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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."
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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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
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
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
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.
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?
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.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
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 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"....
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Got Code?
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.
scott
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.
Got Code?
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!
Ahhhaaa and NBM corporate whore...
Got Code?
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.
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.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
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.
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.
Got Code?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
...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.
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.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
why do you think Apple called the underlying BSD system Darwin. :)
Clearly it's due to the dolphin on SeaQuest.
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.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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:
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.
>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
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.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Actually, there already is a miniBSD. But it fits on a 64MB compact flash card, so go figure.
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.
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.
Well, they can, but they don't... which is fine too.
I thought it said "Taking Microsoft BSOD for a Test Run". :)
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.
/. is just a way to bring out the trolls for a day.
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
(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)
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
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?
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!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
fifth sigma, inc.
>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
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.
>Most of us (myself included) would never put
/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.
>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
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.
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').
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.
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.
:-) 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 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!
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.
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?
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94