Abstract FreeBSD: Looking forward to another 10 years : The FreeBSD project is now over 20 years old, and the Berkeley Software Distribution from which it originated is almost 40! The last 10 years have seen some fairly radical changes in the mobile and embedded computing markets, with the number of FreeBSD-based appliances also on the rise. What this means for FreeBSD, and what the project can learn from the various members of the Fortune 500 who have put BSD technology to good use, will be the topic of this presentation.

1. FreeBSD: Looking forward
to another next 10 years
Jordan Hubbard
EuroBSDCon 2014

2. So, let’s look back at where we came from
first…
Prediction: I can’t win this either way…

3. FreeBSD 1.0
From jkh@whisker.lotus.ie Tue Nov 2 14:51:38 1993!
Path: sran230!sranhd!sranha!wnoc-tyo-news!nec-tyo!nec-gw!sgiblab!
spool.mu.edu!agate!agate!usenet!
From: jkh@whisker.lotus.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard)!
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.announce!
Subject: FreeBSD 1.0 RELEASE now available!
Followup-To: poster!
Date: 1 Nov 1993 16:12:20 -0800!
Organization: Lotus Development Ireland!
Lines: 61!
Sender: cgd@agate.berkeley.edu!
Approved: 386bsd-announce-request@agate.berkeley.edu!
Message-ID: <JKH.93Oct31223943@whisker.lotus.ie>!
NNTP-Posting-Host: agate.berkeley.edu!
!
The first "official" release of FreeBSD 1.0 is now available, no more!
greek letters - this is the "production" release ...

4. Happy 20th Anniversary!
FreeBSD is now almost 21 years old
(in two months, it can drink legally in the USA)

5. Our first distribution media
(OK, I’m lying)
FreeBSD 1.0

6. Our actual distribution media
1.2 MB
FreeBSD 1.0

7. Some of the consequences...

8. The 1.0 ports collection

9. My first FreeBSD dream build machine...
I paid $1600 for my first 1Gb hard drive to do builds...

10. My first FreeBSD dream laptop
That is
<= Warner!

11. First conference (1999)

12. Commercial interests
20 years ago
• Internet Service Providers (large and small)
• SOHO web servers / routers (very DIY)
• Major services likeYahoo!, Hotmail, etc.
• Basic developer desktop machines
• Majority of FreeBSD machines were physical PCs
that ran off of AC power
Key take-away: FreeBSD’s role was fairly overt

13. 20 years later...
New install media: 64GB USB thumb drive. Holy crap!

14. 20 years later...
RB-Pi: SBC Far more powerful than my first FreeBSD
machine. Cost: Under $50 (with storage card)

15. 20 years later...
My dream laptop has evolved (and has BSD included)

16. 20 years later...
• FreeBSD release version is up to 10.0
• Over 24000 ports (vs 70!)
• Hundreds of committers, from both academia and
commercial backgrounds
• Sources of long-term funding (Foundation, other
sponsors)
• … But the commercial interests and overall market
have changed significantly

17. Hey BSD: Let’s see that license again!
The GPLv3: Scaring the crap out of lawyers since 2007
The GPL experience

18. Commercial interests
Today
• FreeBSD is the underlying OS technology for routers,
load balancers, security monitors, file servers, etc.
• Basis for “software appliances” like pfSense, FreeNAS
and quite a few others
• Even the base OS for a very popular gaming console
• “Embedded” market is morphing and exploding
Key take-away: FreeBSD’s role, and even its name, is now fairly covert

19. Some hyperbole (which does actually makes a point)

20. Unix OS deployments today
(waaaa?)

21. And in the Enterprise…
• “BYOD” movement has killed desktop growth
while giving IT departments severe heartburn
• “Cloud” software / storage / computational
resource consolidation have all but killed the DIY
datacenter
• Much better automation choices (*stack, chef,
puppet) gives rise to the “2 guys with their laptops
in a coffee shop” social media / enterprise startup

22. How we see ourselves
OS Designers

23. How the world sees us
OS Designers

24. Closer to the truth
OS Designers

25. The rise of virtualization
• vmware, Xenserver, Hyper-v, even bhyve are all
acceptable hypervisors now. Majority of OS
deployments (and devices) are no longer physical.
• Automation tools work hardest to erase the notion
of machine personality by pushing OS installation and
config metadata to external sources
• Being virtual and/or automated means the entire
environment is far more dynamic; individual OS
instances not installed/configured by mere humans

