The future of NetBSD

[Charles M. Hannum]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 05:44:00PM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Andy Ruhl wrote:
> >On 8/31/06, Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de> wrote:
> >
> >>BSD is about an operating system, not about a kernel.
> >
> >Bingo. Good point. This point is lost sometimes.
> >
> >I believe NetBSD has the proper philosophy in regards to the entire OS
> >as well. I don't want apache built in, for instance.
> 
> This is a silly definition (imho) which I first heard Stallman use, but 
> seems to be spreading.
> Every book on operating systems that I own, or have read, defines an 
> operating system as the kernel. Different applications, including even 
> shells, are not the operating system.
> 
> But that's just my opinion, of course. But most of all, I don't see the 
> relevance of bringing the discussion down to a hair-splitting of what an 
> operating system is.

Actually, defining (poorly) the OS to include so much else has been a
liability for NetBSD in many ways.  It has massively slowed the adoption
of new software versions (e.g. GCC), for one.  It also contributed to
the perception that a better package system and automatic updates were
not a serious issue.