Strategic Thinking (was: Re: Speculative: Rust for base system components)

[Cy Schubert]

In message <0EB517DF-376E-435A-B24D-A4964D0F148F at gmail.com>, Enji 
Cooper writes
:
> On Jan 5, 2019, at 07:07, Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at puchar.net> wrote:
>
> >>>> A) FreeBSD needs to become a platform that can host current and
> >>>> evolving virtualization technologies.
> >>>> 
> >>>> B) FreeBSD should be able to play in the container space similarly to
> >>>> Linux. Unfortunately I believe that this horse has left the barn and it
> >>>> may be too late. Then again maybe there is something we can redeem.
> >>> 
> >>> C) Make FreeBSD like others. So why making FreeBSD?
> >> 
> >> Because we offer some technologies the others do not. Unfortunately
> >> inferior and incompatible approaches (similarly: VHS vs BETA, Blue Ray
> >> vs HD) have left us on the outside. Try porting Kubernetes to FreeBSD.
> > no need to.
>
> Actually, not having Docker/Kubernetes support makes it more difficult to rid
> e the CI/distributed system wave, requiring FreeBSD to reinvent the wheel to 
> do CI, and force various groups to write their own homegrown distributed syst
> ems infrastructures instead of leveraging existing technologies.
>
> >> The technologies used today are more than just fads. They are building
> >> blocks onto which future technologies will be built.
> >> 
> > and this is really sad.
>
> Not really. It’s a sign of maturity as most things now run on a “cloud ba
> sed” infrastructure, or small embedded OSes running embedded Linux (not Fre
> eBSD).
>
> >>> Not everyone needs the same.
> >> 
> >> Niche. We should be more than simply a desktop O/S (which BTW I use as
> >> my primary desktop) and we should be more than a simple bare metal O/S.
> > 
> > Simple bare metal O/S is what is really needed.
>
> Not really. As Cy pointed out, in order to ensure that FreeBSD is well-suppor
> ted by large companies (Dell, Facebook via WhatsApp, Juniper, and Sony were s
> ome of the large contributors over the past couple years, along with a host o
> f other smaller storage companies), so it continues to exist in a healthy way
> , it needs to be dynamic and customizable to meet the needs from embedded dev
> elopment up to large-scale distributed systems. A number of these companies h
> ave considered switching away from FreeBSD to Linux because FreeBSD is niche 
> (see Microsoft with Hotmail, Yahoo, etc). Let’s not give developers willing
>  to make the switch more ammunition to do so.

This has everything to do with relevance. Look at where illumos and all 
the other *BSDs are. They're pretty much hobbyist operating systems. 
The discussion on an illumos developers mailing list has given me that 
impression as well.

At $JOB my customers are migrating from AIX, Solaris and even Windows 
to Linux and from traditional Linux to microservices run under 
OpenShift. As I told my manager at $JOB those many years ago, the 
operating system will become a stub. We are now realizing this.

The other thing I see at $JOB is the network is now being virtualized 
using NSX. Our Checkpoint firewalls are no longer physical but virtual. 
FreeBSD with jails and VIMAGE is in a great position to play in this 
space as well. An example might be, at $JOB we are using vRO and vRA 
but it could be as easily done using Kubernetes and ansible to 
centrally manage network of virtual and physical FreeBSD based 
firewalls.


-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org

	The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.