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BSD BOF at LinuxWorld
Going to LinuxWorld this year? Robert
Bruce, head honcho at Walnut Creek CDROM, writes "There is going to be a
BSD BOF at the New York Linuxworld on Thursday, Feb. 3, from 5:30 p.m.
to 8:30 p.m. We are in room 1D05, Jacob Javits Convention Center, near the conference area in the lower (2nd level down) of Javits.
You do not need to be a Linuxworld attendee to come to the BOF. Everyone
is welcome. There will be representatives from BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD
and OpenBSD."
If you're after installation CD-ROMs, or a bite to
eat, this is the place to be. You might even be able to get one of the free Daemon Horns that will be given away. The BOF is being
sponsored by BSDI, Walnut Creek CDROM, and BUNY (BSD Users of New York).
Actually, the birds of a feather session will be in the room with the title:
"BSDers Anonymous"
(J/K!)
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Developers who do not wish to be coerced to give away their work are free to use code whose creators have not imposed, as a condition of use of that code, that source be made available to any changes that they make, and that the users of said code are not allowed to arrange that the government be able to coerce people not to freely redistribute their changed code.
Not all code on the planet is GPLed; there's plenty of non-GPLed code that said developers can use, and they can also write their own replacements - they have alternatives to "twisting in the wind".
Its purpose, at least in part, is to arrange that code based on GPLed code be made available, in source form, to all who use that code, and that recipients of that code not be enjoined from further redistributing the code.
This may, as a side effect - perhaps intentional - hurt commercial programmers, by "forcing" them to use code other than GPLed code; however, not providing source to software packages could also hurt commercial programmers trying to build something atop that package, by preventing them from seeing how the code works and thus figuring out how to make it do what they want, and preventing them from fixing said code if bugs in it get in their way.
I could believe that Stallman also wants to eliminate commercial software as well; however, I have seen no evidence that the sole purpose of the GPL is to prevent programmers from making money for their software, period - for one thing, given that not all software is GPLed, it cannot completely prevent programmers from making money from their software.
{Free,Net,Open}BSD are free-as-in-speech, as well as free-as-in-beer; the BSD license just happens to allow one to make derivatives of that code that are not free-as-in-speech (or not free-as-in-beer).
Yes, if Solaris ever became "freely available and open source", that might be cool.
However, I've yet to see any signs of that happening; the term under which Sun have said they'll make source license available don't seem particularly like "open source" to me:
(emphasis mine).
No, it doesn't. It tries to say "if you use this code, and if you make available binary code based on it, you must make available the source as well, and must not restrict anybody from giving away what source and binary code, based on that code, you've provided them."
If you don't want to have to give your code away, don't use GPLed code. "The government's guns and courts" are not being used to force people to use GPLed code; they could be used to force people who choose to use GPLed code to make available the source to their changes to that code, and to prevent the people who made those changes from "using the government's guns and courts" to prevent others provided with that changed code from giving it away.
They're not taking away your freedom to write non-free code. They're just taking away your freedom to use their code to write a non-free derivative of that code, and thus to take away the freedom of the recipients of code based on GPLed code to get the source and to give away that code and any additional changes.
Yes, the GPL restricts your freedom to use GPLed code to write non-free code - just as most traffic laws restrict your freedom to drive at 300 km/h on a public highway. If you want to drive that fast, find a private race track (or head over to Germany and drive on an Autobahn, although I suspect they might get peeved if they've imposed a speed limit due to, say, road conditions, and you ignore that restriction); if you want to write non-free software, write it entirely by yourself, or base it on code with a license that allows that.
If you don't like the restrictions imposed by the GPL, don't use GPLed code - write your own replacement code.
Some proprietary libraries are available for a fee. But in many cases, the code isn't available at all - for example, if you wanted to use the display code from MS Word as your own rendering library. Of course it is Microsoft's choice whether they wish to make the code available as a library, just as it is the copyright owner's choice whether to license a program under GPL, LGPL, BSD or whatever.
