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FreeBSD 4.9 Released
Digital Dharma writes "Excellent! FreeBSD 4.9 has been released, and if it's anything like the RC series, this will be a release to remember. You can obtain it from the usual sources, or if you're feeling generous and supportive, you can buy the cd set. Support your local Daemon!" As Jani Laaksonen writes, the new release includes "numerous security advisory fixes, kernel changes and support for the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) capability on Intel Pentium Pro and higher processors (see page(4)). This release also adds support for a few more hardware NIC cards, ipfw network protocol enhancements, userland changes, and more. Check FreeBSD 4.9 Release Notes for more information."
I wonder why those idiots with no more to say than "bsd is dying", "pull the plug", "bsd sux, linux rulez" are not simply filtering out BSD related posts and be done with it... they get moderated down to oblivion anyway...
:)
I'm personally very happy with FreeBSD, thank you.
Hope SMP support (and pthreads support) will get better soon now. Can't wait for 5.x becoming -STABLE.
// "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips,
// their brains start working." -- Ford Prefect
This is good for BSD and good for all of us. For those you saying that BSD lost its vigor in 1990 (lawsuit) then i wonder how the current Linux fiasco is going to impact the penguin. We are all in this together really, a strong BSD means more security for all of us. Espescially with the SCO monster running around. Who know in 5 years maybe BSD will be growing at 17%/year and linux will be on life support. Remember fame is fickle.
You are not a slave, since you are not forced to work. You will not get paid and there is no demand that gives their modifications back but they do not own you and make you work for free, if you do not want to continue then you can stop.
Don't confuse slavery with I-want-to-work-for-free-and-might-get-some-back
None of the points raised by the post in question are worth wasting any time on. The poster's understanding of what "free" means is simply flawed. Flawed? Broken.
Free doesn't mean "do it my way." Free doesn't mean "do what I say." Free means free, period. Unburdened by restriction or prohibition. Free doesn't mean you get to tell other people what to do.
A lot of people don't like freedom. A lot of people think that other people should just do what they're told and not make their own decisions. The poster in question is evidently one of these people. He thinks that people shouldn't be free to do whatever they want with free software. He thinks that people should only be allowed to do certain things, under certain circumstances.
That doesn't sound right to me.
That's where the discussion begins and ends. The poster in question is wrong in his most basic assumption, so there's no point in getting any deeper into it than that.
Apple's contributions are most visible in gcc 3.x.y series powerpc support and optimization, not at kernel level in FreeBSD, since Darwin mainly uses FreeBSD's userland, not kernel.
So Apple is giving back to the community, just not directly to FreeBSD.
You have a naive understanding of how the world works my friend. Can you truly be free when there is no system in place to protect your rights? No! Would you consider yourself free if there were no laws?
Uh, we're talking about software, not human rights and freedoms. Till you manage to get that through your head, there really isn't any point in continuing this discussion.
Dinivin
You have a naive understanding of how the world works my friend.
No kidding?
Can you truly be free when there is no system in place to protect your rights?
Yup. You may not be happy, or secure, or safe, or wealthy, but you're free. That's what "free" means.
If you want to talk about stuff other than freedom, be my guest. But don't try to roll a whole trunk-full of ideas up and call the whole package "freedom." It doesn't work that way.
They can do it because they are just as free as you.
Right. That's what "free" means.
True freedom means the ability to be protected from losing your freedom.
No, that's not what "freedom" means. Wilsonian liberalism aside, freedom cannot be satisfactorily expressed as a negative proposition. There is no such thing as "freedom from." That's just a figure of speech. Freedom is a positive proposition: "freedom to."
I agree that unrestricted freedom would be a lousy way to live. I think restrictions on behavior are important, even critical, to a civil society. I'm just not deluding myself and misleading others by engaging in "slavery is freedom" double-speak.
Freedom is the natural state, the state of grace. We voluntarily give up our freedom, to a degree, when we join a society. In doing so, we must never forget that what we are doing is a conscious act. We must never forget that we have voluntarily surrendered our freedom for a greater prosperity. To say that freedom can't be freedom without restrictions is a disservice to the essential nature of freedom itself.
The thing about FreeBSD is that anyone can easily take away the freedom of the software!
Actually, no. Nobody can take away the freedom of FreeBSD. FreeBSD is now and will always be free... as long as it doesn't get "infected" with stolen IP, as Linux recently has been.
What you can do is take FreeBSD and create something new from it, something that is for a limited time protected by copyright. This is called "progress."
