Are FreeBSD developers ever going to start focusing on user facing stuff?

vanessa said:
Exactly this way of thinking kills many good intentions early. An OS is no DIY project! It is a complex piece of software which needs at least a good dialogue and coordination between many developers.

Oh ok...and what kind of thinking would you prefer then?
 
@taz, I am perfectly comfortable with your way of thinking. You can think as you want, but if you pretend that this is the better way or right way of thinking and doing, then please prove it. Go ahead and code a WM or DE in a solo mission. Then be there for fixing bugs, answering requests, rolling out next releases, keeping your project up and running for a couple of years or so.

No problem for you? Well, for the rest of us it is.
 
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taz said:
Oh ok...and what kind of thinking would you prefer then?

The way I see it, FreeBSD has its own culture, which is primarily do it yourself. You don't go to someone else's country and try to impose your own culture on those people, you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset, the same thing applies to newcomers here. If for any reason that is unacceptable, there are plenty of other options out there. It may not be all peace, love, ice cream, hippies and flowers but that's how the world works.

Just my 2 shillings.
 
vanessa said:
@taz, I am perfectly comfortable with your way of thinking. You can think as you want, but if you pretend that this is the better way or right way of thinking and doing, then please prove it. Go ahead and code a WM or DE in a solo mission. Then be there for fixing bugs, answering requests, rolling out next releases, keeping your project up and running for a couple of years or so.

No problem for you? Well, for the rest of us it is.

I think we have a misunderstanding here. First of all I never said anything about a solo mission. The whole DIY is about not just wishing for some new feature to magically appear in FreeBSD code but tu take steps to make that happen.


And some of those steps would be:
- do a research about your problem
- learn things that you need to know in order to solve the problem
- find a reference project
- ask questions on forum/mailing lists
- present your idea to the community and try to find more people that would get involved if this is needed
- start a project on sourceforge/personal page/whatever page
- etc

The bottom line is this, nothing will ever happen by just wishing things to happen :)
 
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zspider said:
The way I see it, FreeBSD has it's own culture, which is primarily do it yourself. You don't go to someone else's country and try to impose your own culture on those people, you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset[...]

So let's turn the tables here a bit.

FreeBSD does go to "someone else's country" all the time (granted, in an indirect way) by being used all over the world and of course it does not "try to impose your (it's) own culture" but by saying "you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset" think of the users that have to adapt to the mindset of the OS. So basically, what I see here, is the same old "if you don;t like it, don;t use it". Honestly, this is a major turnoff for any newcomers and a major redirect to Linux where guess what ... they stay.

Remember, an OS is a tool and I think a good tool is a flexible tool, in that it should allow the user to use it to whatever the user sees fit (desktop/server/sandwitchmake/etc). Being rigid and claiming "you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset" is like saying to the user "my way or the highway". Guess what, most users will react like "really? so then gfu <insert OS here>".

At one point, some people have to realize the (dekstop) user's needs (too).
 
vanessa said:
Then PC-BSD must be the worst OS ever, having taken the wrong parts of both worlds, the not so fancy BSD kernel (if what @kpa says is true) and the terrible Linux userland ...

What rubs me here is the terminus "Linux userland". The desktop environments (GNOME, KDE) are portable and are also used on different Unix versions. The problem is that Linux-isms are creeping in, but KDE is pretty solid against that. Last time I checked, it did not need things like ALSA, which firefox requires now.

zspider said:
The way I see it, FreeBSD has its own culture, which is primarily do it yourself. You don't go to someone else's country and try to impose your own culture on those people, you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset, the same thing applies to newcomers here. If for any reason that is unacceptable, there are plenty of other options out there. It may not be all peace, love, ice cream, hippies and flowers but that's how the world works.

Just my 2 shillings.
+1 for this. But when I think about international politics, there are places where this mindset is not widely in use. ;)
This would make Linux be more american than european, would it?
 
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Crivens said:
What rubs me here is the terminus "Linux userland". The desktop environments (GNOME, KDE) are portable and are also used on different Unix versions. The problem is that Linux-isms are creeping in, but KDE is pretty solid against that. Last time I checked, it did not need things like ALSA, which firefox requires now.
Both DEs are developed with Linux in mind. Being portable is a side effect. And if you think they build a harmonic relation with FreeBSD, then go and compile KDE from trunk yourself. One or more of those Linuxisms KDE depends on will break your build many times until you manage to compile it. Hence "Linux userland" ...
 
zspider said:
The way I see it, FreeBSD has its own culture, which is primarily do it yourself. You don't go to someone else's country and try to impose your own culture on those people, you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset, the same thing applies to newcomers here. If for any reason that is unacceptable, there are plenty of other options out there. It may not be all peace, love, ice cream, hippies and flowers but that's how the world works.