You might complain that if something is a library, it is spiteful to deny it being used in proprietary software. But remember that the library didn't have to be released at all - the copyright owner might have kept it for his own use, or never bothered to write it. That would be just as bad.
Perhaps it will help to look at it like this. If you want to use a proprietary library such as Motif, you have to pay for it. Some libraries are more expensive than others; some are very expensive indeed. If you don't want to pay, you have to find some other code instead. But it is the copyright owner's choice how much to charge, and if they wish to charge a ridiculously high amount, that's their right. Obviously somebody is prepared to pay that, and of course you're not forced to use their library if you don't want to.
Now consider a GPLed library. In this case there is also a price - but it's not money. The payment asked for using the library is that you make your program GPLed. If you think that price is unreasonable, you are free to not use the library. But there will probably be others who think it's a fair price and are happy to pay.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Every proprietary library does this. For example, suppose you are not allowed to modify the library's source code. This restriction applies to you, and you are also forced to restrict your customers in the same way.
And if the library has a ten-user limit, then any software you distribute using the library will have a ten-user limit. So the library is affecting the terms that your users get for your software.
If you consider the program+library as a whole, taking the terms for the whole work to be the conjunction of the terms for both parts, then the library's licence is restricting the licence of the whole work. If the library doesn't come with permission to distribute it, then your program as a whole would be illegal to distribute. Of course you might have wanted such a restriction anyway, but the library has forced it on you.
Not really - the final program's copyright will be shared between you and the FSF (or whoever). To distribute it, you must find terms on which you both agree. That's how copyright law works (IANAL). If rms wanted to use some of your code in Emacs, he would require your agreement to distribute the resulting work, and you could insist on any copying terms you wanted. Of course, he might not agree and would probably decide to do without your code :-)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
But that would be effectively useless if the library your program includes (whether by static linking or dynamic linking) has a stricter restriction. The program is useless without the library, therefore any restrictions on the library restrict the program as a whole.
Oh really? Try writing an MFC application and distributing it with full source code under a BSD licence. You can't because Microsoft won't allow their MFC code to be distributed in that way. Yet MFC is an essential part of your program, just as essential as any part you wrote yourself.
In some cases library copyright owners restrict you from distributing your program at all, for example if you bought a 'student' licence for the library.
So logically, something which is the joining-together of program + library will have shared ownership. I don't think it's been proven in court (IANAL) whether linking your code with a library makes your code a derived work of that library. It seems this should certainly be true for static linking, dynamic linking is a bit murkier.
That's because your car does not contain the tools as a part of it (and you probably owned the tools to start with). If you photocopied sections of a book and stuck them into your car's manual, the book's copyright owner would be able to stop you distributing the manual unless you removed those sections. This is a silly analogy though.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Just a quick reminder:
GPL: you can use this code in your own programs, but they have to be GPLed.
Proprietary: you can't use this code in your own programs at all.
Which one is more 'spiteful', as you put it?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Bastard Operator From...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
A slightly clearer comparison:
GPL:Proprietary:
It seems to me that if you can accuse a GPLed program of 'destroying livelihoods' by not allowing proprietary derived works, you can level exactly the same accusation at MS Office. In fact Office is slightly worse - you can't use their code at all.
(And please let's argue about what the GPL and other licences actually allow, rather than what you think their 'purpose' might be.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
like this having a meeting.
Zen Master Jack
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
BOF's go back to the earliest days of USENIX (the original Unix gathering, started in the early '80's long before commercial Unix even existed), though the term was probably "borrowed" from some still older source. So in a sense, both definitions are the correct ones! The BOF's are the ones most likely to know what BOF's are...
Too many acronyms.
Ok, I admit it, I must be stupid or something because I don't know what "BOF" stands for. Can someone please briefly illuminate me?
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
I'm a BSDI support rep, so in a way, I oughta be able to go, but I guess I can just hear about anything exciting from here. Sure wouldn't wanna miss this one, though.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Uhm. Pending bankruptcy?
;-)
;-)
BOY are you gonna look stupid in about two or three days.
As I said, I *really* wish I could be at this one.
(I can't discuss internals in any real detail, but I can say that "pending bankruptcy" has not been an issue in living memory.)
