
What I think what we need to do to keep FreeBSD relevant (2019) - rodrigo975
https://www.leidinger.net/blog/2019/01/27/strategic-thinking-or-what-i-think-what-we-need-to-do-to-keep-freebsd-relevant/
======
alexhutcheson
Quick summary:

\- Port several container and virtualization systems (OpenStack, OpenNebula,
oVirt, CloudStack, Kubernetes, Docker, Podman, …) to FreeBSD.

\- Improve linuxolator, and run Linux tests on linuxolator as part of FreeBSD
CI.

\- Make kerberos work.

\- Port more SDN software to FreeBSD and improve the documentation for it.

\- Add interfaces to hardware sensors (fans, voltage, temperature, etc.)

\- Add an implementation of Multipath TCP.

\- Make SecureBoot work.

\- Support writing kernel modules in C++ or Rust.

\- Improve end-user HOWTO docs on how to use specific 3rd party software (mail
server, web server, display server, etc.) with FreeBSD.

\- Review existing docs and remove outdated information.

\- Add a "cloud" section to end-user docs.

\- Use doxygen or a similar system to generate additional developer docs from
source code.

\- Polish and improve DTrace.

\- Make default options for ports packages consistent.

\- Create "meta-ports" for specific use-cases (webserver, database, etc.)

\- Revise default settings to target improved performance on modern machines.

\- Add fuzzers and Clang sanitizers to FreeBSD CI.

\- Make the CI system more visible.

[I'm not the author, just a guy reading the post. Add a comment if I missed
anything important]

~~~
uncle_j
> Improve linuxolator, and run Linux tests on linuxolator as part of FreeBSD
> CI.

This is the worst thing they could actually do because people will just run
the Linux versions and there would be even less demand for anyone to bother
with a FreeBSD version.

~~~
stingraycharles
Not necessarily. It can also actually increase adoption because it fixes
friction: there might always be a few tools or docker containers or whatnot
which are not ported to BSD, and this provides an answer to that.

Microsoft has the “embrace, extend, extinguish” mantra for a similar reason.

~~~
uncle_j
> Not necessarily. It can also actually increase adoption because it fixes
> friction: there might always be a few tools or docker containers or whatnot
> which are not ported to BSD, and this provides an answer to that.

It tells developers that users will put up with the compatibility layer. Also
setting up these compatibility layers has its own set of complications e.g.
random things not working, sub-optimal performance etc.

The only people that have pulled it off has been Microsoft with WSL and there
has been problems with that. I for a laugh setup basically a Xubuntu desktop
and I had lots of odd errors being reported in the console.

------
pnako
It seems to me like a list of things the Linux community is working on; and I
think that's a bit of the problem with FreeBSD. For a long time, it was known
as the "high-reliability / high-performance server OS". But Linux has mostly
taken that crown now, for quite a few years. Where does that leave FreeBSD? I
wouldn't be able to define FreeBSD's identity at the moment; but granted I'm
more a OpenBSD user.

It's easier to define OpenBSD, beyond the obvious stuff (security). It's a
system that does not really want to deviate too much from old-school Unix, and
a community that firmly rejects any fad or fashion and embraces simple, and
indeed sometimes simplistic solutions. That doesn't make it the best system
for everything, but at least we know where it stands: the best old-school Unix
OS. It's almost as if it lives in a parallel universe where time has stopped
in 1990, and the OpenBSD developers are asymptotically converging to the
perfect Unix system of that era. I'm not saying that as a criticism at all.

And NetBSD and Dragonfly BSD are also, more or less explicitly, research
operating systems where individual developers can come and try stuff.

FreeBSD is still a very impressive project but I think they can do better than
being just-like-Linux-but-five-years-later.