But eventually, all things return to the public domain. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So your high-minded, blowhard rhetoric about "taking away the freedom!" is just silly.
For software to truly be free, it must never ever ever risk losing its freedom, no matter what hands it falls into. Anything else is not free.
Please extract your head from your ass before continuing this discussion.
that the difference between a *BSD release and a Linux distro release is a night and day difference. When a linux distro is released everyone comes out of the wood-work, says it is the best thing since the 386 was released, praises Allah, and there would be few if any comments to the contrary. Yet, when a *BSD release comes out it becomes a religious war over which is better, and all the trolls come out of the wood-work?
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I run several FreeBSD servers, and am very happy with them. Install was simpler, and adding software (that is in ports) is a snap. So is keeping up with patches. I am not sure that I would want to run it as a desktop OS (MacOS X), but as a server I am very happy with it.
There is a reason that a lot of the big servers run BSD's...
Hell yes it would! That would make getting people to use free software that much easier!
That was the obvious response to that I was expecting. But I think you're wrong. Microsoft's buggy software doesn't seem to cause joe user to use free software. At least not with the free software we have today. Joe user is used to all the Windows problems, one more buggy implementation isn't going to open his eyes to the world of free software. Not only joe user, but the corporate world seems to not mind using buggy software for their desktop machines. I'd rather Microsoft not have control of the desktop market, but since they do, I'd rather their software be as stable and bugfree as possible. If MS took BSD and wrote a good closed-source OS using it, I'd be ok with that, as long as the end result was a good product.
Would it be better if OS X didn't exist at all? Sure. Why do I care if more closed source proprietary software exists?
You don't, so license your software under the GPL. Other people do care that closed source proprietary software exists. And of course, people who think OS X completely blows away any free OS, care about its existance. I'm not going to argue that, as I haven't used OS X enough to form an opinion. But if it indeed blows away free OSes, I'm glad it exists and don't mind the GUI being closed-source.
In any case, the BSD license gives more freedom than the GPL. However, the GPL restricts freedom in a way that enforces openness. Which is better? I don't know. But this statement is blatantly false:
FreeBSD is *not* free guys! It never was! At least not in the true sense of the word.
#!/
Hey, BSD users are easy targets. Every time someone says "BSD is dying", the BSD snobs get in a hissy fit. It's this "BSD users are more mature and superior to the Linux juveniles" attitude that keeps people away from the holier-than-thou BSD community. So don't blame us if BSD does eventually...well...die. This will probably get modded down to oblivion, but someone had to say it.
No.
Even if somebody takes BSD and makes it into a closed-source product, the original BSD code is still available for free.
Thus, two things will cause customers to ignore the closed-source product based on BSD: more cost and less addition of value. Until the derivative clears this invisible hurdle, people will rather just get the completely free FreeBSD.
Mac OS X works, because it adds sufficiently many features and makes them easy enough to use that people will buy it for what Apple decides they will sell it for.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
Yep. I use freeBSD, and I like it. As much as anything I am used to the BSD way of doing things. I have no problems with linux (other than distributions tend to do things just a little different), and am considering a new linux machine for things that linux does better than BSD. BSD is still the best for servers, but for desktops some of the support isn't as good. All IMHO of course, you are free to disagree.
For desktop and servers, yes.
I tried linux, didn't like one distribution, changed, had to relearn EVERYTHING.
Tried Gentoo recently, looks good, but they think portage is go gracing earth when it still has some issues that need to be resolved.
Besides, nothing beats the stability of FreeBSD, even on 5.1 and 5.2 I've never had a crash on my desktop machine.
Be nice to the FreeBSD project. In the remote event SCO wins its lawsuits, FreeBSD, especially the 5.x series, would easily be able to replace Linux.
I think most FreeBSD folks (whether official project members or just us users) don't bother with torrents since the most popular way to upgrade a system is via cvsup (at least that's the perception). It took a long time before ISOs were even offered since it was believed most people wouldn't be using them. It would probably take an analysis of the FTP logs after a release, showing a lot of traffic on the ISOs, before torrents would show up often.
I've used linux for about 4 years, but i have always peeked into the BSD camp now and again.
While i like linux, and it has always done well for me, i think it's time for me to jump the fence to FreeBSD completely.
The BSDs always seem to be more mature and logical, and `cleaner'.