Every culture without progress is destined to extinction. Especially in the IT world. The FreeBSD community should listen very carefully to those people switching from Linux or Windows to BSD. Then only this way can a project like FreeBSD motivate developers to jump on the train and make contributions. Instead we hear:
  • it is like that
  • don't ask why
  • dance or die (obey or go away)
This is stupid. Do you actually realise that the OP @thorbsd is not taking part in the discussion any more?
You lost one more good guy!
 
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It does, but can you or me control it? NO!

My proposal is on a smaller level. Ex: I need driver X imported or written from scratch. For that, I can:

- wine about it and wait for someone else to do it - this sure as hell will not be productive and is not efficient in any way
- do it myself - guess what, I cannot code in C, let alone code at that level
- go away - favorite line of hypocrites (sorry, it just is. I'm totaly with Vanessa on this one - THIS IS NOT THE WAY)
- donate to the foundation - I donate every year but I cannot control what happens with my money
- act upon getting the thing done in another way - ex: ask how many people need this driver and talk to a developer to ask how much it would cost, go back to the group and present the price and hopefully we will split the costs.

Guys, again ... please be more open minded and stop the "if you don;t like it go away" crap. We are losing users! Fast and sure! If you don't think this is true, search your area for FreeBSD jobs vs Linux jobs. And please, hold back the "but company X uses FreeBSD on 80% of their servers" because the fact of the matter is ... it does not matter.

Do the search and compare. You will see Linux jobs are much more vs FreeBSD jobs. Why? Popularity!

And this is what we need.
 
taz said:
I thought the FreeBSD Foundation served this purpose?

Me too. But now I have the impression that the Foundation is covered by few hosting companies which do contribute to the project but with a specific focus (i.e. no "user facing stuff" at all). A couple of weeks ago somebody posted here that the Foundation has two (2!) paid developers.

And has anybody seen a message from a Foundation member here in this forum? They don't even take part in our discussions.
 
vanessa said:
Me too. But now I have the impression that the Foundation is covered by few hosting companies which do contribute to the project but with a specific focus (i.e. no "user facing stuff" at all). A couple of weeks ago somebody posted here that the Foundation has two (2!) paid developers.

And has anybody seen a message from a Foundation member here in this forum? They don't even take part in our discussions.

Just a while ago they had zero people who were paid to do development on FreeBSD itself. Their role was just to provide the infrastructure for development and all developers were unpaid volunteers.
 
da1 said:
Remember, an OS is a tool and I think a good tool is a flexible tool, in that it should allow the user to use it to whatever the user sees fit (desktop/server/sandwitchmake/etc). Being rigid and claiming "you have to assimilate to their cultural mindset" is like saying to the user "my way or the highway". Guess what, most users will react like "really? so then gfu <insert OS here>".

At one point, some people have to realize the (dekstop) user's needs (too).
+1

Not to dogpile onto this flame session, but ... this was why I kept going back to Windows in the 90's - the narcissistic attitude that mirrors political culture (don't like it here then go move to <insert country here>). Felt kinda good playing Unreal and Red Alert while watching those Kardashians complain about Wine. Until there was an IRQ conflict causing me to lose the progress I made in said game. Ah, memories.
 
da1 said:
It does, but can you or me control it? NO!

My proposal is on a smaller level. Ex: I need driver X imported or written from scratch. For that, I can:

- wine about it and wait for someone else to do it - this sure as hell will not be productive and is not efficient in any way
- do it myself - guess what, I cannot code in C, let alone code at that level
- go away - favorite line of hypocrites (sorry, it just is. I'm totaly with Vanessa on this one - THIS IS NOT THE WAY)
- donate to the foundation - I donate every year but I cannot control what happens with my money
- act upon getting the thing done in another way - ex: ask how many people need this driver and talk to a developer to ask how much it would cost, go back to the group and present the price and hopefully we will split the costs.

Guys, again ... please be more open minded and stop the "if you don't like it go away" crap. We are loosing users! Fast and sure! If you don't think this is true, search your area for FreeBSD jobs vs Linux jobs. And please, hold back the "but company X uses FreeBSD on 80% of their servers" because the fact of the matter is ... it does not matter.

Do the search and compare. You will see Linux jobs are much more vs FreeBSD jobs. Why? Popularity!

And this is what we need.

No I can not control it and should not be able to either. I trust the judgment of the Foundation and in my personal opinion they are doing a good job with their investments (you don't have to agree with this).

I understand your "frustration" but I if I where you I would go to the PC-BSD forum and suggest that the PC-BSD domain starts sort of like a child foundation/fund-raiser in collaboration with the FreeBSD foundation. And that "child" foundation could then server specifically for the "desktop domain". This is just what I would do and what I think makes more sense then handling this on your own. But generally I support your idea and I think a lot of people would donate and take part of this. It just has to be done right and I think PC-BSD is the way to go with this.

