# Too many "alien" programs in base



## vall (Aug 19, 2017)

Hi. My name is vall, and I am sick with the NIH-syndrome.

Not a big joke, but actually.
FreeBSD has a lot of contrib software from others BSDs:
- from OpenBSD there are mandoc (with mdocml, apropos) m4, lagg, dhclient, pf, carp, crypto, ssh (with sftp, sshd), x86emu, grep, make, netcat, diff3, bc, dc;
- from NetBSD there are rc.d, disklabel (originally written by Theo de Raadt), tmpfs, stat;
- and a bunch from external world, like less, ncurses (from GNU), top, etc.

And there due to the fact that FreeBSD has more developers then others have.
And I love FreeBSD so much, and I learn it, but when I connect to home router thru dhcp I think every time "this is provided by OpenBSD code", or when I learn rc.d I think "oh that was taken from NetBSD".

I tried OpenBSD and NetBSD, but they gives me just a lot of pain, problems and computers slowdowns.

I know that NIH-syndrome is rejected by FreeBSD commutity, but I don't want to think every time system loading that FreeBSD is like a Linux-distro, that just takes all external software together.

I don't speak that search and import ready solutions is a lazy job. For example, ZFS or dTrace are production excellent technologies with no alternatives, or Clang takes a lot from FreeBSD developers, and anyway code if shuffling between projects, because it's open source. But yet again, OpenSSH, mandoc, LibreSSL, OpenBSD Cryptography Framework, PF are so widely using and was created inside parent OS.. Uhh..

And probably question is:
Does you have the same syndrome, do you fight with it, or you don't think about things like that, or you surrended to that feeling and use OpenBSD (it seems they are inspired by NIH-syndrome)?

Thanks for reading!


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## obsigna (Aug 19, 2017)

vall said:


> ... I am sick with the NIH-syndrome ...



This is a joke isn't it? In case it's not a joke, please let me express my hope that the FreeBSD team is heavily beaten by the DNRIW (do not re-invent the wheel) syndrome, so FreeBSD programmers may focus on the tasks of more(1) earth-shaking importance than writing just another less(1).


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## vall (Aug 19, 2017)

obsigna said:


> This is a joke isn't it?


yep, it should look like I am anonymous alcoholic and telling my sad story 
Thanks for new DNRIW notion!


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## ShelLuser (Aug 19, 2017)

What good is open source software when it doesn't get used?  OpenBSD has a (very) solid reputation when it comes to security so I think it would be plain out stupid not to use (or at least provide) some of their shared tools, such as OpenSSH, PF and LibreSSL (though I personally still prefer OpenSSL).

But that's not even the reason why I don't quite agree: if you feel this way then nothing is stopping you from doing things "the FreeBSD way". All the tools you might need are available to you to design something specifically for FreeBSD. Yet then comes the major question: why spend time working on a firewall when there are already 3 different versions available? Each to their own of course, I would definitely support such a project, but it's also fair to say that the efforts put in such a project can also be spend on other more dire issues.

Most of all: src.conf(5)

Don't like certain software? Turn it off 

WITHOUT_CDDL= # Down with the CDDL
WITHOUT_GNU= # Down with GNU! (though it doesn't really do much right now)

And of course every other thingie out there.

I do somewhat agree with you though. I also like to be a little bit of a purist here and there. For example I always replace GNU grep with BSD grep "because". When I started using FreeBSD GCC was still fully part of the base system and once I learned what was going on I quickly adapted to Clang long before it became the standard. And that was mostly based on semantics: I seriously liked (still do) the underlying argumentation about the dislike for GPLv3 as such the decision of the FreeBSD project to work on their own compiler.

Also all my servers are build with WITHOUT_INFO= in affect because I always seriously disliked that stuff. Never understood (nor appreciated) the idea why we suddenly needed 2 "manualpage-like" systems.

But despite all that I'm still happy that it's all being made available no matter what. I may dislike GCC and the GPLv3, sure, but there's still lang/gcc5 for those who _do_ want to use it. Together with plenty of make.conf options to swap out Clang with GCC if you so desire (though I have no idea how good that's going to work).

So yeah... diversity is the name of the game?


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## rufwoof (Aug 19, 2017)

> Hi. My name is vall, and I am sick with the NIH-syndrome.



IMAHO there are TMA


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## Deleted member 30996 (Aug 20, 2017)

vall said:


> And probably question is:
> Does you have the same syndrome, do you fight with it, or you don't think about things like that, or you surrended to that feeling and use OpenBSD (it seems they are inspired by NIH-syndrome)?



I have FreeBSD and OpenBSD laptops, and though I prefer using my FreeBSD boxen am happy with both.

I couldn't care less the pf firewall comes from OpenBSD, am actually glad of it and prefer it over the other offerings.


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