Maybe this isn't the best reason to drive such a decision, but i think a lot of the noise and trolling from the linux camp of late has really put me off. I know *all* linux users aren't like this, but it's really turning into something don't want to be associated with. I have a similar situation with the Apple community, and Windows, well... i just hate the OS enough.
The level of integrity that i've seen in my (albeit limited) interaction on usenet, slashdot and irc with BSD folks is impressive. There aren't any issues of acting juvenile or overly zealous.
Maybe in a while the linux camp will "grow up" some and i'll come back.
Sorry.
do() || do_not();
You clearly don't get what free software is all about.
On the contrary, it's you and RMS that don't understand the definition of the word "free".
GPL software != free software.
GPL software == software with huge limitations on how it can be used.
Even the BSD license has limitations, but at least they're much "freer".
Dinivin
Why, yes. Yes it does.
See: /usr/ports/emulators/linux-base
or: FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages: linux
Let's ignore, for the moment, any bikeshedding over the name STABLE and the stability of the code.
The reason for the sentences in question (I had a small part in writing them) was simply this: PAE is a fairly young (in the 4.X series) feature that touches a lot of bits in the kernel (yes, even if it's not enabled). When it was first committed, it caused a number of problems (well-documented on the mailing lists), but they seem to have been fixed. If we thought there were any major problems remaining in this area, we wouldn't have released. However it's an undeniable fact that PAE in 4.X hasn't had a lot of testing time compared to most of the rest of the kernel, and this bears a bit of consideration.
I believe that for the vast majority of users (myself included) 4.9 works just fine. (I run a mix of 4.9-STABLE and 5.1-CURRENT on various laptops, desktops, and non-critical servers.) If you're really one of the most conservative users, you probably wouldn't jump on the new release bandwagon anyways, and would spend some time evaluating 4.9 (regardless of PAE, or what anyone on the release engineering team says) before deploying it in some mission-critical environment.
Actually, our company pays full time wages for at least two FreeBSD developers that I can think of, who's work goes straight to the project. Our products however we dont give away - they are a competetive advantage that we dont want to give up.
The person I originally responded to was claiming that the BSD licensed software frightened away commercial interested MORE than GPL'd software and my posting was to refute that false idea.
Just because YOU like the GPL and you like working on GPL'd products doesn't mean that that is the only valid way to do development.
Our business model works for us, and the FreeBSD community bennefits from our involvment. It really is a win-win situation for both FreeBSD and us.
If I were to release source code of any of my personal software projects, I'd do it under a BSD-style license. Software doesn't have to be business-related or business-useful, but for businesses using various types of 'free' software, BSD is certainly more attractive.
Oh, and you don't have to work on FreeBSD and do 'without-cost' development for corporations - my company PAYS me to develop BSD software. Just because you can't find paying work doesn't mean that the rest of us don't like having jobs.
Don't even get me started about all the BSD work that has found it's way into linux - the BSD license has made this possible, and easy.
Free Online Dark Fantasy RPG - http://www.blackmud.com
Hi, I'm a BSD user as well (Open is my flavor) but what you said is full of crap. If you run similarly equipped Linux and BSD distributions side by side, you will find that they actually have many of the same security vulnerabilities (because, they run much of the same software in userland). I patched OpenSSH on my BSD box at the same time I was patching the Linux box.
What gives the perceived difference is that the ports have separate security advisories (I know they do for Open and presumably for Free) than the core distribution. If you compare a "core" distribution of Linux you would find similar security issues that are patched quickly. Both the BSD and Linux camps do a good job about their security updates and should be commended.
The GPL imposes no limitations on how the software can be used. Quoth the GPL:
GPL and BSD software are equally free in terms of use.
But why? I can understand somewhat the desire to put the FreeBSD kernel in Debian. And I can understand somewhat the desire to put the FreeBSD userland on top of Linux. But why fork it just so you can change the license?
I mean, think about it. It isn't your code and you haven't invested any sweat in it. But you want to change the license. Huh?
From the user perspective, the differences between the BSD and GPL licenses are *zero*. The differences only make themselves known if you as a developer wish to mix your own code into the project. But you're not looking to do any such thing! You only want to change the license for the sake of changing the license!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If you look at the big picture, it is _not_ the way to go. FreeBSD discourages the true ideals of Free Software, because it offers no protections to those wishing to contribute, including private companies.
And if you think that if GCC had a BSD license that Apple would simply "give away" their modifications to GCC, you are pretty naive.
And to call the GPL a silly expression of freedom is utterly insulting and completely sophomoric. I won't even respond to that. You clearly don't get what free software is all about.