As to the "support rep" thing: At the end of the day, I can say that I know of a concrete way in which my job has made the world a better place for my customers. I don't have to be up until 10AM, I don't commute, I get 3 weeks paid vacation, I get paid trips to standards committee meetings, I get however many sick leave days I end up needing, I get all the "normal" bennies you expect from a modern job... And did I mention that I don't have to commute, at all, ever? It takes me 25-30 *SECONDS* to get to work in the morning if I oversleep.
I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I think it's important that people know that support is *not* as sucky as some people think it is.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Simply checking the jargon file we see:
/B-O-F/ or /bof/ n.
BOF
1. [common] Abbreviation for the phrase "Birds Of a Feather" (flocking together), an informal discussion group and/or bull session scheduled on a
conference program. It is not clear where or when this term originated, but it is now associated with the USENIX conferences for Unix techies and
was already established there by 1984. It was used earlier than that at DECUS conferences and is reported to have been common at SHARE
meetings as far back as the early 1960s. 2. Acronym, `Beginning of File'.
Now, if the acronym was not contained in the jargon file, I would have gotten quite angry. Nice to have it, but it would have been nice if they said what the hell a BOF was somewhere in the "article"
_joshua_
Never heard of ROFL. In my haunts it was always ROTFL - "Rolling On The Floor Laughing."
"It tries to say if you use this code, and if you make available binary code based on it, you must make available the source as well..."
But it says a lot more than that. It also says if you use this code, which is a library and intended to be used as such, with code I don't agree with, you may be sued. It says if you port my code to a completely free desktop like KDE, you may be sued. It says if you conduct a private beta test of Corel Linux, you may be sued.
"Yes, the GPL restricts your freedom to use GPLed code to write non-free code - just as most traffic laws restrict your freedom to drive at 300 km/h on a public highway."
That highway is not mine, despite the misnomer of "public" in its name. I have to follow the rules the highway's owner. This is not an abridgement of freedom. However, the GPL attempts to impose restrictions on stuff outside of itself. It says in effect, you have to drive 300kph on this highway, as well as all other highways attached to it.
"If you don't like the restrictions imposed by the GPL, don't use GPLed code - write your own replacement code."
Believe me, I don't. I have much more respect for my users than that.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
GPL Library: any code that links to this must be GPL
Proprietary Library: any code can link to this
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'm willing to follow the rules of the library. If those rules happen to be paying a lot of money, or not selling my software to certain countries, or even dressing up like a chicken, that fine. If that price is too high, I won't use the library. With this, I am in full agreement with you.
However, there is one crucial difference. GPL libraries tell me what restrictions I have to put on my own users. They are dictating terms to a third party. No other license that I am aware of does this. Even if I have to dress up like a chicken and pay $10000 and promise not to sell to their competitors, the ProprietaryIncLib++ does not tell me that I have to ensure *my* customers also dress up like chickens.
Now, I'm perfectly willing to pass along the GPLd libraries license to any of my customers, and would likely accept terms that require me to. And it could require that my own source code be available and all that. But by demanding, even indirectly, the terms that *my* users get for *my* software, the GPL is stepping beyond the bounds of copyright. They are attempting to place their own copyright ownership over software that is not theirs.
So, of course, I am not developing with any GPL libraries.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"And if the library has a ten-user limit, then any software you distribute using the library will have a ten-user limit."
The ten-user limit comes from the proprietary license. I could legally put a 100-user or unlimited user limit on my own. It is the proprietary license that is limiting, not my application. They are getting the program from me, and the library from its owner, since such restrictive terms would not let me distribute runtime libraries with the application. So that can express their displeasure with the library manufacturer.
"If you consider the program+library as a whole..."
But it is not a whole. If I program using the MFC, my application doesn't suddenly become part of Windows, or owned by Microsoft or anything. It is a completely separate entity. It is I that chooses whether to distribute it or not, I who decides whether my users can distribute it or not, and Microsoft has nothing to say in the matter. To put it another way, my application may be "derived" from the library, just as my child is "derived" from me. However, my child IS NOT me.
