Subject: Re: Why are there two 4.4BSD dev. groups
To: <>
From: Peter Berger <>
List: current-users
Date: 01/06/1995 09:42:31
Jeff, don't expect to get an answer.  This is one of those questions
that no one wants to talk about in public.  Luckily for you, I'm a 
complete boor.

In article <199501051724.AA120046645@fwhsm14>,
Jeff Kreska <> wrote:
>Why do we have two groups working on the same thing (FreeBSD, NetBSD).

Personality conflicts, and political differences.  In particular, there
was a dispute over copyright on a certain device driver.  Fingers were
(and probably still are) being pointed about this.  I'm sure if you dug
around hard enough you could find enough evidence to blame someone on
either team.  It's sort of irrelevant now, but the various core teams
seem unable or unwilling to unlink the files that hold these bad 

>Would it not be benificial for everybody if these two groups were merged.


>What do you tell someone who asks which group is better (FreeBSD or NetBSD).

The party line is that they are "different."  FreeBSD has an easier install,
and more packages ported "ready-made".  NetBSD has a higher cool factor.
I've seen a number of benchmarks which would tend to indicate that FreeBSD
disk performance is about an order of magnitude faster than either 
Linux or NetBSD, but I haven't checked these myself.  FreeBSD 
supports more PC devices, but NetBSD is being ported to more foreign 
architectures, such as Decstations, Suns, etc.  I've had about equal
success porting programs to either platform.

>I have tryed both and I haven't noticed much of a difference.

>From the user interface level, there isn't much.  The only tangible effect
the split has is to keep developers and users who aren't BSD bigots from
taking either operating system seriously.

  Peter G. Berger, Esq.  Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh
Internet: Phone: 412/481-3505 Fax: 412/481-8568