GNU-Darwin: Three Years of Free Software Activism

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.

Comments

Don't forget...

[SCO$699FeeTroll]

...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although my precious and limited time (I am an IT-outsourcing consultant) did not allow me to read the interview, I am sure it involves something that

• does run Linux
  
  
• proofs that Mirosoft is making bad software
  
  
• shows how stealing intellectual property simply cannot be wrong ("Actually, it is not stealing") because every fucking idiot does it
  
  
• assumes that any law preventing child molesters from distributing their filthy shit is an attack on Free Speech
  
  
• promotes homosexual, interracial or interspecial cohibitation
  

Kathleen Fent is great in bed

[(TK2)Dessimat0r]

-INSANE-PRIEST--INSANE-PRIEST--INSAN
I___________,.-------.,____________I Slashdot
N______,;~'_____________'~;,_______N fucking
S____,;____LINUX FUCKING____;,_____S sucks
A___;___SUCKS, YOU FUCKING____;____A
N__,'____SLASHDOT RETARDS.____',___N Rob Malda
E_,;___GET IT INTO YOUR HEAD___;,__E is a
-_;_;______._____l_____.______;_;__- cocksucker
P_l_;____________l____________;_l__P
R_l__`/~"_____~"_._"~_____"~\'__l__R Slashdot
I_l__~__,-~~~^~,_l_,~^~~~-,__~__l__I fucking
E__l___l________}:{__ (O) _l___l___E sucks
S__l___l_ (o) _/_l_\_______!___l___S
T__.~__(__,.--"_.^._"--.,__)__~.___T Rob Malda
-__l_____---;'_/_l_\_`;---_____l___- is a
-___\__._______V.^.V___((oo))./____- cocksucker
I__O_VI_\________________ll_IV___O_I
N_____I_lT~\___!___!___/~ll_I______N Fucking
S_____I_l`IIII_I_I_I_IIIIll_I__o___S lameness
A_O___I__\,III_I_I_I_III,ll_I______A filters,
N______\___`----------'__ll/____o__N will
E____O___\___._______.___ll________E this
-_________\..___^____../(_l___O____- ever
P_________/_^___^___^_/__ll\_______P fucking
R_O______/`'-l l_l l-';__ll_l___O__R WORK?!
I_______;_`'=l l_l l='__/ll_l______I
E_____O_l___\l l~l l__l/_ll_l______E Your mother
S_______l\___\ l_l l__;__ll_l__O___S was good
T__o____l_\___ll=l l==\__ll_l______T in bed, she
-____o__l_/\_/\l_l l__l`-ll_/______- grunts like
-_______'-l_`;'l_l l__l__ll_____O__- an ape.
I_O_______l__l l_l l__l__ll________I
N____O____l__l+l_l+l__l__ll___O____N Rob Malda
S_________l__"""_"""__l__ll________S is a
A__O______l____o_o____l__ll____O___A cocksucker
N_________l,;,;,;,;,;,l__ll________N
E_____O___`lIlIlIlIlIl`__ll________E
-__________llIlIlIlIll___ll_____O__- By Dessimat0r
P__________`"""""""""`___""________P (c)2003 Trollkore
-INSANE-PRIEST--INSANE-PRIEST--INSAN

The bishop, while living, was a follower of God.
Now dead, his rotting fingers are able to raise
an army of skeletons from the grave.

Trollkore
"I hate you, I hate your country, and I hate your face!"

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Dear GNAA Sirs

[Anonymous Coward]

Please direct me to the nearest local GNAA chapter. I am in San Francisco, CA. Any help would be most appreciated.

Thank you,
LaTron Jackson

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Ranking

Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin doesn't really have a place in the world, other than to be a PR post for Apple. GNU has the Hurd coming up, and I don't see both Darwin and the Hurd surviving in the long run.

Above all, I have a feeling that the FSF is going to double cross Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers. With the Hurd, there's no need for the Linux kernel anymore, and because Stallman convinced Linus and pals to GPL the kernel, the Hurd is going to have lots of code examples to choose from.

We need a non-GNU toolchain to put on top of the Linux kernel so that when the Hurd makes its power play, Linux won't be dependent on the GNU stuff.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put hurd up in your ass as long as it sucks that much

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

When Hurd comes out, we will all be playing Duke Nukem Forever over IPv6.

don't hold your breath

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a BREAK.

If Stallman were to, as you so eloquently put it, make a "power play" and double-cross Linus, the FSF itself would instantly lose credibility overnight.

Stallman may be bitter, but he's not dumb. HURD is nothing but a curiosity at this point. It is in no way capable to suddenly sit in for the Linux kernel.

Re:Darwin

[WasterDave]

I don't see both Darwin and the Hurd surviving in the long run

Errrm, why not? The Hurd seems to have survived the onslaught of Linux over the past few years, and Darwin is the core of a widely commercially deployed *nix. I can't see a good reason for either to fall over, to be honest.

Dave

Re:Darwin

[hatrisc]

actually hurd is out and is very nice. however it's not exactly usable for most people yet. i wanted to start contributing, but, that plan was foiled when i saw the lack of up to date documentation and realized i have no spare time.

Re:Darwin

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Hurd eh ?

I always though the first letter was ROT-12 encoded.
It's not *when* it comes out, it's *if*.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hurd seems to have survived the onslaught of Linux over the past few years

How could Hurd not survive? Something that was never born cannot possibly die.

Repeat after me: Microkernels are like pure OO programming, very attractive and sexy on the paper, but obese and slow in the real world.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

How could Hurd not survive? Something that was never born cannot possibly die.

Very, very Lovecraftian.

Re:Darwin

[kjs3]

While I agree that Darwin has little more than sideline interest in and of itself, I disagree with the rest of your premise. Hurd, while technically interesting, is years (literally) behind Linux in terms of feature set and usability. It's a decade behind from a user/market acceptance standpoint. Even with "lots of code examples to choose from", Hurd has a significant way to go before it is more than a curiosity.

Quick...name one Fortune 1000 company seriously considering a move to Hurd.

Ultimately, it's not Stallmans call over what kernel is used. That's sorta the thing with the GPL. Since it's all GPLed, people can pick what kernel they like. Some folks will jump to Hurd. My own guess is that very few will abandon Linux, at least in the forseeable future.

FWIW...People who want to dispose of the Linux kernel now do have an option. Last time I checked, the Debian/NetBSD folks had something going, tho they has some "interesting" ideas about licenses. I haven't seen a mad rush that direction from either the Debian or the NetBSD camp.

That said...we could use a new toolchain on top of Linux. Not because of any "consipricy" on the part of Stallman and his cabal, but because the GNU compilers are vastly better at portability that optimization. Having something as good as the Intel compiler or the DEC Alpha compiler for ever arch would be nice...

Re:Darwin

[CRCulver]

We need a non-GNU toolchain to put on top of the Linux kernel so that when the Hurd makes its power play, Linux won't be dependent on the GNU stuff.

Why do you think that the advent of the Hurd would be a bad thing from which other systems need protection? Your entire post is an odd rant, for why rail against GNU software if you're a Linux user?I'm disappointed by the lack of progress in the Hurd (it should pick up after the port to the L4 microkernel, however), but if it achieved stability it would be a superior solution to anything currently on the market. The Hurd has a ton of ingenious improvements and renovations in POSIX architecture, and could truly be a better future for *nix users. Of course, I'm not getting my hopes up, it's been ten years and Debian Hurd is hardly usable. But a man can dream.

Anyway, I expect GNU-Darwin to be cannabalised for code after Hurd picks up. This isn't a bad thing, however, since code reusability is a good thing.

Re:Darwin

[cscx]

I don't know where you come from, but "not exactly useable" and "lack of up to date documentation" doesn't equate to "very nice" in my book...

Re:Darwin

[DAldredge]

TRUE!

It is having 100% user growth each year! Pretty soon Hurd will have at least 512 users!

Re:Darwin

[CmdrTaco on]

I hate when Arabs get on a computer. They start spewing shit like this.

Go suck Allah's dick, General cunt face.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hurd isn't surviving Linux's onslaught, it's being built despite the fact that a perfectly good kernel exists already.

Darwin doesn't really exist outside of OSX. It could live or die and nobody would really notice unless Apple's flashy OSs went with it.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

With a completed Hurd, there's no need for the Linux kernel to exist. The GNU OS is only using the Linux kernel until the Hurd gets done. That's why Stallman fought so hard to get Linux under the GPL. Now Hurd developers can bastardize Linux for parts if they need to, whether or not anything is actually useful.

Take another look at the GPL preamble. It's not very clear about who owns the copyrights to software placed under the GPL. It could be interpretted as meaning that any code placed under the GPL is copyright FSF. If that's the case, then the FSF could pull everyone's right to work on the code or use it in any system that isn't the GNU-OS. There would be no competition.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life? That is the situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outburts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful for the BSD crowd.

Re:Darwin

[CRCulver]

Take another look at the GPL preamble. It's not very clear about who owns the copyrights to software placed under the GPL. It could be interpretted as meaning that any code placed under the GPL is copyright FSF. If that's the case, then the FSF could pull everyone's right to work on the code or use it in any system that isn't the GNU-OS. There would be no competition.

That's a bizarre conspiracy theory you have there. For one, GPL code does not automatically belong to the FSF. If it did, then why is it necessary for the FSF to request that the copyright of widely-used applications be transferred to them in writing so they can defend it in court? Two, Stallman did not "fight hard" to get Linux under the GPL. As a student Torvalds was familiar with the GNU project and thought the GPL a good license for his kernel without any pressure from Stallman. In fact, I imagine Stallman didn't even hear about Linux under it had been under the GPL for months.

I don't understand why you think the GNU project is such a bogeyman out to rape coders. If GNU was afraid of competition, why does it support multiple implementations of the same idea? For instance, GNOME and GNUstep are both GNU projects, but have to a certain extent the same goals. As long as all software in the market is free, the GNU project seems to encourage competition. It's a hacker's OS, so one-upping one's neighbour is a noble act.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD is dying

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Kim Jong-il is to become dictator over a unified, communist Korea. Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking Pyongyang official to defect said that North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il is a failed leader who has starved millions of his people but who is "brilliant" as a dictator.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

If it did, then why is it necessary for the FSF to request that the copyright of widely-used applications be transferred to them in writing so they can defend it in court?

If you were waiting to spring on the world that you owned all the GPL copyrights, you wouldn't blow your trump card until you could benefit from it.

As a student Torvalds was familiar with the GNU project and thought the GPL a good license for his kernel without any pressure from Stallman.

Linux didn't start out under the GPL. It was moved to the GPL license. Also, read the little paragraph that prefaces the GPL copy in the COPYING file that comes with the kernel source. Here is the fun part of the GPL preamble I'm talking about:

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

The "we" is ambiguous. Also note that you aren't allowed to change the GPL text (it's copyrighted), so tinkering with it to clarify who "we" is isn't allowed.

I don't understand why you think the GNU project is such a bogeyman out to rape coders.

I doubt the intent is to rape coders. Money is a better reason why something like this would occur.

If GNU was afraid of competition, why does it support multiple implementations of the same idea? For instance, GNOME and GNUstep are both GNU projects

If both are under the GPL, then the FSF might own the copyright to both. It doesn't matter which one turns out to be the best, because all code in both projects belongs to the FSF. I'll close with one more passage from the GPL:

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes as no surprise that *BSD was soundly defeated in yet another benchmark. Everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is hopelessly mired in a mortifying tangle of fatal trouble.

It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

Consider that because of the many troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

Every major marketing survey has shown that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurd was promised for first release by the FSF in December 1993. The 10th anniversary of that date is fast approaching. Still no release.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

We are still interested in a multi-process kernel running on top of Mach. The CMU lawyers are currently deciding if they can release Mach with distribution conditions that will enable us to distribute it. If they decide to do so, then we will probably start work.

CMU has available under the same terms as Mach a single-server partial Unix emulator named Poe; it is rather slow and provides minimal functionality. We would probably begin by extending Poe to provide full functionality. Later we hope to have a modular emulator divided into multiple processes.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

What????

Hurd does not even have mmap!!!

Seriously, its one of those things where they wanted to do "a very good job indeed" and they screwed it. Linus had the insight to go directly for the solid-x86-dirty stuff and THEN add other features. Hurd tried to do everything perfectly from the start and it was never finished. This happens all the time with people who go for "a very good job"; see the bloatwareness of GNOME for example. Seriously, who need CORBA and XML2 for simple commands like "close window"??

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

It is perhaps anybody's
guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering
*BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD
may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base
for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

mmap() is not part of POSIX, and an OS can function perfectly well without it. There are specific circumstances when mmap() offers and advantage, but there is almost always another way to do it without.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

lame excuse. The man page of mmap() mentions _POSIX_MMAPED_FILES. So it is optional POSIX.

Processors give the mmap functionallity with virtual memory. It's a shame not to have it and use fread() instead. Linux has mmap since 2.0.0. Hurd after 10 years still doean't have it. The failure we were talking about....

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Hurd iso disks disappeared from ALL the Hurd ftp sites for several months over the summer. I don't know if they are available again.

Re:Darwin

[chthonicdaemon]

So let me get this straight. You believe that Stalman has this plan for world domination that he started cooking up in 1984 and he has been waiting patiently since then (for all of 20 years). Waiting to spring this on the world and then ... (3) Profit!

Of course, it might be that he really believes in his cause and is acting as altruistically as he claims. But that would just be crazy. Everyone knows no-one does anything that they don't profit from.

Of course, you could say that he profits by feeling that he acts morally, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

You will have to excuse the people working on hurd for not catering to your needs.

Everyone else on the planet failed to realize that everything revolves around you.

Starting today, I will begin learning to code, so I can personally make sure that someday hurd will have mmap. I don't even know what it is, but I will look it up.

While you are waiting, would you please fuck off.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the GPL. This is an issue that I'm concerned about, but even so, I'll never put any software I write under the GPL.

It's also worth mentioning that I've got an exit plan or two cooked up. If Stallman pulls this mess, the next version of Linux will certainly be out from under the GPL, but it'll be largely toolchainless for a while. FreeBSD is my main strategy.

Re:Darwin

[UnuMondo]

If Stallman pulls this mess, the next version of Linux will certainly be out from under the GPL, but it'll be largely toolchainless for a while. FreeBSD is my main strategy.

I daresay calming down and learning about the situation should be your "main strategy" instead of this bizarre paranoia. Stallman isn't out to get you. He's no evil genius who plans on taking over the world. Even the most ardent of GPL critics do not think he has malicious motives of appropriating others' code (especially seeing as he hardly codes anymore). Stallman began the GNU project as a crusade against software hoarders. He wanted all software to be as usuable and redistributable as it was in the glorious world of 70's academia. So why do you think Stallman will all of the sudden turn around and do the very thing against which he has sacrified for twenty years?

