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.'"

Comments

Linus == Linux

[fm6]

As we've seen over the years, one of the great successes of Linux was that it had a strong leader, who set goals and directions, and was able to get people to do what he wanted -- or find someone else to do it. This latter part is also a key element; there was no sense that anyone else "owned" a piece of Linux (although de facto "ownership" has happened in some parts); if you didn't produce, Linus would use someone else's code. If you wanted people to use your stuff, you had to keep moving.

Which is something to respond next time you hear some GNU dweeb insist that Linux be called GNU/Linux. So GNU contributed a lot of code. So did a lot of other people. LT's leadership is what made it happen. All the more absurd because the GNU OS has been "almost done" for decades.

Re:Effect of GPL "Political correctness"

[Brandybuck]

You're still missing the point. The purpose of the GPL is to threaten people with lawsuits. Nobody from FreeBSD would give a shit if the NVidia driver were bundled on a CD with the kernel. But do it with a GPL kernel like Linux and suddenly people act like you're drowning kittens. Hence the distros that get shut down. Hence the lawsuit over a *free* chess program. Hence the FSF's legal enforcement division acting like Mini-Me to BSA's Doctor Evil.

Freedom is about letting people do what they will, not suing them into a narrow ethic.