FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success

Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by throw0101c on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @02:15PM (#36604663)

> What sort of argument is this. We need multiple political parties. Therefore, our existence is important even if we secure insignificant votes?

Yes, it keeps userland code honest if you follow the published API and not a specific behaviour. See for example the fsync() saga on Linux:

* https://lwn.net/Articles/752063/

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238121

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19119991

It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure in place.

And having 'external parties' that are not part of the same 'tribal structures' and same zeitgeist / group think can allow for experimenting of ideas.

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by textread on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:28PM (#36607415)

Thanks a lot for the lwn article suggestion.

Dave Cutler(Windows NT) too found the DEC support to be a safety test for cleanliness.

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by voxadam on Thursday July 06, 2023 @06:40AM (#36613902)

Considering that Cutler worked at DEC for 17 years, where he was instrumental in the creation of VMS, I'm not surprised.

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by throwawaylinux on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @11:53PM (#36610976)

> It's the same reason why porting to obscure CPUs can be useful: DEC Alpha was never popular, but supporting it kind of forced Linux to be 64-bit clean in some ways, so when amd64 came along there was already a bunch of infrastructure in place.

Nitpick (and you didn't necessarily imply otherwise), but x86-64 was a latecomer to 64-bit ports in Linux. SPARC I think was next after Alpha, and MIPS, PARISC, IA64, PowerPC at least all came before x86-64 was merged.

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by IntelMiner on Thursday July 06, 2023 @04:26AM (#36612910)

Wasn't the Alpha port the first chip it was ported to back in the 1990's? I know the Amiga people did their own thing but I don't think it was ever properly merged back upstream

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by throwawaylinux on Thursday July 06, 2023 @07:37AM (#36614307)

First 64-bit CPU, second CPU of course after 386. Which I guess you mean.

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Re:FreeBSD at 30 years: Its secrets to success by IntelMiner on Sunday July 09, 2023 @02:24PM (#36657344)

I mean you can't "port" something to its first CPU. You'd be writing it for that CPU initially

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