Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run

LiquidPC writes "In this article Jeremy Reed of BSDNewsletter.com talks about installing MicroBSD, what features make it special, troubles and successes I encountered, and the beauty of the BSD license."

Comments

beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

The BSD license is pretty beautiful, if you are MS and you need a TCP/IP stack to steal.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a jerk...this is obviously a post from one of those wanks that wants everyone to have a choice in what license they use, as long as it's the infectious GPL. Yea....choose any license as long as you use THIS one and not THAT one...

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

What a jerk...this is obviously a post from one of those wanks that wants everyone to have a choice in what license they use, as long as it's the infectious GPL. Yea....choose any license as long as you use THIS one and not THAT one...

Use whatever license you like. If you don't mind that you are going to benefit companies like MS and their closed source products, then by all means, release under BSD. The writeup was just trolling anyway, the article says nothing about the "beauty of the BSD license" only that the MicroBSD people didn't even clearly license their product back under the BSD license, something that is permitted under the BSD license.

The microBSD people claim it was just because they havn't finished cleaning up the code.

From the article, it looks like the microBSD thing is pretty shitty right now, maybe in a few revisions it would be OK, but this guy seemed to have tons of trouble with it.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[cetan]

If it's allowed by the license, then it's not stealing. Someone obviously made a concious decision to release the software under the BSD license. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely... the BSD license is beautiful only to our corporate masters. Putting substantial amounts of code under is tantamount to slavery.

The BSD/MIT/X11 license are slave licenses. The GPL enhances your freedom in the same way that laws enhance your freedom by (on the surface) restricting you.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[LiquidPC]

You can't STEAL something that is licensed so people can use it anyway they want. Even if microsoft took the BSD TCP/IP stack, so what? What's the big deal if microsoft is using BSD's TCP/IP stack, it's not like microsoft took it and said BSD couldn't use it anymore. Microsoft should be allowed to take their TCP/IP stack and not having to release all their new source code; the original source is still available if you want to download it. You're making a big deal out of nothing.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lordy I see the light!

Seriously, some software should be made for everyone to benefit from.

cough opengl cough

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least MS got the code legally, unlike Linux

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you are trolling, but the maintainer added in the copyright notices that were required within minutes of the owner sending him an email. This was really a non-issue.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

ar you one who likes warez? You didn't take it from them so you didn't really steal it.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Shelled]

For me the big deal was that after years of development on such a critical network component by the 'best' software group in the world MS dumped it all for community code. They couldn't create anything of comparable quality. MS Winsock anyone?

A side note, I browse at a two threshold and at this point I see two posts. How does such a pro-MS, relatively content-less post such as yours make it to +4 Insightful so quickly?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Subcarrier]

The BSD license is pretty beautiful, if you are MS and you need a TCP/IP stack to steal.

I think it's great that Microsoft can and does use the BSD stack. At least now they are using something that is well designed and follows the RFCs to the letter. Anything cooked up and "optimized" by M$ themselves would in all likelyhood have brought down the Internet in a catastrophic congestion collapse.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[SmileeTiger]

Perhaps because he makes a valid point?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[stripes]

You can't STEAL something that is licensed so people can use it anyway they want. Even if microsoft took the BSD TCP/IP stack, so what?

At the time MS (and even AT&T) were accused of taking code the BSD licence had one more clause then it has now. Basically a credit clause, you had to acknolage BSD in your documentation (and maybe on screen).

What's the big deal if microsoft is using BSD's TCP/IP stack, it's not like microsoft took it and said BSD couldn't use it anymore.

The big deal is BSD asked for one very small and specifc (and fair!) form of payment, and they were denyed. That makes it theft.

Fairly serious theft in my book. The university put in a pretty impressave motion for "injunctave prayer for relief" diring the AT&T vs. BSDI lawsuit on those grounds too, something about "irreparable harm to the reputation of the University"....

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you are trolling but the burglar returned the television and the silverware within minutes of the police arresting his sorry ass.

It's really a non-issue for the homeowner.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

or me the big deal was that after years of development on such a critical network component by the 'best' software group in the world MS dumped it all for community code. They couldn't create anything of comparable quality. MS Winsock anyone?

So?

What you need to understand: it isn't your code, they can do what they want with their code. release your code with whatever license you want.
The developers of code released under BSD style license are just fucking generous. plain and simple.
It's not that they have never considered "Gee, what if someone uses this in a closed source system? Gee, what if someone or some Corp. rips off our code and we get nothing back?". They have considered that possibilty, and they dont care.

Here is the flaming part of this post:

Ideally: "we release completely free source"
Realistically: "People rip off our shit"

BSD style license is Ideals living despite Reality. GPL is Ideals living to confront Reality. You decide what the right lifestyle is for you and let me live the way i want.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[essdodson]

Because some of us have grown up and realized that not everything related to MS is bad. I can only hope that one day you will shed your revolutionary, world domination, Linux zealot ways. I think they even have group therapy for your type. Good luck man, you're going to need it.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[codepunk]

Ahhhaaa and NBM corporate whore...

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[TheSunborn]

But it's also a great help for all the rest of us, who have to network with microsoft software.

Just imagine the problems that could ocour if
Microsoft used a bad tcp/ip stack insted of the bsd one. I mean we got enough problems with dos attack due to buggy web servers.

So the day microsoft take apache, modify it a bit and call it IIS 7 will be a great day for all of us internet users.

Sourcecode want to be usefull not free :-}

Martin Tilsted

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[T-Punkt]

Dude, if something is free you can't steal it. You can take it or not but you just can't steal it.

Yes, I know. Some of you think that freedom is a bad, bad thing...

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a few google searches . . . here is what happened with the BSD license and TCP/IP stack and Microsoft:

MS had ignored the internet for a while, and suddenly found themselves behind. They wanted TCP/IP in the next NT bad. So they went and bought a TCP/IP stack from a small company somewhere, and planned to partly rewrite it with each release as needed. But this third party just handed them the BSD stack. At that time, the BSD license had the advertising clause in it, so not putting that notice in there constituted not meeting the terms of the BSD license, i.e., distributing a work without holders permission . . . "piracy" as MS likes to call it. Note that we don't know that MS knew about it, they could have been hoodwinked by the company they bought the stuff from. Taking BSD code and selling as your own is pretty sleazy.

How was this discovered ? Well, MS NT 3.something had all the same bugs as the BSD stack. What's that, you say ? The vaunted BSD stack had bugs ? Again, hit google and see for yourself.

What was the end result ? Well, before the end of the NT line MS had modified the stack until it was their own, or re-written it from scratch, we don't know. MS gave a lot of money to the Califonia university system and the Reageants changed the BSD license to not have the advertising clause.

Let's reveiw all the lies and misconceptions, on both the pro-BSD and anti-BSD side:

1) MS choose the BSD stack because of the BSD license. No, MS probably thought they were buying all copyright to the code outright, and didn't even know about the BSD aspect; or maybe some engineers did and management / legal didn't. But if MS loved the BSD license, why didn't they just copy the code for free ? So, one may conclude that MS's use of the BSD code cannot be used to argue the BSD license is better than the GPL.

2) MS choose the BSD tcp/ip stack because it was a perfect implementation superior to linux or other alternatives. Well, it certainly had a few bugs. It was faster than the linux one. But likely MS was going to buy whatever came close to working that they could get fast; they only minimally cared about quality. Quality was something they would inject as needed in future vesions, they just wanted tcp/ip in windows NT now.

3) BSD licensed code is in windows till this day. Well, it's in NT 3.something and maybe one version of NT 4, and after that we don't know. One of the gifts the BSD community gives the world is viral code that can sneak into anything and can't be tracked because it's all closed.

4) This episode shows how the BSD license is better for the world because closed source can benefit from the work as well as free software. Well, it's true that non-free software can incorporate BSD licensed code, but the benefit to MS in this particular case is questionable. THEY PAID FOR IT. So saying "BSD was used by MS and MS saved money and thus all of us saved money through cheaper windows licenses and a more stable, faster, windows" is just wrong. There are other examples of BSD use in non-free software that make this point more clearly.

5) Microsoft is a proven hypocrite because they pirated other people's code. No, as in the case of MS piracy in France, what happened was that MS bought code that someone else had pirated, and MS probably bought that code unknowingly (else they would have downloaded it rather than pirate it, right ?)

There are a couple of other common spins on this story that also don't hold up under examination of the facts, but I can't remember them now -- search usenet for some of the flame wars.

Summary: the BSD tcp/ip stack in windows has become a misunderstood proxy for all sorts of messages which it doesn't support.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

The BSD license is useful, but when someone says something meaningless like the "beauty of the BSD license" for something like this distro, it just sort of pisses me off.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[dinivin]

We've already established that MS ignored the advertising clause of the BSD license when it used the BSD TCP/IP stack. What makes you think that they wouldn't just ignore all of the clauses of the GPL?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

Freedom can be bad. Suppose you make really cheap guns that work really well, and you decide to give them away completely free. Then some terrorist comes along and takes a few thousands of your guns, for free.

The BSD license allows companies like MS to take the code for free, and close the source, and possibly hurt the industry by extending the standard with proprietary, closed source, extensions, and then forcing people to use them through monopolistic practices.

So yes, the obvious conclusion is "If You Support BSD You Are Supporting Terrorism (TM)"

Of course this post is partly joking, but the analogy is somewhat fair I think.

BSD licensing has a place, but in my mind, that place is very limited. A small program that you don't care if people use for whatever reason, like something that is mostly educational as a code example, or a launching point for building another app that isn't very useful in and of itself, that is fine for BSD.