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Linux supports mmap(). Lesser, unsophisticated systems like *BSD do not support it either. Linux remains the most advanced operating system in the open source world.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life? That is the exact situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outburts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful for the BSD crowd.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life? That is the exact situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outbursts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful for the BSD crowd.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I need to learn is what an independent lawyer says about the wording of the GPL. It doesn't matter what Stallman used to want for the world of software, either. If it turns out that the "we" mentioned in the GPL is the FSF, then that organization benefits from it, because they control an enormous amount of extremely functional code.

The GPL makes for a good license if the FSF wants to start a project, but it's a horrible license for Joe Coder writing libexample-1.6. If the GPL coup occurs, then they can take the control of libexample out of Joe's hands. They can't stop him from making a derivative work, but it would be under the GPL too, and because they own the copyright to libexample-1.6 and before, they can force him to dump all copies of his^W their code.

Re:Darwin

[hatrisc]

this was due to a breach of security on the box they were hosted on. only files from a "secure" backup were put back up.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Flask of ripe urine
Pressed to bsd lips
bsd drink up

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thought for today: BSD is dead

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin doesn't really exist outside of OSX. It could live or die and nobody would really notice unless Apple's flashy OSs went with it. For all intents and purposes, Darwin is essentially dead.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one thing to consider. That is the simple fact that *BSD is dying. *BSD is dead meat, as they are wont to say say in the butcher trade.

Re:Darwin

[Anonymous Coward]

You really don't keed to be Kreskin to look into FreeBSD's future. Even a child knows that FreeBSD is dying. All major marketing surveys show that FreeBSD has steadily declined in market share. FreeBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral. In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking. It's a fact: FreeBSD is dying.

3 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah because we have only been doing this for three years.

I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I SODOMIZE PORK CHOPS!

lolf

[Anonymous Coward]

bwah! fourth post?

I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I SODOMIZE PORK CHOPS!!

Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Digital activism?

[E_elven]

No, the problem is that of voting for people who can win because all the other schmoes think the same way instead of risking an opinion. If everybody who didn't vote at all in the last elections had voted for one candidate, that person would have won.

Re:Digital activism?

[Lord Kano]

No, the problem is that of voting for people who can win because all the other schmoes think the same way instead of risking an opinion.

So what you're saying is that the problem is with practical reality. As much as I would have liked to see Alan Keyes become president, I knew that there was no chance.

What that leaves is "Who would you least like to win?"

Once Keyes was out, who would I least like to win? In order that would be...

1. Al Gore
2. Ralph Nader
3. GW Bush
4. Pat Buchanan

While Bush wasn't my first choice, I had to vote against Gore and Nader. Any other vote would have been no different than a vote for them.

If everybody who didn't vote at all in the last elections had voted for one candidate, that person would have won.

And if I had a million dollars, I'd be rich. But ,in the immortal words of Ice-T, "SHIT AIN'T LIKE THAT!"

You have to deal with reality the way it is. It's the only way to make things the way you want them to be.

LK

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, there really are shitheads out there that think Pat Buchanan is a viable candidate.

It's incredible that people like you are allowed to live.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Pat Buchanan was completely wrong about immigration practices. California isn't giving away valid ID cards at all, and breeding a lot doesn't increase your voice in politics at all.

Think about Bustamante being governor of California. He would've fucking turned over most of the USA's Pacific coastline (valuable and strategic land) to Mexico.

Buchanan wasn't my first choice for President, but he was a better choice than Gore and Nader either one.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turned over California to Mexico? Where do you right-wingers get this stuff? State governors don't have the power to sign any sort of treaty like that, so I have no idea what you mean and I'm pretty sure you don't either.

On a related note, check out boycottcbs.com for a good laugh. Those retards haven't even seen the show but they just KNOW they're going to hate it. I guess it must not show all of those things that only happened in their dreams, like that time the USSR invaded and Reagan fought off the entire Soviet military using only one hand. Dumbasses, all of you...

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who want to come here should get in line and play square and wait for legal entry papers. We have enough crooks and cheats here already without importing any more. Most the people who cross illegally into the US are criminals and scum.

Re:Digital activism?

[Lord Kano]

Viable or not, he was on the ballot. That's the point.

LK

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on Mecha, and then you'll wipe that smug little liberal smirk off of your pasty white liberal ass face. The Klan with the tan.

Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don Mattingly is returning to the New York Yankees. The six-time All-Star, who was the team's captain from 1991 until his retirement in 1995, persuaded by owner George Steinbrenner to become the team's hitting coach.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life? That is the situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outburts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful.

Re:Digital activism?

[Ed Avis]

The problem is that the activism chosen doesn't necessarily have much to do with GNU-Darwin or free software or programming, and is just a random collection of the author's beliefs and prejudices, jumbled together because if you believe in one you're expected to believe in the others. What does the Iraq war have to do with the GPL or software patents, for example?

Having a political stance is fine, but you need to stay focused on what your real goal is. The FSF is a good example in this regard - they choose their goal (freedom for all computer users, in terms of using, sharing and changing software) and work towards it. Although RMS may talk about stuff on his own time, you don't see the FSF issuing press releases about global warming or saving the giant panda.

Re:Digital activism?

[alexdewaal]

We have enough crooks and cheats here already without importing any more.

Hey, why suddenly change your oldest tradititon?

According to the Powers that Were in Europe, most emigrants (from Europe to the New World) were criminals and scum.
According to the native americans most immigrants were criminals and scum.

Most the people who cross illegally into the US are criminals and scum.
The conclusion is inevitable: Most the people who crossed legally into the US were criminals and scum.

Considering that criminal traits are genetically acquired...
So you oppose not to criminals coming into the US but how they come in? But what can you expect from criminals?

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spics are sub-human. They are mud people, more like monkeys or Negroes.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Came across quite an interesting site at libresociety.org that seems to be interested in activism from a free software perspective..

G

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point. I imagine that this Darwin dude scares more people away than he attracts with his mumbo jumbo.

The guy is a whack job.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, some of us consider the Right Thing to be about more than whichever one can win a popularity poll at any given moment in mass market fashion trends.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the Iraq war have to do with the GPL or software patents, for example?

Well, assuming you mean the typical liberal view on the Iraq conflict as a non-war motivated by short-sighted ideas, then it's related to software patents quite directly. Selfishness on the part of the perpetrators, wisdom, insight, and depth of understanding on the part of those who choose another way.

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face the music; recognize the truth. *BSD is dead

Re:Digital activism?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another item which must be considered. That is the simple fact that *BSD is dying.

*BSD is dead meat, as they are wont to say say in the butcher trade.

I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I SODOMIZE PORK CHOPS!!!

How curious. "Remove it"?

[AndroidCat]

We have been prepared to take the Distro off-line a couple of times as a form of political action. It is important to realize that the software freedom status of GNU-Darwin was tenuous before the change to the APSL, so we were ready to cut our losses, and remove GNU-Darwin from the internet, if necessary. Now things have improved very much.

Now, I'm probably mistaken, but if they took down their site, couldn't someone just immediately pop up a mirror site and carry on from there? If it really is free software under the GNU licence, how can they remove GNU-Darwin from the Internet?

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Arker]

Now, I'm probably mistaken, but if they took down their site, couldn't someone just immediately pop up a mirror site and carry on from there?

You are and you aren't.

Nothing legal to prevent it. On that you're right.

But it costs money and time to make something like that available and keep it updated. What makes you think that there are enough people out there who would spend that time and money to keep this thing alive that don't care about Freedom? What on earth would be their motivation?

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I'm probably mistaken, but if they took down their site, couldn't someone just immediately pop up a mirror site and carry on from there? If it really is free software under the GNU licence, how can they remove GNU-Darwin from the Internet?

That would require someone outside their project to actually give a shit if they took it down. All their stunts in the name of 'activisim' have marginalized them even more than they would have been anyway.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[s20451]

What makes you think that there are enough people out there who would spend that time and money to keep this thing alive that don't care about Freedom? What on earth would be their motivation?

Well, I have no idea. Maybe they don't have girlfriends and are trying to fill the gaping void.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Arker]

I think you have just proven my point.

How many of those links go to sites maintained by volunteers who took over a project after the originators pulled out? How many are run by people that don't care about Free Software?

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[AndroidCat]

No question--any fool that thinks starting/maintaining their own fork is welcome to try it. (The question of if anyone will care about your fork and where you put it, I leave to the other posts.)

It was just the choice of the work "remove" that struck me: Shorter than saying "stop all our work and take our site down", but it sounds more like "take our ball and go home". With open software, you can go home, but you can't take away your ball.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Software != Freedom, jerk-off!

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Voivod]

What do you mean by "care about Free Software" in this context? I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Are you asking why anyone would work on and maintain an open source project without strong ideological reasons, such as considering closed source software amoral? In that case, I expect that the majority of open source project communities do not fit your criteria. BSD, Apache, MySQL, Bind... many projects exist because they filled a niche and the open source method just out-competed their commercial rivals. People participate in the projects for many reasons that have nothing to do with ideologies that require Capital Letters to discuss.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD people are losers who need to feel "different". It is much like self-proclaimed homosexuals. You have an empty spot in your psyche which requires you to always need to be associated with the peculiar and different. Your most important concern in life is hardly the operating system itself. It is the need to feel "special". Maybe your momma didn't cuddle you enough, who knows.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It should come as no surprise that *BSD was soundly defeated in yet another benchmark. Everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is hopelessly mired in a mortifying tangle of fatal trouble.

It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

Consider that because of the many troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

Every major marketing survey has shown that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[alexdewaal]

Oh my God!!
Those people do things for reasons I don't understand!!
They're, well, like, Humans!! Aaarghh!

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[D2Deek]

How many of those links go to sites maintained by volunteers who took over a project after the originators pulled out?

How about this one?

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well but isn't it under the Apple Public Source License rather than the GPL? The APSL does conform to the definition of Free Software Licenses, as certified by the Free Software Foundation, but its not GPL.

Re:How curious. "Remove it"?

[stephanruby]

Now, I'm probably mistaken, but if they took down their site, couldn't someone just immediately pop up a mirror site and carry on from there?

Too late, I'm the next in line and I'm putting up a porn site.

Political?

[worm eater]

Well, timothy seems to be suggesting that OpenBSD is a 'truly politically oriented' version of BSD. Yet the OpenBSD site says that one of their goals is to "[b]e as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the basis of technical merit." So is it just not possible for a group of Free Software programmers to be non-political?

Re:Political?

[AndroidCat]

No no--when they say politics free, they mean operating system politics.

Meat-space politics come and go, but operating system politics cause flamewars at dawn with dueling forks.

It was our last-best chance for peace, it failed...

Re:Political?

[cscx]

The OpenBSD people HATE the GPL. The only GPLed package in OpenBSD is GCC... and that is slated for removal eventually.

When the maintainer of BSD's ipf pulled a 180 and changed the license to something more restrictive (I'm at a loss for details right now), the OpenBSD people told him to fuck off, and they wrote their own firewall, now known to everyone as pf. Pretty sad that it had to happen, since pf is now regarded as one of the best firewalls around...

Re:Political?

[kayen_telva]

the story is from JigSaw

Re:Political?

[moonboy]

Not sure, but Timothy may have been referring to the stance that the OpenBSD team has taken in the past with regard to encryption technologies. Essentially keeping development headquartered outside of the U.S. because of export restrictions. But then again, Theo is from and lives in Canada anyway, so I guess I could be wrong about the above.

Re:Political?

[s20451]

Meat-space politics come and go, but operating system politics cause flamewars at dawn with dueling forks.

I'm reminded of what they say about academic politics: it's vicious, only because the stakes are so terribly small.

Re:Political?

[drinkypoo]

It's just not possible to be apolitical. Even stating that you will be apolitical is a political stance. You can only choose your politics.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, politics chooses you!

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just not possible to be apolitical.

Are you commies are just going to repeat that until you believe it?

Re:Political?

[CmdrTaco on]

Spoken like a true Arab intellectual! (I know that's an oxymoron for the ages)

You Allah ass-sniffing, muslim, child-raping, 5 times a day praying, carpet riders piss me the fuck off.

Excuse me. I'm off to the book store to pick up a copy of the Quran; I ran out of TOILET paper.

Re:Political?

[drinkypoo]

I am neither a communist, nor a democrat, the group most commonly labeled a commie after communists and socialists.

Re:Political?

[NightSpots]

What?

When the maintainer of BSD's ipf pulled a 180 and changed the license to something more restrictive (I'm at a loss for details right now), the OpenBSD people told him to fuck off, and they wrote their own firewall, now known to everyone as pf. Pretty sad that it had to happen, since pf is now regarded as one of the best firewalls around...

How is that sad?

Someone wrote software, and then wouldn't correct a poorly written license. OpenBSD decided that they liked the idea, but disliked the license, wrote it themselves, and published it with a truly free license.

That's a good thing.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OpenBSD project has learned beeing non-political is impossible.

Regarding to 3.4 (and eventually 3.3, too) does this have to do with politics http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html yes or no?

Isn't politics a greater base than just a government? Like hierarchy, for example? Hierarchy, which OpenBSD clearly has (it has a static person who calls himself ''a friendly dictator''; see kerneltrap.org interview)

I stand unleashed.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...

Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.

If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"

That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.

The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

While NetBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer. OpenBSD may be in the worst shape in this regard.

I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...

Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.

If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"

That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.

The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD lost.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a red diaper doper baby, a fellow traveler, a pinko.

You made your own bed, bub. Now lie in it.

Re:Political?

[redhog]

Nag, it's a sad thing the sstupid bastard wrote a changable license, and the OpenBSD-team accepted it in the first place. Note that this has nothing to do with copyleft, which most BSDers hate too, but with totally non-free-software!

Re:Political?

[NightSpots]

I've been told via email by Theo something along the lines of:

"That suggestion just shows how little fucking clue you have as to how this all works".

In all fairness, he was right.

Does that make him an ass? Not really. If I were him, I'd have responded in a very similar manner. He's got a lot of shit going on at the same time, probably gets a ridicuslous amount of email, and to his credit, he seems to know exactly what he wants done, and is willing to do it himself if nobody else will.

Yes, he's an egotistical bastard. But he's a talented, hard working egotistical bastard.

BSD still hasn't lost. FreeBSD still beats linux performance wise, and OpenBSD beats everything security wise. There's no reason to use linux except for third party software support, and that's only there because of the buzzword factor of "linux".

When third parties start realizing that BSD has a more commercial friendly license, guess where all of the commercial apps are going to go?

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But he's a talented, hard working egotistical bastard."

You forgot the words batshit insane, and brilliant.
Just remeber dont hack openbsd or you will hurt
theo's feelings.

Re:Political?

[mantera]

i think the word politics means different things in different contexts.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

Score: -1 (Truth)

Re:Political?

