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GNU-Darwin: Three Years of Free Software Activism

Posted by timothy on from the motivations-and-results dept.

JigSaw writes "The GNU-Darwin Distribution is a free BSD operating system and a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86 users, but it is also a platform for digital activism. Founder Michael L. Love wrote an editorial speaking about the roots, goals, problems and just about everything about GNU-Darwin. Free Software is at the core of GNU-Darwin and also anything political that has an impact on digital and even rights. Is this the first truly politically oriented BSD OS?" Nope.

3 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Digital activism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Problem is that for most people, digital activism amounts to bitching and whining on /. and maybe voting for people who have no chance of winning.

  2. Political OS by Chromodromic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, I'm not very familiar with Darwin, but now I can say, based on this story, that my mind is pretty closed to it. I would certainly be hard pressed to ever consider it for anything in a production environment.

    I don't want politics with my OS. I don't want the distribution site going black because Bush decides to bomb koala bears or even humans for that matter. Call me cold-hearted, but if I'm in a production environment, and I need to deliver a box that's expected to be supported and work as advertised, I don't want to worry if the freaking OS "activists" -- whatever the hell they are, exactly -- are going to pull the Distro (capitalized, no less) because the Malaguan butterfly's habitat is endangered by oil drilling or 250 million U.S. citizens have strong opinions about war.

    Screw that. Give me my FreeBSD, which, to my knowledge, is pretty much always available, regardless of what Dan Rather is spewing at any given moment, and give me peace of mind. Hey, I know that's a lot less eloquent than "give me freedom, or give me death", but in my mind, and with some of the pressures I face from clients, I really don't distinguish between the two.

    Activists need to shut up and get jobs anyway.

    --
    Chr0m0Dr0m!C
    1. Re:Political OS by 11223 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Please don't confuse Proclus's trolling with Darwin, which is a fine operating system put out by a lot of good people at Apple, including Jordan Hubbard. Instead go to the OpenDarwin web site, with people who are actually interested in improving the technology. The only reason GNU-Darwin offers bootable CDs is that an OpenDarwin team member mistakenly told him how to build a CD without linking to the Apple proprietary components; the OpenDarwin release ISOs do this as well.

      GNU-Darwin also has a spotty history with replacing libraries with broken versions, installing stuff in /usr and /usr/local, and generally making a mess of the system. Please do not attempt to run GNU-Darwin and ask for support from the real Darwin folks; they will turn up their noses at you.

      Pay no mind to Proclus's trolling. I'm just dismayed it ended up on Slashdot.