~~~
JdeBP
1988\. OpenBSD does not have the waitid() library function.

~~~
tedunangst
I think this is the first time I've heard of waitid.

------
ksec
As long as FreeBSD has sustainable interest among cooperate usage it should be
fine, but I am not sure if the number of FreeBSD client / cooperate user are
growing or shrinking.

WhatsApp moved away from FreeBSD to Linux. And last time there were a few
Netflix employees mentioned FreeBSD were used on Open Appliance for historical
reason, not technical. So I would not be surprised if someday they move to
linux as well. ( Once it offer similar performance )

Mellanox loves FreeBSD, but I am not sure if the same could be said for their
new owner Nvidia.

OpenBSD and NetBSD are both an easy sell, one focus on Security and the other
on Embedded. I am not sure how to sell FreeBSD, and it needs focus and
direction. May be aiming for Network Appliance which is what the majority of
its cooperate customer are using it for, where it could offer greater value.

~~~
drewg123
Netflix employee here: FreeBSD generally scales well for our workload, and
where it doesn't, we can improve it and upstream the fixes without a lot of
friction.

Right now, we're serving 200Gb/s of kTLS encrypted video on a single box (see
talk at [https://youtu.be/8NSzkYSX5nY](https://youtu.be/8NSzkYSX5nY)), and
looking at 400Gb/s. I have not heard of others doing this on Linux, and its
sexy enough that I assume anybody doing this on Linux would make a splash
about it.

In fact, as far as I know, some other big CDN providers that use Linux are
just now moving to 100GbE, where as we've been serving at 100Gb/s in
production for almost 4 years now on FreeBSD.

~~~
pdimitar
Would you recommend a few specific server parts that help you achieve those
numbers (in addition to FreeBSD). I am curious about constructing a 100GbE
network in my neighbourhood.

~~~
drewg123
We use Mellanox ConnectX-4 NICs (cx5 and cx6 would be fine too), as well as
Chelsio T6 in mostly Supermicro boards, making sure to have a full Gen3 x16
(or Gen4 x8).

The Mellanox (and Chelsio) NICs are helpful for us because they support RSS
assisted TCP LRO. If you're doing just plain packet forwarding, that would not
matter.

~~~
gonzo
Well, the RSS does, but LRO does not.

~~~
drewg123
RSS assisted LRO is a FreeBSD feature where LRO holds batches of hundreds or
thousands of packets, then sorts packets by arrival time and LRO hash result.
That puts packets from the same connection adjacent to each other, and lets
LRO combine them. Delivering packets in batches of hundreds requires some work
from the driver (and requires the driver use a new LRO API).

At least on our (Netflix) workload with tens of thousands of active
connections, RSS assisted LRO increases our aggregation rate from almost
nothing to about 2:1, and saves about 10% CPU.

Its been on my TODO list to add RSS-assisted LRO support to iflib, which would
give the intel and broadcom 100g drivers access to it, along with assorted
Intel and other 1g, 10g, and 40g devices. But it still hasn't happened yet.

~~~
cthalupa
I think he was saying that RSS would still matter for plain packet forwarding.

------
insulanian
> Another item we should have a look at is to provide means to write kernel
> code in different languages. Not in the base system, but at least in ports.
> If someone wants to write a kernel module in C++ or Rust, why not?

Having the development of OS modules in a safe language like Rust as one of
the strategic goals, would likely attract some eyeballs and dev hands. Long
term it would result in a more stable and safe system and possibly lead to
increase in the market share.

------
GordonS
I'm a veteran of Windows and Linux, but I've never used a *BSD (unless you
tenuously count MacOS).

Why or when would I want to use BSD over Linux? Is it more performant? Does it
use less resources? What real differences are there?

I've tried to find out myself, but it mostly seems to come down to
philosophical reasoning and personal preference.

~~~
petre
It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple,
it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is
performant, PF is a well designed firewall, the base system is very well
integrated, the ports tree is very extensive, only Debian offers more packages
I think. PostgresSQL also used to run a bit better on FreeBSD. Nowadays thanks
to pkg installing and upgrading packages is easy. I have 11.3R instalations
that were incrementaly upgraded from 8.0R. It fells like the OS is designed by
greybeards that don't care too much about the latest and greatest hype, hence
this article.

~~~
GordonS
> It just works, you don't have to deal with systemd, things are kept simple,
> it's rock solid, works quite well under load, the networking layer is
> performant, PF is a well designed firewall

I don't mean to offend, but TBH there isn't anything terribly compelling
there. I don't care either way for SysV/systemD, but distros still using SysV
exist if it matters to you. CentOS et al are rock solid and work well under
load, and have performant networking layers. FirewallD and UFW are also good
firewall systems.