If you don't care about what MS or other companies are doing with your code, then by all means use the BSD. That is what it is there for. If you would rather guarantee that your code stays open source no matter what, then GPL. If you don't mind closed source people linking with and using your code, so long as they don't extend it without giving back to the community, then LGPL. If you don't want people to use your code at all, then use a more restrictive license, or close source it. It's all very simple.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[smash]

Yet again...

If someone wants to take *BSD and add proprietry crap, and try and sell it:

a) It will be closed, have no benefits - it will die
b) It will be closed, compatible, and have support - it may flourish. You pay for the support.
c) It will be closed, have additional features, and if it is worth the money, people will buy it. If not (ie, its just *BSD with a name change) people wont bother.

I don't see the problem.

Not everyone who develops software wants to control the use of it. Some people just want to advance the industry.

I mean, so what if MS steals the entire FreeBSD codebase, and calls it Windows NG (new generation) for example. The public gets an OS that doesn't suck, with proper industry support - and people who don't want to use it can continue to use the open-source version.

Its a more generous mindset, and I for one, am all for it.

smash.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

d) It will be closed, not compatible, and forced upon a unsuspecting public through monopolistic practices and lawsuits, and become the de facto standard that is a moving target for people trying to interoperate through contant forced upgrades, and patented extensions.

You forgot that option.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

... and yet, this has not happened.

I smell an agenda.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should mod you down for such a terrible analogy.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least MS used a *decent* tcp stack.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Arandir]

The GPL would have required Microsoft to GPL any of their own software that linked with the TCP/IP stack. They would not have done so, and would not have used it to begin with. Thus by using the GPL you have limited the role of the software. If that's your goal, fine, but it wasn't BSD's goal.

Sometimes you get better results if you don't automatically assume everyone is a thief.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Arandir]

You are assuming that Microsoft is the only proprietary software developer. Microsoft may indeed do what you suggest, but that's not the fault of the license, since Microsoft has already demonstrated that it will break the law in spite of court orders forbidding it to.

The typical proprietary software developer knows that they can't successfully fork a Free Software project into a proprietary one and get away with it in the long term.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Dahan]

I think it's great that Microsoft can and does use the BSD stack.

Well, they can, but they don't... which is fine too.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[TummyX]

If it was GPL, Microsoft would have been forced to release the source for Windows, Office and any other applications that link with Winsock.

Geee...that makes a heap of sence. Now I know why GPL is 'viral'.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[lactose99]

Technically: If the license were GPL'ed, the same microsoft would have been forced to "release" any enhancements they made. Thus, a GPL has a way of getting improvements back into the main release.. and is likely to win out over a BSD in the long run.

Depending on the your definition of the word "win" above, I think you missed the point of your own argument. If the TCP/IP stack was GPLed, then MS would never have used the code to begin with. This of course assumes they wouldn't have just stolen the code without any credit or redistribution of the code back to the community, which I wouldn't put past them (as companies like SonicBlue are so fond of lately). This would have caused MS to either A) find a TCP/IP stack which would allow them to make the code proprietary (as is the case with the BSD license, the advertising clause that was recently removed nonwithstanding) or B) write their own TCP/IP stack and not release any source. In either of those cases, a GPLed TCP/IP stack would NOT have made it into any MS products, and with the current market realization of MS products, would have severely limited distribution of this said GPL TCP/IP stack to non-proprietary products.

In any case, I believe that BSD-licensed software has just as much, if not much MORE, a chance to live-out its existance as GPLed software. Chances are BSD-licensed code will get more use than GPLed code, as both free software developers and (gasp!) comemrcial companies can both use the code to their liking. You just won't see it as much, as not all of the products that use BSD-licensed code will release that code for others to see. Whether this is a good or bad thing is really up to each indivdual, which is why arguments about GPL-vs-BSD licensing on /. is just a way to bring out the trolls for a day.

(Note that I don't think the previous poster is a troll, but arguments like these often fail to recognize both sides of the coin)

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhaaa and NBM corporate whore...

Ahhhaaa, a communist!

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[cscx]

You are a moron. They didn't "steal" any TCP/IP stack. When NT was first being written, they needed a TCP/IP stack, so they purchased a third party stack. Of course, that turned out to be the BSD stack. Well, soon after that MS wrote their own TCP/IP stack from scratch, and replaced the BSD stack with it.

What's that attribution in the Windows release notes to Berkeley, you say? That's for utilities like ftp, telnet, nslookup, etc -- the legacy console Unix tools that are still in heavy use in NT, taken from BSD code to ensure compatibility with Unix users.

Why don't you shut your cake hole when you don't know what you're talking about, and quit spreading FUD? No wonder you're on my freaks list... afraid of the truth, are we, Mr. Zealot sir?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the answer you're looking for involves "head" and "up his arse" you do the math.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[kirkjobsluder]

I suspect that part of the difference is that the BSD license reflects more of a research focus where the primary criteria for winning is recognition. Some innovations are best released into the public domain because the public is best served by the maximum number of implementations, commercial and open. The openess of stories from the brothers grim permits hundreds of interpretations.

In this scenario Microsoft is no worse a freeloader than any other entity that uses the software.

But this is one inconsistancy w/ gpl advocate logic. Copyright should not be used to create artificial scarcity for ideas because they are nonrivalous resources but public domain should be discouraged because ideas are rivalous resources.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot lunix luser.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[T-Punkt]

> Freedom can be bad. Suppose you make really cheap guns that work really well, and you decide to
> give them away completely free. Then some terrorist comes along and takes a few thousands of
> your guns, for free.

Yeah, you are right. I should sell those cheap weapons to those evil terrorists and make money that way. And I should do the same with the cheap bread I made to feed the hungry.

Sorry, I can't take someone serious who writes up such stupid unrelated nonesense like you. (I stopped reading after the second paragraph BTW).

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[NDPTAL85]

I'd rather be a corporate whore than a anti-corporate, counter-culture loser.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[GigsVT]

You should have finished reading, you would have seen I was partly kidding about the analogy.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats, enough strawmen in one post to feed a Hurd!

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

A side note, I browse at a two threshold and at this point I see two posts. How does such a pro-MS, relatively content-less post such as yours make it to +4 Insightful so quickly?

I hate to break this to you, captain, but nearly half of slashdot crowd use Microsoft products one way or another. I know people who never even installed linux, but read /. on a daily basis. Not everyone is a zealot.

I give credit where it's due.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[chez69]

Even a GNU HURD?

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[smash]

d) It will be closed, not compatible, and forced upon a unsuspecting public through monopolistic practices and lawsuits, and become the de facto standard that is a moving target for people trying to interoperate through contant forced upgrades, and patented extensions.

I don't see how this differs from the company (who shall remain nameless) creating their OWN defacto standard that is a moving target etc...

At least if they steal the BSD licensed code, it will inherit some or all of its good points, and even if the company spends enough time deliberately breaking it (which would be silly), its still no different to them writing their own new implementation ('cept maybe its less buggy - is this a bad thing?).

Try thinking outside the "if im too slack to make money off my code, im going to be jealous of anyone who does" mindset once in a while...

smash.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[arkane1234]

and now you understand why there is more than the gpl when it comes to GNU. There is also LGPL, which is more than available for use by commercial entities.

Of course something so closely tied to the kernel is definately going to be GPL. So, what would the benefit be of having the code available to be snagged by everyone and used legally without releasing their changes?

Consider it a 'save your ass' maneuver.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[pyrrho]

but they would also begin to become large contributors, affecting the BSDed projects direction.

Berkeley, for example, didn't want to have Microsoft feed code back to Berkeley... ick.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[TummyX]

Of course something so closely tied to the kernel is definately going to be GPL. So, what would the benefit be of having the code available to be snagged by everyone and used legally without releasing their changes?


The benefit of allowing everyone to benefit from your code?

If the TCP/IP stack been released under GPL Microsoft would not have used it AT ALL and Windows would have been stuck with an inferior stack. Because the BSD stack was under a more free license (than GPL), all of Microsoft's customers benefitted. You seee, there was a benefit for everyone because it was under a BSD license. Had it been under GPL, the modifications/improvements microsoft made would not even exist for ANYONE because microsoft never would have used it.

There is such a thing as giving without FORCEFULLY taking back.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[adadun]

At the time MS (and even AT&T) were accused of taking code the BSD licence had one more clause then it has now. Basically a credit clause, you had to acknolage BSD in your documentation (and maybe on screen).

The BSD license still states that you have to acknowledge the copyright holders in the documentation. And Microsoft does that, actually. Look at the copyright section of the Windows XP release notes; there are several acknowledgments to people who have released their source code under the BSD license. It gives credit to Berkeley and other univesities that have large portions of code released under the BSD license, and also to people like Luigi Rizzo how have written a lot of BSD licenced code for the FreeBSD project.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[BalkanBoy]

This means that the BSD folk have a lot of class, perhaps too much for everyone's good.. whereas the GPL folk are probably just as classy, but expect others to inherit that class, rather than savagely curtail it...

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[alphatool]

as a major contrib. to both linux and *BSD (you don't know who I am(haha)), I can say that BSD is dead. This is bacause of its class, even though it is far better than anything else. Here's hoping that OS X.2 keeps *BSD alive.

Re:beauty of the BSD license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux contains BSD code. Including the networking stack. Go figure!

I can write a stripped down BSD too.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "NanoBSD":

printf("Welcome to NanoBSD.\n");
printf("You've reached the end! Have a nice day\n");

Re:I can write a stripped down BSD too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your code has no main() function. How the fuck do you expect that to work ?

Re:I can write a stripped down BSD too.

[Anonymous Coward]

your comment has no account attatched to it. How the fuck do you expect anyone to take you seriously? Pedantic fucking troll

Re:I can write a stripped down BSD too.

[arkane1234]

You sir are a karma whore.

Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this has been slashdotted. Poor poor server....