"Not really - the final program's copyright will be shared between you and the FSF (or whoever)"
No it is not. Not even the FSF claims this. And it is certainly contrary to classic copyright law (as opposed to the shoddy digital millenium copyright thingy). My program is solely mine, and the library belongs solely to the author.
It is impossible to live or labor in isolation. This was the principle reason the concept of property arose, so that one could know what was whose when people worked together. If I build an automobile using Craftsman tools, Sears has no legal claim over my car. And if I use a GPL library, the FSF has no legal claim over my work. They can certainly dictate how I use their library, but they demand nothing of my users. That the GPL seems to be claiming this is probably its weakest point. The FSF lawyers say there is nothing wrong, but until it has been tested in court, the concept of passing terms onto third parties is legally uncertain. Until such a time that a court finds in favor of this concept, I will rightfully consider my own software to be mine.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"Oh really? Try writing an MFC application and distributing it with full source code under a BSD licence. You can't because Microsof won't allow their MFC code to be distributed in that way."
First of all, my users don't need the MFC source code. Why even bring this up? Nowhere was I claiming the proprietary libraries were free software. Duh!
However, I have rights from Microsoft that lets me redistribute the runtime libraries to MFC. I CANNOT do that with a GPL library and a BSD application. The most I could do is distribute the GPL source separately from my apps source, and let the user compile them themselves, with a warning that if they give the resulting binary to a friend (it would wrong if they didn't) they could find themselves in court.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"I don't understand why it always has to be BSD vs. Linux."
Actually, there have been two "battles", BSD versus Linux and GNU versus Linux. The BSD v Linux battle is over which has a better TCP/IP stack, can handle terabytes of data better, can process more http requests, etc. In short, the technical drivel that all OS advocates relish. I mean, you should have seen some of the NT threads versus OS/2 threads flamewars!
But the other battle, GNU versus BSD, is much bloodier. And the only reason the battle is against *BSD is because it isn't GNU, period. Every time a BSD related article gets posted to the main page of Slashdot, there will be a dozen posts talking about the shoddy licensing practice of BSD. Or the myth of how BSDI stole FreeBSD. Or any of several other silly things.
The trouble is, this battle is just as stupid as the other. I would ignore it myself, but I keep getting arrows lobbed at me. Every time I have announced a BSD licensed application on Freshmeat, I receive hatemail. Sometimes they take the form of pleading (please make it GPL so that I can use it too) or warning (don't you know that someone will steal your app?). But there's a significant contingent out there that just can't tolerate non-GNU or non-GPL stuff.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Hmmm, this sort of verifies my statement that GNUzis are and always have been antagonistic towards the free speech of others.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No, RMS doesn't want to take over the world. But he does want to eradicate all closed source software, even if it means that programmers can't get paid for programming. And he's not talking about just Windows. He's talking about Navigator, SAP, Oracle, Photoshop, every piece of hobbyist shareware, and yes, even the BIOS in your computer. He was publicly stated that it is more moral to wait on tables than to write a closed source program.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
and we CERTAINLY didn't use long acronyms
Well, IANAHY and IWNHITDOTBBS but ITAWY that the TLA's are going DTD. I mean, WTF do we need TLA's, FLA's, FiLA's and other NLA's? NOIENMFLBIMCWTSTLA's, we could do as well with OLA's only. AAE we could say "W T F" instead of "WTF".
ITAWY: I Totally Agree With You
IANAHY: I Am Not A Hacker Yet
IWNHITDOTBBS: I Was Not Here In The Days Of The Bulletin Board Systems
TLA: Three Letter Acronym
DTD: Down The Drain
WTF: Why The Fuck
FLA: Four Letters Acronym
FiLA: Five Letters Acronum
NLA: N Letters Acronym
NOIENMFLBIMCWTSTLA: Not Only Is English Not My First Language But I Must Cope With These Stupid Three Letters Acronyms
OLA: One Letter Acronym
AAE: As An Example
W: Why
T: The
F: Fuck
OITIWSH: Ok I Think I Will Stop Here
BTW (By The Way), what does mean the CERTAINLY acronym???
