Slashdot Mirror
Confessions of a Recovering NetBSD Zealot
debilo writes, "ONLamp.com is featuring a lengthy interview with Charles M. Hannum, to Slashdotters probably best known for his wake-up call aptly titled The Future of NetBSD that generated a rather vocal discussion. In the interview, Charles speaks about his role in and the beginning of The NetBSD Project, shares his thoughts on software licenses, discusses the popularity of Linux and its development model, and further addresses the problems that NetBSD is facing. Some notable quotes include: 'If I were doing it again, I might very well switch to the LGPL. I'll just note that it didn't exist at the time.' And: 'There was a lot of FUD around this issue — some of it from Linus, actually — and it did cause us some problems.'"
In the past, when notable members of the BSD community have encountered difficulties with the status quo, they have taken the initiative to go out on their own. This has proven to be a successful path twice over: first with Theo de Raadt forking OpenBSD from NetBSD, and then Matt Dillon forking DragonFly BSD from FreeBSD.
Will we ever see Charles back up his rantings with a similar fork? The community won't take him seriously until he does at least attempt to rectify the problems he sees by creating his own fork of NetBSD.
Why, oh why can more people not see this...
Linux is a kernel (as opposed to the BSDs which include a set of integrated userland tools - not just package a bunch of independently developed GNU tools), that really, these days is nothing particularly special, other than being "free". I mean sure, certain aspects of it may be cutting edge, but for the most part they're not "must have" features that will make or break it's usage in a particular application.
As much as I think RMS is a idealist nutjob, I can see his point regarding the whole "GNU/Linux" thing here (even though simply tacking "GNU" on the front isn't fair to other developers, without which the system would be useless for certain purposes, such as xfree.org).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Free, sure. But I dont know about lean and mean.
The whole point of NetBSD is portability. If it weren't for portability, NetBSD might as well not exist. But the problem is Linux has taken over as the portability leader and has a huge margin.
Every 32-bit cpu out there has a corresponding Linux BSP or distro. At least ones with enough ram or external bus interface. To compete, NetBSD will have to do without MMUs in some cases, and allow the kernel to be configured to be really small. Linux can scale and has enough configuration options to be able to produce a 200kb kernel and boot in under 1MB on an ARM7TDMI.
Given its license and code cleanliness (and maturity) I'd prefer NetBSD if it was portable enough. Its not.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
A lot of people depended on NetBSD for embeded software development. What is going to replace it? It's kind of sad to see a standard die like this.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
I am probably going to get flamed to a crisp for this, but what the heck, I have karma to burn...
If Linus continues to dig in and refuses to accept GPLV3 with its anti-DRM provisions, what is is for the linux developers who truly want to move to a GPL V3 model to contribute the fruits of their labour to a GPLV3 fork of the kernel. (Freenix anybody?) Note that they wouldn't have to stop contributing to Linux, they can dual licence as GPL V2/V3 for as long as they wish.
Actually the linux kernel could be forked from the existing code base licenced as GPLV2 with ongoing contributions to the new kernel licenced as GPLV3. Users would be bound by the terms of both licences, which would default to the more restrictive GPLV3 unless they took the time to strip out all of the newly contributed GPLV3 code. Support for DRMed media and hardware would done through clean room design, and hosted from servers in DMCA free countries. Does DVD Jon have some friends and a bit of spare bandwidth?
I really love linux, use it in my home servers and would use it on my desktop if I wasn't doing contract windows development as well. But I disagree with Linus's stand on DRM and the proposed GPLV3. RMS is an arrogant pain in the butt, but in this he is dead right. I like where GPLV3 is going, but we need to build a full featured OS around it.
My rights don't need management.
It is worth noting that it has been speculated that the only reason for the introduction of the absurd GPLv3 is that Linux won't be able to convert to it, but Hurd will since the FSF demands copyrights to everything. It is Hurd's only chance in hell, and, if true, it is a dirty move.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Now let's look at the BSD-licensed core parts: Now, I'm too lazy to run cvs log and do the grep there. But I sure hope that I would get more than one hit...
As for Charles Hannum, he's pretty much a troll. Talking to a few of the NetBSD core developers, he's upset that he was marginalised five or so years ago, and has been tolling the project since then. It's also worth noting that he was one of the people primarily responsible for throwing Theo De Raadt (another of the NetBSD co-founders) out, leading him to found OpenBSD (interestingly, Theo named both NetBSD and OpenBSD). Last survey I saw showed OpenBSD having about twice the market share of NetBSD. It's a shame they kicked Theo, and not Charles, out back then.
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