I don't understand...

[Taylor_Durden]

I don't understand why people ever think this type of operating system would ever be useful. The time you invest into "finding the IP address of your primary name server" and figuring out what "fstab, hostname.fxp0, hosts, myname, mygate, resolv.conf, sysctl.conf" mean will negate any postive effect this has on your development time/bank account. The only reason anyone would want to install an operating system like BSD or Linux would be to increase their geekness factor, and that can be easily accomplished by not showering for a week.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

xtra! xtra! Man TROLLS ON SLASHDOT!!!!!

more news at 11.

Re:I don't understand...

[KewlPC]

As much as I hate feeding trolls, if you're using a BSD operating system, chances are you already know what the IP address of your primary name server is.

If you don't know what at least some of those files do, then why are you posting in the BSD section of Slashdot?

Nevermind that MicroBSD isn't close to a 1.0 release yet.

Re:I don't understand...

[iggymanz]

any *serious* install of network Windows also requires parameters corresponding to each of the configuration items you are complaining about. Of course, if you're one of those who just plops in the CD and runs through the wizards taking the simplest/shortest/least effort path, then you are one who doesn't know how to set up Windows either.

First and Third Person, eh?

[VortexVertigo]

Why don't people just say; "Hey, I wrote this great article, post the link on Slashdot please." Instead of; " just wrote an interesting . I... um, THEY make some interesting points.

Re:First and Third Person, eh?

[mackstann]

heh, thats pretty funny. i know liquidpc, and unless he is hiding something (ok hiding alot), then he is not the guy that wrote the article.

Re:First and Third Person, eh?

[HimalayanRoadblock]

Looks like its Reading Comprehension Time®. The review is written entirely in the 1st person. The poster posted in the 3rd person. Then he included part of the interview, in 1st person, in his 3rd person post. Are you diggin me? Sorry for being kind of long winded but I've had no kind buds.

Re:First and Third Person, eh?

[LiquidPC]

Pardon me. I did not write this. I just pasted the introduction they used, as it fit well, and I didn't s/I/he/. It happens.

Micro?

[dbrower]

[i was going to moderate, but there was nothing worth anything in the discussion so far]

I don't see what is 'micro' about the distro. The default installation takes 160M. Back when I have my AT&T 3b1 running, the whole thing fit on a 10M disk with 3M left for my files. No tcp/ip tho, but does that really take 150M?

-dB

Re:Micro?

[Bush_man10]

160M default install is a lot better than a 400-600M install with other *Nix and BSD flavors. Be a lot easier to get this distro down below the 50M mark I think.

Re:Micro?

[Istealmymusic]

Putting pico in front of a unit is simply easier than writing 0.000 000 000 00x (or twelve figures before the decimal point) before your number and putting micro in front of a unit is a short way of writing 0.000 00 (or 6 figures before the decimal point) before your number. So one micro has 1 000 000 or one million pico units in it. [ source]

So as you can see, MicroBSD, referenced in this article, takes 1,000,000 times more space than PicoBSD. Using compiled-assembly /bin utils, combined into one executable which checks $0, such as busybox--one is able to strip down the OS to fit on a 1.44Mbps floppy disc. I would suppose MicroBSD is aimed to fit on a 700MB CD-RW, with the ~600MB left over for user files thanks to the rewritability of RW media. As you can see, there is a large gap between Micro and PicoBSD, each fills their own niche.

Re:Micro?

[friscolr]

160M default install is a lot better than a 400-600M install with other *Nix and BSD flavors.

install OpenBSD using only base31.tgz etc31.tgz and bsd, you'll have an install that takes about 96mb and has more than enough tools to run pf, bridging and altq (all for setting up a very useful firewall), and even has pop server, sshd, apache, perl - plenty for a basic server.

Re:Micro?

[GigsVT]

Freesco does most of that and fits on a 1.44mb floppy. Linux based. Web server, bridging, routing, dial in, web management interface, plenty for a basic server. Takes about 4 megs of RAM. What were you saying again?

Re:Micro?

[friscolr]

Freesco does most of that and fits on a 1.44mb floppy. Linux based. Web server, bridging, routing, dial in, web management interface, plenty for a basic server. Takes about 4 megs of RAM. What were you saying again?

i was saying...

[Linux] file /sbin
file: no such file or directory
[Linux] which file
which: No such file or directory
[Linux] uname -a
uname: No such file or directory

find worked *very* different too, and even ls was different (not alpha order, try `ls /bin`)

I'm sure Freesco has a very definite, good place.
What i was saying is that a base OpenBSD install, with full range of commands that you will already be used to, takes less than 100mb.

Re:Micro?

[GigsVT]

What i was saying is that a base OpenBSD install, with full range of commands that you will already be used to, takes less than 100mb.

Yes, of course, they all have their place, but I agree with the earlier poster, microBSD is sort of a misnomer. compactBSD or smallishBSD seems better. :)

Re:Micro?

[friscolr]

compactBSD or smallishBSD seems better. :)

hehe - yeah, maybe KindofBSD, WannaBSD

Re:Micro?

[Schubert]

emBSD does it better in IIRC under 32MB

Re:Micro?

[Anonymous Coward]

From their Web Site

Seems someone decided to /. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.

641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz

Re:Micro?

[Empty Sands]

Or DYI:
# du -sk
17219 .

cf. http://www.nmedia.net/~chris/soekris/

Re:Micro?

[arkane1234]

and Debian's basic install (great for a firewall) is about 80-90 megs, also.

I had Linux Router Project running from one floppy for my firewall for the longest time. I'm running BBIAgent (one floppy) now because I got lazy. (Java interface over the network, etc)

OpenBSD is very sweet though.. nice and secure.

Microbsd is not dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just too small too see so no one thinks it exists.

Better choices...

[Krapangor]

aren't usually very successful. Very often it's only hype and FUD.
The failure of BSD is the best example.
Superior license (not blocking use for embedded devices), superior IP stack (why else is everyone ripping it off) with full functional IP6 support, superior kernel structure (that's why MAC OS X adopted it and not lunix), better file system, better performance ...the list is virtually endless.
And where are we know ?
The OS world is ruled by bug-ridden Windows and hobbyist Linux with their very own design flaws (security, no microkernel etc.). And *BSD, this high quality, scientific system is obviously dead.
There is some support out there but these groups are all dying in the long term.
Sad but true.
Sometimes I think if this Darwin "survival of the fittest" stuff is nothing but a huge scam. At least Darwins theses would imply that *BSD would in fact dominate the OS market, right ?

Re:Better choices...

[gtaluvit]

BSD is not at all dead, if it were, you wouldn't be seeing all this new development. As for Darwin's survival of the fittest, why do you think Apple called the underlying BSD system Darwin. :)

Re:Better choices...

[Peaker]

Probably a troll but:

Linux and BSD are both just *nix.
*nix is *nix is *nix. Crappy ACL-type security (as opposed to Capability Systems security [EROS, for example]).

Performance differences are negligable. The areas where BSD and Linux do differ, usually the Linux way is better known around. The Stack is ripped off in closed source OS's because Linux doesn't use a license that supports Closed Source distributers.

In hardware support, Linux probably beats BSD, but I haven't followed it much.

Also, Linux has a native Debian distribution, and many others, while BSD has second-hand ports of such and its native distributions are in many oppinions far worse.

Re:Better choices...

[drinkypoo]

Sometimes I think if this Darwin "survival of the fittest" stuff is nothing but a huge scam. At least Darwins theses would imply that *BSD would in fact dominate the OS market, right ?

You should stay far, far away from genetic algorithms because it is clear you could not write a fitness function.

You are assuming that the technically superior OS is going to be the fittest, which is patently untrue. The OS which is easy to use, has the largest base of interesting software, and which is made most attractive to the consumer in general is the fittest. This would clearly be the microsoft on x86 platform.

If linux did everything windows did (which it patently does not, even if you look at it from a technical standpoint - consider cleartype) then it would have a chance to displace windows. However, it must also run Win32 binaries which link to the MFCs, which it does poorly at best. It must be as easy to use as Windows, and as easy to fix when it breaks. About now many of you are saying "what the fuck is this guy's problem, when windows breaks it's a nightmare!"

Consider what happens when linux "breaks" in even a trivial way; The user must venture into a Unix shell to repair it. When windows "breaks" it's usually some sort of hardware conflict (statistically speaking the majority of cases in which windows won't work right, there is a hardware problem/hardware configuration problem) which is resolved by troubleshooting through a GUI. Whereas if you have ext2 filesystems and they have one of a certain set of software-correctable errors, you must run fsck manually. While this particular problem is going away, what with the plethora of journaling filesystems available or about to become available (XFS, ext3fs, ReiserFS, JFS, and probably more) it is representative of a Unix mindset which is not necessarily a bad thing, but which will keep Unix from replacing Windows on the desktop for, I believe, all of eternity.

Windows, as of NT 4.0, has the added advantage that the Desktop OS (Windows 95 at the time) and the Server OS (NT 4.0, again, at the time) look and operate in essentially the same way. As of Windows XP, the desktop and server OS are the exact same thing. While linux has this as well, it does not have user-friendliness. Most of us (myself included) would never put redhat (For example) on a server unless we had no other choice, because it is cumbersome. We might use gentoo, or slackware instead. Or we might even run BSD. But for a desktop system, we want something simple for the user to understand, and unless we feel like building many many software packages, we will probably give a user RedHat or Mandrake.

People use linux over BSD in most cases because of the wider feature set (journaling filesystems, moderately mature SMP support, some of the BSDs have none) and the dramatically broader driver support. While BSD is catching up in some areas, like sound card support, it is still woefully behind in others. I used to run linux just because MIT-pthreads didn't exist on BSD at the time and I wanted xmms. How sad is that? Not for me, mind you, but for BSD.