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Go to the official web page of the Linux World Expo, and you'll learn in this case BOF stands for "birds of a feather".
BOF stands for "Birds Of a Feather" - small, common-interest groups that meet at conferences.
You can limit the maxproc for every user, and prevent the fork bomb from taking you down. As for that Linux Fork Disarmer thing that the AC mentioned, I don't get it. Makes as much sense as gtk frontends to kill(1)
-bugg
This posting is devoid of fact. The FreeBSD (and *BSD) community has multiplied many times in the past year. I hate to tell you, but there are thousands of BSD users that read this site.
I can back my statement up with statistics such as:
-) peak 250 people in the efnet #FreeBSD channel which is comparable to the number in linux related channels;
-) exponential increase in unique users on the freebsd mailing lists;
-) increased commercial use of FreeBSD. This includes Intel, Pair.com, UUnet (Canada, U.S., South America), Savvis, Whistle Communications, US West, and older adopters such as Hotmail and Yahoo! inc, as well as many other companies with name recognition.
Now provide proof in your argument or numbers to nullify mine. Otherwise it is useless supposition.
When LW was scheduled Microsoft was still fooling around with RC2 and telling the press to expect a 4Q 1999 release of Windows 2000.
But what you say may have some merit. Perhaps Microsoft sought to buy a few extra days before their new OS was exposed as a total security nightmare.. With all the talented hackers and sysadmins out doing the Linux/BSD thang, surely no one would find the bugs!
.sig: Now legally binding!
> Linux is fully POSTIX compliant.
Oh dear. Tell me, which POSTIX standards does Linux comply with? What are the manyfold advantages of the "ELF file format" over..what are the alternatives again? I'm sorry to say that you come across like someone who is just repeating what they think they heard someone else say. However, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The various BSDs have lots of features, large and small, which Linux doesn't have - if you were really interested you can find out more yourself by doing a bit of research. And similarly, Linux has lots of features, large and small, which the BSDs do not have.
Even supposing there were no feature differences, they're just different. Some prefer Linux, some prefer the different structure and environment of BSD. Why should we consolidate and join the collective just because Linux also works similarly?
And then there's the fact that the BSD license is commercial-friendly (i.e. companies can do what they want with the code, not what Richard Stallman wants, namely forced disclosure of code. This is NOT friendly to the business models of most software companies). Some of us (probably most BSD developers) are coding under the BSD license because they want to raise the bar of software quality, so all companies everywhere (yes, even the evil ones like microsoft) can use the same high-quality code as a starting point even if they want to keep it closed-source. It's about providing tools to everyone, regardless of their ideology towards keeping software open.
As someone else said recently, without this "copycenter" (thanks to Kirk McKusick for this wonderful expression) approach to software, there would not BE an internet today and we'd all be using OSI for our networking.
Why must we all be forced into a one world, one OS, one true Linux (or Microsoft) way? Isn't the ability to choose one of the things the "Linux movement" is supposed to be about? Or does "freedom to choose" only mean "freedom to choose Linux".
I do write good and readily available open source code; however, I also want to promote ethical behavior. Hence my desire to raise awareness of the origins, mechanisms, and effects of the GPL.
Of course, simply stating that people should avoid the GPL and GPLed code isn't sufficient; one must also present them with a feasible alternative. This is where the BSDs come in. Besides being excellent work in their own right, they also provide a viable alternative to the (unfortunately) GPLed Linux. So, happily, the goals of discouraging use of GPLed software and promoting BSD UNIX coincide. I do both.
--Brett Glass
About 2 weeks ago we moved over from NT to BSD, I'm sure you're thinking didn't you think of linux first? Of course we did, my roommate and I both run linux on our personal boxes. But we wanted to try it out.
Here we're our initial reasons:
The name BSD "feels" more like a REAL server
I'd head that it can handle mass load, e.i. hotmail, yahoo
Not much to go on...