[Grizzlysmit]

So is it just not possible for a group of Free Software programmers to be non-political?

I like to know how you can have a group of humans which is non-political?, as soon as you have a group you have different views and interests, and thus politics is born.

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD still hasn't lost.

Keep telling yourself that, zealot!

FreeBSD still beats linux performance wise,

Proof? FreeBSD came dead last in a performance test against Linux and Windows 2000. Too bad. The days when FreeBSD was better than Linux are long gone. Not only is it slower... it's also less popular... and less supported by the big commerical organisations. Face it, the BSD license is a dead end for open code.

and OpenBSD beats everything security wise.

Not true... what's OpenBSD's government secutiry rating again?

Re:Political?

[4of12]

So is it just not possible for a group of Free Software programmers to be non-political?

That's correct.

The best path is to be as rational and non-judgemental as possible. If you want to further technical development of free and open source software, then you aren't required to spend time ranting against the DMCA (even though you know it's not good legislation). In the words of a recent talk, "You don't have to drink the Kool-aid". Not that it isn't a good cause, and something to be done, just don't burn so much of your emotional energy railing against The Machine that you aren't able to do anything positive.

Inevitably, no matter how carefully you avoid arguments or making inflammatory remarks, etc., others may want to define you as having a "political" agenda. That's because success of free and open source software can have a significant impact on the economy, where those harvesting certain existing money streams are in jeopardy of losing revenue because of the impact of free and open source software. Then, anyone working on free and open source software gets a label thrown at them.

Re:Political?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

That wasn't a political decision, but a legal one. OpenBSD legally could not distribute IPF (because of the modifications they made). OpenBSD asked IPF to change the license, it was not changed, so IPF was dropped.

(Note: I am using the names of the projects as proper nouns)

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

enough with the cut-n-paste trolling already, you're not fooling anyone into thinking you're "original"

Re:Political?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a red diaper doper baby, a fellow traveler, a pinko

...and you must be an Israel-Firster who listens to that Jew Savage whose real surname is "Weiner"

Fucking useless neocons. They're the real commies, all ex-Trotskyites

That was scary

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

GNU-Darwin is an activist distribution

GNU-Darwin has been an ardent defender of digital liberties, and it is a platform for digital activism. Given the current state of things in the US and elsewhere, strident expressions of democratic power are necessary.

blah-blah

We have been prepared to take the Distro off-line a couple of times as a form of political action.

Damn, my skin crawls just remembering it ...

Seriously, what's this political rah-rah attached to software making? sure free software is about freedom of speech and it's very preferrable for a million valid reasons, but gee, let go of the melodrama-mode button.

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people would even care? I mean, Linux is pretty obscure in mainstream computing. The BSD's are almost never seen. But Darwin or GNU/Hurd? Who'd honestly care if they were gone?

Re:That was scary

[Scarpia10]

I have a really tough time taking this guy seriously. Way too much commentary, some of it completely unrelated to software - "we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March." Now, I wasn't exactly in favor of the war, but this guy seems really, really self righteous. I know I went to his homepage to find out how HE felt about the war... I don't know, but he seems more interested in hearing his own voice (seeing his own print?) than in producing software.

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

More often that not, "free software" is really about the ego of the proponent. Most people like to have a reason to feel smugly superior to others. And it's not really that much of a stretch from mindless zealotry about an OS to mindless zealotry about any other cause.

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't!

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you know, like people say "Hey Michael, how's the great mighty BSD/Darwin crew?" - "They're both well".

Re:That was scary

[idiotnot]

It does have an effect -- people who are opposed to whatever whacko statement they're making at the moment simply decide not to use their software.

On my s-list at the moment:
- GNUPG people for their antiwar stuff
- GNU/Darwin for several of their stances
- OpenBSD (well, Theo, mostly) for being upset when the hand that feeds them stops when they bit it.

The political crap doesn't further your cause, it only turns off users. For me, with GNU/Darwin, it's easy. I don't use it, because there are better unix-like platforms available for PPC. And there's no contest on x86.

Re:That was scary

[Crazy Eight]

Yeah, I've got to wonder who these guys think their audience is. I'd be surprised to find that anyone really wants to use their `NIX let alone gives a shit about their political activism. And what's with the air-quotes used when mentioning Linux?

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

So is anyone supposed to care that some war-mongering idiot is avoiding distros with a stance against the war in Iraq, which to any reasonable person, btw, is obviously a huge scam? Let them take whatever stance on foreign policy they want; it won't affect the software they distribute, or our national foreign policy; but organized criticism of our national foreign policy and other matters is an effective and critical part of our democratic system. Disagree with their stance? Fine! Let them know how you feel, and explain your position in an articulate manner. But to avoid distros based on political statements is just stupid, since they have no leverage on the matter, and your support (or lack thereof) for their distro will have zero effect on the political stance they're taking. Choose a distro for its merits at getting your job done the way you want, not on some editorial by the guy in charge of it.

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Every major marketing survey has shown that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally dim.

Re:That was scary

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

Re:That was scary

[bit01]

Political rah-rah-rah is entirely appropriate. You name an area of your life that is not affected by software and IP rights. Everything from supermarkets to credit cards to car engine computers depend totally on software.

No problem, until self-serving multi-nationals like M$ start using DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) to bypass the democratic legal system (eg. first sale doctrine) and control people's lives.

--

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

Happy to be a part

[Galileo430]

Seems silly such an article is written about "3 years" of free software. Since clearly this "free" stuff has been around for quite a bit longer.

I see Darwin as FreeBSD's little brother that just happens to have picked up a nice job working for a respectable corporation. The only reason why anyone really cares about this distro is because Apple does. Not that that is a bad thing.

Re:Happy to be a part

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but respectable corporation is an oxymoron.

Re:Happy to be a part

[bursch-X]

>I see Darwin as FreeBSD's little brother

Then I'm afraid you know fuck about Mach and NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP.

Re:Happy to be a part

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason why anyone really cares about this distro is because Apple does.

But Apple DOESN'T care about it.

You're getting GNU/Darwin confused with Open Darwin. Apple couldn't care less about the former, and doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to the latter. (It's mostly Apple's Core OS guys who even look at Open Darwin more than twice a year or so.)

From Apple's point of view, Darwin is "that portion of Mac OS X, which Apple publishes under an Open Source license, to make life easier for people writing drivers who need to be able to debug kernel code." It was never intended to be a competitor to Linux, BSD, or any other commercial or non-commercial OS.

When the GNU/Darwin dude tries to roll up a whole distro and sticks an X-windows GUI on Darwin, the reaction is much like that to a dog walking on its hind legs: it may be cool on some level that he even attempts it, but don't ask whether he's doing it well.

GNU/Darwin is basically pointless. It offers precisely *nothing* that can't be had from less preachy sources.

I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I SODOMIZE PORKCHOPS!!1

Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

That GNU-Darwin people decides not to link to "proprietary" libraries is, of course, a result of them using the GNU Public License so extensively-- and now the primary supported Darwin platform is not even supported in this project!

This makes me shake my head and think, "what the fuck?" This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners. This move is akin to opening a car garage (in America) whose mechanics are all experienced in servicing American cars, and then changing policy months later, stating that the garage will only work on foreign models.

Where's the fucking logic?

Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man? This move makes so little sense I can't tell if the people at GNU-Darwin are really that stupid, or if I am waking up in alternate realities every damn morning. I almost kind of hope for the latter.

This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down and kiss Apple's butt for choosing the BSD license.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Arker]

What kind of kool-aid are you drinking?

"The primary supported Darwin platform" - PPC, most assuredly is supported by this project.

Quit spreading fud, and moderators, please quit moderating this kind of nonsense up!

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[TRoLLaXoR]

No it's not. Read about this asinine move here.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man?

This line by itself has earnt my 'post of the week' award. Bravo!

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Juanvaldes]

You were saying?

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[proclus]

That was a troll folks, and full of lies too. Mod down please. (hello trollaxor)

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[DAldredge]

What follows is a quote from the GNU-Darwin web site. How is stating the truth a troll?

"GNU-Darwin will not support or distribute any software which links to proprietary libraries, and that includes Cocoa, Carbon, CoreAudio, etc. There will be no native package manager from GNU-Darwin (pkg_add suffices). Second, we will be moving our operations to x86, and we are putting the ppc collection into maintenance mode.' "

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[proclus]

Hello Trollaxor. The Free Darwin campaign is over. Here is the correct link, and from the article as well.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/06/1729 21 3

We are developing actively for the ppc platform, including OS 10.3. You should know these things, of all people, so I can only conclude that you are deliberately spreading lies about the Distro. Ahh well, it appears that the good news is drowning out your factitious message.

Regards,

proclus


http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[proclus]

That quote is no longer valid. According to the article, ppc is supported, the Free Darwin action was successfully ended, and GNU-Darwin is supporting Apple users. Moreover, GNU-Darwin is actively developing for the ppc platform, including OS 10.3.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the real troll, you fucking piece of shit. Think of all the good Slashdot stories that were rejected to have this article about your gay faggot ass project. Die cunt rag!

+5 Insightful (don't be such pussies mods)

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[DAldredge]

Please provide a link to a page on the gnu-darwin homepage that show support was restored and that support will not be pulled again.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why you don't try updating your site, bitch? Are we all supposed to read your mind? God, you disgust me.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down and kiss Apple's butt for choosing the BSD license."

Apple didn't "choose" the BSD licence, they exploited it! (as is their right)

The licence Apple "chose" was the ASPL, which is like the GPL but NOT. It's more like the MS public licence, but nothing like the BSD licence.

I realise kissing iSteve's butt is a passtime round here but this is just lies.... God forbid this guy standing up for what he believes in despite what apple or anyone else thinks.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the biggest piece of shit I have ever met. You're lucky I'm not standing in front of you, because otherwise I'd knock your ass out.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Graff]

That was a troll folks, and full of lies too. Mod down please. (hello proclus)

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, quick question. How do you defend your erroneous prediction that Iraqis wouldn't welcome American soldiers as liberators?

It's all too clear that a vast overwhelming majority of Iraqis have welcomed the United States, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to explain your embarrasingly faulty prediction.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy is a whack job. I wouldn't touch Darwin with a ten foot pole.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how hard your website is to navigate and how bad it looks, and how longwinded and boring your articles are, I can't blame Trollaxor - or anyone else - for not being up to date with your bullshit neener-neener plicy games.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[TRoLLaXoR]

I took a glance at your website and couldn't find that. I shouldn't have to resort to Slashdot to find major policy changes in your project.

That being said, GNU-Darwin is still a political project and not a technology project: Decisions regarding the future of GNU-Darwin are not based on technlogy that will most benefit the end user's ability to get real work done but on personal interpretation of third party actions and policies.

How long will it be before Apple does something else to tweak the nipples of GNU-Darwin and send PowerPC development into maintenance mode again?

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners.

I'll agree that they're shooting themselves in the foot, but I fail to see how they're screwing anyone else over. I don't know anyone who depends on what they distribute on or yank from their web site.

If I need X-windows, I'll D/L it from Apple. If I need Apache, I'll hit "software update". If I really want to build Apache myself, I'll pull it down with fink or Darwin Ports.

I'm rather reminded of Deep Thought asking Vroomfondle and Majiktyhse: "Whom would that inconvenience?" when they threatened a philosophers' strike.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Apple sic the lawyers on you for screwing with their good name. If I were Apple I'd have you hung, drawn and quartered just for being so idiotic and anoying.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its life? That is the exact situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in just such a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outbursts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful for the BSD crowd.

Re:Who do GNU-Darwin Think They Are?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? I post this old troll and it gets modded down and Trollaxor's gets modded up. YHL YHBT HAND

You make your stand where you can

[Crashmarik]

While I seriously doubt a free os will be able to muster the clout to be taken seriously on theri Antiwar stand or for that matter their Anti DMCA stand. Its very good to see people taking a stand and getting out the message.

This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues. If you caught the Diane Rehm show this morning, they were doing a piece on voting systems. While they did have a few C.S. people talking about the problems of electronic voting machines, the election officials managed to stonewall and treat their concerns as non issues. The trick for technical people of any stripe is to make certain that the opinion of their community is heared outside their community. GNU/darwin, free BSD, or linux will only serve as a platform for speaking to those allready within a particular community.

Re:You make your stand where you can

[Evil Adrian]

This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues.

The same reason actors aren't taken seriously -- because they're not politicians.

Re:You make your stand where you can

[Otter]

The problem is that if you use your software as a lever for your political views, you only have leverage to the degree that anyone cares about your product.

Nobody gives a damn about the GNU/Darwin software; it contributes nothing new, it's unsafely done and it gets jerked around every time "Proclus" wants to make a political statement. The guy flames anyone who points out shortcomings in his distribution, rants at anyone who criticizes anything he does and one time accused the MacSlash editors of trying to smear him after they posted one of his press releases, verbatim, with no additional commentary!

It's not a coincidence that every post here is commenting on the controversies he stirs up, with nothing about the technical merit of his work.

Re:You make your stand where you can

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and who pray tell takes the politicians seriously?

I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I SODOMIZE PORK CHOPS!!1!

I PRINT OUT THIS STORY AND WIPE MY ASS WITH IT

[Anonymous Coward]

If I ever need toilet paper, I just print out the day's stories from Slashdot and then wipe my ass with it. Anyone in to butthole play/scat?

Not quite "fair" politically.

[Qweezle]

From the site:


In fact, we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March, and we blackened the whole website, after Apple used the DMCA, but we have never actually taken it off line. Fortunately, the situation has never warranted taking the package collection off line, which would be an even more drastic step, and our actual users have never been affected by these actions. In fact, we received many orders and messages of support as a result of our activism.


While I realize that MOST of the supporters of Darwin may in fact be politically liberal...this is not fair for the [conservative and otherwise] users that are not. I'm not looking to start a flame war, but I believe that inserting his political beliefs into his work project is less than elegant.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[geoffspear]

Why would any conservative support open source, free software? A real conservative should believe that anything done for any reason other than to make a profit is necessarily wrong.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[squiggleslash]

Can't the conservative hackers create their own OS? I mean, we could have hundreds of different OSes, one for each political philosophy. You could look over someone's shoulder, see "Be/HURD", and think "Wow, an anarcho-syndicalist", or someone else, who's running "GNU/OpenBSD" and think "Gosh, that guy's a christian democrat", or yet another person, who's running Windows Me, and think "Wow, that person's a Republican".

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Arker]

This has nothing to do with 'liberal' or 'conservative'. Plenty of left-wing warmongers out there (just look at the US Congress) and plenty of conservatives are anti-war.

Being against war isn't a right-left thing. It's a humanity thing.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you're just a pansy.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[zangdesign]

A real conservative should believe that anything done for any reason other than to make a profit is necessarily wrong.