So BSD is clearly not the fittest operating system as far as world domination goes. However, due to its lesser overhead (which is unfortunately growing every day) and yes, the clean TCP stack, it is sometimes ideal for embedded systems. Of course, various linux variants including rtlinux and ucLinux are making strong inroads into this space, which may serve to further displace BSD.

I'm a big fan of BSD, but if it doesn't keep up with the times, it's destined to be relegated to third-class status.

Re:Better choices...

[brad-x]

May I ask what debian has to do with FreeBSD in any way shape or form?

I think your viewpoint is biased and ridiculous. Expand your horizons before commenting.

Re:Better choices...

[ffatTony]

why do you think Apple called the underlying BSD system Darwin. :)

Clearly it's due to the dolphin on SeaQuest.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

*nix is *nix is *nix. Crappy ACL-type security (as opposed to Capability Systems security [EROS, for example]).

what's the difference between Capability Systems and implementing systrace for all apps?

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

would never put redhat (For example) on a server unless we had no other choice, because it is cumbersome. We might use gentoo,

uh you`re stupid, Red Hat is the leading server distro in all the fortune 500 companies. Slackware has no support or kickstart style tools. Gentoo takes 3 days to install....um yeah try explaining that to a manager. go away troll

Re:Better choices...

[smash]

People use linux over BSD in most cases because of the wider feature set (journaling filesystems, moderately mature SMP support, some of the BSDs have none) and the dramatically broader driver support. While BSD is catching up in some areas, like sound card support, it is still woefully behind in others. I used to run linux just because MIT-pthreads didn't exist on BSD at the time and I wanted xmms. How sad is that? Not for me, mind you, but for BSD.

Hmm interesting. I was a Linux guy for a few years till recently (since about 96), and switched to BSD because it felt more mature.

Granted, video and sound drivers on FreeBSD aren't at the same level as they are on Linux, however the parts of the OS that matter (documentation that is actually consistant with software for example) FreeBSD is streets ahead. Anything that I've tried to do with it just *works* as the documentation says it should.

As for threads - Linux was without threads for a good long time as well, and went through a number of implementations. FreeBSD now has threads, so they're both now on an even footing there...

Journaled FS - well... FreeBSD has softupdates. Different strategy, similar end result... Honestly don't know enough to comment on which is best, other than the fact I have had no issues with either...

In the few areas where Linux is clearly more advanced than BSD (video drivers/sound drivers) its still pretty pissweak anyway. FreeBSD may not be the shiny pretty desktop OS of the month, but its happily sitting in the background doing more important things.

With regards to SMP - we'll see how FreeBSD 5.0 goes ;)

The general feel I get from FreeBSD is that it has its clearly defined limits, but the stuff it does, it does well - there doesn't seem to be much half-assed, unfinished shite that you'll spend 3 days messing with to get it to *almost* work, included.

anyway... its 3am, im rambling...

smash.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is better known than Linux. Does that make it better?

I'd argue that the BSDs are better-engineered in many ways. Linux has spent a long time now using concepts that BSD did first - often years ago - and they're STILL not getting it right. (q.v. the TCP stack rewrites, the VM subsystem rewrites, the scheduler rewrites... )

Oh, and the stack isn't "ripped off". It's used perfectly legally, legitmiately and with the good will of the original developers.

"distributions"? You're living in Linux-land, old chap. BSD has complete operating systems.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The OS which is easy to use, has the largest base of interesting software, and which is made most attractive to the consumer in general is the fittest. This would clearly be the microsoft on x86 platform. "

Yes on the software base side issue, but Apple might argue that ease of use is very important. In fact they did a whole ad campaign where side by side with a PC people chose the Mac for that reason.

Your idea that Windows trouble shooting is done through the GUI isn't entirely true. It's nice when it works that way, but you're omiting the common strategy of rebooting, and if that doesn't work, reinstalling and rebooting. And, of course, prayer.

In consideration of fitness, there is also it issue of 'environmental niche'. The BSD's have been very successful in the server niche. Linux is threatening it there of course. Linux seems to be evolving into a morphing beast capable of niche hopping, as you note, Mandrake on the desktop, but Slack on the server, both are Linux (or should that be 'GNU/Linux').

Re:Better choices...

[Arandir]

In your zeal to castigate others for the ignorance of evolutionary fitness, you've shown your own ignorance of ecology. Nature abhors a monoculture. The Windows monoculture is poised to be the victim of a mass extinction when the landscape changes. If Linux achieves its goal of "world domination", then it will be the next monoculture to be devastated when the environment changes yet again.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In hardware support, Linux probably beats BSD, but I haven't followed it much."

You obviousely didn't follow anything regarding BSD. Ever heard of NetBSD ?? http://www.netbsd.org/

Re:Better choices...

[Reziac]

Interesting comment... in my brief forays into linux (RH6.0 with all the bells and whistles) and BSD (Darwin for x86 downloaded from Apple, just a naked commandline) I got exactly the same impression: BSD is a more mature, more *professional* OS than linux.

It's not a matter of drivers and apps and such; it was a matter of feeling *finished*, ie. that everything had been completely thought through and polished, not just roughed out and tacked into place. Such as tiny details like that in BSD, "man" knows enough to auto-exit when it runs out of text, whereas in linux you have to know to press Q for Quit.

I'm reminded of an old saying: the difference between "old junk" and "antique" is the quality of the paint job.

Re:Better choices...

[Peaker]

What Debian has to do with BSD is that it doesn't exist for BSD, and if there is some port, its not as good as the original Debian GNU/Linux.

My point was that Debian is probably the best distribution out there, and Debian GNU/Linux as a whole is thus probably better than BSD.

I have tried FreeBSD in several occasions, as well as some of my friends, we all abandoned it in favour of Debian, for apt and friends.

Re:Better choices...

[Wdomburg]

>Most of us (myself included) would never put
>redhat (For example) on a server unless we had no
>other choice, because it is cumbersome.

Define "cumbersome". It's far from rocket science to configure a Red Hat system to have a foot print of only about 150MB, running only the services you want.

Managing a Red Hat system can be done just the same as most other Linux systems. All the standard tools work (ifconfig, fdisk, etc), they follow FHS policies for filesystem layout, and conform to the LSB.

The configuration tools they provide don't destroy changes made by hand like the ones provided by some other distributions do (*cough*YAST*cough*), and their convienence scripts (ifup/down, chkconfig, service) are just that - convienent. They in no way prevent you from manipulating these things by hand (e.g. you can still configure networking with ifconfig, you can still manupulate services by running the scripts in init.d and manually editing symlinks in rc.d).

>We might use gentoo, or slackware instead.

Sorry, but I'd seriously question "most of us", particularly if you include people who actually have real experience administrating servers in a production environment, instead of on their home network.

With Red Hat I can use kickstart to create replicated installation scripts. I boot off a CD, and in 15 minutes the type of machine (e.g. SMTP, POP) is ready to go.

With Slackware I can install each machine individually, or I waste my time developing, debugging and maintaining my own method for replicated installs. I actually did this, before we migrated *off* Slackware (choice of a previous admin who was 0ld sk3wl 31337, when there was only one server).

With Gentoo I have to their gawdawful primitave installer (I'm sorry, but having to manually load modules and set up networking is just stupid), or again waste my time writing my own installer.

With Red Hat I have a robust package management system and a secure update mechanism. They provide critical updates usually within a day, and it only takes me a few minutes to update every machine on my network.

With Slackware I can manually download updates, distribute them to the servers, and install them. Or roll my own system for doing updates. (Starting to see a pattern here?)

With Gentoo I have to emerge the old package, and then unmerge the old one. Mind you, there's no mention of testing to make sure services aren't negatively affected by their files changing underneath them, and "config file protection" is only turned on for /etc and KDE config files by default. Oh, and since they only provide binary packages for releases and snapshots, you have to wait for this to compile on each box individually.

I might have taken your comment more seriously if you had suggested Debian, which does have automated installation available, and provides a laudable upgrade system. On the other hand I've managed a large (~ 100 machine) Slackware installation in the past, and know the downfalls all too well. And Gentoo is, I'm sorry to say, piss in your pants laughable.

Re:Better choices...

[Peaker]

Capability systems have many provable mathematical properties that are very important to real security. For example, one can prove privelege escalation is impossible in a capability system.

Sure, a real life implementation will differ from the design until all bugs are resolved, but its still better than *nix security, where even the design itself has no secure properties that are mathematically provable. Also, since the security code in EROS and such systems is very limited to the implementation of the low-level capability mechanism, the amount of security-testing code is very finite in size, and thus will at some point in time be clear of bugs, and identical to the architecture's design.

One of the main differences between capability systems and systrace for all apps, is that in a capability system, _only_ authorized requests can even be expressed by an application, while with systrace, all requests can be expressed, and if a bug exists in one of the millions of requests' implementations, you get a security hole.

Also, capability systems grant you far more fine-grained security control, and they define processes as entities, rather than users.

Capability systems are also much simpler in concept, and do not have a global namespace such as a filesystem that makes for richer communication between distant entities of the system, even those who are not supposed to communicate.

Capability systems are not volunerable to the Confused Deputy problem that exists with ACL-type systems where you must have applications that 'Change hats' (All apps with 'suid bits').

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the response!

Capability systems have many provable mathematical properties that are very important to real security

that sounds like a winner.

the amount of security-testing code is very finite in size, and thus will at some point in time be clear of bugs

why couldn't the same thing be said of systrace? audit the systrace code and you're good to go. or is it kernel dependant too, so you'd need to audit the kernel and systrace? In that case, wouldnt implementing systrace in kernel give you the same small finite size code to audit?

in a capability system, _only_ authorized requests can even be expressed by an application, while with systrace, all requests can be expressed, and if a bug exists in one of the millions of requests' implementations, you get a security hole

I see the first part and it sounds really good, but i dont get the second part- the bug would still have to exist in systrace as systrace is the gateway through which all other code is run. it is designed to run code that may be untrustworthy.

