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

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.

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: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.

[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.

[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: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?

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.