Actually, I think you've got Republicans and Conservatives mixed up there, dude. Real Conservatism and Liberalism have nothing to do with all the political horse manure that Republicans and Democrats have piled on it.

Real Conservatism is about slow, careful change. More tweaking than actual, sweeping changes to the social landscape.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a humanity thing.

If you can't take the heat, get off the planet.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, on the internet anyone can be a tough guy, i bet in real life you wet yourself when a bee flies too close to you. Remember digital balls don't make your real ones any bigger.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[rocketjam]

Being antiwar doesn't equate with being liberal. There are plenty of conservatives and libertarians that don't agree with the Bush administration's foreign "policy".

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Pave Low]

Being against war isn't a right-left thing. It's a humanity thing.

Where was the humanity in living under the boot of Saddam's regime? Where's the humanity in North Korea?

Being against all war can equate to being against humanity.

Freedom isn't free.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[gsfprez]

being for war isn't a non-humanity thing when there are people dying at the hands of tyrants.

just ask the Hatians, the People of Yougoslavia, the Somalians, or any of the people we worked to save during the Clinton Administration.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[b17bmbr]

i am reminded of that old saying, "what's the best part of banging your head against a wall? when you stop."

trying to ask anti-war folks to use a little logic or reason and look at the facts is just banging your head against a wall. for all their blathering, the truth is that there is not a single lie bush told. there were intel failures for sure, but the antis are just full of bush hatred. period. they were nowhere to be found when clinton bombed serbia for 78 days, killing many civilians, and destroying the infrastructure of serbia for a presumed war criminal, whose mass graves we can't seem to find. hmmm...where's the story there? yet, when mass graves turn up all over iraq, and kay's interim report shows definite weapons programs, even if nothing is found, and yet you want these people to use a little common sense. their boy clark, suddenly an anti, was fired from nato. one of the reasons. he wanted the airport where the russian troops were, and he wanted to go to war against the russian troops. WTF!! british general refused, and our own general staff backed the british general. when shelton fired him, the story was that he was using the campaign to push his own personal agenda, and turn it into a larger campaign, wanting to be another schwarzkopf type. but where's the mention of that? hmmm...

hey, cruise /. for the tech news, and for kicks. most of the people here have no idea what saddam really wanted. to be the caliph of the abassid empire. anyone on /. who konws of the abassids probably thought the war was a pretty good idea. but hey, i'm a history teacher by trade, geek by desire!!

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[DesScorp]

"A real conservative should believe that anything done for any reason other than to make a profit is necessarily wrong."

That's a crock of shit. Conservatives are big believers in volunteer work and charitable causes. I've given money to, trained with, and volunteered for the Red Cross, among other organizations.

Or does that not count? One of the appealing things about Linux is the volunteer aspect. I don't always agree with the politics of the Linux community, but I admire the work, among other reasons, for the public good that results.

Liberals and/or Democrats do not have a monopoly on good works for the sake of good works.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad I have the criminal record to prove it.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not looking to start a flame war, but I believe that inserting his political beliefs into his work project is less than elegant.

Many businesses shut down for a day to join political protests. It is common practice, at least outside of America. It is an unfortunate fact (made more obvious by your post, if you are an American) that too many Americans consider it somehow improper to protest against the government if it involves anything more than saying you're not in complete agreement. And considering how vehemently the present government's supporters make their case (e.g. Ann Coulter accusing Bush's critics of treason), people who disagree with current situations have the right to be active and be heard.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[WiseWeasel]

Wow, I feel very sorry for your students. Stick the the curriculum, buddy! There were many mass graves found in Serbia and Bosnia, and the "presumed war criminal" was the object of massive evidence displaying his guilt beyond a doubt of terrific attrocities. Maybe if you would leave the partisan BS behind, and achnowledge the character and intentions of our leaders, you could convey a more realistic World view to your students. The war in Iraq was started based on trumped up charges of WMD posession and acquisition, which have turned out to be based on shaky intelligence at best, and an outright lie at worst. We aren't in Iraq to liberate the subjects of a brutal dictator, but to secure access to their resources (hint: powers your car) with a friendly regime. In Bosnia/Serbia, there was no oil to fight over, and with the mix of cultures with ties to different major World powers (and was the site of events that triggered both World Wars), was a messy place to be involved in. In hindsite, there was no greedy goal for that war, besides possibly to allocate funds to the defense department and its contractors (though that is the extremely cynical view). In Iraq, however, with the dubious charges made to start the war, the timing of the war (in a recession, with oil prices on the rise, with Saddam was doing his thing as usual, as he has been for the last decade since the first Gulf War), and the way the country (Iraq, not the US) has been managed since the end of the war (all contracts going to a select group of powerful American companies who just happen to have contributed massive amounts of money to Bush's election fund, no real care given to the well-being of Iraqi citizens, money from Oil sales to ourselves going to pay for our expenditures there), it is easy to say that the motivation was not very honorable. Have you considered teaching history in North Korea, where all history is fabricated on a (politically motivated) whim, like yours?

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Doomdark]

Yeah, those filthy humanists, preaching about humanity. Why would normal humans care?

Now, about taking the heat... them's the fighting words, so why are you not brave enough to log in as yourself?

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Doomdark]

Being against all war can equate to being against humanity.

True enough, but the question is whether according to one's moral it's better to kill people (war casualties, esp. civilian ones), or to let people be killed (during tyrants reign). Ignoring cost of war on innocent, and even on iraqi soldiers in considering which action is "right" is intellectual cheating.

Additionally, iraqi soldier casualties can not be ignored either; claiming they should all just have surrendered is just childish. It's not that difficult to think of soldiers of any country defending THEIR country; even if their leader is a certified a-hole. Just like during Clinton era; even though many soldiers despised him, they were ready to give their lives for their country. Same principle doesn't just apply to this country; other countries have patriots as well. Even if they hate(d) Saddam, many considered their duty was to protect their country against enemy invasion.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given money to, trained with, and volunteered for the Red Cross, among other organizations.

If you have done all that, clearly we haven't been taxing you heavily enough. You should be spending that time at your job, earning money so profesionals can take care of those tasks.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best part of banging your head against the wall will be the cleaning up part. Your head is full of shit.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

We've found you! I bet you liked it, too.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Scarblac]

A real conservative should believe that anything done for any reason other than to make a profit is necessarily wrong.

Regardless of your political views, making money is just the means, not the end. You need money to live your life. Making a profit is the means to get money, it's never a reason by itself.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Being against war isn't a right-left thing. It's a humanity thing.

War is what results when stupidity and egos reach critical mass.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen an animal backed into a corner and fighting for its very life? That is the exact situation BSD finds itself in. The BSD fans are in a state of desperation, and even the mildest criticism of their hobby horse results in wild and paranoid outbursts from the faithful. They will find an alibi and excuse for everything. Truth has nothing to do with it. The truth is too painful for the BSD crowd.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[cpghost]

but I believe that inserting his political beliefs into his work project is less than elegant.

Agreed. GNU Privacy Guard did the same as they opposed the Iraq war. Even now, they're still featuring a PACE button at the bottom of their home page. I actually had trouble convincing some more conservative companies to adopt GNUPG as a replacement to PGP after this.

Re:Not quite "fair" politically.

[bugg]

Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, the conservative is whining about how unfair life is to him because he has to deal with a webpage blacking out.

Tell me this, Mr. Conservative, why should I care about what you see as unfair when 0.5% of the US population controls 25.6% of the wealth in the country? How fair is that? How fair is it that the US is planning on entering in free trade agreements with countries in which the labor cost is kept artificailly low for the use of force? Is that fair?

When a conservative says "it isn't fair" he means "it isn't advantaged to me like everything else is." Fuck you.

A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll work

[FreeBSD Goddess]

Most developers don't have a problem with opposing things such as the DMCA and the abuse of patents that runs rampant. That won't be an issue. It was also said in the article that, in March, the page was blacked out for a time in protest of the war against Iraq. I know the war is something that most Slashbots were quite opposed to. While it may not have been the right thing, there are some good things to come from it. One of which is millions of Iraqis now have freedoms they never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. For the sake of the Iraqi people, hopefully the war will be a success and Iraqis will enjoy the freedoms that much of the world already enjoys. And hopefully the standard of living will rise in Iraq, too. My point is that some issues don't have a clear cut right and wrong. Taking a side, one way or the other, risks fragmenting the community, alienating developers, and just causing a big mess.

I'd like to think the editorial was right when it stated that the community hopes to pressure SCO into changing its ways, much like the effect they probably had on Apple. Unfortunately, the problem is here that SCO doesn't give a damn about the community. SCO is all about profit, pleasing investors, and making a quick buck.

Contradictory

[Timesprout]

In the SCO dispute, GNU-Darwin has no stake at all

For a body with no stake at all they have a lot to say about the SCO dispute in that document.

Re:Contradictory

[Anonymous Coward]

haiku

flask of ripe urine
pressed to bsd lips
bsd drink up

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamnit you perv/cunt, will you please the fuck shut up? We know you're a man. You're worse than wil fucktard wheaton. You are also an early post karma whore. You think you are fooling anyone? Get the fuck out of here.

Reenactment

[Anonymous Coward]

Scene: the Whitehouse

Dubya: Ok, tomorrow we start dropping the bombs if the demands are not met.

General: Sir! We just got the news in! The GNU-Darwin distribution has taken down its website!

Dubya: Oh my god! Cancel the war!!

Re:Reenactment

[hayden]

Scene: the Whitehouse

Dubya: Ok, tomorrow we start dropping the bombs if the demands are not met.

General: Sir! We just got the news in! The GNU-Darwin distribution has taken down its website!

Dubya: Darwin? Isn't that is Austria with all the Kargaroos? They said they were on our side!

Re:Reenactment

[Anonymous Coward]

you friggin' rule. :) thanks for making my day!

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job, cmdrtaco(troll). By following me around all afternoon and evening making stupid little comments, you've proven that you have no life at all. And this is the last comment of yours I'm biting on. Run along now, kiddie. Your fun is over, little boy.

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

It should read 'shut the fuck up' - and it's worth repeating. Get lost, you fat fuck.

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

You my friend are my favorite Slashdot troll. Very subtle, well done.

broken images?

[miguel_at_menino.com]

Is it just me or are the slashdot images all screwed up?

Re:broken images?

[tritone]

Not just you. Most of them are missing for me too.

Re:broken images?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theyre not just screwed up they're not found.

Re:broken images?

[buffer-overflowed]

It's fixed, clear your cache. I presume you mean the smileys?

Re:broken images?

[Anonymous Coward]

When asked about *BSD, I think Bones said it best: It's dead, Jim.

translation for normal people?

[bcrowell]

What seems to be missing from the article is an explanation of why anyone would care about the project. Is it because they think the Darwin kernel is technically superior to other kernels? In what way? Is it superior in ways that normal users would care about? If you've got a PPC box and want to put a free OS and free apps on it, why not just install a PPC version of Linux? There may be good reasons, but they aren't evident from the article.

The whole article just comes off like a crank piece to me. I'm against the war in Iraq, but if they think blacking out their web site is a real form of anti-war protest, that's pretty pathetic.

Re:translation for normal people?

[RalphBNumbers]

If you've got a PPC box and want to put a free OS and free apps on it, why not just install a PPC version of Linux?

You ought to just go ahead and put linux on it then, or perhaps plain old Darwin.

GNU-Darwin decided to support only x86, not PPC, some time ago in a fit of 'activisim'.

Re:translation for normal people?

[Arker]

While I am not sure why someone would want to run Darwin instead of Linux-ppc if not because they have to run one or more proprietary apps (that's my excuse) this is just nonsense:

GNU-Darwin decided to support only x86, not PPC, some time ago in a fit of 'activisim'.

I know it's nonsense, because I have a lot of their packages installed on my TiBook at the moment. Look here. Packages for PPC and x86, no problem.

Re:translation for normal people?

[RalphBNumbers]

It's not nonsense.
Look here in their own press archive, 3rd article from the top.
They still have their old PPC stuff in "matinance mode", but they only actually develop on x86. (unless they meekly pulled back from their position without bothering to make a statement to that effect).

Re:translation for normal people?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all can agree that *BSD is a failure. Yet why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:translation for normal people?

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes as no surprise that *BSD was soundly defeated in yet another benchmark. Everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is hopelessly mired in a mortifying tangle of fatal trouble.

It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral. It's dying.

Re:translation for normal people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Political OS

[Chromodromic]

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.

Re:Political OS

[11223]

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.

Re:Political OS

[Chromodromic]

Thank you for your well considered response. Since you sound level-headed, I will go check out that site and see what there is. I love OS X, love BSD, and I'm always interested in seeing the innovations surrounding the different flavors of this OS branch.

Oh -- and I have nothing against the Malaguan butterfly. I was just saying, you know, for example ...

Re:Political OS

[frightenedmonkey]

This guy's pretty much a crank. He's not representative of Darwin in any way, other than that he put together a version of Darwin that has a bunch of GNU software. If you'd like to find something out about Darwin, check out either of Apple's Darwin site, or the Open Darwin site, which is a site for Darwin developers. Honestly, I think most people think of Michael Love as a troll; I don't know why he's getting play on slashdot.

Re:Political OS

[Snuffub]

Lets make it clear that this is GNU-Darwin only. There are other darwin distributions which are... well... less retarded. It's only fair not to slander their collective good name.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we all know that FreeBSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:Political OS

[Brandybuck]

other than that he put together a version of Darwin that has a bunch of GNU software.

If I wanted GNU software, I could get it from Fink or OpenDarwin instead. Frankly, the only point of GNU-Darwin, as far as I can tell, was to put "GNU" in front of the name.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't keed to be Kreskin to look into FreeBSD's future. Even a child knows that FreeBSD is dying. All major marketing surveys show that FreeBSD has steadily declined in market share. FreeBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral. In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking. It's a fact: FreeBSD is dying.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad you have to end your opinion with a flame like this

"Activists need to shut up and get jobs anyway."

What do you know about activism? What do you see as activism?

Did you knew ''activism'' and ''having a job'' can exist coherently? In several ways?

To name a few examples

* A job which includes a form of activism.
* A job, and activist in late hours during free time.
* A job, and activist during the weekend.
* A part-time (ie. 20 hours a week) job and part-time activist.
* A full-time job, using a form of activism during vacation.

And finally:
* Not beeing the one who brings in the money. For example can occur when living together or beeing married or when living in a RL community.
* Beeing jobless can happen during these times, too.

Isn't starting something new, like starting ie. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, GNU, Linux, a new company called Microschoft a form of activism in some way?

Who are you to say what other people have to do? Stick with your own business. What does it matter they're politically involved? Isn't that that freedom of speech? Isn't it good they're actually HONEST about their opinion? You now know what you get. This is what i like most of it. So now you know, you do NOT want GNU/Darwin, which is a Good thing you know. How do you know? Because they're honest about their opinion instead of saying ''we are a-political'' and then release a song about DARPA like OpenBSD does with thrir 3.4 release.

