# The Trillion Dollar Kernel



## rbelk (Mar 1, 2010)

After reading the Slashdot entry, The Billion Dollar Kernel, I thought that the work that went into BSD would be a lot more than that. Since BSD was actually part of UNIX and all the work to make 4.3BSD NET/2, and the followers. What should the BSD community say our Kernel was worth, The Trillion Dollar Kernel! 

Mods, if this needs to go into another thread, please move it!


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## oliverh (Mar 2, 2010)

Their calculation is refering to 'manpower' and *BSD cannot win such a fight. But then nobody really cares.



> "Competition doesn't really enter into it for most of us," Lucas stated. "You don't see FreeBSD developers sitting in a smoke-filled room plotting the overthrow of Microsoft. We sit in light, airy rooms and plot where to get the best drinks."



Well, we shouldn't try to fight Linux either - there is nothing to win, you can just lose lots of quality.


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## fronclynne (Mar 3, 2010)

I would say that the GNU* tools and userland utilities are at least an order of magnitude more valuable (& important).  FreeBSD uses (some of) 'em, most linux distros use 'em.  Their portability was probably at least as important to linux's growth & domination as the kernel itself.



* cave!  I have unfathomably foul opinions about rms & the GPL that growing from my respect for the mods and admins I will not print here, but some of the GNU stuff does, in fact, work.


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## oliverh (Mar 3, 2010)

>I would say that the GNU* tools and userland utilities are at least an order of magnitude more valuable (& important).

Considering the work involved since the 80s, surely yes. Quality wise it's a rather different story.


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## phoenix (Mar 3, 2010)

The BSDs use some of the GNU tools (GCC being the largest), but there are several active projects underway to remove them from the base install of each BSD.


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