So we installed the puppy and found it actually easier to get up and running then a linux box, the port collection is dreamy, all the files we're pretty right where you'd expect them. it's just very simple and logically laid out, with no extra crap thrown in.
So now that it's been two weeks I've found
I don't know jack about being a unix sys admin
Fork() is a very dangerous thing (lpmud was crashing the box due to a infinite fork)
Perl scripts rule
Sendmail is a bitch, bind is it's horny cuisine
Linux has more apps, BSD has less crap. Nuff said.
-Jon
this is my sig.
I always read people calling BSD a cathedral model and Linux the bazaar model. I really do think you have it backwards.
BSD has forked. There is no single, one true BSD. I don't think you get more bazaar than that.
Linux on the other hand, has Linus on high, with his archangel Alan. It is true that you can send a patch, but I think a prayer has more of a chance.
I think Linux started out as a bazaar and has changed into a cathedral. And think that BSD started out as a cathedral and has changed into a bazaar.
BOF stands for "Birds of a Feather" its essentially a "special interest meeting"
anyone who's been involved in USENIX related activities would know.
wow, I've been slashdotted!!
-- FreeBSD - The Power to Serve NetBSD - of course it runs NetBSD OpenBSD - Armed to the Gills Three tools in our
As one of the sponsors of this BoF (I am the founder of the BSD Users of New York), I don't understand why it always has to be BSD vs. Linux.
/. In the comments, several StarMedia employees, including myself, made reference to BSD's high perfomance under network load. None of us here are against linux.
Approximately a week ago, there was an interview with Larry Augustin posted to
In fact, BUNY has cooperated with LUNY, LXNY, and NYLUG on a number of occasions here in NY. There seems to be no rivalry here. We have *preferences*.
So people, lets stop the BSD/Linux Flamewar, lets stop the mockery, lets stop criticizing. Its all about tools. I prefer BSD tools, you may prefer GNU/Linux tools.
My dad prefers Makita, and his friend prefers Craftsman...so what?
So anyone who wants to know what its really about, I invite you to show up.
If you are that closeminded as to not learn something, thats *your* problem, not mine.
-Pat
-- FreeBSD - The Power to Serve NetBSD - of course it runs NetBSD OpenBSD - Armed to the Gills Three tools in our
While I understand the reasoning, I don;t particularly agree. This is probably about the only forum the BSD's will get at this conference, as its LinuxWorld. However, I wouldn't publicize it at USENIX or anywhere else.
and Yes, its BSD news, Nik posts what he thinks is BSD news, and a BoF at a Linux dominated conference is definitely it.
-Pat
-- FreeBSD - The Power to Serve NetBSD - of course it runs NetBSD OpenBSD - Armed to the Gills Three tools in our
Mindshare does not a good operating system make.
What makes a good operating system is dedicated users,
developers and documentors, and *BSD has all of these.
It's not possbily to simply dismiss the hundreds of developers
with direct CVS write access to FreeBSD, for example, or
the thousands of code submitters, 3000+ ported applications,
and countless users of FreeBSD and *BSD, including
Verio, UUNet, HotMail, and countless others.
BSD provides many features that Linux doesn't, in the
same way that Linux provides many features that BSD
doesn't: they're neither mutually exclusive, nor
incompatible. BSD provides strong security, and a
clear orientation towards scalable service providing:
take the recent jail() code added to FreeBSD, allowing
providers to easily create virtual machines for each
virtual domain customer. Cool feature, and clearly
targetted at one the the prime FreeBSD audiences,
network service providers. The feature is not in Linux.
Sure, it could be easily enough, but it's not. Similar
to Linux support for dos emulation: sure, it could be,
but it's not.
Some of the great strengths of both Linux and BSD lie
in the applications that run on it, and you'll find that
almost all serious applications run on both: XWindows,
KDE, Apache, Samba, and many more.
And there seem to be no signs of either the Linux or
BSD worlds slowing down in gaining mindshare: while
Linux is a few steps ahead on the curve to popularism,
that doesn't mean that BSD isn't on the same curve,
or that it's not going in the same direction. As with
Linux, FreeBSD has seen exponential growth use,
increased media coverage, and adoption by major
consumers and vendors.