~~~
JdeBP
> _distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you_

As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all. The BSDs _never used_ the
AT&T System 5 mechanism, nor its van Smoorenburg clone. It's _you_ the Linux
user that it matters to, and even then not nearly as much as you are implying
it might matter to someone else. It pretty much hasn't mattered greatly to
anyone _apart from Linux, and before it Minix, users_ for 30 years.

There is a fallacy in discussions of systemd, which was called out by the
Uselessd Guy years ago. It is the fallacy that only systemd and van
Smoorenburg init/rc exist. This is not the case. It wasn't the case for Ubuntu
and Fedora. It is _especially_ not so when a BSD is the topic. The BSDs have a
quite different family heritage in this area.

But then, AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who
bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think. The init/rc that
Miquel van Smoorenburg cloned had actually already been superseded years
before Linux was even invented. It wasn't used in the BSD side of the universe
at all. But it was only a major mechanism in the AT&T side of the universe for
just over half a decade, in the 1980s.

The BSD side of the universe could turn around and observe that they were
right all along; were it not for the fact that the other side of the universe
largely thought better of the mechanism _as well_ , coming up with the SAF in
1988 and the likes of the SRC in 1991. (-: Of course, the BSD world wasn't
just standing still all of those years, moreover, and had things like
/etc/rc.local.d/ and Mewburn rc.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.d...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190306213420/http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/rc.local-is-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/inittab-getty-is-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/run-levels-are-history.html)

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/unix-service-access-facility.html)

* [https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/](https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/)

~~~
GordonS
I have to say, I'm very confused by this, and I'm not really sure what you're
trying to say.

> As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all

I can only assume "xem" is some kind of "BSD thing"?

> It's you the Linux user that it matters to... AT&T Unix itself actually has
> a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous
> "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think...

I did actually say I didn't care much either way, in part because I really
didn't want to derail this thread into a sysv/systemd flamewar - I only wanted
to know why I might use BSD over Linux.

------
ncmncm
FreeBSD could get a boost by switching to building with a C++ compiler,
beginning to modernize their ancient codebase (red-black trees, really?), and
inviting people with modern ideas to implement them.

The exokernel people know how to write good kernel-grade C++. Much of the code
just needs to go; kernels can't keep up with the I/O needs of user-space
programs, and need to learn to get out of the way. Linux has its io_uring
thing which is vastly overcomplicated. FreeBSD could lead the way with
universal kernel bypass, with only authentication, resource allocation, and
permissions handled in ring zero.

Much more likely, though, is that somebody new will need to start from
scratch.

~~~
wjakob
What's wrong with red-black trees? :) Since you mention C++: you do realize
that std::map will typically be implemented with one?

~~~
wolf550e
You want more fanout to use the entire cache line or even the entire virtual
memory page. RB trees assume access to any address in memory has equal cost,
which is extremely incorrect.

~~~
wahern
The red-black tree implementation typically used in *BSD development,
<sys/tree.h>, is an intrusive data structure; tree nodes are embedded within
the object you must dereference for key comparison. There's no need to
optimize fanout because you've entirely removed that extra indirection.

As a general purpose data structure implementation for systems development,
<sys/tree.h> is quite nice. However, for any particular task you can always
optimize the data structure, or choose an entirely different data structure,
to better fit the problem. Which is perhaps why the Linux kernel has so many
different tree and hash implementations.

------
ggm
Yes. That list is pretty good. LXC or Docker Integrated with jail and bhyve
would be awesome. Even just finishing BBR would be awesome.

ZFS is totally awesome. Iscsi can't yet do dual path and dual controller magic
well I believe which is a bit of a shame.

~~~
justincormack
Various people have said they want to work on Docker for FreeBSD over the
years but nothing has come of it. There was a port years ago but it was just
before a major change (containerd split) so it didnt get merged. It is not an
enormous amount of work, but it is non trivial.