Also, capability systems grant you far more fine-grained security control, and they define processes as entities, rather than users

how does this differ from systrace? you define systrace rules by application too.

Capability systems are also much simpler in concept, and do not have a global namespace such as a filesystem that makes for richer communication between distant entities of the system, even those who are not supposed to communicate.

Definitely it seems that the overall simplicity and integration of capabilities are its strong points.

Capability systems are not volunerable to the Confused Deputy problem...

but capabilities exist by separating out processes that require access to certain things from code that doesnt. in the Confused Deputy case cited, the true problem was one of flawed design - there should have been a separate program which had full access to write files where needed, and this sounds remarkably similar to what capabilities do.
again, the benefit of capabilities systems seems to be its integration and real enforcement of such coding practices.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

What Debian has to do with BSD is that it doesn't exist for BSD, and if there is some port, its not as good as the original Debian GNU/Linux.

how so? do you understand what a port is?

now if you said binaries running under emulation arent as good, that would make sense. there are some ports that do this. the majority, however, are the original source code plus some patches and/or specific config options to get the code to compile on *BSD. end product, a working binary on BSD. they work great.

Maybe no other OS should really run OpenSSH since it is developed first on OpenBSD?

I have tried FreeBSD in several occasions, as well as some of my friends, we all abandoned it in favour of Debian, for apt and friends.

ahh, there's the winning argument.
are you trolling? some comments come from you with little to no thought or substance (as this one), but others are a bit clearer.

Re:Better choices...

[friscolr]

Such as tiny details like that in BSD, "man" knows enough to auto-exit when it runs out of text, whereas in linux you have to know to press Q for Quit.

While i agree that BSD's feel more mature, i dont feel this point is relevant. The default pager for man in linux (at least the distros i've used) is less, while in BSD it is more. The auto-exit you mention is one difference between more and less.

Personally, i prefer less to read man pages since i often want to page back up when i reach the end. Luckily setting PAGER=less works fine in both OS's.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.. This post has to be the most ignorant that I have ever seen. There should be a slashdot parody site just to post some of the comments that I see on this site.

Re:Better choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

Better userland threading, KSE (Kernel Scheduled Entities) are an upcoming feature in FreeBSD5.0.

Its slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily this article is also on edinburgh news.com,

Re:Its slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm surprised that edinburgh news would cover that, it does make sense when they add that the council is switching to BSD for all the samba servers. I think the edinburgh article was a bit more balanced if less techie oriented, IMHO

Fuck you all

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD is not dying ! Why is everyone saying that ?
BSD is the best OS in the world, anyone who doesn't use it is an utter moron.

Anyone who mods me down is using a toy OS.

Re:Fuck you all

[ketamine-bp]

I am fine with your opinion saying BSD is not dying, yet, I would like to point out that BSD has the near-the-best kernel in the whole wide world doesn't meant that it has the best user interface, best applications ported, best usability in the world, hence it is doubtful whether it is _the_ best OS there.

I would agree that BSD is a real good arch though, microkernels, decent IP stack.

BTW i'm using Darwin though.

Re:Fuck you all

[Wdomburg]

>BSD is not dying ! Why is everyone saying that ?
>BSD is the best OS in the world, anyone who
>doesn't use it is an utter moron.

Depends on what your criteria are. Just as a quick example, what is the status of SMP support on the free BSD variants? OpenBSD has it in a CVS branch, but it still depends on a BKL (Big Kernel Lock). NetBSD has it, but only for Alpha in current, and AFAIK the only other architecture is i386, which is in CVS, and again depends on a BKL. FreeBSD has it, but only for i386, still has some serious known issues (e.g. race conditions), and won't be fine grained until 5.0 is released.

Contrast this to Linux which has had SMP support built in since 1996, is relatively fine grained, and support x86, Alpha, Sparc, PPC, ia64, MIPS, and s390.

And what kinds of clustering are supported in BSD? How about disk layouts? Filesystems?

No, Linux is by far not perfect in any of these respects. Neither are any commercial operating systems. BSD has its strengths, but it has weaknesses like everyone else.

Matt

Re:Fuck you all

[Anonymous Coward]

>Contrast this to Linux which has had SMP support
> built in since 1996, is relatively fine grained
It wasn't fine grained by any definition in 1996, It wasn't fine grained when 2.2 come out and sections of the kernel are under BKL even in 2.4 and 2.5 development kernel. Not much difference as compared to FreeBSD here.

> FreeBSD has it, but only for i386
FreeBSD has is for Alpha and Sparc64 too, check your facts before spewing them on public.

Re:Fuck you all

[Wdomburg]

>It wasn't fine grained by any definition in 1996,
>It wasn't fine grained when 2.2 come out and
>sections of the kernel are under BKL even in 2.4
>and 2.5 development kernel. Not much difference
>as compared to FreeBSD here.

I never claimed it was historically fine-grained, or completely fine-grained in the current release. I specifically said "relatively fine-grained", which I stand by completely.

The 2.0 kernel was a first implementation, and was dealing with a largely non-threaded kernel. In other words, it was largely bolted onto a code base that had been traditionally uniprocessor.

The 2.2 kernel added fine-grain locks for the scheduler, signal-handling, interupts, and much of the I/O layet

The 2.4 kernel has a multi-threaded TCP/IP stack, I/O layer, VM subsystem, page cache, scheduler, interrupt handler, etc, etc. Most of the traditional BKL bottlenecks *have* been removed.

Is scalability still optimal? No. Hence the word "reasonably".

The implementation of SMP in FreeBSD has been called "simplistic" and "rudimentary" even by the developers. Both 3.x and 4.x rely heavily on the BKL (or Big Giant Lock, or Giant Kernel Lock, or whatever nomenclature you prefer), although 4.x did move portions of the syscall code outside the lock.

It appears that the smpng code in 5.0 will be an immense improvement, in part due to the access developers had to the BSD/OS code base. But for current production releases, the "not much difference" verdict doesn't hold water. Maybe if you were comparing FreeBSD 4.0 against Linux 2.0.

>FreeBSD has is for Alpha and Sparc64 too, check
>your facts before spewing them on public.

I apologize. I had forgotten about the Alpha support, and the Sparc64 support was only added earlier this year, and as far as I can tell only it's only in the as yet unreleased 5.0 branch.

Matt

Re:Fuck you all

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my reasons for liking NetBSD, my personal preference. No, SMP is still in a seperate branch... maybe it will be released next year sometime, but they are trying to get it more fine-grained before they release it. Rather than "bolting on" a kludge, and then trying to adapt it into more and more complexity, the NetBSD philosophy is "do it right the 1st time".

That, plus the fact that by default they are making the attempt to support SMP on *all* platforms (or all that support it anyways, I'm not sure you'll ever seen a "new" SMP atari or amiga box), which means they put a lot of thought into making the code cross platform compatible.

And to those who say "who cares about VAX support", I would add that when they make a change to the code, and the VAX suddenly gets much slower, it gets reported and the code gets changed so *all* platforms get better performance. If a change adds 1/2 a second to a PC bootup, nobody notices...but when that *same* change adds 2 minutes to a VAX bootup, it points out the issues to the developers... and results in better performance on *all* platforms.

Re:Fuck you all

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD has a better user interface than Linux, that's for sure. BSD projects actually try to maintain their man pages.

The BSD stack helps Windows

[Peaker]

succeed and thus helps sources be closed.

Re:The BSD stack helps Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You're one big walking, talking non-sequitur. Lots of them on Slashdot. Wish our schools were better.

Need brighter plumage

[LBrothers]

The *BSDs and Linux (and related OSes) all fail basic usability - by which I mean my Mom can't configure them to just run darnit. Sometimes the gentically inferior, but more brightly plumaged cock gets the chicks. When these OSes get better plumage the public may consider mating - er using - them.

Re:Need brighter plumage

[ketamine-bp]

There are quite a few distributions that makes people-with-mom-using-computer well.

Libranet <http://www.libranet.com/>
Lycoris <http://www.lycoris.com/>

also, recent release of mandrake is quite promising on its usability for non-linux-based users.

Re:Need brighter plumage

[Anonymous Coward]

As a BSD user, I must say... I really don't care if you or your mother use BSD or not. Those who use/develop BSD do because WE like it and it suits US. If you want "brighter plumage" use Mac OSX. Your mother doesn't take a helicopter gunship to the corner store, and in the same sense why would she want to use BSD if she just "wants a computer to run"?

Search and Replace to create your own OS

[LBrothers]

So basically the author says that MicroBSD is a great developing OS which is basically FreeBSD and OpenBSD somewhat combined with a few patches and a search and replace performed to put MicroBSD all over the place.

What a waste of an OS and a waste of an article. Why was this even posted on Slashdot?

Re:Search and Replace to create your own OS

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically the author says that MicroBSD is a great developing OS which is basically FreeBSD and OpenBSD somewhat combined with a few patches and a search and replace performed to put MicroBSD all over the place.

What a waste of an OS and a waste of an article. Why was this even posted on Slashdot?

Well, it's not so much an OS as a 'distribution,' in the sense of RedHat versus SuSE. Same basic kernel- OpenBSD's, in this case- and the idea is to merge all the 'heavy' security features (ACLs, etc) from TrustedBSD et al. onto the fairly 'light' and proven OpenBSD core. It's no worse than Yet Another Linux- and there are quite a few distros in that market that seem wastes of effort to me, but... it's the maintainers' prerogative.