Aren't a lot projects political when they did massive protests against software patents in Europe? Don't you think these protests have had a kind of influence, even beeing it only informative? There relatively was a lot of media attention to this problem.

I'm considering myself trolled.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside of a few socially backward dweebs, no one, but no one, uses BSD.

Yes it's dead. The BSD zealots need to wake up and smell the coffee.
They also need to shower, brush their teeth, lose 100 lbs, and get a life.

Re:Political OS

[Chromodromic]

* Not beeing the one who brings in the money.

LOL. Thank you. I think your rebuttal about sums up my point, in addition to being the most entertaining post I've seen on Slashdot in a long time.

Also, I'm not sure what "beeing" is, but I'm fairly certain it's something you do wearing thick, sting-resistant clothing in order to harvest honey.

Peace out, bruthah ...

Re:Political OS

[Chromodromic]

Outside of a few socially backward dweebs, no one, but no one, uses BSD ...

... wrote the moron, posting in Slashdot's BSD section which has just posted two new release announcements in the last six days ...

Yes, brilliant comment. You keep tellin' yourself that. Oh, you might want to check out the story on the front page about Red Hat not releasing anything else in the Red Hat Linux product line, ever again. Next.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thank you. I think your rebuttal about sums up my point"

Why does it? It seems you ignore all the other points.

I said after that after that "For example can occur when living together or beeing married or when living in a RL community."

Can you imagine this? Can you imagine 2 people who live together, one who's working for money, one who's working for money, the other one doing these things in his/her free time?

Do you also say this when it's not _called_ activism when one writes a document on /. about something which they want to see changed, done in his/her free time?

I have this funny feeling it's just the word ''activism'' people don't like.

"Also, I'm not sure what "beeing""

Sorry, my native language is not English. You could have helped me by telling me how i'd have to write it, so i'd learn how to write it in a correct way. In this way it's not constructive criticism imo.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

The way most of us see it, *BSD is dying.

Sorry to step on your toes. It's nothing personal. But the truth is more important than personal feelings.

Re:Political OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the word was *liberty*.

Re:Political OS

[Chromodromic]

The way most of us see it, *BSD is dying.

No you don't. That's why you're flamebaiting. But thanks, don't worry, I know it's not personal. You're too idiotic for it to be.

Re:Political OS

[fkr]

thanks for this good comment. (it actuallt being of the few that are worth reading).
and yes, please don't confuse GNU-Darwin with OpenDarwin.
-fkr

EVER HEARD OF MISCARRIAGES???

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:EVER HEARD OF MISCARRIAGES???

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have to be retarded to believe that a miscarriage involves death.

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll see about that.

WHERE ARE THE WMDS?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have all been lied to. We impeach an adulterer, but we don't impeach someone who sends our brothers and sons into the battlefield for corporate reasons?

Make sure you vote in the next election. And think before you do.

Thank you.

Re:WHERE ARE THE WMDS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you vote in the next election. And think before you do.

What for? aren't Diebold machines supposed to do that for you?

Zealot!

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy's a zealot. I don't mind him choosing to do what he does, but I won't ever bother to try out GNU/Darwin because of his zealotry. I prefer a more relaxed environment where BSD, GNU, APSL, or other licenses are not so strongly advocated or political/religious views put forward that I can worry instead about what interests me.

Re:Zealot!

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't mind his zealotry but his server is /.ed and wont load worth a damn, the screenshots look loke Afterstep/WindowMaker, heck i can get that with my current Linux install so why bother, anymore i just keep an extra disk partition for testing other distros, if they don't cut it with me then fsck em and reboot to my main distro, no loss for me, i was going to try and download a ISO of the x86 version but as slow as the webpage loaded it might as well die because i will probably die of old age before i get a single ISO downloaded...

Re:Zealot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we all know that FreeBSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:Zealot!

[Anonymous Coward]

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave.

*Ahem*. Except Unix. Though that's more a conept than an OS, but still.

Michael Love = troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why the fuck this douchebag and his GNU-Darwin hard-on are allowed anywhere near slashdot. Check his homepage if you want. He's a scientologist.

Re:Michael Love = troll

[exhilaration]

Please link to it. Scientologists are on Slashdot's (or most of its users') shit-list.

Re:Michael Love = troll

[Kentamanos]

I looked at his various websites, and I could only find a link to his Radical Mormon Site.

There seems to be an author named "Michael Love" who writes some books dealing with Scientologist stuff, but I think it's a different guy.

I could be wrong though...

Re:I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEA

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a shit on your pork chop.

MOD THIS UP - DONATION PAGE FOR DARWIN

[Anonymous Coward]

The GNAA will be happy to use excess funds towards GNU/DARWIN and GNU/LINUX and GNU/HURD and GNU/blahblah. In addition, we are not motivated by politics. So, for the donation address, scroll down.

GNAA (GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGROS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - learning to better manage their particular sexual desires.

GNAA is the only GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO support association in the country with its own TOLL FREE number! Call us any time at 1-888-633-3446. We now have bilingual support as well, in both English and Spanish.

Did you know that millions of people throughout the United States are trapped in homosexuality? Your generous gift to the GNAA will help these people in many ways. In addition, we are a strong supporter of minority rights.

Are you GAY/HOMOSEXUAL ?
Are you a NEGRO ?
Are you a GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO ?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for! Just call us 24/7 at: 1-888-633-3446
Join GNAA (GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO community with MILLIONS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today. Don't delay, act now to learn to control your sexual desires.

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

First, you need to give us a call at 1-888-633-3446 and apply for membership.

Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third (optional), you may join official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on irc.mozilla.org, and talk about membership.
However, to sign up, YOU MUST CALL US AT 1-888-633-3446

The GNAA is an outreach to help this particular demographic, and provide community and other support to them. Donations are tax deductable and may be sent to:
GNAA Donation Center
977 Centerville Turnpike
Virginia Beach, VA 23463

If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA for the betterment of the GAY/HOMOSEXUAL NEGRO and similar communities, please moderate this post up. BY MODERATING THIS UP AS UNDERATED, YOU WON'T BE METAMODERATED!!!

(c) 2003 SHAA enterprises. You are permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. Our statement of belief.

Re:I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEA

[Anonymous Coward]

My mom is a plumber

a blip on the screen

[Anonymous Coward]

three years of activism! hugalugalugalugalugalugalugalugalugalugalu, yeah bullshit. RMS jacking off in his hype-paid office all day is only activism for bacterial colonies across metro Boston.

politrix as usual

[segment]

Well, timothy seems to be suggesting that OpenBSD is a 'truly politically oriented' version of BSD

You must be with SCO to make a comment like this, so anti-BSD'ish. I mean, how dare you talk about Theo, no one said he was arrogant cocky pr*ck in this article, so you should really stop trolling. As for political correctness on the BSD's, look to the less spoken of NetBSD, where no one plays the zealotry games.

mY oS iS bEtT3r tH4n j0ors sissies I swear...

MOD THIS HIPPIE DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

The 60's and 70's are dead.

Scary..

[Pave Low]

This nutjob seems to think that people should be buying into his beliefs when all anybody cares about is the software. He makes the mistake of thinking people should care just like him one other issues because of one non-related issue.

Can you imagine if you were in a restaurant and the waiter berates you for being pro/anti-abortion, pro/anti gun or being christian/jewish/whatever??

I'm sorry, this guy is really no much different than the child molesters who tempt kids with candy , only to get them into the back of their vans. Harsh, but true.

Re:Scary..

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course we care! After all, people listen to movie stars & singers as if they were authorities...

Re:Scary..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we all know that FreeBSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for FreeBSD.

MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!

[NaCh0]

It's times like these when I need points.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!

[The Munger]

It's times like these when I need pants.

What? Why are you all backing off?

The 'blacking out' of the site

[DAldredge]

"In fact, we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March, and we blackened the whole website, after Apple used the DMCA, but we have never actually taken it off line"

Did they take the site offline when "The war veterans - unleashed by President Robert Mugabe to seize white-owned farms - are not, however, killing only people: they are slaughtering animals on an unprecedented scale."?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ ne ws/2003/06/22/wzim122.xml

Did they take the site offline to protest the jailing and torture in china of people who speak out or worship?

Did they take the site offline to protest the actions of the goverment of iran to put down the student lead protest movement that has resulted in thousands being thrown in jail?

No? Why not? Do they only protest against things that are 'in style' and/or 'hip' with their 'progressive' friends?

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[bstadil]

Please let us all know what you did, when these things happened.

Second their actions was related to the issues against which they protested. Closing down a site is a fairly powerful statement. I remember going to Knoppix's site and found out the front page was closed. I had read about it a week or so earlier but had forgotten. When I saw it made me stop and reflect for a while.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[DAldredge]

I wrote letters to my reps in DC.
I emailed stories on them to people/reporters I know to help get the word out.
I submited articles on them to various blogs that I contribute to.
I have in the past, donated money to support what I believe in.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever believe in anything that's "in style" and/or "hip"? Ever write letters or email stories or submit articles or donate money for those causes? Or are they all without merit?
Just curious.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[lurker412]

You have hit on the key point for me, which is that I would prefer to keep my politics separate from my technology providers. Why should I make good technology vulnerable to bad politics?

Even if a site were completely consistent with my own (admittedly inconsistent) political views, I would not want to find myself simultaneously pissed off at world events over which I have no control and also unable to update my own software because my provider is also pissed off.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[sholden]

Maybe they protested against the things which affected them or which they thought they might actually influence.

Since they aim at Mac OS X users Apple's DMCA use might affect them and their users. And the USA is a democracy in which such protests theoretically might change government policy.

Zimbabwe, China, and Iran are not democracies (well not ones where people can vote how they want and have it counted) and hence blacking out a web site isn't going to do anything to them. You need to stand in front of tanks (and get run over by them) and spend decades in jail to influence such powers.

Blacking out a website is pretty pointless, but as part of a larger protest might achieve something... maybe...

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Well, I saw this dude kick a dog yesterday, and what did you do about it? Nothing. That's right, you just sat on your ass and did nothing to correct this injustice. Just because it wasn't big trendy news in the paper or anything doesn't assuage your guilt my friend, you should have been there to stop it and you weren't. I don't see how you can sleep at night.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[DAldredge]

Zimbabwe, China, and Iran are not democracies. No shit? I thought they were lands of milk and cotton candy!!!

But bringing attention to their plight could go a long way in correcting them. But they chose to protest against something they could not change.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[sholden]

No, they chose to protest against something they could change.

Their web site protest will have no effect on Zimbabwe, China, or Iran.

However, a significant number of Apple's customers use use a web browser to look at web sites, and hence there protest may cause some Apple customers to change their purchasing habits, and let Apple know why. That in turn could cause Apple's behaviour to change.

Assumming they are US citizens or that some US citizens view their web page, then their protest may let an intern browsing the web see their opinion and report it to their political master. Or the viewers may change their voting habits and let the political parties know why. That in turn could change government policy.

Sure, there protest might be innefective in practice. But at least there is some way it could actually be effective, so in theory it is sound. Protesting about "land reform" in Zimbabwe isn't going to change anything, in theory or practice.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[sould]

Did they take the site offline to protest the jailing and torture in china....

Did they take the site offline to protest the actions of the goverment of iran to....

No? Why not?

Perhaps because they have no control over what happens in those countries?

Perhaps because they feel more responsible for the atrocities being committed by their government and corporations?

To be honest, I don't think its a particularly effective form of protest, but do you really believe that to have a 'right' to protest something being committed by your government in your name that you have some measure of control over you have to protest about every bad thing that happens in the world that you have no responsibility for and cannot exert any influence over?

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why they never felt compelled to "black out" their site when Saddam was giving young women baths in vats of nitric acid, or when Usay was running Iraqi intellectuals through industrial paper shredders. I suppose such crimes don't meet the "hipness" test for the GNU-Darwin poseurs.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[jhunsake]

When I saw it made me stop and reflect for a while.

Yes, that just does wonders, doesn't it?

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit.

You dont care about anything that doesnt affect you.

Show us the links to the articles you submitted.

--
Poll: 85% of Palestinians support mutual end to violence"
Poll actually linked to - unlike cowardly parent.
And this Poll has a larger sample size AND is more recent then cowardly parent's misleading quote.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[line.at.infinity]

Did they take the site offline to protest the jailing and torture in china of people who speak out or worship?

Are you talking about recent news? You can worship in China lawfully.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[jweatherley]

You can worship in China lawfully.

Lawfully yes, freely no.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[MysteriousPreacher]

Falun Gong practitioners don't seem to have much freedom in China.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[MysteriousPreacher]

So you're saying either protest against everything or protest against nothing. People following trendy causes may be irritating (particularly if you live near a university), but it does get results. Look at the compaigns against poverty in Africa and the AIDS campaigns back in the 80s. Cheesy as hell but helped a lot of people. New idea for people running sites on IIS servers.. When the web server goes down, it's not a technical problem, it's a protest.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[line.at.infinity]

In July 1999, practice of Falun Dafa by Communist Party members was outlawed... Something about subversive activities. I was in Beijing at the time they arrested Falun Dafa members peacefuly demonstrating at Tienanmen Square. I don't know what to think about them because I don't know enough about why the CP is against them. Obviously, western media will have a sympathetic point of view rather than a neutral one. Which makes it harder to see exactly what is going on. But despite that, I have a feeling that unfortunately China is in the wrong here.

Re:The 'blacking out' of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD is dead. Get over it.

Re:I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEA

[Anonymous Coward]

she's at my place, cleaning my pipe

GNU-Darwin Mirror

[proclus]

Our pipes are pretty full, but there is always the Sourceforge mirror.

http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net

Regards,
proclus

Re:GNU-Darwin Mirror

[jhunsake]

Thanks for posting. Now we can all easily make you a Foe.

Re:GNU-Darwin Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, I'm gay too. We can be gay together. What say, big guy?

Re:GNU-Darwin Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Ass!

Wrong.

[DAldredge]

That would be a Republican.

Conservative thinking is no longer welcomed in the GOP. Just look at GWB and his spending/political policies. Don't look at what he SAYS look at what he does.

A Geek's Guide to Political Discourse

[Rimbo]

"This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues."

I believe it is because the way that technical people see problems is very different form the way that non-technical people see problems.

Technical problems typically involve tradeoffs. E.g. if you use this certain data structure, you will get fast deletion and insertion, at the cost of slower searching; if you use this data structure searching, deletion and insertion are all reasonably fast, but it is difficult to code.

The concept of a compromise is thus in our vocabulary, but usually it's a negative -- that is, most technical compromises suck.

The idea of a win-win scenario, where everyone wins, is very foreign to us techies. We see things in terms of "this vs. that."

