Why all of innovations come from elsewhere?

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My friend has a very strong hatred for FreeBSD. The reason he gives me is that OS just a copy cat and didn't invented anything. So he's not respect such OS and foretell that when there is nothing left for that copy cat to copy, it will just die because of shooting itself on the foot. Then he gives me examples. All of the selling feature of that OS, is taken somewhere else:

Jails: isn't it just poor quality clone of Solaris zones?

ZFS: of course a Solaris thing, now even have to keep it alive thanks for the mercy of the ZFS On Linux project!

Bhyve: poor quality clone of Linux KVM, and sucks.

Ports: source based Linux distros are not rare, but the fact is they [FreeBSD] created that ports system because they have no real package maintainers like Linux! Everything is keep by the mercy of those ports maintainers, and when the ports is unmaintained and no one step up to take over it, the ports is just deleted! How stupid! On Linux, we have real package maintainers, take care of hundreds of packages, and maintaining it well, so none is broken or outdated! Even if it [FreeBSD] is the first one to implemented the idea (the ports system), it's not necessary to be the leading of the game. Remember, first in, last out. The Gentoo ports system is much more sophisticated!

PKGNG: poor quality clone of Solaris's pkg, come very late in the game and plagiarize many ideas from the Linux counterparts. But it doesn't matter. The way they [FreeBSD] maintaining packages is broken the same way as they maintaining their ports tree! It's "broken by design". Remember that they invented that term to prefer to BTRFS, but BTRFS is now up and kicking. That term should more applicable to them! In no way on Linux we observed users go to the forum and whining about their favorite packages was deleted for no reasons as much as on that OS. Not only because the ports is now unmaintained but also because the packages simply didn't build for them [FreeBSD} thus it's not available for the users, too. The reason is simple. On Linux, we have previous packages version to fall back. On that OS, the users are just doomed! The only thing they can do is switch to an outdated repo or waiting for the mercy of the ports maintainers and the miracle to make the packages build for them [FreeBSD] thus available to us [the users]. Another stupid one is base vs ports! On Linux, we always have the same version of OpenSSL. In no way we have to care about problems arise when the OpenSSL in base is mismatch with the OpenSSL required on ports! And the most ridiculous is they [FreeBSD] asked the users to upgrade to new OS version only because the ports expect the newer OpenSSL that only available on newer OS version! That's how LTS support on that OS works! Oops, almost forgot, that OS has no LTS release whatsoever.

I have no idea about these points but I'm fine with FreeBSD. What I need is a working browser so I could watch youtube and have up to date toolchains so I could do development occasionally. FreeBSD served all of that needs well. But I have to agree with him about this point: most of the new ideas come from Linux [I'm not said anything about innovations or selling points so far.]

e.g: Does someone in the FreeBSD community has ever come up with an idea like PuppyLinux? Yes, it's just a toy. I know. But the ideas of it is at least cool! Recently, I found a former Puppy based distro, Fatdog64. And I loved the idea of it and the way it customized the system. I think FreeBSD should definitely need more derivatives implementing many new ideas like this!
 
More examples:

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When you first learn about a feature while using an OS, it is easy to assume the feature was invented on that OS.

Who invented the virtual machine? Some people think it was VMWare. Actually, it is much older.

Virtual machine - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

FreeBSD evolved direct from BSD which came direct from Research Unix.

Linux was a work-alike clone that copied Unix. Linus saw good ideas in Unix and copied them.

When you see good ideas, you should take them and find a way to apply them to your OS. That model worked well for Linus. I see no reason for any OS to not do the same.
 
As Solaris was the origin of many of FreeBSD‘s features, I have started to use OmniOS as a potential replacement and it works just great.

FreeBSD was the only free system with ZFS and dtrace though, while Solaris was a closed system.
 
I think I could counter his point regarding the ports system.

As it name shows, "port", it means the software is not natively developed there but being ported from somewhere else. So maintaining a huge amount of ports not simply as fetch and build them as is but also involving patching them [e.g: to remove the Linuxism or adding workaround for it], it's a huge job indeed. On Linux, as it's the native development platform for most software out there, they don't have to go through the same procedure as FreeBSD. So it's much less effort to maintaining a source based Linux distro than the FreeBSD ports system. FreeBSD doesn't have the resources needed to do all of this themselves so a community powered ports system is the only viable solution.

I have no idea how to counter his argument about pkg, though.
 
Cthulhux said:
As Solaris was the origin of many of FreeBSD‘s features, I have started to use OmniOS as a potential replacement and it works just great.

FreeBSD was the only free system with ZFS and dtrace though, while Solaris was a closed system.
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As you said you also use OmniOS. It has both ZFS and dtrace, too. And I don't think it's not free.
 
gh_origin said:
I think I could counter his point regarding the ports system.