That said, while it's a very nice attempt, I don't think 'Outback' is up to maintainership. He seems like a nice guy with some nice dreams, but from his mailing list posts, it's obvious he doesn't have a lot of familiarity with... anything. I wish him well- and think the project will be a great learning experience for him- but I wouldn't dare run this beast without seeing some 3rd-party audit action, if and when the merged features get running. I think it's his inexperienced perspective that's making it happen at all- it's an "innocent" approach to free software- "Hey, FreeBSD and NetBSD have all *these* great features, while OpenBSD has this really audited and sane-ified base install, let's install X under Y"- but the issues of actually making it run and avoiding stupid problems (overflowable buffers and other holes) in the 'glue' required make it fairly daunting for even the most experienced maintainer. (Theo gets a lot of crap for *his* architectural decisions, and compared to Theo, Outback is a MCSE.)

So... let's see if he gets anywhere. If he does, let's jump in, learn how to properly audit a project, and create the wonderful feature-complete distro that is his intent (or cross our fingers and hope a consultancy or similar does it for us)... No need to knock a man for trying, but no need to put your network at risk with his software based on his good intentions, either.

lets hope that miniBSD won't be released...

[ketamine-bp]

otherwise it will take tens of thousands of megabytes to install it - simple mathematics. pico --> micro we got around 100 times, so we can expect what would happen
if the trend is linear...

Re:lets hope that miniBSD won't be released...

[archen]

Wait until MegaBSD. The daemon mascot will blot out the sun, and people will become very afraid, as Evil Dr. S Jobs cackles in his laboritory. It's alive, It's alive!

Re:lets hope that miniBSD won't be released...

[slickwillie]

Actually, there already is a miniBSD. But it fits on a 64MB compact flash card, so go figure.

Re:lets hope that miniBSD won't be released...

[Anonymous Coward]

From their Web Site

Seems someone decided to /. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.

641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz

Re:lets hope that miniBSD won't be released...

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD is dying.

Darwin never said that.

[repetty]

There's no record of Darwin ever saying or writing the phrase "survival of the fittest."

Any any rate, he would have been incorrect if he had.

Correct: Survival of the fit enough.

--Richard

Re:Darwin never said that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a friend of Darwin, Spencer said that....

Re:Darwin never said that.

[Anonymous Coward]

well, depends on what you mean by fittest, right? You could consider it to be a group, not an individual.

Linux code thefts

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it you are Linux 2.036 kernel writers and you REMOVE the FreeBSD copyright and put a GPL notice instead.

Or you are RedHat and didn't include the BSD notice in your ads before 1999.

Or you are Linux Kernel writer who took the FreeBSD ATA code.

Linux - the lo-rent Microsoft.

BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[codepunk]

I hate to say it but BSD is going away due to it's insane licensing. The BSD license is not friendly at all to the developers producing code. It removes the developer from any claim he has to the code. I produce code and place it on the web and then Apple or any other hostile for that matters, takes my code and attempts to sell it back to me? Now I don't know about the rest of you but that sounds pretty damn stupid for me to pick a BSD license.

Behold the beauty of the GPL

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[essdodson]

With GPL code its not really up to the developer. The choice of how they're going to license something has been made by someone else. I will never write GPL code, as will many many companies.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[codepunk]

Well no one said you have to write GPL code that is personal choice. The BSD license removes the checks and balances that reward the developer. This is my reason for choosing the GPL over the BSD license. No one has forced me ever to code under the GPL and no one has ever made that decision for me.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[noselasd]

You seem not to understand that people are diffrent. There are many, many developers that wants companies to use their source, and they dont care if they make money of it.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Simon (S2)]

The BSD license is not friendly at all to the developers producing code.

i can't agree with you in that.
if you write a class with basic functions, let's say a textbox, and you give the sources to me, and i write a hole application using your textbox, i think i have the right to sell my product back to you.
you just wrote the textbox. i did a lot of work around it.

just like apple did.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Simon (S2)]

i think what your paren post was stating is that if you take a peace of gpled code and you want to modify it, you can't. with the bsd license you can.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Simon (S2)]

[...]if you take a peace of gpled code and you want to modify it (and publish it under a different license witch is not gpl compatible), you can't[...]

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[codepunk]

Yep and he is exactly correct because I decided to modify GPL code the original property holder is protected yet I get to use his gifft.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a gift. If it was a gift, I could do what I wished with it.

As for "protecting"... protection from what?

If I see someone else's code in a product, they don't lose anything. The source doesn't go away. So who loses?

Before you scream "but we don't see the modifications!", consider this: those that would value-add to BSDL'd software won't do it to GPL'd software. So if it's GPL'd, there will be no modifications to see, at least from that source.

I've always found it amusing that many of those using the GPL are doing so mainly out of greed.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

Based upon this, it appears you expect all of MacOS X for free just because you might have happened to have written some small part of the kernel.

You do realise that a company can only sell your code back to you if they've significantly added value to that code, right? Otherwise, no-one will buy it, and they'll *LOSE* money.

If they have significantly added value to it - look at MacOS X for an example - why shouldn't they be able to sell it back to you? They've done a lot to it.

And, as it happens, you can get all the "free" parts of MacOS X in the shape of Darwin. For free. Just go download it.

Behold the beauty of the BSD license. Everybody benefits, except perhaps the whiny GPL zealots who sit complaining that they can't have the source of Apple's nice desktop to port to Linux...

I have yet to be convinced that a large part of Linux's popularity amongst so many people is not due to it being "free as in beer", in that anything that makes use of the code is guarenteed to bee available without charge. The fact that Hyperion software's Linux games were outsold by the company's own Amiga releases demonstrates this very point.

The GPL's agenda is to keep software free as in beer, to stop programmers making a living from selling software. And you consider THAT developer-friendly?

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[BadmanX]

Exactly. This is why I prefer the BSD license - it is truly a gift, unlike the GPL, which just pretends to be.

I once read a story about "Freedom: I Won't", the idea that everyone has the basic right to say "I won't" when requested to do something by another, and that answer must be accepted.

The BSD license says "I won't. I've chosen to freely give this away. I won't make money off it, but if you want to add your own code to it and try to make money off the combination, you're free too. It's a gift, and like any gift, can be resold."

The GPL says "I won't - and you won't either. If you use this code, you become beholden to us, and you must release your code in order to further our political ends."

The GPL violates my Freedom: I Won't: it tries to dictate to me. Well...I Won't use the GPL then.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Arandir]

I hate to say it but BSD is going away due to it's insane licensing.

What is it with you GPL freaks? Do you just sit around all day waiting for a BSD related article so you can shit all over it? Get a life!

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet you would be shitty if someone took your newly finished app changed the name and made a few million off of it (can you say limeware) and tried to sell it back to you

fucking hypocrites

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh stuff it. You don't see the merit of the GPL simply because you've never created anything of sufficient value.

The GPL is a contract that says how you can use a program. The BSD license says that it would be great if somebody finds a use for the program.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that the def. of a gift is necessarily something that comes with no strings attached. Yet a parent can give a child a puppy on the conditions that:

1) the child has behaved in a manner consistent with maturity and responsibility and
2) the child agrees not to mistreat the pet.

In my mind, the puppy is still a gift, conditions or not. the GPL is quite simple, and as someone's sig here says: "GPL simplified: what's my stuff, is now our stuff. If you change or improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff."

If you're not interested in this gift, you're free not to accept it, but just because you don't like the (IMHO) supremely reasonable conditions, is no reason to bitch about it.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Reziac]

You've pretty much hit on what frustrates me about the GPL. It's not a gift, it's an obligation .

Having dealt with a source-hoarding coder, I'd be the first to agree that the GPL is miles better than nothing when having open source is important. But it also prevents me from making a no-strings gift of code that I now administer, simply because it was in turn based on GPL'd code.

One is put in mind of the doctrine of First Sale for books. The BSD license is in that spirit; the GPL license is not.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[philovivero]

GPL Simplified: Don't like my software license? Try writing your own damn code! I'm not in the business of giving you gifts if you're in the business of saying: "Thanks, now screw you." I'm glad you grasp this subtlety. You won't use the GPL.

You don't grasp this subtlety, though: The GPL doesn't violate your freedom. It never has, and it never will. As you said yourself, you won't use the GPL (and I guess you're implying you won't use GPL software). Fine by me.

Along with my GPL-software writing cohorts, I guess I say, good riddance. If you're not the sort who views the GPL as something that enhances the world and makes it a better place, then you're not the sort I want changing and distributing my code.

See? The GPL enhances my freedom without infringing on yours. And I'm the one who wrote the damn code. Seems like we both got a good deal.

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

Executive summary:

*BSD is dying

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

what percentage of GPL software is used in the enterprise? much less than BSD and BSD-like licenced software

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[AME]

I wouldn't buy it. And those who did are ignorant and pitiful because they paid money and all they got for it was a name.

The thing about the BSD license that, it seems, most GPL advocates don't see is that BSD does guarantee that my code will remain truly free.

If someone else uses my code in their own product and sells the result, my code is still free. The end purchasers of the proprietary product are only paying for the difference between that product and my free code since they could always freely have my stuff. This is true even if there is no difference between that proprietary product and my free code.

In fact, the BSD license even grants you, dear developer, the freedom to change the license to GPL and redistribute the exact same code otherwise unchanged. Just don't send me GPL patches because I can't use them. This is not true the other way around. So, which license offers developers more freedom?

Re:BSD License Not Developer Friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSD license does not take ownership of the source code away from the developer because it doesn't place ownership in anyone's hands, period. GPL is unenforceable legalistic garbage.

