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"BSD", as some idiot quoted it, is NOT a "License", it's a *Copyright*. There is a huge difference there. Get it right.

The BSD style Copyright is now best represented by, and deployed as, the following...

https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/src... https://www.freebsd.org/copyri...

With additional discussion here... http://landley.net/toybox/lice... https://urchin.earth.li/~twic/...

You should also know that the next major release of FreeBSD 12.0 will be out in 1.5 weeks :-) You can liveboot the RC3 sampler from USB today.

Copyright is a legal concept emblazoned in the United States Constitution and in many other countries around the world. To make a lot of legal stuff as simple as possible, it means "if you write the code, you own it and have the right to say what happens to it". Since you are the owner, you now have to do something to allow usage by someone else. That "something" is the license. BSD is a license, not a copyright. BSD always was more permissive than most other licenses, and over the years it removed the few requirements that it had, until now the "0BSD" license is almost indistinguishable from "Public Domain" software. However, it is best to put a license somewhere in your code stream, just to let the people who want to use your code that they can and under what circumstances.

Wrong. There are multiple Unix variants that run on micros and were during the 1980's, too. Xenix comes to mind rather rapidly (ran mostly on 68k), SunOS also was around in the 1980s along with early versions of IRIX. Those are not mainframes or mini's either, but they weren't exactly micros, either. You also might not be aware but Amiga's (and a lot of other 68k variants) could run a special version of SysV. NCR also had "regular" computer that ran it's Unix variants. Check out Micro implementations of Unix by Jorn Berg. You'll find out that Unix was a lot more widespread on non-mainframe/non-minicomputer machines than you seem to believe.

They [Android] use busybox to provide the typical userland utilities

Since marshmallow they use toybox rather than busybox. I think even before that there was a minimal subset of commands needed by init etc, which they had implemented under a BSD license, and busybox was installed on development builds only to give a full set of command-line tools to developers.

In the beginning an OS was the least expensive part of the equation - anything under $100 was no big deal when the basic box, monochrome monitor, 4k, 16k, or even 64k of ram, keyboard, and one 5-1/4" floppy would set you back thousands of dollars. 640k? Dream on. These were not PCs.

Before the PC, there was no shortage of operating systems. For example, CP/M ran on over 3,000 types of machine and those machines were already on a downward spiral in terms of price/features. Other OSes were available as well. The ability to switch computer manufacturers and "maintain software compatibility" wasn't a big deal when you had all sorts of computers being used in homes and offices. Home users were using pretty much everything under the sun, businesses were using Xenix, custom systems written in BASIC, whatever worked. The lack of a common OS didn't stop these machines from proliferating.

Even after the intro of the PC, people kept buying other systems. McDonalds used TRS-80 model 100s in their franchise kitchens, TV stations used Microware OS9 for various stuff, Amigas were favoured by people looking to print up fliers and stuff because, when Apple finally released a GUI, the computer (the Lisa) was just too darned expensive at $9,999.00. The same problem with the Mac when it came out at "only" $1,995 (quickly raised to $2,495). Or you could buy a Color Computer Model 1 for even less - and people did. The CoCo 2 and 3 were both able to run Microware OS9, a very memory-efficient multi-tasking environment with multiple terminals on each text screen in 64k, (and multiple graphic screens, on the Coco 3 in 128k). And you could even run Microsoft Flight Simulator on the Coco3.

People really didn't give a damn about the OS. It was "whatever ran what I wanted to run," and there was plenty of software available for all these different systems. It was the declining price of hardware that put a computer in every home. The original PC, adjusted for inflation, would cost more than a small car. Simply too expensive to put in every home.

You might want to read this wrt tinycc: http://www.landley.net/code/tinycc/
Also, no x86-64.

Wait, wait...he FORKED a project because he didn't like the source control software they were using???

Then he complained when people didn't flock to his superior source control version?

That dude is a moron, and I don't know why you care. That entire rant was the single most stupid thing I've heard and everyone who read it is now dumber for it. May God have mercy on his soul.

You might want to read this wrt tinycc: http://www.landley.net/code/tinycc/

Jesus. That is the saddest story I've ever read. I want to find that guy and give him a hug.

That's a pretty good summary of why I never bother contributing to open source any more, even though I have tons of code lying around including cool modifications of some pretty big-name projects. I've been lucky enough to never work with douchebags in the salaried, closed source world. I sure as hell will not suffer it while also not making any money from my efforts.

It's already been done at Penguicon. Steve Jackson officiated and Eric Raymond was best man.

Rob Landley has a project called Firmware Linux that can do compliation of ARM binaries inside QEMU which might help sidestep the issue of code that does not support HOSTCC (at a speed price).

Its worth noting, however, that the Linux kernel as it stands simply doesn't work with any compiler other than GCC.

May have been true once, but it hasn't been for a long time. I recall seeing news about using Intel's compiler to build a Linux kernel years ago. More recently, Rob Landley's been doing some work with tinycc to get it up to snuff for kernel compiles, with the goal of generating a system that can "...completely rebuild itself, under itself, without any gnu code on the hard drive."

I am now reading the book Rebel Code and it is interesting to notice that exactly this was suggested years ago. If the heads at Sun listened to the "sourceware" suggestion back then, they could have been miles ahead by now...

According to your definition, both Solaris and OS X are BSD since they are direct descendants of the Berkeley Systems Distribution.

http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/unix/bigtime line.html

crude and outdated