~~~
jtotheh
I've been running Docker containers in freebsd using a bhyve debian VM. seems
to work pretty well. That's the same way you can run docker in windows and
mac.

------
pdimitar
God damn, I wish I read more articles like that one. That guy is objective and
not a fanboy even with him working on FreeBSD.

We need more such critical thinking and insight. Kudos to him.

~~~
sitkack
Came to say the same thing, clear writing and a great voice. Definitely
something to emulate.

------
glintik
Good article, but FreeBSD top-managers don’t want(or can) to change anything.

So, where FreeBSD can be used nowadays: 1) Desktop/Mobile - no,
drivers/sensors problem. 2) Network/Web service in SOHO? Linux is much way
better. 3) Network/Web in medium/large company? May be, for special network
services. Well-tuned FreeBSD can beat well-tuned Linux easily, but requires
skilled staff.

There is a very little chance for FreeBSD to come up Linux and be useful for
the masses.

P.S. Worked with FreeBSD since 1996 as default OS, in 2008 switched to
Linux(RH/Debian/Ubuntu).

~~~
morning_gelato
> Well-tuned FreeBSD can beat well-tuned Linux easily, but requires skilled
> staff.

This doesn't seem obvious to me, there are a lot of tech companies with
skilled staff that choose Linux and also deeply care about performance.

------
hd4
In that list, nothing strikes me as a killer feature that I would leave either
Linux or Windows for. I've actually gone from Windows (about 10 years) ->
Ubuntu (6 years) -> Clear Linux (a few months if that) -> Windows 10 in the
last week or so because I realized that I value convenience and performance
over whatever else is on offer from Linux, even though there are a few good
tools I immediately missed from Linux (grep firstly, but at some point I'm
going to setup WSL anyway). There's nothing compelling enough to even bring me
back to Linux any time soon, why would I bother with FreeBSD?

I develop software, and just want to get things done and the OS to stay out of
my way. Windows 10 LTSC does that amazingly well. Sorry if I sound like a
shill, I'm really not, I just grew tired of fighting silly little fights to
get Ubuntu/x-distro to do what I want.

~~~
papermachete
What workloads offer better performance in windows 10 than linux?

~~~
hd4
The term 'workload' is itself slightly loaded as it implies something constant
like a server maintaining performance over a given period. I did mention my
use-case is developing software, so I'm not exactly pushing this to its
limits, however programs seem to work a lot faster which I know sounds
anecdotal. I found a benchmark which did influence the switch back to Win10.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=icelake-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=icelake-
clear-windows&num=6)

>if simply counting the number of first-place finishes, Windows 10 performed
the best with coming in front 50% of the time to Clear Linux at 36% and Ubuntu
19.10 at 13%.

~~~
papermachete
To me, my optimised compilation of liquorix on f2fs beats windows on my laptop
outright. I lose bandwidth but gain lower latency. Even moving around windows
explorer and searching by name is embarrassingly sluggish on my windows 10
install. Can't afford ms telemetry service and windows "defender" taking up
half my resources whenever they please, either.

~~~
hd4
It's trivial to remove telemetry these days.

~~~
hd4
I seem to be getting a lot of downvotes for that comment for some reason, not
sure why but there are several programs that can disable telemetry, this is
probably the best-known one.

[https://wpd.app/](https://wpd.app/)

~~~
edgyquant
Removing telemetry completely isn't supported by MS

------
papermachete
FreeBSD can hold its own well against Linux. You can now use it as a fully
functional desktop OS, no worries (GhostBSD for the uninitiated). Best part is
the ports tree, works better and easier than the AUR.

