of California.

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Soon after USL went up for 

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sale, and it was bought by Novell

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A gentleman, Ray Noorda, the CEO 

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at Novell, agreed to a settlement at this point because
they understood that there was

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no copyright infringement in the 

0:10:01.060,0:10:03.510
code. So, basically, 

0:10:03.510,0:10:05.850
the lawsuit was settled out of court 

0:10:05.850,0:10:07.150
in secret for ten years.

0:10:07.150,0:10:08.870
In 2004, a site Groklaw primarily got

0:10:11.490,0:10:14.990
what the actual settlement

0:10:14.990,0:10:16.120
was released.

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And, well 

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USL, AT&T and

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Novell sort of

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was embarrassed,

0:10:22.190,0:10:27.060
which ended up resulting in two distinct releases

0:10:27.060,0:10:32.990
4.4BSD, there is an encumbered version and had USL license

0:10:32.990,0:10:37.490
and AT&T code, and 4.4BSD-Lite, which was completely
unencumbered

0:10:37.490,0:10:39.460
and became the

0:10:39.460,0:10:40.600
foundation for

0:10:40.600,0:10:43.470
 FreeBSD.

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NetBSD, I'm sorry, FreeBSD, it ends right there

0:10:49.150,0:10:55.670
FreeBSD, people with background, only different BSDs
that came out of 386BSD

0:10:55.670,0:11:00.900
It runs on Intel x86, Itanium, AMD64, Alpha, Sun Ultra

0:11:00.900,0:11:05.149
SPARC and it gives us the neat features of jail, which
most of us are familiar with,

0:11:05.149,0:11:07.420
mandatory access control as MACH

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and historically, had a very strong TCP/

0:11:10.830,0:11:11.750
IP and SMP performance.

0:11:11.750,0:11:16.150
The original NetBSD, which also came from 386BSD

0:11:18.680,0:11:22.200
Over 50 hardware platforms from a single 
source tree

0:11:22.200,0:11:25.520
and that’s pretty much what it's known for. To be honest

0:11:25.520,0:11:31.790
I mean, I got to admit I'm an Open BSD guy, I was looking for
a really cool and innovative features for NetBSD and I really

0:11:31.790,0:11:32.329
couldn’t find any. 

0:11:32.329,0:11:34.940
so let them hang their head on this.

0:11:34.940,0:11:37.160
Sorry,

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I know people are going to…

0:11:39.650,0:11:46.650
I know the NetBSDers is going to jump me…I can 
handle two of you. Okay? And this is

0:11:48.680,0:11:51.490
a list of the  hardware platforms that currently supported on

0:11:51.490,0:11:53.820
including a toaster.


0:11:53.820,0:11:55.000


0:11:55.000,0:11:56.410
OpenBSD, 

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this is one of the old logos, this is the new

0:11:59.179,0:12:03.510
logo. It was forked from NetBSD 1.0, we won't go 
into the history, I know 

0:12:03.510,0:12:08.929
most people know it, and it's supported by about
16 official platforms

0:12:08.929,0:12:12.530
platforms. This is about half of the most popular ones. 

0:12:12.530,0:12:17.570
And it comes out with a new release every six months,
generally, in May and November

0:12:17.570,0:12:20.810
1st, so if you haven’t already, pick a copy, that just came 

0:12:20.810,0:12:24.880
out of the foil. It's unofficial model is secure by default

0:12:24.880,0:12:31.880
only what's needed is running on the default

0:12:32.750,0:12:35.690
And, some of their goals

0:12:35.690,0:12:38.300
and features - full disclosure, audits,

0:12:38.300,0:12:43.950
privsep, privilege separation & revocation, chroot jails,
like FreeBSD,

0:12:43.950,0:12:48.910
random values wherever possible. This is probably

0:12:48.910,0:12:52.180
the most obvious example. ProPolice

0:12:52.180,0:12:58.070
Some other features that they’d given us through 
the years – PF, authpf, CARP, pfsyncd,

0:12:58.070,0:13:01.380
which I think some of these are probably in the

0:13:01.380,0:13:08.380
FreeBSD by now. DragonFlyBSD was a continuation of
FreeBSD 4.8. Again,

0:13:08.760,0:13:11.160
DragonFlyBSD was 

0:13:11.160,0:13:15.640
forked with FreeBSD 4.8 and was intended to basically

0:13:15.640,0:13:21.580
overhaul the SMP features in FreeBSD 6
and 7..5,6, and 7.

0:13:21.580,0:13:25.690
DragonFly is another example. If you look at their goals,
it had some really neat technological stuff.

0:13:25.690,0:13:28.500
I can't find any features that really, you

0:13:28.500,0:13:31.830
know, mean anything. 

