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New Sidekick Will Run NetBSD, Not Windows CE
jschauma writes "Many sites are reporting that the next Sidekick LX 2009/Blade, from Danger (acquired by Microsoft early in 2008), is going to run NetBSD as their operating system, causing Microsoft's recruiters to look for NetBSD developers."
I feel so torn. On one had here is a chance to be paid to work on netbsd. On the other hand the job is with Microsoft.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
BSD is the only licence that is compatible with MS business practice.
So can I get windows and word with a BSD license?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It might be "embrace", but you can't do any more than "extend" there. As long as the *BSD crowd's interested it'll be around. Much like Linux will be.
No, this is notable because it's an open admission that WinCE can't cut it .
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
http://michaelsmith.id.au
That was always one of my favorite MS facts, unfortunately they switched to IIS a few years ago. Netcraft confirmed it :)
Is there a problem with Microsoft using BSD code in their proprietary products? The developers clearly understood that was a potential outcome when they placed their code under a BSD license. As a result, they probably don't mind
That said, would it be nice to have seen MS contribute some code back? Yes, but that was not required by the license so there is no problem. That is the whole point of the BSD-style licenses: you can take my code and do whatever you want with it; you are under no further obligation to me.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
No, this is notable because it's an open admission that WinCE can't cut it .
Not really. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, development was well underway when Danger got bought by MS. That means it was likely cheaper to just continue doing what they were doing rather than scrap the work and start again using Microsoft's stuff. Not to say that something like that would have been unheard of, but it would have delayed a product that they wanted to get out the door. The real test will be whether the next iteration of this hardware runs this same OS or whether it comes with WinMo/WinCE.
This poo is cold.
Dear Lord, thank you. A post on Slashdot that mirrors the easily understandable fact that BSD licensed code is, in fact, free.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
You mean, Hotmail used to run FreeBSD before Microsoft bought it, and for the 4+ years it took them to migrate it over to Windows without failing?
Hotmail itself has never run on Linux. It may however have some of its content delivered by Akamai's CDN, which does run Linux (but not Apache).
http://astutehosting.com/
Of course no. Hotmail run Apache on Linux :)
Hotmail never ran on Linux. Originally, before Microsoft bought it, it was running on FreeBSD with Apache, with some backend servers running Solaris.
Microsoft had a lot of trouble switching to Windows, and even after they claimed they had migrated, they had to admit that some things were still running on BSD.
However, by now I'm sure they've had enough time to finish that switch.
As it stands there is nothing to make them release the source code to drivers they have written.
I don't think you get it. You consider "freedom" to be the ability to force other people to release their own code under terms you find favorable? Wow, dude. That's awesome.
You're still free to download any BSD distribution you like, in its entirety, and do whatever you please with it. Stop whining about the fact that the developers of that codebase made a personal decision that they don't care what others do with their code. What's that, you feel you have the right to make that decision for them? Wow.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
forget it dude, you are arguing against a mind set that has attempted to redefine free. but it's very nature it can't understand free.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Incorrect; Hotmail never ran on Linux. It did continue to use Apache for some time, however.
Hotmail, when originally purchased, ran on FreeBSD and Solaris. Portions of it were moved to NT, running on Apache in the POSIX subsystem of the NT kernel (at the time, Apache for Win32 was not available, and Apache was miles ahead of IIS). This is one of the few cases I know of where the POSIX subsystem was used internally by Microsoft, although it is still under development and available in recent NT-based operating systems (some editions of Vista and Win7, and their server equivalents).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Seriously, this isn't surprising... NetBSD runs on everything. The NetBSD team spends a significant amount of time supporting a large number of platforms - be it a modern X86 server or a sun pizza box.
You'll notice that commercial entities like the BSD license (see: OS X) And, I don't think that the NetBSD developers will suddenly panic: "Someone's going to steal our code!" Contrary to what some here might feel, there is room for more than one open source operating system and, believe it or not, more than one license.
Back in the old days, slashdot had the BSD link right on the front page.
Look, BSD licensing allows the end user to do whatever their want with the code in question
End users do not use source. End users use binaries. Granted, they can compile from source if they have it. GPL binaries come with source. BSD-based binaries in general don't. It can be 99% BSD code, 1% special closed source driver code but the whole comes without source and it does me fuck all good that it's 99% BSD. BSD is ultimate freedom for the ones with the source, GPL is a little less freemdom what you can do with the source, but it makes sure I will have the source in the first place.
