Submitted by MidnightBSD 0.4-RELEASE hit FTP servers today and the new version includes a custom package management tool, “mport”, that was developed with sqlite3 and libarchive. The packing list and all metadata is stored in SQL and a tool is provided to query the package database directly. This allows scripts and third party tools to easily integrate with the package system.
Where are these times when all such news were welcomed on OSNews with much more enthusiasm than revelations about new Microsoft Windows or Xbox today?
Neither I’m ironic nor nostalgic, but… The time has changed for open source enthusiasts. Alternative operating systems and software are now taken over and capitalized by big companies. No one is afraid about GNU GPL license anymore, as all these lawyers have learnt how to make money out of free licenses. Good bye free software? No, I don’t think, so.
To be fair, there are a lot more options nowadays. I used to have a dream while in collage: try to find a job where I could work professionally with Free Software. To my good fortune I haven’t done anything but work with Free Software.
None of these small projects are revolutionary, so to speak, but evolutionary. It’s not a bad thing at all, of course, but maybe we saw then as revolutionary before, thus the bigger enthusiasm.
Go GNU, go BSD.
Y’know, your comments do strike a cord with me, especially the wanting to work with free software. I went through Tafe (College here in .au) and Uni in the early 90’s when we were exposed to a mix of commercial systems at these institutions and some of the proto-form Free systems. The difference then was huge in that the commercial software tended to be better documented, currently documented definitely more stable where as the free software you were a lot more tolerant of the inconsistencies, outright strange behavior etc. 20 years later, the commercial systems are in decline, the free systems are in the majority and the quality, chaos and reliability is still about where it was. The way I measure this is the amount of time spent fluffing around with commercial systems (VMS, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris) vs Free ones .. Linux being a prime candidate, BSD to a lesser extent (I’m quite fond of NetBSD and TheoLinux). The free OS’s always end up taking a great proportion of time compared to the commercial stuff.
Anyway.. just a pet peeve and a constant in my life for 15-20 years. For me, I find it quite disappointing.
Sodki,
“I used to have a dream while in collage: try to find a job where I could work professionally with Free Software. To my good fortune I haven’t done anything but work with Free Software.”
I’m curious whether you did mean working “with” free software or working “on” free software? I think it’s easy to find companies willing to use free/libre software (ie LAMP/etc), but the bigger hurdle seems to be landing an employer willing to sponsor FOSS contributions. I’ve never encountered any companies (in the local SMB market) who did that.
If you do work on free software projects, do you mind talking a bit more about what you do and your company’s market?
In my case it was “with” Free Software. Seems to be all the place now, but before I was really scared of not being able to find a job that allowed me to work with it.
wawrzyn1313?… o_O
… update packages without waiting for new release. Wow. I’m sure they have other great features, too, because ability to update packages is quite important. And I definitely like usage of sqlite for that.
Are you being sarcastic? I hope not, but I can’t tell…
In dubio pro reo!
Let’s assume he was ultra-sarcastic about the fact that the special feature advertised for this distro is yet-another-package-manager. Reminds me of this classic comic: http://xkcd.com/927/
PACKAGE MANAGEMENT WARS WAGE ON
I haven’t checked out MidnightBSD before.
I think I’m going to have to check this out, as well as some of the other BSDs I haven’t really looked at before.
…never heard of MidnightBSD. About 6.5 years ago I ran BSD for 6 months as my work machine, before we changed our VPN system. I really enjoyed it, I even came to really appreciate KDE.
Now Windows is required for work…
I feel your pain. Is it truly Windows or just some strange Kerberos/LDAP settings combination that’s required?
It IS possible, but you would need to get an exception from the systems people. The company I work for has taken extra good care of me and I don’t really want to rock any boats.
Talking about package manager, it’s a downgrade.