
Strategic thinking, or what I think what we need to do to keep FreeBSD relevant - vermaden
http://www.leidinger.net/blog/2019/01/27/strategic-thinking-or-what-i-think-what-we-need-to-do-to-keep-freebsd-relevant/
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ggm
The docker story needs work. I use bhyve a lot and docker on Debian and OSX.
I'd love to be able to do deployment to freebsd more easily.

Kubernetes needs a story.

Better pf examples would be nice. How to set up decent stateful Configs. How
to self protect a host.

I've whined about BBR elsewhere. I won't repeat that here.

The filesystem story with zfs is fantastic. Snapshots made some stuff much
nicer. I use a slideshow from the web to drive postgres on zfs deployment but
that leads me to:

Zfs and sysctl kernel tuning need better stories. How to rightsize buffers to
get max performance from things.

iSCSI needs a story. It's not able to do easy dual master live (failover modes
are fine)

Pkg is good. Brew is better as a lived experience across upgrades.

~~~
empthought
My experience with Homebrew has been universally awful, even on OS X.

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75dvtwin
I guess the author is thinking that Operating system dev must be run like a
corporation.

I think it is a valid point of view, and if competition with Linux is the goal
-- then it could be, the only valid view.

But if competition with Linux is not a goal for example -- the goal is to be
complimentary to Linux, or the goal is to research/innovate quicker in some
specific areas.

Then the FreeBSD thinking needs to be more of 'risk-taking', rather than
strategy?

I personally always tend to use underdogs if I can (bee it BSDs vs Linux, AMD
vs Intel, Duckduckgo vs Google, etc).

But I think it is hard for BSD to compete with Linux.. may be when Linus steps
down, people will not like new leadership/structures -- and will look for
alternatives and then FreeBSD will pick up, and will need to become that
'company-like cube of strategies) ?

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75dvtwin
I should have used better and clearer wording, so apologies.

What I meant was, strategic thinking on FreeBSD has to follow (not precede, in
my view) the goals of the project.

Which is what I was trying to say above, but poorly.

\--

FreeBSD dev summit in 2018 made an effort to define the goals

[https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201809/13goals](https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201809/13goals)

A piece of that the author of the article is describing, is in the goals too
(virtualization tooling).

But other points do not seem to have equivalents in the 13goals.

\-- I have a personal set of 'wants' for FreeBSD, but felt that without
clearing understanding its goals, I should not be just throwing the 'wants'
out there)

\---

In my projects, I prefer to support where possible all the BSDs (NetBSD,
openBSD, dragonflyBSD) -- so I compile and test there, too, where possible.
These projects leverage and follow FreeBSD porting efforts, so FreeBSD,
perhaps acts as 'big brother', or may be 'leader' for the other BSDs
packages... if may say so.

If anything, I would prefer that FreeBSD recognizes that role, and somehow
helps the portability of the packages to the other 3 to be at least 'in the
sight' (for example by templating/allowing placeholders for the other ports
config/make files)

There are porting efforts I could contribute to (small code bases in
C/C++/Erlang).

But something like even a small contribution to a Java11 port (which is still
not in any of the BSD) -- is well outside of my capabilities (both skill and
time wise).

Delay of having, for example, java 11 in FreeBSD -- is, I think, negatively
affecting adoption of the other bsds. I guess, that's an example of my
specific want.