Unless you limit yourself to pure BSD you as an end user have absolutely nothing, no more than if it was through and through proprietary. The freedome that you could try to figure to what bits and pieces of BSD they used, how they put them together and add the secret source yourself is illusory at best, possibly plain out illegal through patent law at worst. Maybe it could help some developer make a similar product, but as user of a closed-source derivative you have no ability to make small changes to improve or fix anything. You are at the vendor's mercy, you have the same lock-in issues, you have the same "embrace, extend, extinguish", they support only the platforms they choose and end support when they choose. "BSD based" means nothing to the end user except maybe that it was slightly cheaper to produce rather than reinvent the wheel.
Of course you can just stay with pure BSD. But then you're fighting a million companies that want to kill off the userbase that actually could improve that code by making them use properietary "value-added" versions instead. Let me take an example:
Linux user use Konqueror, finds bug in engine, patches source, has better Konqueror instantly, sends fix upstream, everyone gets a better Konqueror.
Mac user use Safari, finds bug, can't compile Safari but has to compile Webkit engine by itself, sends fix upstream, someday get an improved Safari.
The last is much, much more unlikely because it doesn't fix the end user's problem. The far more likely story is that he'd file a bug with Apple that may or may not do anything about it but then you're right back to classic "report error to vendor, wait for fix" just as if you reported an IE bug to Microsoft. I just don't see the appeal of "based on open source" because it is not anywhere near "open source". And the only advantage of the BSD over the GPL is to make products "based on open source".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What are the constraints that GPL bestows on the end user? Right, none at all.
You're right, none at all. Until you decide to change the code and redistribute it. Oops.
What part of the term "end user" confuses you?
No but windows does have BSD code in it. Specifically ftp.exe and some zlib code.
Which is exactly the reason for all the BSD vs GPL holy wars.
GPL is about the freedom of the code: "I've shown you the code, if you use it, show your code to anyone who wants it". BSD is about the freedom of the software: "Hey, I wrote this. Use it."
Regarding Windows:
GPL: "Oh noes! They closed the source!"
BSD: "Cool, they're using my stuff! At least they got *that* part right."
Anyone can take that code, ignore the communal effort which went into producing it, close source the code and their own additions and benefit off the backs of the work of others.
You mean like the way Linus Torvalds did when he used the work that everyone from Thompson and Ritchie to Allman and McKusick had done in designing the system he cloned?
I'm not criticizing Linus, writing open source code to open systems APIs is a Good Thing. My point is that EVERYTHING we do is done on the back of others.
And if this is another step in Microsoft's slow and reluctant journey from proprietary APIs back to open ones, that's good too.
I'm not sure why you think that it's better for corporations to be able to profit from someone's work without giving back, but that's up to the authors anyway
Who said anything about not giving back? Apple have made a lot of improvements to GCC and to a number of other projects, including several BSDL ones where they were not required to release their changes. They have released a number of new projects under permissive licenses, such as Launchd and the clang front end to LLVM.
People who actually create things and genuinely give back have overwhelmingly voted for a model in which someone else can't just grab your code and run.
Did they? Most of the code on my system is not GPL'd. A fair bit is LGPL'd, but huge amounts are under BSD, Apache, and similar licenses. This includes a lot of well-known projects, like *BSD, Perl, LLVM, subversion, PostgreSQL, Lighttpd (or Apache, if you prefer), Squeak, X.org, and so on. The only bits of GPL'd software I use regularly are bash, gcc, and vim. Of these, gcc is slowly being replaced by llvm/clang and the others are hardly the 'overwhelming' majority of the code I run.
According to Ohloh.net, I have released around 150,000 lines of code, putting me well into the top 2000 open source developers, and all of this has been under BSD-style licenses. I wonder where you are on this list.
Are you an anti-GPL zealot, or an Apple fanboy?
No, I'm a pragmatist. I want contributions from companies and from individuals. I'm more interested in the contributions companies do make than they don't. If Apple, Sun, IBM, or Google releases something under an open license, I prefer to count this as a positive, rather than count the number of lines of code in products they didn't release. I look at gcc and llvm/clang (which, by the way, I've contributed a fair bit of code to that isn't counted by Ohloh since I don't have commit access there) and I see a lot of the companies that used to contribute code to gcc are now backing llvm because of the license.
When Apple released a new ARM back end for LLVM to use as the iPhone compiler, I chose to be happy that LLVM had been improved, rather than complain that the iPhone was not open. I can choose not to buy an iPhone because it is not open (and did) and still benefit from the improvements in LLVM for other ARM-based devices I own.
The same is true of a lot of corporate contributions. When Yahoo! releases improvements to FreeBSD, I am happy that the operating system on my ThinkPad gets better, I don't complain that they didn't also open source their search engine.
In the modern world of interconnected systems, the GPL's distinction between what code you do need to release and what you don't is quite arbitrary.
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