Take your pick:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=FreeBSD](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=FreeBSD)

tl;dr optimised freeBSD performs as well as and even faster than Clear Linux
on lots of benchmarks - easily faster than most distros then.

~~~
drewg123
I would love to just be able to have a stable package base where nothing
changed for years except security updates, and have special repos for things
that needed to change (like firefox or chrome). Eg, like what Ubuntu does with
their distro and PPAs.

I personally hate the concept of a rolling distro, which is what the ports
tree really is. Except for the things _I_ care about, I don't want random
stuff changing out from under me.

Some ports upgrade 15 years ago failing led me to rage-install Linux and run
Linux on my desktop for 10 years because I just didn't have the time to deal
with upgrade failures and X not working. Thankfully, now that we have ZFS boot
environments (making rolling back easier), I'm back running FreeBSD. But just
2 days ago, I was left with a non-function system when a pkg upgrade renamed
"startkde" to startplasma-x11 or something, and it took me nearly an hour to
work out that it wasn't the nvidia driver crapping out, it was just that my
'exec startkde' in my .xsession was failing.

(Yes, I'm aware of the quarterlies, but that's about 8x too much change for
me).

~~~
petre
Always go back and read the UPGRADING document if you encounter something like
this in the future. It will save you a lot of time.

You should use Ubuntu LTS if a major release every 6 months is too much for
you.

~~~
drewg123
That's my entire point. With FreeBSD ports, we have a rolling release. When I
ran Ubuntu, I did run LTS. I could not care less about having the latest KDE.
I'd actually be about 100x happier with the KDE from 10 years ago

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Why not use this?

[1] [http://trinitydesktop.org/](http://trinitydesktop.org/)

~~~
drewg123
Nice, KDE before it jumped the shark. Sadly, there is no FreeBSD port or pkg
for it.

------
rsync
I, personally, and my businesses, have a tremendous amount of time and money
invested in FreeBSD as a platform.

JohnCompanies[1] was started on FreeBSD, rsync.net runs FreeBSD exclusively,
and Oh By[2] runs on FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is an operating system by, and for, the FreeBSD developers.

You may choose to deploy, and invest in, FreeBSD for your own purposes (as I
have) but you need to understand what the development process is and how
FreeBSD is "released" if you want to make meaningful investments _of actual
money_ into adopting it.

In short: the official position of FreeBSD is that -RELEASE is the only
production release of FreeBSD and, technically, -STABLE and -CURRENT are not
production ready. _Yet at the same time_ all investment and development of
FreeBSD by the actual developers is done with -CURRENT.

The result is your legal, contractual, fiduciary, and even moral obligations
to the customers you serve _demands that you run only -RELEASE_. And yet, any
issues you have with -RELEASE will be difficult to resolve because the entire
community is already 1-2 major versions ahead of you in their development,
their workspaces, and even their personal machines. You will be met with
incredulity when you insist that you need to run only production code and your
"current" problems with the "current" -RELEASE will not be addressed.

This makes it very difficult (although not impossible) to make any kind of
long-term investments in FreeBSD.

Pointing to the big name firms that run FreeBSD, like Netflix, is a bit
disingenuous as only they have the resources to, essentially, run their own
forks of FreeBSD (which they do).

I have written about this in detail, twice:

First, in 2012[3] and then later in 2014[4]. The 2014 posting is probably more
succinct and relevant here, but if you really want a deep dive in the culture
and tendencies of FreeBSD development, read the 2012 thread.

[1] JohnCompanies, started in fall of 2001, was possibly the first "VPS"
provider as we now think of it, although we called them "Server Instances" and
did not coin the term "Virtual Private Server".

[2] [https://0x.co](https://0x.co)

[3] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-Jan...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2012-January/037294.html)

[4] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2014-Jun...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
hackers/2014-June/045319.html)

~~~
jeffatfreebsd
Developers pick their own priorities as most are donating their time. Those
that are not are following the wishes of their employers. People make an
effort to ensure that bug fixes are MFC'd back to supported releases and for
security fixes we have a stronger policy. Otherwise it should be no surprise
that we focus on future releases. The release process has a certain
organizational cost for validation and running them too frequently burns out
project volunteers.

Many companies who use linux also effectively maintain their own forks that
are gradually updated and tested. This is not a unique problem to FreeBSD. We
unfortunately don't have a redhat equivalent although there are now several
companies offering paid FreeBSD support if you need that for your enterprise.

I think you also got quite a lot of very reasonable replies in your thread on
hackers. You need to realize that your fundamental request is for people who
are giving up their free time to do something interesting to change their
plans so that you can run your enterprise while providing no help or financial
incentive.

When there are reasonable proposals it may catch someone's eye and prompt
action. I can't even really tell what your proposal is besides changing
release frequency. What are _you_ willing to do to support that?

