UserBSD vs. UserLinux - Is It Feasible?

A not-so-anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "Someone has suggested to make a UserBSD instead of a UserLinux. From what Bruce Perens' anonymous 1-million-$ backers seem to want (no GPL-/Commercial dual-licensed development toolkit like Qt in any library, but only gratis LPGL stuff), this seems to make a lot of sense. After all, only the kernel would be different, the rest of the stuff (including the KDE or GNOME desktops) runs pretty much the same on BSD as it does on Linux. Is it possible to get the legal problems solved with licenses and still create a usable enterprise Unix desktop system on *BSD?" The idea, in and of itself, sounds fine, but does the choice of kernel really matter? What advantages would BSD have over Linux in such a project, and vice-versa?

Comments

Is this the legacy of 18 years GNU?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest this 1 million dollar "investment" for Bruce Perens looks like a trojan horse. Just compare the GNU system when it started in 1985 with what we have achieved now without compromizing our ideals. First it was just some tools, an editor, then compilers, basic libraries, a kernel, then we created a real advanced server. And now with KDE and Gnome we have conquered the desktop. We can only grow from here. Sure a quick million will bring us forward faster, but at what prize?

Bruce Perens says:

we're on the losing side. The extent to which our software penetrates the business world will govern our effectiveness in getting the legislative changes we need.

Enterprise users buy solutions, not systems. And it's a fact of life that enterprise customers will want to run a mixed Free + proprietary environment, choosing whatever software is best for a particular application. The overall viability of UserLinux will be based upon the size and quality of the ecosystem of solutions around it, both Free and proprietary. So, in order to get any Free Software into businesses, our Free system must promote the creation of a large collection of proprietary solutions that do not exist today. As we penetrate the enterprise, we will continue to move Free Software higher up the application stack, until these businesses make use of Free Software predominantly. But you need proprietary software to get in the door.

It is possible for us to make our system entirely royalty-free for solution developers, both Free and proprietary. This dictates some software choices: GNOME and PostgreSQL rather than KDE and MySQL, simply because of the way those products license proprietary developers. This will support a large ecosystem of both Free and proprietary solution developers by lowering the financial barriers to entry all the way to zero.

This looks like someone who want to throw a few principles over board. O, yeah. Please let us not confront our proprietary overlords with something as basic as Free Software. Lets not call it GNU. Copyleft protects us and makes us strong, so lets throw it out as much as we can. Jeez. Cowards.

Sure it would be nice to get popular really quickly. And if it was easy to change some laws all at once. But we have not done so bad. Several countries are now demanding free software when it impacts their relation with the public or in schools. America isn't one of the fastest to get those changes, but even in America some states are now seriously investigating free software. But changing laws and views takes time.

Please Bruce Perens come back to your roots. I was so proud when I read your "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again" essay. Please don't let a million dollars put you back into the open source and proprietary camp again.

Re:Is this the legacy of 18 years GNU?

[hattmoward]

Okay, I don't get this... Yes, GNOME and PostgreSQL are pure GPL apps, but MySQL and QT are dual-licensed. Right now, if you get the GPL version of either, and send a patch back in, you will assign copyright to MySQL AB or Trolltech, respectively. If one of those companies decides they don't want to produce free software, and pulls the GPL download from their page. What I'm missing here is how this is any problem at all. Just like with SSH, someone who wants it will pick up the last GPL version and move on. It's already GPL, it's already free. I guess I don't understand what Bruce and his moneyman are worried about...

Low quality troll mate

[DrSkwid]

FreeBSD is for people who like Unix

Linux is for people who hate Windows

OpenBSD != NetBSD != FreeBSD

Loser

The risk

[dtfinch]

is that someone could take UserBSD, and for a small fortune, make something better but closed source and patented. Then the work that everyone else put into it would be used against them.

Linux is

[Mark_MF-WN]

Linux is also for people who hate Unix. Unix is a nasty, primitive, backwards OS. All the worst parts of Linux are the things that come from Unix (the filesystem, for example).

Linux succeeds because of a willingness among its developers to not create another Unix. The original was bad enough.