As it name shows, "port", it means the software is not natively developed there but being ported from somewhere else. So maintaining a huge amount of ports not simply as fetch and build them as is but also involving patching them [e.g: to remove the Linuxism or adding workaround for it], it's a huge job indeed. On Linux, as it's the native development platform for most software out there, they don't have to go through the same procedure as FreeBSD. So it's much less effort to maintaining a source based Linux distro than the FreeBSD ports system. FreeBSD doesn't have the resources needed to do all of this themselves so a community powered ports system is the only viable solution.

I have no idea how to counter his argument about pkg, though.
Click to expand...
He refuted it by stating the the Gentoo portage system has to remove many systemd-ism, too. Gentoo is OpenRC based. I said regardless of SystemD or OpenRC, it's the same Linux system and GNU userland. He refuted my statement, too. I don't think I should continue to discuss with him. He's a typical phoronix forum user, pro anything Linux, GPL, progressive (SystemD, WireGuard, GNOME3,...) and against any thing conservative and permissive licenses (he said it's license of thieves), too.

p/s: There is anti systemd on phoronix forum, too. There are many of them indeed.
 
gh_origin - you don't need to counter this persons argument. If it makes the other person feel superior - let them go on their merry way. Don't waste your time.

Understand the real issue is about licensing. Most people don't care about GPL vs. BSD licensing but some of us do.
 
Cthulhux said:
Which is why “Solaris” is finally a very serious competitor to FreeBSD.
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I don't think so. I would rather consider Linux is the only serious competitor to FreeBSD, not Solaris. Solaris is dying and Illumos is stuck and dying, too. They tried to integrate bhyve but it's not enough for them to stay relevance. FreeBSD now is much better than Solaris and Illumos. The idea FreeBSD is underdog to Solaris and Illumos is the mindset of the past.
 
unitrunker said:
Understand the real issue is about licensing. Most people don't care about GPL vs. BSD licensing but some of us do.
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I don't understand why these pro GPL people obsessed too much with the fear of someone stealing their code and think the GPL is the only way to keep this from happening.
 
unitrunker said:
This feels like one of the "Why can't FreeBSD be more like Linux" threads.

So ... does this "friend" write code?
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Nope. GNOME3 + Wayland user. Pro SystemD. Pro Linus (Linus is the fact his idol!). Pro Rust (rewrite in Rust anyone?) and pro many things else. Addition: Anti Microsoft at any cost.
 
@Mod: Please lock this thread. I think I'm too wrong to bring it here just because I failed to counter someone's arguments.
 
Jails aren't a clone of Solaris Zones, it's the other way around.

ZFS on Linux isn't so much a thing anymore. They copied OpenZFS, made changes (as far as I can tell didn't follow one of their core philosophies of contributing back (they didn't have to, mind)) and drifted, but now their code has been moved to OpenZFS. Input from the FreeBSD project has been accepted and multiple parties are now working together.

Ports have been around since 1994, when was the first Linux package manager introduced? Personally I've no idea...
There was a recentish study (can't find the link now) that suggested that FreeBSD's Ports system was one of the most up to date repositories out there.

PKGNG, not sure on that one.

Linux is a big copy cat. Copied Unix concept/tools, took things like LVM from HP-UX, IIRC systemd is a copy of launchd or SMF. The list goes on.

Care not about copying idea. Care about how they've been implemented and integrated. All of the points you've made are native parts of the FreeBSD system, they are integrated into the system well and work together when you want to use them together.

IIRC, the sendfile syscall is somewhat novel and was developed on FreeBSd for FreeBSD by Netflix (and contributed back!)
I'm not sure how easy things like that are in Linux, I've heard it's so notoriously difficult to add things to the kernel that people keep stuffing things in Userspace (see f-stack).
 
gh_origin, you don't have to counter his arguments, there is absolutely nothing wrong with adopting good things invented elsewhere!
In fact, it just proves the "copier" is smart enough to assess the quality and value of others' work.
And be sure FreeBSD will die if it stops doing this, it would mean it has lost its adaptivity.
 
FreeBSD can't copy Linux code, but Linux can copy FreeBSD's code, due to their licenses. So there's no way FreeBSD can copy Linux, apart from borrowing a very few things.

Ethernet card drivers are actually developed for FreeBSD by hardware manufacturers. Also, Microsoft has used FreeBSD's network stack. These are two things that originated on FreeBSD.
 
Cthulhux said:
I found illumos to be more accessible and reliable, to be honest.
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I used to feel so, too. But the project has too few developers compared to FreeBSD. When it's stable, it's rock stable. When it breaks, no one here to fix it! It's my experience.
 
forquare said:
Ports have been around since 1994, when was the first Linux package manager introduced? Personally I've no idea...
There was a recentish study (can't find the link now) that suggested that FreeBSD's Ports system was one of the most up to date repositories out there.
Click to expand...
As a FreeBSD user, I'm pleased with it. But saying the Ports system is one of the most up to date repo out there is plain wrong. There are so many broken and unmaintained ports, let alone not updated ones. I'm still waiting for the maintainer to update CodeLite to the latest version.

forquare said:
IIRC systemd is a copy of launchd or SMF.
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I have never used launchd but to be honest, I like SystemD more than SMF.
 
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