~~~
rsync
"You need to realize that your fundamental request is for people who are
giving up their free time to do something interesting to change their plans so
that you can run your enterprise while providing no help or financial
incentive."

...

"I can't even really tell what your proposal is besides changing release
frequency. What are _you_ willing to do to support that?"

...

I offered $50k to run 9.x up to 9.15:

"... I can contribute USD $10k per year that this course was followed, or $50k
over five years. We can contribute some hardware, hosting and bandwidth as
well."[1]

As I said in this old, old thread:

"I'm not a FreeBSD developer and I have little use for either CURRENT or
STABLE. I'm saying that I need a major release to have an _effective_ lifetime
longer than two years."

... and in anticipation of your 2020 response, I direct you to the FreeBSD
handbook, which explicitly states:

"This is still a development branch, however, and this means that at any given
time, the sources for FreeBSD-STABLE may or may not be suitable for any
particular purpose. It is simply another engineering development track, NOT A
RESOURCE FOR END-USERS."[2]

FWIW, we have also offered _and paid_ several FreeBSD development bounties
since 2005.[3][4]

[1] [https://0x.co/TCZM6C](https://0x.co/TCZM6C)

[2] [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current-
stable.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/current-stable.html)

[3] [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
announce/2007-Ap...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
announce/2007-April/001127.html)

[4] [https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/01/64bit-
freebsd-...](https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/01/64bit-freebsd-
quotas.html)

~~~
jeffatfreebsd
You do understand that releases made from -STABLE are considered release
quality, not development branches?

~~~
rsync
Not according to current FreeBSD documentation ... see link above.

~~~
jeffatfreebsd
You have confused the branch with the release.

------
Ericson2314
Heh I just had a chance to mention this in another thread but I think the
biggest thing holding the BSDs back is they repackage all the solver.

Who said 1 distro, 1 kernel?! I fully believe NixOS/Nixpkgs should be able to
support non-linux kernels, _and the philosophies of their communities_. We are
always trying to bake in future assumptions, this is a great opportunity to do
that.

Coalition without compromise. Truely.

~~~
Ericson2314
If someone is interested, please do reach out. I'm really serious about seeing
this happen. We got cross compilation done distro wide, now we need more
things to drive us forward.

~~~
pdimitar
Do I get you correctly? You are looking for Nix[OS] being able to work with
FreeBSD?

~~~
Ericson2314
Yes. Nix runs on FreeBSD so first step is cross compile pure stdenv with BSD
libc. Next step is native builds and kernel. Final step is make NixOS work
with multiple init systems. Shouldn't be too bad!

------
trasz
It's a good TODO, and it's worth pointing out that those things are being
gradually put into place. Great example is the Continuous Integration,
[https://ci.freebsd.org/](https://ci.freebsd.org/). (Shameless plug: it
actually runs Linux Test Project Linux binaries too!)

------
mixmastamyk
First thing I would do is to merge the bsd distros and have an installer that
could pick configurations like hardened or not. Add a cool name.

No reason so few folks should be pulling in different directions.

------
delduca
io_uring

~~~
macdice
Will be interesting to see how kqueue systems respond.

------
frankharv
I noticed that Alexander had to grind his axe on his rejected bikeshed
project.Re:Sensors.

PHK is one of the developers who have made FreeBSD great. The more you grind
your axe the more you get discounted.

~~~
mlyle
> I noticed that Alexander had to grind his axe on his rejected bikeshed
> project.Re:Sensors.

"Bikeshed" project? Who exactly is bikeshedding when functionality is lacking
on FreeBSD 10+ years later because we don't like the configuration mechanism
chosen for the previous work?

> PHK is one of the developers who have made FreeBSD great.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been dubious moments like this, or that they
don't cause harm.

> The more you grind your axe the more you get discounted.

Menacing responses to criticism are not exactly indicative of good culture.