An exclusivist attititude is not an open source attitude:
if the goal is a better operating system, being able
to select best of breed features from multiple source bases
leads to strength through diversity, not stagnation. We
see stagnation in places where there's a single vendor,
not multiple vendors competing, and cross-pollinating.
rwatson
Your argument is nullified by your apparent ignorance to both operating systems. Anyway, I will present my perspective.
First, Linux does not do "much more than BSD's do". This statement sounds like a corporate propaganda campaign that doesn't actually have any real arguments. Next time, please properly articulate features that you value in both operating systems.
Second, the world does not rotate around Linux. You may think that all the applications that you use in Linux were in fact specifically made for it, but this is in fact false. Many, many applications were not only developed to be specifically cross platform, but also were primarily developed on other UNIX-like operating systems.
"users want to feel 'superior' by using a 'real' UNIX"
These people are either ignorant or feel they can make weak statements such as that just because it's slashdot.
"having nostalgic fixation on an ancient code base"
Which of course brings about the fact that all the BSD's are in fact not full of ancient code but are being constantly modified just like Linux.
Under the direction of your argument, we could also say that we should stop using gtk or kde and use the other, stop using sendmail and use qmail etc. Different people use and develop for what they like. Your argument is just a weak minded attempt to bring uniformity where it has no place.
"Whatever technical advantages BSD may have over Linux, Linux will simply incorporate"
That's a stupid argument. Replace BSD with microsoft or SCO or solaris and you'll see how stupid it is. If you meant straight code lifting, who cares. It doesn't take away from the BSD projects. Those interested will contribute.
To elaborate upon my choices of OS:
- 2 co-located freebsd i386 shell and web servers. According to my benchmarks, Freebsd was faster serving static web pages. This, however, is irrelevant, given that I never come close to maximizing the 100mbps interfaces on each, and each is within that performance threshold. I like the ease in which I can secure freebsd, as well as the standardized setup where I can easily determine where everything is. The ports collection (along with packages collection) were also a very good plus (ports, because I often do makefile and minor source mods before make install). Another factor was also the fact that I had used FreeBSD in the past (at a time when Linux 2.0 was a joke compared to FreeBSD), so I found no compelling reason to switch to linux
- 1 2xp3 (debian)linux db2 server. Couldn't get db2 working properly on freebsd to even benchmark (linux base 6.1 wasn't available at that time). Linux SMP is also reportedly better, so I just thought I would use it. I wish I had a sparc with solaris with oracle, but budget was a consideration.
- 1 p200 FreeBSD firewall and nat gateway. I do not like ipchains. Netfilter seems to be getting there, but not yet. I don't particularly like ipfw for freeBSD, so I use ipfilter for filtering. I also use dummynet for traffic shaping (which is find superior to the solutions offered for Linux). It also doubles as a samba server.
- 1 FreeBSD 4.0 workstation. I enjoy playing with new features, so I'm running -CURRENT here. I use X, with the Window Maker window manager. I also have some kde applications installed. I do some java, c, and quick and dirty perl development here. I also run some multimedia applications. I also have cvs, samba and postgresql running here. The new jail chroot environment is also really interesting, especially for large shell login environments. Anyway, I do not see any compelling reason to go to Linux here. My ata 66 hard drive works fine, window maker works fine, kde applications work fine, performance is also comparable to linux in this configuration.
- 1 windows 98 workstation. I use editplus for most coding (as well as developer studio). I use ie5 heavily. I play counterstrike, a half-life mod when I have free time. I sometimes use word to format specifications documents and letters. I also create PDF's. Another reason to keep it around is proprietary media formats such as windows media, real and the sorenson codec in quicktime.
As you can see, I have plenty of reasons to use multiple operating systems.
How can FreeBSD, a non-commercial entity, go bankrupt? This is like saying the Linux kernel is on the verge of going broke.
I didn't hear of any Linux booths at the FreeBSD Con last october - even RedHat didn't show. I thus conclude that Linux is on the verge of death.
You are a twit.
This is neither fair nor just.