RTFA to see a great example of this. The political points made are all made in terms of "Us vs. Them." They are on one side, and they are in opposition to another side. It is very warlike, in fact, and someone who does not already agree with their point of view -- who might not yet have an opinion on the matter -- is going to be very put off by the language used. And those who do disagree but who are otherwise open-minded are immediately going to be put on the defensive.

The only solution to the problem with Diebold (for example) that will help things is a solution that also helps Diebold's bottom line.

Consider this point of view: Diebold faces a long-term growth problem if they force buggy voting machines on the public. The truth always comes out, and if Diebold doesn't take action, the resulting backlash and loss of trust will bury the company. If, however, they acknowledge what is a simple technical limitation and fix it, and work with the community, they are not only likely to land contracts now, but to dominate the market in the future. This leads to substantial revenue in the future.

Notice that I'm talking about what Diebold itself is most concerned with. This is the only way to have any discussion: Talk to people in terms of their interests, not yours. Diebold doesn't care one way or another, as a company, how they make money. But obviously destruction of Democracy as an institution is bad for them: They will be the first ones lined up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Unlike technical solutions, people problems deal with people, who are irrational and emotional. If you consider someone else's point of view first, you can get them to see your side of things, and convince them to pursue another course of action. And when that happens, everyone thinks they win. And when everyone thinks they can benefit from a course of action, suddenly change becomes easy.

GNU-Darwin is what happens...

[Xenex]

...when a troll writes a software distribution.

Now, to quote myself:

GNU-Darwin is a project founded by a person that goes by the name proclus. This proclus character spends a fair majority of his time replying to valid criticism of his project on sites such as Slashdot and MacSlash.

Unfortunately, this time would be much better spent working on the actual GNU-Darwin project; GNU-Darwin has nothing to offer that hasn't already been done better by either OpenDarwin or Fink.

This "article" is merely another case of proclus wasting time advocating instead of coding.

GNU-Darwin is totally irrelevant. If it disappeared tomorrow, no-one would notice. Mac users don't want it, and Free Software advocates don't want Macs.

This junk was rejected as crap elsewhere. It's just that OSNews are happy to run with any crap.

Re:GNU-Darwin is what happens...

[jhunsake]

This is not flamebait. It's cold, hard facts.

Re:GNU-Darwin is what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be modded up, not down.

As far as anyone can tell, there's only two people in the world who use "GNU-Darwin" and they are both posting on this story. This thing is totally irrelevant, except as a political platform (because nobody in the OSS Community will listen to you unless you are a developer, or play one on slashdot).

don't be mad

[Anonymous Coward]

but i smell shit. like a huge stinking log of shit.

I found him for you

[NaCh0]

Pants can be found here.

Re:I found him for you

[The Munger]

No, it wasn't like that. This guy was huge .

Re:I found him for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that because of the many troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

They only take 'safe' stands.

[DAldredge]

They don't take stands on things that are 'safe' to take stands against.

The don't take stands against china nor do they take stands against what the current goverment of iran is doing to those students that protest against it.

In short, the don't believe in there protest, the just want to look 'cool and/or 'progressive'

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[quinto2000]

That's an idiotic thing to say. China is very "safe" to criticize, as is Iran. It's a majority position that the Chinese government has serious human rights problems. The same goes for Iran, although it is criticized in the US to a lesser extent. Maybe they aren't criticizing those countries because...they can have more impact by criticizing a nation that they are part of? Their leaders actually have to listen to them? And learn to spell.

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[yomegaman]

Why don't you post a link to this supposed poll that proves all Palestinians are evil and deserve to die? How are we supposed to make fun of you and the way you have misunderstood or distorted it if we don't have the source material? Throw us a bone!

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[DAldredge]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JP ost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066287147759&p=1008596 981749

The poll was conducted by "Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in Ramallah."

http://www.pcpsr.org/

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good summary. You never seem them take a gutsy stand against anything. It's always some politically correct fad orchestrated by Hollywood liberals and NYTimes editors. They are as shallow as the Los Angeles river.

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[yomegaman]

OK, just for you I took a look, even though you were too lazy to make a link for me. The press release doesn't say what exactly they mean by "supports", i.e. what was the actual question asked? Since the same poll also showed that 85% of Palestinians supported "mutual cessation of violence" I would have to say that no real conclusions can be drawn from this, no matter how much you may want to. Just picking out one thing is intellectually dishonest.

Also, it looks like this PSR has a little history. The brother of the assassinated head of Islamic Jihad? I prefer my pollsters to have a little more emotional distance than that, thank you very much.

Re:They only take 'safe' stands.

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin is part GNU, part Apple, part BSD. Sort of a hybrid. That's natural.

PLEASE NOTE:

[stienman]

So called 'GNU-Darwin' is NOT OpenDarwin so far as I can tell from their respective websites. Apple is not associated with GNU-Darwin in any way, other than GNU-Darwin seems to have stolen the mascot, the name (adding GNU - how original and trademark avoiding), and the source.

Seems to me that this 'GNU-Darwin' is no more than a political website, probably distributing the stock Darwin unchanged.

Stupid, stupid people. This can of worms has been opened before - don't they know that polotics is not considered 'added-value'? And if they don't have anything substantial to add to the core Darwin, they won't last more than it takes for them to come up with some other bandwagon.

-Adam

Re:PLEASE NOTE:

[stienman]

polotics: Annoying tick like creatures which infest polo fields and are the scourge of polo teams world wide.

politics: Annoying tick like ideas which infest sensible discussions and are the scourge of intelligent people world-wide.

Freudian slip, or forgot to preview: You decide.

-Adam

Re:PLEASE NOTE:

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up. GNU-Darwin is nothing more than a website run by a total nut job.

Re:PLEASE NOTE:

[Anonymous Coward]

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order,
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

Re:PLEASE NOTE:

[Brandybuck]

politics: Annoying tick like ideas which infest sensible discussions and are the scourge of intelligent people world-wide.

politics
Etymology: Greek poli, "many" + Latin ticus, "small bloodsucking invertebrate".

mkLinux

[simpl3x]

perhaps it is actually more than three years. while i am primarily a mac person--designer--i have installed linux on apple machines for fun in the past. mk linux was supported (financially) by apple, and i installed it on a powermac 6100. i just didn't have anything to do with it once i got it up and running! toys!

Offtopic: Where are slashdot images?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every image at http://images.slashdot.org/ is saying 404 wtf?

Got karma to burn, so here's my beef...

[stienman]

Most of those who've hung around slashdot long enough to actually be interested in this particular discussion will be familiar with the many reasons for and against prepending GNU in front of any software which appears to require GNU tools to maintain core functionality.

I'd like to re-iterate my position that those who feel it should be added, as in 'GNU-LINUX', are askin' for a smackin'.

That's all I'm saying.

-Adam

I'd rather pay money for an OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

than get it for "free" but subject to the author's political views. From the article "In fact, we did blackout the home page as a war protest in March"

Re:I'd rather pay money for an OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't want your business to be dependent on the whims of someone who takes his marching orders from CNN Headline News. That "black out" stuff borders on suicidal insanity.

Site Blackouts

[CaptainTux]

Is it just me or does it bother anyone else that the same software developers who passionately scream about "freedom of choice", "open source", and "alternatives" are so ready to try to force their users towards a particular choice by removing access to their software? When we look at the "blackouts" that we've seen over the last few months, they amount to wholesale extortion of users.

For example, on the GNU-Darwin site, the developer mentions taking the distro offline as a protest to the war. What purpose did this really server? Do you really think that the leaders of the coalition had any high-level meetings where they said "You know, I really thought this war was a good idea. But the blackout on the GNU-Darwin software site has really made me think twice"? Of course not. What it DID do however was pressure some of the distro's users to get pissed off and write their MP or Congressman and oppose the war because they wanted their distro back damnit! And that was the intention: to force their USERS into taking a specific action.

Yep, there's that freedom they rant about huh? Software blackouts don't mean a thing and the developers/sites that use them should be ashamed of themselves for trying to extort their users in such a way.

Re:Site Blackouts

[anarchima]

Man, nobody's forcing you to do anything. It's a (relatively) free Internet. Just get another distro. Geez...

Re:Site Blackouts

[.com b4 .storm]

Why is this modded "Funny"? This is damn insightful! I wish I still had the mod points I wasted yesterday...

Re:Site Blackouts

[CaptainTux]

Man, nobody's forcing you to do anything. It's a (relatively) free Internet. Just get another distro. Geez

I never said anyone *was* forcing anyone do to anything. I said they were trying. The fact that their efforts to do so doesn't really effect anyone just shows how absurd it really is to even try.

But aside from that, it's not always as easy as "just go get another distro". When GNU-Darwin does this, it's no big deal. But what if a company like RedHat decided to do so? Imagine the hassle and pain admins of stable production systems would have to go through to "just go get another distro".

While I understand that a lot of this software is designed by small teams and because of such personal beliefs, politics, etc are bound to creep in, I also realize that they have a responbsibillity to their users and THAT is of greater importance than than expressing their political views and trying to drag their users with them.

Being "non-political" is a political goal

[konmaskisin]

... take a political science class!

Re:Dear GNAA Sirs tsarkon reports, gnaaggers !

[Anonymous Coward]

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G_____________________________________naann_______ ________G
N_____________________________nnnaa__nanaaa_______ ________A
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N________ananaannn_AY_____________________________ ________S
A________ana____nn_________IRC-EFNET-#GNAA________ ________S
A_______nn_____na_________________________________ ________O
*_______aaaan_____________________________________ ________C
um, dolor. Nunc nec nisl. Phasellus blandit tempor augue. Donec arcu orci, adipiscing ac, interdum a, tempus nec, enim. Phasellus placerat iaculis orci. Crasa sit amet quam. Sed enim quam, porta quis, aliquet quis, hen

Insider's bombshell: How Darwin killed FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I

"not a single lie bush lie told"

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm sorry, you're full of shit. the man has contradicted himself multiply, publicly, and on the record. it's either (a) lying, or (b) his lack of understanding. in either case, it's a very bad thing.

mass graves were found in serbia. do some research.

a weapon development program != a weapon.

many people believe that the war to remove saddam was a good thing, but they also believe it should have been done ten years ago, and that our government should be honest with us about its reasoning and its data, and generally should act in good faith with regard to us... the citizens that give it power.

now please, go back to banging your head against the brick wall. i'd suggest a running start this time around.

your UID does wonders for your credibility on this topic, by the way.

Activists need to shut up and get jobs anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

i was with you right up until you said that. damn shame your mind is stuck.

Mac users MUST be liberals?

[DesScorp]

"...or yet another person, who's running Windows Me, and think "Wow, that person's a Republican"."

I guess that's why Limbaugh, G.W. Bush, and Tom Clancy use Macs, eh?

Info on conservative Mac users can be found here, but THIS Mac user says that using a Mac DOES equate to Communism...and that is a good thing, in his eyes.

Re:Mac users MUST be liberals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's attraction can be found in a stylishness that appeals to even the most effeminate of homosexuals, and yet Apple's one button mouse makes it simple enough for even a Negro to use without confusion.

Flamebait this article!

[grocer]

This whole article is one giant piece of flamebait...GNU-Darwin is clearly crap, doing nothing that can't be accomplished with either FreeBSD or OpenDarwin and Fink. There is nothing newsworthy here, 5 years of an OS that has made significant inroads would be something...Linux certainly developed into something notable in five years beyond a curious *NIX-like OS...and BSD has been around for ages, powering Yahoo and Google et al.
Darwin has not managed managed to achieve anything other than curiousity status, IMO. I mean it's great when it's under OS X and it's cool that Apple is trying to provide an Open Source alternative for its hardware (ever think maybe all those G3s and G4s need to do something and it's easier to sell a G5 when that old computer can become a web server/firewall/mail server/file server for nothing and still use all the Apple hardware? Or let all those switchers do something with that x86 they now have collecting dust?) Plus, ya know, if the hardware market ever goes bust, Apple can always sell this nifty OS as an enterprise/opensource/consumer alternative depending on what they put in or take out...
(Posted from an iBook running Jaguar)

a popular source of free software for OS X...

[SewersOfRivendell]

a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86

On what planet? I think the poster is thinking of Fink, which is at this point quite apolitical. Everyone tends to shun GNU-Darwin, generally because the bootstrap script was originally horrendously insecure. This appears to have been fixed, but they're still downloading completely unnecessary binaries (you don't need wget to download a single file! curl does that just fine).

Don't bother w/"GNU" go OS X and dont look back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone bother with this "GNU" shit? It is basically a set of hobbyist programs created by communists for communists. Instead of that crap, you should be looking into OS X. It is the most advanced, professionally developed operating system available today. It has more applications, a better GUI, and runs on the fastest hardware money can buy. By comparison, anything "GNU" falls flat on its face. So move out of your parent's basement and into the world of Apple Mac OS X! Think different, think professional, think Apple!

What the fuck is an "Englobulator"???

[DesScorp]

From the article...

" If everyone does everything that they can, no matter how small, then together we can make an impact. Together we can stop the Englobulators!"

What's he talking about? A Google search turned up this:

"Englobulators" is a term of art meaning the loose alliance of cartels, monopolies, and governments, which act against our right and power of private ownership of computers, and our rights and powers of free communication over the Net."

Re:What the fuck is an "Englobulator"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Acording to the dude's website, he is a Scientologist. I believe "englobulator" is some jargon borrowed from Scientology.

Re:What the fuck is an "Englobulator"???

[Anonymous Coward]

The only person who I know of that has used that term is Jay Sulzberger. Visit the NYLUG mail archive and you'll find it in any almost all of his announcements.

Jay is a cryptographer and relative of the NY Times Sulzberger family. He was involved in the DMCA protests in Washington that made a lot of noise in the commerce department.

He's a nice guy, but a bit of a blowhard who loves the sound of his own voice. I don't think he has any Scientology connections, so I don't know if her made the word up or heard it from someone else.

Re:What the fuck is an "Englobulator"???

[Brandybuck]

Acording to the dude's website, he is a Scientologist.

Holy shit! That explains everything. Someone get the man a deprogrammer!

Hi there.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it feel to know that you were completely wrong about the war in Iraq? Just curious.

Thanks for your reply.

Re:Hi there.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's not determined yet.

(i also can't find info about his scientology interests.)

Activist Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just picture this guy, Stallman, and the eight other GNU-Darwing users sitting around some place resembling a Cambodian re-education camp espousing the evils of proprietary software, singing Kumbaya, and trying to convince people if all software was GPL the world would be utopia.

Maybe if these people would code more and stop talking politics less Hurd would actually get done.

As someone else mentioned, Stallman has said that he would like to see proprietary software illegal. Smells like communism to me. Good thing that nobody takes him seriously.

Re:Activist Distribution

[CaptainTux]

Stallman has said that he would like to see proprietary software illegal.

