[HN Gopher] FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity a...
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       FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity and lifecycle
        
       Author : rsync
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2022-01-24 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lists.freebsd.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lists.freebsd.org)
        
       | shimont wrote:
       | Who uses FreeBSD those days? As a company that runs on the cloud,
       | AWS/GCP/Azure you run windows/linux, and on desktop people mainly
       | run MacOS/Windows/Linux.
       | 
       | I am really asking as for what is the main use case of FreeBSD in
       | 2022?
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | Domain-specific derivatives of FreeBSD are still very popular,
         | such as TrueNAS, pfSense, OPNsense, and so on.
        
         | rsync wrote:
         | We[1] have our entire infrastructure on FreeBSD - and always
         | have.
         | 
         | That's why this has been frustrating - we have a history of
         | committing real money[2][3] to the project in an attempt to
         | make investments ... but there is never a fixed target to make
         | those investments in.
         | 
         | It is a matter of fact that our own use of FreeBSD - in live
         | production for a business - is _completely divorced_ from the
         | experience and day to day usage of FreeBSD developers.
         | 
         | [1] rsync.net and, previously, JohnCompanies
         | 
         | [2] https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html
         | 
         | [3]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | rsync wrote:
       | I wrote this in 2012 - almost _exactly ten years ago_ - and it
       | remains true.
       | 
       | Looking at freebsd.org right now I see that my options for
       | production, release systems are 12.3 and 13.0 ...
       | 
       | ... which means that if 12.1-RELEASE came out at the end of 2019
       | and 13.0-RELEASE came out in April of 2021, you had _all of 16
       | months_ to make investments in the 12 branch before it was
       | hopelessly passe and all queries regarding it would be answered
       | with:
       | 
       | "That's fixed in current ..."
       | 
       | The 4.x nostalgia is justified: it was polished and polished and
       | polished over many years and many organizations were incentivized
       | to invest in that branch
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | Just because you think it's still true doesn't mean you're
         | justified in not putting (2012) in the title.
        
       | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
       | Is this partly because there is no (or very little) commercial
       | support for FreeBSD and therefore nobody is all that interested
       | in the boring bits like long-term stability releases such as the
       | 5 year release, 5 years of support suggestion in that thread? The
       | volunteers want to do new and interesting things. They don't want
       | to backport fixes for 5 year old bugs anymore when most likely
       | the subsystem that contained that bug has already been replaced
       | in current anyway, so "what's the point?". And if nobody is being
       | paid to do it, if there's nobody _to pay_ to do it, then nobody
       | is going to do it. This has always been the problem with FreeBSD.
       | Despite some great technology the operating system itself has
       | mostly fallen by the wayside in the grand scheme of things.
       | There's way too much FreeBSD "religion" in that community IMO.
        
       | KindOne wrote:
       | Needs (2012) in the title.
        
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       (page generated 2022-01-24 23:03 UTC)