--Brett Glass
IANAL = I am not a lawyer
AFAIK = As far as I know
BOF = Bastard Operator From (...)
Dammit BSD people, what the hell DOES "BOF" stand for???
What bugs me is that the acronyms have been getting longer. Earlier in my formative BBS years, the longest you had to contend with was "ROFL" = Roll on the Floor Laughing or even the absurdly long (for an acronym) ROFLMAO (MAO=My Ass off) Now AFAIK and IANAL are actually common...I tell you, it's obscene.
In my day, we respected our elders, ate our vegetables, didn't say dirty words like "Microsoft" and "EULA" in polite company, and we CERTAINLY didn't use long acronyms. (Of course, BOF is not a long acronym, but I've spun far enough off-topic that I can't stop now)
Jeez, when do I see somebody prefix their slashdot post with:
OYMBAINIUMEAPMSOS = Obviously you must be an idiot not immediately understanding my el33t acronymz. Ph33r m3 spl01t2, Or something
Regardless of what you may have read above, I agree with you. Support the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/
To add to what was said up there:
I'm an RHCE, and run Mandrake at home. I haven't bothered to mess with *BSD; when I got into throwing M$ off the desktop, Linux was what was ready to hand.
That said, I have one thing for all the daemon-bashers out there: Where would any of us be, any of us including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, et alia ad infinitum nauseumque, without BSD 4.3 networking?
If you jerked all that Berzerkeley code out of "The Internet", The Net As We Know It would cease to exist (at least until we could re-engineer all that, each vendor his own way, and we all know what THAT would entail....)
Bash M$ all you want, I don't care. Leave the daemons alone. Maybe they don't understand that free as in beer doesn't measure up to free as in speech... But without that original codebase and the original idea of giving away sofware, no enthusiasm for Unix in the university setting, no Internet as we know it, and therefore nothing for RMS to get excited or pissed off about, nor anything for Linus to base an OS on. Without the Daemons, there ARE no Penguins. And without Penguins, there would be no Slashdot. And without Slashdot... ~~*&%$#
NO CARRIER
:)
This is offtopic. Sorry.
I was skimming the replies to this article below my threshold (usually 2), and I saw a bunch of the usually trollish first post (well, first 30 posts this time) garbage. I noticed something really weird about the posts, though.
The article is dated:
"Tuesday February 01, @02:31PM"
BUT, if you read post #1, you see that it is dated:
"Thursday January 27, @07:54PM EST"
I haven't looked at the slash code yet, and my perl isn't really that good anyway, but:
What the heck?
Despite the general consensus around here, BSD is a very worthwhile operating system, that in many ways is much easier to use than Linux. I am curious what BOF stands for, though? Anyone figured that out yet? Despite what might be said, however, BSD is not "jumping" on the linux bandwagon at all. It's just that when people start looking around for alternatives to Windoze they see Linux... and if they look a bit further they bump into BSD. I run both Mandrake and FreeBSD (with my primary gateway being FreeBSD for stability) and I would highly recommend some Slashdotters to try out both (if you have the machines and the chance to hook both up as gateways/firewalls... even not connected to the net, it's an interesting experience) because the differences between the two are both interesting and informative. Yes, BSD is at a Linuxworld conference, but that's only because there's no BSDworld. All I'm saying is it's good to see both great operating systems represented.
I'm going to be at linuxexpo, it's in fact going to be my first linux trade show despite the fact that I've been using linux for close to 4 years now.
:) but I don't see it that way.
The BSD's are not the enemy of linux. They're just a "cousin" so to speak. I don't approve of their licenses, but hey, that's not really the issue. The issue in my mind is that they're bringing good free software to the table for everybody to use. Now, some people may think of BSD as the ugly third cousin that we try to keep locked in the closet
It is quite interesting to see linux/BSD bigots lock horns over the advantages and disadvantages of the two - as in the maturity of BSD over the momentum of linux, the centralized development of BSD versus the bazaar development of linux, et al.
Regardless of what you may have read above, I agree with you. Support the Free Software Foundation http://www.gnu.org/