Good point. And yet another example of a raving radical looney who believes that taking away choice is the only way to protect freedom to choose. Sheesh...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is a hoax!

[Brandybuck]

I've come to the conclusion that GNU-Darwin is a hoax! Oh, there may be some software there you can download, but it's all part of the trappings for an incredibly elaborate chicanery. I am here now to unmask the perpetrator of this hornswoggle. This has gone on long enough!

Proclus (otherwise known as Michael L. Love, of no relation to Ransom that I know of) started this scheme in an effort to illustrate absurdity by being absurd. His aim is to ridicule Free Software by taking the ideas of the FSF to a absurd extreme. His ultimate goal, I fear, is to completely discredit GNU. Look at the evidence! All of it points to either a madman or a cunning conniver.

GNU-Darwin has been an ardent defender of digital liberties, and it is a platform for digital activism.

Here Proclus is deliberately asserting that GNU-Darwin is a propaganda tool. This isn't a platform to write documents, edit videos or administrate servers, "it is a platform for digital activism." The sole purpose of GNU-Darwin is to spread an ideology. An ideology that Proclus has subverted towards his own diabolical ends.

The tools of such action include, but are not limited to; boycotts, blockades, community response, de-branding, labor solidarity, whistle-blowing, etc.

Here we see how he out-stallmans Stallman. While RMS may have some firm and inflexible opinions on everything from Bush to the local dogcatcher, he keeps all of his non-software ideology out of GNU, and on a separate personal website. The point of GNU is Free Software and Free Software only. The point of GNU-Darwin is everything imaginable. It's not about the software, it's about "labor solitarity." Huh? Is Proclus going to take down his site as a sympathetic protest the next time the AFL/CIO goes on strike?

Once your credibility to engage is established, then the mere threat of such action is often sufficient to produce results.

Fortunately, GNU-Darwin has no credibility. They can boycott, blockade and de-brand all they want, and no one will care. Remember, this is all an elaborate and intricate hoax! The aim was never to get credibility, but to discredit GNU.

It is important to realize that the software freedom status of GNU-Darwin was tenuous before the change to the APSL, so we were ready to cut our losses, and remove GNU-Darwin from the internet, if necessary.

This is a prime example of "kindergarten activism". Proclus threatens to hold his breath until he gets his cookie. But since Apple wasn't paying attention, he has to call attention to his self-serving breath-holding, hoping that we'll feel compassion for his almost-sacrifice. How noble!

In general the effects of such action are ambiguous by nature, because the rulers certainly have an interest in denying the influence of democratic power.

This is a classic example of radical pseudo-think. He's telling you in advance that he can't point to any concrete results of his political activism, and the reason he can't is because he's oppressed by the ruling class. This is the crux of his ideology. Upon this all his hopes ride. You either laugh at this point and go on with life, or you stretch your credulity too far and you fall victim to his rantings. Don't go there!

Our third year commenced with the initiation of the The Free Darwin campaign which was followed by the antiwar blackout in March.

With this antiwar blackout, he's obviously playing along with the Free Software protests against European patents. But he went too far this time. Protests against "europatents" were justified because they were inextricably linked with software. But the war in Iraq, no matter how vile, has nothing whatsoever to do with software.

This is part of his insidious scheming. But engaging in this blackout, and widely announcing it on each and every forum he can possibly find (kuro5hin, slashdot, osnews, etc), he's discrediting the entire Free Software Movement. Real Free Software developers,

Re:I JUST TOOK A BIG SHIT ON YOUR MOTHER'S FOREHEA

[Anonymous Coward]

Id probably still eat the pork

Re:Reality as it is?

[Lord Kano]

If you looked at "Reality as it is" you'd realize your one vote has no chance of swaying the election, because the election would be won by a margin or tens of thousands if not millions on any given election.

MY vote means very little, but the votes of millions of people like me matter very much.

free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

>Free Software is at the core of GNU-Darwin

GPL/GNU is not free it is cripple licensed. Free software can be used by anyone for anything without any licensing/legal strings attached.

If you really want to know this, try to get your legal department to allow you to link GPL code directly into your company's commercial software. That same commercial software provides your income.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the lawyers would probably let you do just that. The truly insidious aspect of the GPL is how it was deliberately crafted in such a way that it requires a team of highly paid contract lawyers and tens of thousands of dollars just to figure out what the damn thing really means. A cursory glance at the license leads to absolutely the wrong conclusion about what it really obligates you to do. That's the trap.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is designed so that the software remains free. It has nothing to do with the freedom of the developers or users. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

If you want to leech code, then use BSD code. Or you could just write your own code and license it however you want.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

> The GPL is designed so that the software remains free.

I don't see RMS using 'Free of cost software' instead of the intentionally misleading/false 'free, as in beer'.

'Cripple-license' software needs to be called just that.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

I am waiting on a major commercial software company to go bankrupt or a major commercial software company th lose tens of millions of dollars defending a GNU/FSF license violation lawsuit.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Commercial software doesn't provide any sort of income at my company. It's an expense item. It sounds like you're confusing the needs of a proprietary software development firm relying on widget sales with the needs of everyone else in the world. GPL is for users not developers.

Re:free ???

[Anonymous Coward]

> It sounds like you're confusing the needs of a proprietary software development firm relying on
>widget sales with the needs of everyone else in the world

I am glad to hear that you want your company to get things for free that it needs to conduct business for a profit.

So, that makes it ok for your company to make a profit.

Hmmmm....and the software companies cannot.

I am sure that many software companies would give product away for free if they did not have to pay employment taxes, rent, electricity, water, etc.

Will your company give away its product?

Note to self: stay away from this distro

[GileadGreene]

From the article in question:

We have been prepared to take the Distro off-line a couple of times as a form of political action. It is important to realize that the software freedom status of GNU-Darwin was tenuous before the change to the APSL, so we were ready to cut our losses, and remove GNU-Darwin from the internet, if necessary. Now things have improved very much.

Which pretty much sums up why these guys will never be any kind of serious competition for any real free OS. Who the hell would place any faith in this distribution? Doesn't exactly sound like the kind of dependable OS I'd want to put on my critical servers if it's going to come and go depending on the current political situation. And what kind of idiotic form of activism is it that goes out of its way to inconvenience its supporters, rather than the people its protesting against?

Re:Note to self: stay away from this distro

[Anonymous Coward]

It is sort of like standing on the street corner waving a chain saw and proclaiming that you are going to cut off your own legs as a "protest".

Re:Note to self: stay away from this distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Junior, BSD is dead. This implies GNU-Darwin is dead. What part of dead don't you understand?

1. Grieve.
2. Get over it.
3. Move on.

You're a big boy now. High time you started acting like one.

Re:Note to self: stay away from this distro

[trouser]

2a. profit

+1 Elequontly put.

[sould]

Mod sholden up - pretty much summed up what I wrote later in the thread, only better.

Re:Reality as it is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wonder how many grams of fat are in that fettuccini Alfredo at your favorite restaurant? Or how many calories you're sucking down with that apple martini? The answers to such questions often elude diners who worry that eating out is wrecking their diets.

Stop flattering yourself.

[Xenex]

Apple didn't change the APSL because of you. Hell, Apple can't possibly think much of your project, considering they've since founded OpenDarwin, and are paying people to create DarwinPorts.

It's kind of sad you need to write these articles yourself. I mean, if people actually liked your distribution, they'd be writing these crappy articles for you! You don't see Linus submitting stories to Slashdot about Linux, do you?

Darwin already has a mature, GPL-licensed, Stallman-compatible software distribution: Fink. Hell, it' even uses apt, the favourite software management tool of people everywhere. There's also the aforementioned DarwinPorts project, for people that wish to use modern, ports-like system on Darwin.

Maybe GNU-Darwin should be focusing on important things: It's not part of MetaPKG, the massive collaborative Darwin software effort, which Fink and DarwinPorts primary members. Even the newcomer Gentoo has been invited to take part. But GNU-Darwin has not.

The future of Darwin software is setting sail, yet GNU-Darwin isn't on the boat. This can't possibly bode well for GNU-Darwin's future relevance on the platform. Maybe they should be working to become a part of that, instead of submitting rubbish to Kuro5hin, Slashdot and OSNews.

Right now, GNU-Darwin is totally irrelevant, and there's nothing on the horizon to change that. If it disappeared tomorrow, no-one would notice. Instead of trolling here at Slashdot, go do something!

Re:Stop flattering yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

What i find so funny about these people here is that they whine when a project is openly political. Oh no! An opinion in software! Everybody put on their red jackets, fire alert is incoming!

What do you think? Microsoft doesn't have a thing to do with politrix? RedHat neither? Yeah right. Think again. They just blur that part.

Thanks for your honesty GNU-Darwin, and thanks for trying to do something against Sick Things (tm).

Re:Stop flattering yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand.

GNU/Darwin don't actually do anything except whine. As a software distro they're non-existant.

Buddy, buddy ...

[Chromodromic]

... Cool yer jets there, hombre. First, lax, then relax.

Can you imagine this? Can you imagine 2 people who live together, one who's working for money, one who's working for money, the other one doing these things in his/her free time?

No. Can't. I don't have any time for imagination, I'm too busy working.

You could have helped me ...

Yeah, all right, I'll respect the not-your-native-tongue thing. For future flames, you want "being" not "beeing".

How 'bout we just agree to disagree, 'k? Or, if you want, we can flip a coin, heads I win, tails you lose ...

Re:Buddy, buddy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one local restaurant has already changed its pricing because of high beef prices, and grocery store prices are anticipated to jump soon. "An astronomical increase," is the way Ted Mackorell of Makoto Seafood and Steak House described the jump in beef prices this week. "It has been inching up on us for the last month," Mackorell said, "but both of our purveyors came in this morning and said, 'Brace yourself.'"

Re:Buddy, buddy ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, i'm done with evade tactics. Thanks for your help on the grammer.

Jeez...

[lelnet]

...if someone had told me yesterday that today I'd read a piece by a software activist even more stridently and offensively political than RMS, I'd have asked what they'd been smoking.

At least RMS and FSF/GNU gave the community a metric shitload of high-quality tools to go along with their rhetoric...I have yet to see what this guy's done to add any value to the world.

Three years for free software activism ??

[thrill12]

I guess the DMCA has done it's work again...
erm... "of free software activism" ? ... oh well, must have been a bit prejudiced with all the 'good' news of late.

Re:A nice idea, but I have my doubts that it'll wo

[Anonymous Coward]

One of which is millions of Iraqis now have freedoms they never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. For the sake of the Iraqi people, hopefully the war will be a success and Iraqis will enjoy the freedoms that much of the world already enjoys. And hopefully the standard of living will rise in Iraq, too.

Yes, for one thing, removal of Saddam Hussein meant the removal of trade embargoes against Iraq, thus reenabling international trade for the Iraquis, which will bring Western medicine to the people.

It also removed the United States military from Saudi Arabia, which had been stationed there to keep an eye on the Hussein regime. Wasn't that one of Osama bin Laden's excuses for attacking the U.S.? Now that the United States has been removed from the Sacred Islamic Land (TM), Osama and his goons should shut the hell up. Of course, Al Qaeda won't, because religion is their excuse, not their objective. (Actually, I suspect that bin Laden is actually dead by now, especially since only audio tapes -- and no videotapes -- have surfaced.)

People forget that the Weapons of Mass Destruction, in the form of tons of anthrax toxins, can be packed into the size of a two-car garage.

"HURD" is "TURD"

[Anonymous Coward]

actually hurd is out and is very nice. however it's not exactly usable for most people yet.

They should rename it "TURD". The GNU project has suffered massive constipation in pushing it out to the masses.

In fact, in the original history of OS's, Richard Stallman originally wanted Andrew Tanenbaum's MINIX, which was under the auspices of the Free University of Amsterdam. Stallman of course wanted to distribute MINIX at no charge, but Tanenbaum refused. Apparently, Stallman became very obnoxious and quite rattled Tanenbaum, thus MINIX never made it into the GNU distribution. Then MINIX inspired Linus Torvalds to create Linux, and the rest, as they say is history -- the Linux name would eclipse GNU's, much to the consternation of Stallman, and the HURD would never get the momentum it needed.

Regardless of what HURD advocates say, the project is too many years LATE for something that was started in 1990, and only now is at version 0.2!!! People working on and with the HURD are really wasting their time, and if they are being funded by taxpayer dollars, they are wasting my money and your money as well.

MOD TIMOTHY UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod timothy up for the OpenBSD jab if I could. :)

Thanks to the frist pr0st guy for the use of his post to post my props to timothy.

BT

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!

[BasharTeg]

"Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man?"

Who do you think you are bashing the Kool-Aid man like that?! He doesn't deserve to be associated with this crap. He's capable of smashing through reinforced concrete without spilling a single drop! Show the guy some respect!

"Oh yeah!"

More Kool-Aid man stuff!

Re:Reality as it is?

[alexdewaal]

E_elven: No, the problem is that of voting for people who can win because all the other schmoes think the same way instead of risking an opinion.
Lord Kano: MY vote means very little, but the votes of millions of people like me matter very much.

Vote (together with millions of people like you) for the candidate you really want.
If Pat had a those millions of votes wouldn't that be a very strong signal for George ?
Wouldn't he shift his policies in the direction of Pats (or at least claim to do so)? Wouldn't that mean that you got more out of voting for Pat than out of voting for George?

Democracy works, not because the majority is right, but because the majority is divided.

Delusions of significance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is what we do know.

Know? More like it's what he imagines. Big difference there.

There was no indication whatsoever that Apple was pursuing free software listing before the Free Darwin action, even though we had been asking for it for almost three years.

Apple's really not known as a company that talks about things/deals/products/licenses/whatever before they're DONE. Apple was probably flogging this FSF-approval thing since the original APSL, and just not talking about it.

In fact, Apple's own Darwin FAQ derided the necessity of it.

That's because it WASN'T necessary. There might have been a dozen people in the whole world who changed their hardware buying decision on the basis of whether any GPL fanatic approved of the APSL.

Apple attained that listing 7 months (corporate lightspeed) after commencement of Free Darwin.

Who wants to play "Spot the Fallacy?"

Fortunately, the action provoked huge coverage and a human groundswell on the web, and apparently impacted Apple's stock price.

Oh, please. A "huge groundswell"? What, a hundred or so slashdotters clicking a checkbox on your website?

It provided a focal point for the discontent of the community, so that Apple employees had an opportunity to point to the action and say, "We need to do something positive about this."

I think the guy needs to get a grip.

Apple's modification of the APSL had absoulutely squat to do with his little hissy-fit, and everything to do with the FSF getting more reasonable to deal with. As for the stock price, I defy anyone to find me a major pension-fund investor who gives a rat's ass what this GNU/Darwin guy thinks or says.

Mod Parent Up!

[Anonymous Coward]

This puts the OS X into perfect perspective.

All Lies!

