• ``As the old saying goes, FreeBSD is about performance, NetBSD is about platform portability, and OpenBSD is about security. So is that still the case?''

  I don't think so, and it probably never was, as I hope for FreeBSD (and OpenBSD too): Each of the BSD projects has more than one goal, and at least for NetBSD, establishing state of the art security is just a natural thing that needs no special emphasis. Likewise, if performance deficiencies are found, the past has shown that they do get addressed. As such, asserting that each of the BSDs has only one goal in mind seems a short-sighted to me, and leads to wrong impressions in the reader that e.g. performance and security are of no concern in NetBSD. Which is wrong. Of course NetBSD is performant, and of course it is secure - we just emphasize something else as our major feature.

  Speaking from a historic perspective, when UCB stopped BSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD emerged (with some detour via 386BSD). With 4.4BSD supporting a wide range of hardware platforms, FreeBSD concentrated on the PC platform only, and NetBSD set the goal to provide a stable Unix(like) platform that behaves equally well on all platforms (as far as the platform allows). Seems NetBSD didn't have to re-adjust its goals so far...

• ``The NetBSD advocates are quick to claim that NetBSD 2.0 now beats FreeBSD in both performance and features. Fortunately, that is just not true.''

  There are a number of benchmarks out there that show differences to this statement. Not all of them, not in all details, but the statement in general is not true any more.

• ``There simply is not anything else in any other OS that is as flexible, easy to use, and full-featured as netgraph.''

  Uhu. While reading the description on what Netgraph is, I wonder: What about System V's STREAMS, which was there um... 20(?) years ago?

• ``Advanced network features and protocols such as SACK, NFSv4, SYN-cache/SYN-cookies, compressed TIME_WAIT, and accept filters allow for fast, secure, and scalable network operations in an ever-increasing hostile and busy Internet. Packet filters like IPFW and PF provide advanced filtering, shaping, and NAT sharing.''

  Um, just for the record, NetBSD has SACK too, SYN-cache etc. is available since NetBSD 1.3(?), a collection of packet filters (IPF, PF) and traffic shaping. I'm not sure what the other features listed mean, so I cannot comment. (Someone please update the NetBSD list of features please!)

• ``Outstanding desktop and laptop support is provided by a number of technologies.''

  Um, like the PCMCIA framework that I hear is based on NetBSD's code? Given it's goal of portability, NetBSD was long made to support a lot of devices, even in a "removable" way, and thus getting drivers working esp. on non-Intel, 64-bit machines helped a lot.

  I agree that interfacing with some vendors like nVidia or groups like KDE and GNOME could be improved, but then KDE runs pretty well out of the box on my PC running NetBSD. :)

• ``The "Ports" collection provides one-step support for over 11,000 3rd party applications.''

  Yes, size does matter. :) I hear rumours that many of these "ports" are duplicates for difference in options and language, and that some do not build properly. To counter this with some number, from the ~5500 packages in pkgsrc, less then 100 (<2%) were broken in the last attempt to build them all. (Details)

• ``NetBSD 2.0 is a significant step forward for NetBSD, but the large amount of stagnation cannot be overlooked.''

  Hu?

• ``It's great that NetBSD is committed to supporting legacy architectures, but how does the effort to do so benefit modern architectures or encourage wider use and more adoption of NetBSD?''

  Portability is more than "supporting legacy architectures", as can be known. It's about making hardware abstractions, and establishing interfaces to easily replace support for code, like change of CPU or bus architecture. This lead to products like the ARM-based "keyboard-video-mouse" switch from Avocent, the PowerPC-based Brocade SAN switches of the Sony PSP TCP/IP stack, just to name a few. And it also serves as a base for FreeBSD's PCMCIA/Cardbus support, FreeBSD/alpha, FreeBSD's bus_space/bus_dma(?) support, I hear. :)

  (Details: various NetBSD-based products from HP, IBM and Sony, MacMini, Xen, products based on NetBSD)

  Maybe some more understanding of the issue and facts at hands should be gained before making more statements like the above.

• There's one statement in Robert Watson's (second) part of the article that I want to emphasize though (in favour of FreeBSD):

  ``This includes doing a better job with PR.''

  Yes please!!!

  I have promoted NetBSD at various joint BSD-boots at roadshows in Europe, and while NetBSD and OpenBSD were present, there were always people asking for FreeBSD which we had to send away. It would be really nice if some FreeBSD people could be found to do some on-site adovcacy at various events. Anyone interested feel free to contact me to coordinate joint BSD activities!

Last, I'm impressed that DaemonNews gave their good name to publish such a statement in such a position.

[Tags: Articles, rants]