I am willing to bet

[codepunk]

I am damn willing to bet that your mother cannot configure windows properly either. My father is a generally a very smart and trainable guy but there is no way he is capable of administrating his own machine much less installing software and or drivers.

Re:I am willing to bet

[Reziac]

Um... I'm not a network dude, but I can make Windows (any species from 3.1 thru XP) so well-behaved that it does not crash, period. (Witness that I have a WinME box that has gone two YEARS with ZERO crashes.) And it didn't take any deep study or delving into esoterica either -- I had good success on my first or at worst second foray into each version of Windows, mainly by following the evident bread crumbs and doing the obvious. And no, I didn't have to RTFM.

But in my excursion into linux (RH6), I found configuring it somewhere between frustrating and painful. Nothing was evident or obvious; I found some config items by sheer chance; others, I never did figure out. And I even dragged out and RTFM.

I'm originally a DOS type (anyone remember DOS? :) so I'm used to raw commandlines, config files, and such. But linux just didn't seem to have the tools to let me see WTF I was doing, or if it did, they weren't where I could find them. The best I found was Midnight Commander, and I still fervently wished for a linux version of Buerg's LIST, so I could SEE what the hell was going on in there!!

Anyway, I'm rambling, but the point was that finding linux overly-esoteric and abstruse isn't necessarily a sign that someone is a general computer moron. I can beat any Windows into good behaviour, but -- Linux? Still scratching my head.

(Source code for LIST v6.0 is public domain, and it's on Simtel, but is ASM.. anyone up for a port?)

Re:I am willing to bet

[Anonymous Coward]

WinME with ZERO crashes?? Oh... but, may I ask, how many times did you REBOOT it??

I seem to remember some problem with Win95 that it would degrade-horribly/lock-up after like 47 days. I often had problems in those days, so my solution became to reboot like once a month.

Re:I am willing to bet

[KewlPC]

I'm originally a DOS type...

That's probably part of your problem. In fact, I find that the most prevalent problem among people who switch from MS operating systems to UNIX is that much (if not most) of their DOS/Windows knowledge just doesn't apply. UNIX was around before DOS or Windows, and the result is that the UNIX way is very different from the Windows/DOS way.

My first exposure to UNIX was FreeBSD (in the long ago time of 1998). When I first started using it (all my friends told me I'd have an easier time if I tried Linux first; oh well), I was totally lost. I knew that things were going to be different from Windows and DOS, but I had one major hangup (that I didn't even realize was a hangup): all my old DOS knowledge. Then one day somebody told me "Forget what you know about DOS or Windows. Unlearn it." I haven't had any trouble since then.

Oh, BTW, RedHat 6 had the "linuxconf" (or was it "linuxconfig"?) program, which used ncurses for text menus, or a GUI if X Windows was running. If you really did RTFM, or even browse through the default menus in GNOME or KDE, you would've found this program. With it you could configure almost anything (everything from LILO to Apache).

Re:I am willing to bet

[Reziac]

Actually, my point was that it's not naked configuration files that are the problem, nor expecting *NIX to act like DOS/Win (hell, the various flavours of DOS that I use don't even act alike) -- it's the fact that you have to pretty much know what to do and where to look before you even start looking, and even then there's this either/or mentality about how stuff is done. Either users are all too stupid to live and gotta wipe their asses for them (but don't let them do anything themselves), they're all born knowing *NIX syntax. What's wrong with some sort of reasonable medium??

And I did root thru all the menus, and found a sort of config manager (the one I found in gnome didn't accomplish much, the one I found in KDE did better), but while I could alter some stuff from there, it didn't show me what I'd actually DONE to the system. So I didn't learn a damned thing from it.

I *hope* this pile of various newer disties I'm about to inflict on yonder machine does better.

Re:I am willing to bet

[KewlPC]

I believe (though I could be wrong; I haven't used Redhat 6 in a long time) that the linuxconf program had an option to show you what it was going to do before it went and did it.

Alas, Redhat no longer includes this program, but most recent distros are easier to config than Redhat 6.

Keeping in mind that most config stuff goes in /etc, just read the docs for whatever you want to configure. If your distro is any good, it should include the Linux FAQs and HOWTOs, which greatly help with learning how to configure stuff by hand.

Luckily, one doesn't need to configure their system by hand nearly as much as one used to :)

Re:I am willing to bet

[Reziac]

Whatever I was using (it was a long time ago!) didn't even show me what it did afterward. I do recall that by some Oz-like procedure (IOW I never did see what it did), the KDE variety managed to finally speak to the sound card.

Part of my point being that if the config system itself is any good, I shouldn't NEED to consult FAQs and HOWTOs.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes next time around...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

fdisk

[essdodson]

From a quick look at the fdisk and fdisk manual, it was just the same OpenBSD unintelligent fdisk (where a calculator would be handy).

Sigh, OpenBSD install procedure is annoying, there's little or no documentation available throughout the installer. Hopefully MicroBSD will move on from this archaic and elitist installer used by OpenBSD.

Re:fdisk

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes two tries to get right at first, but it's still my favorite installer. The only thing I'd reallly like to see different is the ability to assign swap more flexibly, but getting around that is as easy as finishing the install (you likely won't need to swap while installing) and editing fstab.

Really, they've done well for what they're doing. It fits on one floppy, it's no-bullshit, and is the general equivalent of MS-DOS format /s. If you aren't familiar with the BSD mindset at all (fdisk+disk slicing, which is about the only hard thing there), OpenBSD isn't your distro- FreeBSD should be, and yes, their sysinstall is broken and sucky (nice menus... but when you can't get back to partition your second disk, they aren't of much use), hence the 'libh' project to eventually allow a serious revamp of sysinstall.

Check out NetBSD's installer sometime; IMHO, it's a bit of the worst of both worlds, but it's basically an OpenBSD installer that's more self-documenting.

While I know this is a stupid troll...

[Watts Martin]

...the number of open source projects that have "gone away" because of licensing that allows companies to use the code in proprietary closed systems can be counted on no fingers. Earth to Codepunk. Earth to Codepunk. Please return to base to pick up your clue. BSD's been around for how long without "dying?" Ever use X11? TeX? Perl? Vi? All things with licenses that allow commercial versions. (And in my book it's a good thing the licenses for all those original programs that drive the Internet, from the BSD IP stack to Bind, allowed commercial versions, or the Internet today would be very much like the Internet of 1990 and you and I would be using NetWare at work.)

The sad thing is that I agree that the GPL is a more "developer-friendly" license, a position I have a great deal of difficulty getting anti-GPL zealots to understand. (You'd think the idea of "I should have the right to prevent others from profiting from the work I did without giving me recompense" would not be difficult to get across to capitalists, but it is.) This kind of nonsense thinking from pro-GPL zealots surely doesn't help.

Windows TCP stack is NOT BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The IPv4 and IPv6 stacks were both written from the ground up, in house.

BSD can be a good approach to promoting free s/w

[g4dget]

There is nothing insane about the BSD license, nor is it necessarily unfriendly to developers.

Yes, BSD-licensed code may end up in commercial products. But that often beats the alternative. I'd much rather see Microsoft use a piece of software with a BSD license than have them hack their own--I already know that whatever they come up with themselves is going to be less compatible with the rest of the world and usually technically worse.

Most companies who use BSD code and try to keep it closed sooner or later realize the futility of their endeavor and publish it--there is just no point on keeping software closed when other people have very similar software already for free.

The GPL relies on a contractual obligation to ensure source availability. BSD relies on something much simpler: laziness.

The LGPL and GPL both are very useful, and I use them for my software too. But BSD isn't "insane"--it's a valid license and a good approach to open source software. And sometimes, giving commercial users more than they "deserve" is a good idea because it helps get the APIs and architecture of free software systems into commercial and proprietary products.

So, here is how I see good licensing choices that promote free software:

• GPL: use for software for which there is no substitute and for which it is desirable that feedback comes back to the community. Also use for software where incorporation into another product doesn't help free software much. Application like office suites and scientific applications fall into this category.
• LGPL: use for libraries or software for which substitutes are available and where it is desirable that the free software gets adopted by commercial users but that their changes get published back to allow others to interoperate. Libraries like GUI toolkits, office suite file readers/writers, password authentication libraries, Java runtimes, etc. fall into this category.
• BSD (or MIT or public domain): use for libraries or software for which substitutes are very easily available and where feeding changes back to the community doesn't matter that much. Examples are commodity software like command line FTP and telnet clients, command line utilities, libraries for HTTP or XML, etc. For such software, the free software community benefits most if commercial companies just adopt whatever small or large part of the free and open standard as they like, and you want to minimize their reluctance to do so.

For software like kernels and command line tools, the GPL/LGPL often isn't very strong anyway because most commercial uses would not involve linking with the code. Note again that the GPL (or some even more restrictive license) isn't always the best choice for promoting free software. Imagine where Linux and free software would be today if the Linux kernel only allowed the execution of free software applications, or if the X11 window system only allowed the display of GPL'ed GUI apps.

So, in short, all of the *GPL and BSD licenses have their purpose. Which one is best for the promotion of free software depends on the software and the potential users.

Re:BSD can be a good approach to promoting free s/

[M$ Mole]

Mod this one up!!! This guy, unlike the gentleman to whom he is replying, has it together.

BSD license

[mrm677]

I'm reading a Computer Networks textbook right now. The author frequently points out that the success of the TCP/IP stack can be largely attributed to the BSD license because companies had access to a well-engineered network staff for free. Otherwise, OSI protocols might have been chosen as they were the "hot" research/development topic of the 80's.

Re:BSD license

[slavemowgli]

I'm reading a Computer Networks textbook right now. The author frequently points out that the success of the TCP/IP stack can be largely attributed to the BSD license because companies had access to a well-engineered network staff for free. Otherwise, OSI protocols might have been chosen as they were the "hot" research/development topic of the 80's.