[Reverend528]

Darwin isn't a politically oriented BSD at all. It's politically oriented Mach.

xnu's neither and both, actually

[caveat]

xnu (the Darwin kernel) is a frankensteinian Mach where the entire BSD layer is hacked to run in kernel space. Good idea, all the POSIX goodies and management tools lose the overhead. Apple has a blurb on their site.

Re:Don't bother w/"GNU" go OS X and dont look back

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot to tell GNU communists eat kids. About OSX running on the fastest hardware money can buy... you obviously got no money dear monkey, fastest hardware runs with fuel.

Movements vs. Projects

[Enkerli]

[Very interesting thread, BTW]

As a casual observer of the Free Software and Open-Source movements (I'm not a coder), I find the situation fascinating.
The movements themselves are often put along political lines, especially on /. and similar FOSS media. The difference between Free Software and Open-Source is in fact stated by some as a matter of politicization with RMS being among the most politicized and Linus or Eric Raymond being the most "neutral." But even the most "Open-Source for purely practical reasons" initiative carries political implications, at least of the "Your Rights Online" kind. Slashdotters often joke about all the M$/Gates-bashing but it's quite clear that most 'dotters would favour, say, Linus over Gates in an election for a hypothetical "Department of Software Decisions" and the possible use of DRM in Linux has showed a limited political involvement.
Still, political ideas that are well-represented among members the movements aren't (and shouldn't) at the basis of specific projects.

"GNU"-Darwin's case is quite specific and has been described adequately by other posters. Among Open-Source advocating Mac OS X users, "GNU"-Darwin has been seen as either a joke or a problem. In fact, I've been naive enough to install a few GD packages at one point and I'm sorry I did. The /usr/local thing makes them harder to remove and they often clash with Fink packages.

Re:Reality as it is?

[Lord Kano]

If Pat had a those millions of votes wouldn't that be a very strong signal for George ?

See my earlier list of people that I did not want to win. For me to have voted for Keyes or Buchanan, would have been no different than a vote for Gore. They had no chance to win in a general election.

I voted for Keyes and Buchanan in previous primary elections, that is where the biggest change can happen. We lost in 1996 because of the idiots in my party who decided to put up an elderly senator against, a young, attractive successful southern, president.

Wouldn't that mean that you got more out of voting for Pat than out of voting for George?

Ask those liberals in Florida who voted for Nader if they got more out of that vote than they would have from a vote for Gore?

We learned that lesson in 1992.

LK

Re:Reality as it is?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was 11 A. M. and the stage show at New York's Paramount Theater was in full swing. Tommy Dorsey's band was playing, the Nicholas Brothers were tap-dancing furiously, and the audience of 3,000 was squealing with delight.

Suddenly the dancers stopped. One of them held up his hand signaled for the spotlight. Amid dead silence, the spot moved to a fat girl in blue, seated high in the rear of the stage. Her head was bowed and she was snoring delicately, sound asleep.

The roars of laughter woke the girl up. She blushed to her hairline, tied a sickly smile, and fell over sideways in a dead faint.

"Sometimes maybe I get too relaxed," says Jo Stafford of that 1941 incident.

Due to this genius for casual unwinding, the carrot-topped, freckle-faced, 38-year-old-woman, who looks something like a plump housewife and has a contralto voice like a drink of mountain spring water, is without doubt the leading female singer of American popular songs.

Is anyone "FOR" war in the abstract?

[TheConfusedOne]

What an absurd statement:
Being against war isn't a right-left thing. It's a humanity thing.

War isn't something that most people embrace with relish and joy. War is something people resort to solve a problem of one sort or another.

Saying you're "anti-war" is just sticking your head in the ground and not confronting the realities of the world. Now if you want to say you're against the Iraq war you are at least starting at a point for discussion. The next step would be to say why you're against the war and what should be done instead to solve the problem that Iraq presented. (You can also argue the degree of that problem but you can't pretend that it doesn't exist.)

Re:Is anyone "FOR" war in the abstract?

[Arker]

Since you seem to have taken the time to write a serious reply...

Saying you're "anti-war" is just sticking your head in the ground and not confronting the realities of the world.

Quite the opposite. It's saying that I care about human life, liberty, the rule of law and a bunch of other things America once represented to the world.

Now if you want to say you're against the Iraq war you are at least starting at a point for discussion.

That one and all others.

I'm not a pacifist, mind you. I've no problem with defending oneself. But you don't start a war to defend oneself - you defend oneself against those who start the war.

This country has been in some pretty rotten doings in the past, but those who wanted war always before had to maneuver, to provoke or manufacture attacks, to find some way any way to make it look like it was defense. The american people, G-d bless us, would never go along otherwise and they knew it. But something very deep has changed in a very scary way here. In Iraq, the US for the first time in history invaded another country that never attacked us. As a patriot, that's something that shocked and discouraged me like nothing else in my life has done. I never would have believed it possible.

The next step would be to say why you're against the war and what should be done instead to solve the problem that Iraq presented.

What threat? The 'terrorist links' that the intelligence community said from the beginning never existed, which were never substantiated? Except of course for that one group somehow loosely associated with Al Qaeda, operating in the north of the country where the US and the Kurds, not Baghdad, were in control since the last war?

Or maybe those 'weapons of mass destruction' that are actually less dangerous than plenty of perfectly ordinary weapons, that the inspectors said weren't there, that the intelligence community worldwide said weren't there, that turned out to have not been there?

Or maybe that elusive nuclear program (those my friend, not poison gas, are real 'weapons of mass destruction' and several nations, including the US, Israel, and North Korea have them - places that don't get invaded you'll notice) that turns out to have not existed, outside the fevered fantasies of a few people that were desperate to find a reason, any reason, to start a war, and a very poorly done forgery that was reported to us as gospel truth long after it was detected as such?

Just what threat was it you think I 'can't pretend doesn't exist' here?

BRAVO!

[TheConfusedOne]

Congratulations, you have managed to sneak in the subtlest "BSD is dieing" troll of the day.

That was very well done.

Political

[Pan T. Hose]

So is it just not possible for a group of Free Software programmers to be non-political?

Of course it is not possible since Free Software is a political movement in the first place and has been so since at least 1984. That is actualy the reason of the recent community fork in 1998. What you are looking for is Open Source.

So, umm we should have ignored Bosnia and Iraq?

[TheConfusedOne]

Wow, it started out as such a reasonable reply then fell apart in a hurry.

Let's look at this carefully.

Quite the opposite. It's saying that I care about human life, liberty, the rule of law and a bunch of other things America once represented to the world.

How about that whole Bosnia affair? I suppose we should have simply sat on the sidelines and waited for one side to finish whiping out the other? What happens when the other people don't care about our values?

What threat? The 'terrorist links' that the intelligence community said from the beginning never existed, which were never substantiated? Except of course for that one group somehow loosely associated with Al Qaeda, operating in the north of the country where the US and the Kurds, not Baghdad, were in control since the last war?
I suppose we'll simply ignore the money that Sadam was sending to families of suicide bombers in Israel? How about the increasing Ba'athification of Iraq since the '91 defeat? (Adding words from the Khoran to the flag, buiding giant mosques while his people starved...)

Or maybe those 'weapons of mass destruction' that are actually less dangerous than plenty of perfectly ordinary weapons, that the inspectors said weren't there, that the intelligence community worldwide said weren't there, that turned out to have not been there?
WMD are orders of magnitude more dangerous than conventional weapons. They kill indiscriminately and have the ability to render entire areas inhospitable for decades or centuries (if nuclear in nature). Did you bother reading the Kay report? The hidden programs, the vial of botulinum toxin in a scientist's refridgerator? How about the centrifuge pieces buried in a scientists backyard? Maybe the missile development instead? What more do you need to be convinced that Hussein wasn't a poor little misunderstood man?

Or maybe that elusive nuclear program (those my friend, not poison gas, are real 'weapons of mass destruction' and several nations, including the US, Israel, and North Korea have them - places that don't get invaded you'll notice) that turns out to have not existed
The nuclear program in Iraq was about to be deemed completely dismantled back in 1995 (I believe) until a defector managed to point out all of the items that had been hidden from inspectors.

And about those "fevered fantasies of a few people" try this statement on for size:
I supported the resolution because I gained information from the CIA and other former Clinton security officials that Iraq either had weapons or components of weapons of mass destruction.
Two guesses who said that. (Here's the link for when you give up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A350 20-2003Oct29.html)

I suggest that you try to educate yourself some more on this topic.

Re:So, umm we should have ignored Bosnia and Iraq?

[Arker]

So many misinformed statements, and so little time.

How about the increasing Ba'athification of Iraq since the '91 defeat? (Adding words from the Khoran to the flag, buiding giant mosques while his people starved...)

'Ba'athification? That was actually quite the opposite. The Ba'ath party was explicitly secularist, the moves you mention were backing off from Ba'athification to reduce the dangerous levels of popular discontent.

WMD are orders of magnitude more dangerous than conventional weapons. They kill indiscriminately and have the ability to render entire areas inhospitable for decades or centuries (if nuclear in nature).

WMD is a term designed to mislead. It lumps chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons together. Nuclear weapons, the one kind Iraq never had, merit the term. Chemical and biological weapons can wreak a lot of havok under the right conditions, but they typically do a lot less damage than conventional explosives.

BTW, do you happen to remember where Iraq got the 'WMDs' that it did once possess?

You should really check your facts, you allude multiple times to allegations that have been shown to have been spurious.

What more do you need to be convinced that Hussein wasn't a poor little misunderstood man?

Did I ever say he was that? No. Quit putting words in my mouth.

Saddam Hussein is and was a monster. America was once, but obviously is no longer, a nation possessed of enough wisdom that we did not 'go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.'

Who trained Hussein? Who propped him up in power. Who gave him chemical weapons, and turned a blind eye when he used them?

There are plenty of monsters in this world, and Hussein was certainly not the worst of them. He did do some things I consider, and I would bet you consider, good things in Iraq. He was, after all, a secularist, and under his rule women went to college, got .phds, and held high ranking jobs. That's gone now.

But, as I said, he was on the whole a monster. That changes nothing. There are plenty of monsters in this world. An unprovoked invasion makes the invader into another one, if he wasn't already.

As much damage as Hussein did to Iraq, we have done worse. Destroying the village to save it was always, and still is, madness.

I suggest that you try to educate yourself some more on this topic.

Ahh the arrogance. It is you, my friend, who should try to educate yourself on the subject. I've been following it since long before it entered your brain, I'd wager. You're a wonderful illustration of why the big lie works. It's trotted out on the front pages, and the fact that it was an easily verified lie comes in a small retraction towards the back the next week. Then months or years later, you allude to it as if it proved something, and tell those of us that actually read the fine print we need to educate ourselves.

If you really want to know the truth, you can find it. Start at the link listed as my homepage.

If you prefer to keep believing the comforting lies, I can understand that to some degree, but don't expect me to waste any more time on you. I have work to do, I haven't given up yet.

Since we can't agree on even basic facts

[TheConfusedOne]

Then we're not going to go anywhere at all I see.

Did you bother tracking back that quote that I presented to you when you attempted to claim that WMD was only in people's "fevered imaginations"? Should we go on to a list of the quotes and times that Clinton invoked WMD's and Iraq in his public speeches?

As far as only nuclear deserving to be classified as a WMD I would have to disagree with you in the strongest possible terms. While chemical weapons are devastating, they are at least usually limited to the area that you can disperse them in. The REAL WMD is biological. Just look at how much havoc SARS caused and it was a natural occurance. Imagine a weaponized version of something like SARS with a longer incubation period and a higher mortality rate. (Incubation periods are the real danger as you have people walking around carrying a disease and spreading it but not knowing that they're infected.)

Frankly I don't believe any "comforting lies" I believe in reading as much as I can about things and then forming my own opinions. What I've read on Iraq is enough to chill anyone's soul.

Consider that we intervened in Bosnia for so much less.

Re:Since we can't agree on even basic facts

[Arker]

Did you bother tracking back that quote that I presented to you when you attempted to claim that WMD was only in people's "fevered imaginations"?

Your link didn't work but I believe it was Robert Gephart, right? And that proves what?

Should we go on to a list of the quotes and times that Clinton invoked WMD's and Iraq in his public speeches?

And again, that proves what? What makes you think Clinton has any credibility with me? Why would anyone believe anything the man said, he was (and is still, I would guess) a habitual liar and everyone with a TV knows it.

I thought Clinton was the worst president we'd ever had, until W got going. He talked a real good talk when he was campaigning, at least on foreign policy, too bad he changed to a completely different tune once he had the office.

You're quoting statements by politicians that contradict statements by professional weapons inspectors and intelligence experts including the CIA and you think you are establishing credibility thereby?

As far as only nuclear deserving to be classified as a WMD I would have to disagree with you in the strongest possible terms. While chemical weapons are devastating, they are at least usually limited to the area that you can disperse them in. The REAL WMD is biological.

Biological weapons have amazing potential, at some point in the future, but at the moment they're pretty sad as weapons go. How many people have been killed with them so far? How many died from the Anthrax mailings?

Don't get me wrong, they're horrible things that violate every standard of decency and law. But equating them, at their present state, with nuclear weapons is hyperbole of such scale that I'm at a loss to come up with a word that even comes close to describing it.

Iraq's biological weapons programs were ancient history long before the invasion anyway, so even if you believe that it's permissable to invade someone simply for having weapons you don't like (I disagree,) it would still be a red herring.

And let's not forget where the biological weapons they once had came from, and why they were given to them.

Consider that we intervened in Bosnia for so much less.

This is the second time you've trotted this out, and I must assume that you've somehow gotten the impression I approved of that. I did not and do not. You seem to have assumed I'm a Clinton fan - nothing could be further from the truth.

Try to look at the facts instead of just the partisan politics and the comforting lies. Our nation, more than ever before, needs us to have the courage to look the facts in the face.

Eddie Izzard said it best

[Anonymous Coward]

We hardly ever jump in to save victims of tyrants unless we have something to gain from it. Else why put our own lives on the line?

To quote Eddie Izzard, "Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there; Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest at age 72, well done indeed! And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people, and we're sort of fine with that."

Re: Thomas Paine

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad how few people give a shit about *liberty* anymore.

For the guy who said "activists need to shut up and get a job," you should remember that Thomas Paine was an "activist."

FreeBSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't keed to be Kreskin to look into FreeBSD's future. Even a child knows that FreeBSD is dying. All major marketing surveys show that FreeBSD has steadily declined in market share. FreeBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral. In truth, for all practical purposes FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking. It is an undeniable fact: FreeBSD is dying.

gnu-darwin / opendarwin

[dizzy tunez]

whats the difference, except version number?

gnu-darwin download: opendarwin-6.6.1fv.x86.iso.gz
opendarwin download: opendarwin-6.6.2.x86.iso.gz