0:13:31.830,0:13:33.130
Of course,

0:13:33.130,0:13:36.890
Tiger is an old I'm sorry, OSX

0:13:36.890,0:13:43.890
It started from the Jolitz project, but it's sort of an inbred

0:13:48.870,0:13:53.800
and then various others spearBSD, ecoBSD

0:13:53.800,0:13:58.350
and other minor BSDs

0:13:58.350,0:14:04.130
That is all about, I wanted to cover kind of the present of
where we are right now, some of the myths and truths.

0:14:04.130,0:14:08.260
Why is BSD dying? Really, that’s what the title 

0:14:08.260,0:14:11.750
of the project and topic is.

0:14:11.750,0:14:16.270
Well, first, because IDC said so.

0:14:16.270,0:14:21.480
Market share for BSD is, right now, at an all time low, under 1%

0:14:21.480,0:14:28.480
And, of course, Netcraft confirms these findings. 
Last place in the SysAdmin networking test, so we all 

0:14:29.660,0:14:30.930
know that word, we're just big losers.

0:14:30.930,0:14:37.610
Because open-source projects are giving away free software.
I mean, we can't possibly make

0:14:37.610,0:14:39.310
money, so that, obviously, means that

0:14:39.310,0:14:46.310
we're dying.  And free software is terrible

0:14:46.390,0:14:53.390
We know the insane let me get out.
Free software equals terrism.

0:14:55.120,0:14:57.910


0:14:57.910,0:15:04.910
Our inability to adapt. As you can see by this graph 

0:15:09.630,0:15:15.980
Let's be serious here, people.
As per FreeBSD network pages per hour search

0:15:15.980,0:15:20.520
We see Windows, obviously I mean, they are way ahead people.
Come on, they’ve been doing this for a number of what? 15,

0:15:20.520,0:15:22.180
20 years. Linux is second. 

0:15:22.180,0:15:24.349
They actually are showing some.

0:15:24.349,0:15:29.259
We presume that someone is doing authentication
by reading user pages  

0:15:29.259,0:15:35.450
The BSD is only for register, so we've got to work
on that, of course

0:15:35.450,0:15:37.030
Loss of talent.

0:15:37.030,0:15:41.410
FreeBSD has lost 93% of their core developers.

0:15:41.410,0:15:45.300
Okay, come on, guys, let's go.

0:15:45.300,0:15:48.030
But not all is lost. 

0:15:48.030,0:15:53.600
Fortunately, a few very small companies still
use BSD in this age.

0:15:53.600,0:15:56.450


0:15:56.450,0:16:02.590
I know you probably have heard most of these. 

0:16:02.590,0:16:05.780
Believe it or not, this is our premier

0:16:05.780,0:16:12.780
sponsor, and some other company that didn’t sponsor us

0:16:16.070,0:16:17.560

0:16:17.560,0:16:20.070
I should just end right there.

0:16:20.070,0:16:21.870
because we're the nearest to them

0:16:21.870,0:16:28.130
Seriously, though, the technological challenge that we
have ahead of us. Virtualization, that’s a big deal

0:16:28.130,0:16:29.529
as far as the market.

0:16:29.529,0:16:33.230
Of course, developers are in the market, so,
if that happens, that

0:16:33.230,0:16:35.370
happens.  Although the end is really, really cool.

0:16:35.370,0:16:40.150
DRM, is obviously evil, yes, I know, I don’t care about

0:16:40.150,0:16:41.690
DRM. Run Dell.

0:16:41.690,0:16:43.980
Right? 

0:16:43.980,0:16:45.310
Political challenges

0:16:45.310,0:16:48.710
Now, this has been hard to entertain,
but I can't read this out in front of 

0:16:48.710,0:16:50.530
people. Blobs, 

0:16:50.530,0:16:52.140
binary is bad,

0:16:52.140,0:16:53.140
don’t do it

0:16:53.140,0:16:56.180
just smoke in the same crap

0:16:56.180,0:16:57.540
when it says

0:16:57.540,0:16:59.590
NDAs

0:16:59.590,0:17:01.900
and closed documentation.

0:17:01.900,0:17:06.460
How many of us here are actual core developers for
one of the BSDs?

0:17:06.460,0:17:08.159
Okay, the rest of us, let's help them

0:17:08.159,0:17:09.420
out

0:17:09.420,0:17:10.120
okay

0:17:10.120,0:17:12.000
get in touch with your supplier, 

0:17:12.000,0:17:16.740
let's get some documentation to these guys.

0:17:16.740,0:17:18.159
Because without the 

0:17:18.159,0:17:20.100
diversity, we have

0:17:20.100,0:17:22.220
unity

0:17:22.220,0:17:24.630
and a common goal.

0:17:27.420,0:17:30.090
Thank you.