Why the continued separation from Linux?

[ralphbsz]

Look on the web for the myriad stories of Linus exploding at people in e-mails, and abusing them verbally. He has an anger management problem (for which he is getting treatment!), and an ego that is 3 sizes too large.

As the dictator of the Linux kernel, he makes all the large-scale implementation decisions, and many of the small-scale ones. Look on the web for discussions of his taste in those decisions. Not the 25-year old stories of the e-mail exchange with Tanenbaum (that's too old to be relevant), but at more recent things.

 

[msplsh]

Sorry if this is offensive, but why the continued separation from Linux?

By using "separation" this statement assumes that being distinctly different is an unnatural condition (opposed to your assumption, I assert that it is not) and "continued" seems to imply the condition has existed for "too long," which does not follow, if being distinct is normal. This formation could be posed to any operating system pair: Why have Windows and MacOS continually been separated?

The answer is simply: They are distinct entities.

both projects could get a lot of good from a merging

Again, applying this to Windows and MacOS, the combined OS could also "get a lot of good", but the answer is more obvious there, but can be boiled down to "they don't want to." and can be transferred to your question just as easily.

the only solution I could think of is the license difference, but that doesn't seem a very big snag.

Entire projects have been broken in half by licensing disputes, so this is a massive understatement of the tractability of the issue concerning an action that neither entity is interested in doing.

Could you elaborate?

To be honest, if this is your only interaction in this thread with other valid responses in it, I doubt the sincerity of the question.

 

[wtrys]

To be honest, if this is your only interaction in this thread with other valid responses in it, I doubt the sincerity of the question.

There have been a lot of responses, I just responded to one that said something different.

 

[msplsh]

The "something different" was an ad hominem.

 

[wtrys]

Yeah, I wanted to see if they had a good point about it.

 

[astyle]

What comes to mind: under load (even around the 90%) "reasonable" behaviour, also when some cat pulled out a coaxial cable there would be problems.

Once a squirrel ate through a cable, and took out the entire company campus location. I was on the sidelines at work for that. It was a mess, nobody could work for about 5 hours until a team arrived from another branch 2 hour drive away to examine the damage and replace the damn cable. And no, local guys could not just fix it, that required authorization from pretty high up, because it was a pretty important cable where messing up could mean millions of dollars in losses.

 

[Jose]

Not the 25-year old stories of the e-mail exchange with Tanenbaum (that's too old to be relevant), but at more recent things.

Psst, ralphbsz it's been more like 35 years... I know, I feel old too.

 

[malavon]

And if you look at it, Apple took even more. We just did not get much back, other than the interoperability.

Well, we did get LLVM, Clang and libc++ which I consider a very important addition. Having an ever-aging gcc in base was already posing problems. I'm sure there is other code that I don't even know of. For a second I also thought they'd be donors to the FreeBSD foundation but apparently that's not (or no longer) the case.

 

[msplsh]

Yeah, I wanted to see if they had a good point about it.

Given all the other things you could have responded to, that you latched on to this one is notable.

 

[patmaddox]

I guess the continued separation is due to Linux users obstinately refusing to abandon Linux and adopt BSD.

 

[bakul]

Perfect answer by patmaddox. What a way to end this thread!

 

[PMc]

Whoa, this thread started entirely stupid, but then it became extremely interesting...

Air France Flight 447 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I completely missed that one. Maybe because those years I was travelling Indonesia - and in Indonesia it is completely normal for an airplane to fall into the seas (or a ferry drowning) every 6 or 8 months, and you get used to it. (The pilots there are excellent fighter pilots, but the aircraft just fall apart.)

So yes, this is what you get when you have two trained monkeys sitting in the cockpit.
There are basically three different ways to do things:

1. Perform procedures. You do not know what you do, you do not know why you do it, and if anything happens different than prescribed in the procedures, the trained monkey is at the end of it's wits.
2. Know what you are doing and why, by first understanding what you are working with and how that does work.
3. No longer need to know what you are doing, because it has become intuitive and you will automatically do the right thing without thinking. (If you don't get it, just imagine bicycle riding, and you will know what I mean)

Long ago, a german air force general stated that there is no use of aerobatic skills in combat, but nevertheless combat pilots should learn aerobatics, because then they will learn to fly intuitively, freeing their mind to focus on the combat situation.

Okay, enough of that. What is the actual issue:

For one, in systems management we see more and more trained monkeys, instead of engineers. Also, in these forums nowadays we mostly read trained monkeys (alright, some of them aren't trained).

Then, this article...

The Long Way Down: The crash of Air France flight 447

The story of the infamous disappearance of an Airbus A330 over the Atlantic, and the fundamentally human mistakes which led to the tragedy.

admiralcloudberg.medium.com

... states that the aviation industry has learned the lesson, and now trains their monkeys to not be trained monkeys. (I still have to see it to believe it.)

But, at the same time the entire remainder of the world repeats the same mistake and joyfully embraces A.I. - transforming the population on a planetscope scale into monkeys performing procedures and unable to cope.

 

[cracauer@]

The interesting part is that Airbus and Boing have opposite views on automation tht lets and does not let pilots screw up - and that the accident rates are entirely comparable. One method didn't turn out to be better than the other. You would think that one wins.

(* not counting recent Boing antics)

 

[hasbeen]

The interesting part is that Airbus and Boing have opposite views on automation tht lets and does not let pilots screw up - and that the accident rates are entirely comparable. One method didn't turn out to be better than the other. You would think that one wins.

(* not counting recent Boing antics)

Interesting comparison, though aircraft/airplane design, development and manufacturing are way more complicated and somewhat different from development and implementation of GNU-Linux or FreeBSD.

Boeing and Airbus derive their core design knowledge of wings, which make their airplanes fly, from centuries old experiments by others who dreamed of flying – starting with kite. Later, addition of wings and engines to propel aircraft forward and up to its flying plane plus electronics, improved and modernized airplanes manufactured by both companies. But, each is built based on different design philosophies – Boeing with its conservative approach and Airbus being more progressive. In the end, the final result is the same if everything works as intended and their jets don’t crash.

Different comparison, from the above, must be made between FreeBSD and GNU-Linux, where FreeBSD is focused on core system development and operations that involve manual input by end user during installation and configuration which require basic knowledge of FreeBSD by the user. On the other hand, many modern GNU-Linux distributions for casual users focus on ease of use with point&click GUI for OS, application installations and system operations.

In conclusion,
Working with FreeBSD, as the operator, is similar to that of a developmental machinist in an aircraft industry. Modern GNU-Linux with its GUI for automated installation and operations requires operator equivalent to a rivet installer on the aircraft production line, in both Boeing and Airbus.

 

[Jose]

And the name of the company that implemented it all? I can remember what their building looked like, and what street corner it was, but I have forgotten the name.

Project Monterey?