Out of curiosity, would that necessarily have been a bad thing? Granted, it would have meant that today's world would look quite different from the way it does now, but would it necessarily have been a change for the worse?

Re:BSD license

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's saying it is a bad thing?

Re:BSD can be a good approach to promoting free s/

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem in favor of the GPL, and I'm a BSD fan myself:

• GPL/LGPL: Use for software promoting standards not yet generally accepted, where guaranteed interoperability is an essential component.

I'm speaking, of course, of Microsoft's usurping of Kerberos. There's no incentive in breaking TCP/IP, as an accepted standard, but there was incentive in breaking Kerberos, which most users were just in the process of adopting.

After a standard is popularized, GPL producers should 'open' their license to BSD. I'm curious to see whether anyone will 'break' Ogg and Vorbis now that they're BSDed, but those luck out because the killer app- Napster-type sharing- relies on interoperability, and there's enough of an installed base that it's 'safe' to be BSD- people can easily tell the difference between a 'real' interoperable .OGG and "that company making the broken version that won't play everyone else's files/makes files that won't play on everyone else's computer."

I misread the title of this article.

[Vic]

I thought it said "Taking Microsoft BSOD for a Test Run". :)

Looks Like 0.6 Will ROCK! less then 64Megs

[Anonymous Coward]

From their Web Site

We are going to give you all a little preview of exactly where we are with the 0.6 release and whats been going on here. Right now our tree is current as on 9/06/2002 and all code/updates/patches have been applied, and our modifications integrated. These include fixing up of some erroneous errors in the documentation, up to date Network Port ACL code, File Systems ACL code provided as of 9/6/2002. This also includes the stripping of all uneeded system binaries, the framework of integration of packages installed during the installation process as you desire. The base system is now below 25 Megs installed so we can now fit nicely on a 32Meg CompactFlash with room to spare. The first packages in the server installs will be IPSec, PPP, PPTP, IDS, MySQL, HTTP, DHCP, and Sendmail with other additions to follow. We are also testing now an AutoUpdate/Binary Upgrade process to centralize this for users. More will show up on that later. Our Downloads will be alot smaller for the full and mini versions of the ISOs. We may even drop the mini and create a combined for those that wish to install a compiler. This release does include the previously mentioned major code updates and functionality like TCP/IP mods, further privacy protection, the non-exec stack modifications and systrace functionality updates, GCC compiler mods of Stack Smashing protection, restarting of the TCP/IP counter at 0 for each new connection. plus fixes for the reported problems with file system ACL binaries. We are moving forward with this build and are looking for testers to pound out the bugs before the release.
We have gotten further additions for the 0.6 release integrated into the system along with the previously mentioned fixes and updates. If you are interested in joining the testing phase email us @ dingo@microbsd.net

FTPD Security Hardening
This makes ftpd run 99% non-root, while remaining 100% functional. Root privileges are dropped immediately after a successful authentication, and never regained later.

Human-time Resource Limitations
Traditional Unix semantics defines inheritable per-process resources limitations : memory usage, CPU time usage, stack size, file size, descriptors, max subprocesses and core dump size. It lacks something that can be really useful : human-time, ie. the real (not CPU) number of seconds a process is allowed to run. So even if the process is waiting forever without taking CPU time (dead lock, something waiting for data that nobody sends, etc), it can be automatically killed after a maximal time.

Signal Logging
With this the kernel will log important uncatched signals sent to processes. It will help to track down hardware and software bugs, processes that mysteriously crashed, and possible attacks.
Output in the log files looks like :

Sep 5 20:26:46 mserver /bsd: signal 11 received by (qmail-smtpd:13657) UID(1006) EUID(1006), parent (tcpserver:11016) UID(1006) EUID(1006)

Seems someone decided to /. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.

641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz

Re:Looks Like 0.6 Will ROCK! less then 64Megs

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD runs just great on a 32Meg piece-of-shit 486 box. I know because for years that was the only computer I had. Sure ran faster and more reliably than the total garbage that Windows 3.1 was.

ClearType

[Anonymous Coward]

XFree >= 4.0 in fact does cleartype.

You (or (preferably) your distributor), have to put the following line to /etc/X11/XftConfig:

match edit rgba=rgb;

and then you will have sub-pixel font rendering.
anything else that windows can do but Linux/*BSD can`t ?

Re:Inside scoop: Why FreeBSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD Is ALIVE contrary to your idiotic belief.

Assuming you can read, it kills your OS on so many levels.

Re:BSD can be a good approach to promoting free s/

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a great idea. I have been thinking along the same lines of using the BSD or MIT license for codecs as a way of spreading the codec to the largest market with perfect interoperability but the hijacking ala divX of the codec before it is complete and before large penetration irked me. This idea of making it gpl while it is being completed and after completion turning it into bsd for consumer penetration is a great idea. Prhaps slighly modified bsd to make sure it is mentioned in the documentation to make it easy for people check for compliance to the standard.

GPL is anti-business

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is the most anti-business license out there. Right now the last thing our economy needs in more destruction of the computer industry. Every time a person releases software under the GPL a programmer is put out of work. Keep that in mind the next time you sit down at the dinner table. Every time you release something under the GPL you are causing a programmer somewhere to lose his job. No license is more destructive to the computer industry than the GPL.

Are you serious?

[SHEENmaster]

I didn't have ANY trouble installing it.

I just had the age old network card compatibility problem. Why the HELL can't these damn companies agree on a standard!? I'd like to see a series of OSS rom images that companies can use in their products to garuntee compatibility.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't have ANY trouble installing it.

yes, but you can read instructions.

For those of us who do not bother to read instructions, installing OpenBSD can be rather difficult - i kept on clicking but nothing happened :-(

As a Canadian.. I am sorry...

[RebelTycoon]

Hopefully this stupid survey conducted by Ipsos-Reid will not cast doubt on the importance I see of a strong and supportive partnership with our brothers to the south.

Quoting, Seven in ten (69%) Canadians think that the United States, because of its policies and actions in the Middle East and other parts of the world, bear some of the responsibility for the terrorist attacks on them, while 15% indicate that they believe that the U.S. bears all of the responsibility.

The question is overly broad and thus meaningless, additionally the timing is both inconsidered and just a cheap way of creating news by bashing Americans. Supporting a soverign nation (Israel) in its struggle for acceptance and a right to exist, and deploying military forces in Saudi Arabia when asked, does not constitute a justification for the cowardly act of September 11th.

For more information, here is an article, but more importantly, I think we should all Ipsos-Reid what we think of their "make news bullshit by bashing Americans" at ...

John Wright
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900

To my American brothers, I am sorry for this type of survey, see to it that Ipsos-Reid doesn't do it again... Take the time, even if it is just a two-word email!

Re:As a Canadian.. I am sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

So bascially you are mad that a company did a survey? Are you claiming they fudged results? Did they falsify figures? Did they invent 1000 viewpoints to bash the USA?

All they did was ask a question: if you are not happy with the answers they got, maybe you should bomb some Canadian city "back to the stone age". Since when is it wrong or evil to express your opinion?

The SURVEY indicates that the polled section of the Canadian population has basically the same view that most of the world (islamic and non-islamic) has of 9/11. Are you so anxious to kow-tow to your "brothers" that you want to distort his fact?

Furthermore, this is so far off topic you must be on a bad trip......

I constantly see X-BSD users

[Anonymous Coward]

running Gentoo Linux.
And they love it.

I used NetBSd for 5 years and FreeBSD(like it better).
But I must tell you that IMHO BSD has a long way before it can be as fast as Gentoo Linux on the desktop.

I like FreeBSD

but
I LOVE my Gentoo Box.

Gentoo versus BSD ...

[Anonymous Coward]

www.gentoo.org

There can be only 1 !

The GPL and the right to say "I won't"

[alienmole]

I once read a story about "Freedom: I Won't", the idea that everyone has the basic right to say "I won't" when requested to do something by another, and that answer must be accepted.

... The GPL violates my Freedom: I Won't: it tries to dictate to me.

That doesn't follow. You're saying that the GPL violates your freedom to steal someone else's code. Well yes, it does, in the same way that the law violates your freedom to murder people and steal their stuff. I'm glad the GPL exists, to protect us from people such as you.

I concur.

[Bishop]

It agree on all three counts. OpenBSD could be easier for first time users, but is simple and fast the second and nth time around. FreeBSD and its menus can be confusing. You need the Handbook right in front of you. Even then I seem to install something a little different each time. Haven't used NetBSD recently. I had trouble with the installer, but that was a while ago I hope things have changed.

OpenBSD is my favorite *nix. It is perfect. It is a simple clean install that comes with everything that should be in a default unix install. (Except BASH! :-) The installer is not friendly to the first time user. My first install was wiped in about 3 minutes as I started my second install. My second install worked well. My third and nth installs are great. The install is very quick. The defaults are sane and not a lot of questions are asked. There are only a handfull of packages that I install from precompiled instead of ports. When I need a *nix I install OpenBSD.

OpenBSD may be for a more advanced user. Anyone willing to learn, read a little, make some mistakes, should have no trouble working with OpenBSD. I encourage any *nix admin to make some time and learn OpenBSD. Call it professional development. I am sure that you won't turn around and install OpenBSD everywhere. However I am confident that you will find uses for OpenBSD where its quick and simple install will save you time and stress.

Re:I concur.

[snake_dad]

(replay for lack of mod points) I fully agree with Bishop. I remember my first steps into OpenBSD as a fun learning experience. Not at all difficult, just make sure you read about disklabels.

Similar to how they 'stole' DOS for $50,000

[qurob]

I 'stole' a slurpee from 7-11 for $1.29 too!