26. The rise of mobile
• More Unix machines are running on batteries than
are plugged into AC by several orders of magnitude
• Talking to one or more radios has replaced physical
cables
• The obvious: Power consumption and dynamic
interface / connection management is important
• Less obvious: High-level debugging and telemetry
technology become critical to success

28. What does this all mean?
• We need to be open to fundamentally new
approaches and ruthlessly cull what is no longer
demonstrably useful to the 99%
• We need to be willing to shamelessly steal^H^H^H^H
adopt things that are working elsewhere
• We need to take on some big-picture challenges that
will appeal to the next generation of hackers (where’s
the next mountain?)

29. One Project Idea
All OS / App configuration data
• We need a lingua franca format yesterday!
• Whether it be XML,YAML or JSON, we also
need a single API to read / write / abstract away
the details of finding config data.
• Existing tools /services need to convert their
legacy formats into this one and use the same
API or the tower of babel will persist

30. Working Example
• All OS and app configuration data in OS X and iOS are XML
plist files, even GNU emacs and X11.org’s preferences!
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/
PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>SULastCheckTime</key>
<date>2014-02-09T02:45:56Z</date>
<key>cache_fonts</key>
<true/>
<key>done_xinit_check</key>
<true/>
<key>no_auth</key>
<false/>
<key>nolisten_tcp</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

31. One Project Idea
A centralized event notification system
• You just can’t deal with:
• Radios powering up and down at odd times
• Network configuration changing rapidly
• A node changing its identity almost entirely on the fly
• Critical system caches needing invalidation
… without a centralized way of being able to know about
these sorts of events!

32. • notify(3) APIs in OS X / iOS and corresponding notifyd daemon
• Send it a SIGUSR1 on OS X and you will see a huge number of notification names
and their subscribers in /var/run/notifyd_pid.status - it has become insanely useful!
"com.apple.system.lowdiskspace.system" uid=0 gid=0 333
17 32 port
!
"com.apple.system.timezone" uid=0 gid=0 333 slot 7 = 1
1018 1 memory
1011 10 port
1011 8 memory
1011 6 port
!
"com.apple.system.powermanagement.SystemLoadAdvisory" uid=0 gid=0 333 slot 13 = 19
406 44 port
944 12 port
406 35 memory
!
"com.apple.system.config.network_change" uid=0 gid=0 333 slot 39 = 129
190 17 memory
845 28 memory
845 26 memory
!
"ids-device-nearby-0FC85E3A-7779-4EAA-AD02-70292707A33C" uid=0 gid=0 333
229 30 port
402 19 port
257 30 port
242 23 port
Working Example

33. One Project Idea
Service startup and wrangling
• /etc/rc.d is quite sophisticated for what it does,
but the paint on /etc/rc is obvious
• Too many things need to know explicitly about
dependencies (when can I start? What has to
start before me?)
• Power wrangling and automation depend on being
able to start and stop services easily and at will

34. Working Example
!
• I’m trying really hard not to suggest launchd here (so I won’t)
• The idea of registering everything up-front with a broker and
then letting IPC / timers / HW events start things from there (in
cascade fashion) is still the right architecture
• Even the linux die-hards have essentially grasped the necessity
of systemd (even though they’re going to hate on it for awhile
longer)

35. One Project Idea
Telemetry & Remote Debugging
• We really need a centralized way of being able
to collect data from appliances / mobile devices
• The NSA don’t need our help (they already do
this upstream) but FreeBSD downstream end-
users DO
• Debugging the software stack on mobile devices
is hard. It’s time for remote debugging support

36. One Project Idea
Reference phone / tablet ports
• Running on SBCs is excellent for bootstrapping,
but there’s no “real world” hardware to support
(displays, radios, accelerometers, etc)
• Running on hardware you can actually use and
carry around validates power / telemetry work
• Real Hardware forces you to think about the
entire software stack

37. In summary
• We need to become more lego-like (and toss those
legos we don’t need out of the box) in our
architecture
• The hardware platforms we choose need to be
genuinely relevant in terms of mass appeal
• We need to be more willing to learn from those
who have gone before us in these emerging markets
(BSD has a bit of a “rep” there)

38. FreeBSD 20th Anniversary Party
FreeBSD:The future is ours if we want it!