Fact is that FreeBSD is more server oriented and making things like FreeBSD in the "desktop domain" or for example "embedded domain" is up to us users to get involved start taking actions. If you think that a found-raiser for desktop related problems is what we need, then do it. I think a lot of people will back this up, including me.
 
kpa said:
Just a while ago they had zero people who were paid to do development on FreeBSD itself. Their role was just to provide the infrastructure for development and all developers were unpaid volunteers.l

This looks promising, let's wait and see how long will it take until we get to know one of those ominous Foundation members here in the forum.
 
I know Konstantine is funded by the FreeBSD Foundation to work on implementing KMS in the kernel and I know this project is progressing so I don't think that the FreeBSD Foundation is completely ignoring user facing functionality.

At least not quite having enough manpower prevents the project from doing pointless messy things like Mir and Wayland integration etc...
 
kpedersen said:
At least not quite having enough manpower prevents the project from doing pointless messy things like Mir and Wayland integration etc...

You totally underestimate the "marketing" effect if the Foundation or whoever else manages to port Mir or Wayland to FreeBSD! We don't even need to talk about the technical usefulness. The gain made by attracting thousands of developers to FreeBSD is worth it!

NOW is actually the right time to support one of these projects and be one of the first OSes implementing it thoroughly. The popularity of FreeBSD today is largely based on the decision to jump on the ZFS train early and make this move complete. Mir and Wayland are perfect opportunities to "invest" in the future of FreeBSD.
 
vanessa said:
Mir and Wayland are perfect opportunities to "invest" in the future of FreeBSD.
I think that would be a horrible idea. Canonical has already jacked up ?buntu, causing 'buntu-based distros to create a Canonical-free version. With how they are affecting things under their own auspice why would people want to allow their tentacles into FreeBSD?
 
taz said:
No I can not control it and should not be able to either.
Agreed, I'm just saying that I would like feature X implemented sooner (my priorities != foundation priorities)
I trust the judgment of the Foundation and in my personal opinion they are doing a good job with their investments (you don't have to agree with this).
I agree, but desktop users are second in line and while this is normal, the desktop does attract lots of users and I think it needs some (more) love.

I understand your "frustration" but I if I where you I would go to the PC-BSD forum and suggest that the PC-BSD domain starts sort of like a child foundation/fund-raiser in collaboration with the FreeBSD foundation. And that "child" foundation could then server specifically for the "desktop domain". This is just what I would do and what I think makes more sense then handling this on your own. But generally I support your idea and I think a lot of people would donate and take part of this. It just has to be done right and I think PC-BSD is the way to go with this.

It does make sense but I think being able to run FreeBSD on your desktop AND in your datacenter is better because the probability of you (as in: desktop user) finding out a bug is faster than if you would run (the bit bloated version of FreeBSD) PC-BSD.

Fact is that FreeBSD is more server oriented and making things like FreeBSD in the "desktop domain" or for example "embedded domain" is up to us users to get involved start taking actions.
Agreed but the OS has to provide that flexibility to the user.

If you think that a found-raiser for desktop related problems is what we need, then do it. I think a lot of people will back this up, including me.
I think/hope it will speed things up (regardless if it's desktop or server) because for instance one can have a server without a specific NIC driver, just as the same user can have laptop X without a certain video driver. So I think the door swings both ways here.
 
tzoi516 said:
I think that would be a horrible idea. Canonical has already jacked up ?buntu, causing 'buntu-based distros to create a Canonical-free version. With how they are affecting things under their own auspice why would people want to allow their tentacles into FreeBSD?

I don't see any parallels to the axis Canonical-Ubuntu here. Mir/Wayland under FreeBSD would be developed by the BSD community instead of by a single company. This is a totally other starting point.
 
vanessa said:
I don't see any parallels to the axis Canonical-Ubuntu here. Mir/Wayland under FreeBSD would be developed by the BSD community instead of by a single company. This is a totally other starting point.
Mir is Canonical's project. One can't rule out Canonical trying to influence FreeBSD development is my point, since you suggested bringing it over. With how they're affecting ??buntu, I think it would be a negative impact.
 
tzoi516 said:
Mir is Canonical's project. One can't rule out Canonical trying to influence FreeBSD development is my point, since you suggested bringing it over. With how they're affecting ??buntu, I think it would be a negative impact.

No, by bringing it over I didn't mean hijacking the whole project - this is impossible. What could be made is to use the existing code base of Wayland, keep 100% protocol and API compatibility and have a FreeBSD-own development.

The Open ZFS project is a good example: illumos, FreeBSD, Linux and OS X each develop their port of ZFS with differing code but common results. If any of the OSes develops a new function, it has to announce it and the other may or may not implement or use it, but they still can handle pools not using the specific function.

Now just imagine if FreeBSD would have a port of Mir. How many people do you think use Ubuntu? There are for sure statistics somewhere, but even without them one could imagine the gain of attracting/moving just 0.1% of Ubuntu's user base to FreeBSD by providing Mir and a good DE.

Again, I don't look at how good or bad Mir or Wayland are. Important is the impact.
 
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