Perhaps not. Marx doesn't spend much time on what exactly the ruling body, the government, will be in a communist society. He says first will come the revolution, then a "prolotariate dictatorship" (the majority ruling over the minority - the bourgeosie), and then when this becomes unneeded communism will form. It sounds close to a system where there is no government, but social order by pure morals. As Marx doesn't go in depth into what communism is, but more on his ideas of history and capitalism, communism has been easily critisized for not giving any incentive (except 'for the party') to work.
If you really wanted to compare the GPL and communist ideals / society, you could claim a few things.
1) As the GPL makes work owned by the workers, not the capitalists, the capitalists are forced to contribute back to use the code. This means the workers are in control.
2) The GPL advocates itself most effectively by claiming it is morally better than closed source (ie, BSD advocates are far less MS-bashers than GPL advocates). The overall goal of the programmer becomes ego, and thus strives for the community. This is just like striving for the 'party,' where the most cheered individuals are considered the most dedicated.
3) The GPL, like communism, does not mean freedom! In actuallity, it restricts freedom or has the potential to restrict freedom. If you don't understand this, read 1984 which shows a communist society (by all definitions, although one could argue whether the workers 'rule'), which is oppressive.
Why is this on the frontpage of slashdot? There have been better posts in the bsd section than this one.. and he mentions BSD so little (and incorrectly) its only significant that at least the guy has heard of it and seems impressed. Guess he must really like those sysadmins and developers working under him, who decided on freebsd over linux..
I'd have to agree, but ask one question. Is it innovative to prove a concept, or is it innovative to create a concept? Or.. is it both? Richard Stallman deserves cedit for the licensing and distribution, for the idea of free software, and (hopefully) envisioning the distribution model as it is. Linux took Stallman's idea, embraced it, and showed that it worked.
Oh, and considering that the GNU project's goal was to create an OS based on the GPL, that's not Linux's idea, it just got the team together before FSF did. The GNU project created the tools - working backwards. Linus came and got the glory by beating FSF to the kernel.
And make sure to get overtime.. there's no fun in working weekends.
And I think its quite clear I agree. My mere statement is that its ok to be annoyed at MS, because I am. I don't like false advertising, I don't like big companies manipulating others and killing the innovators. I just also don't like the same people bashing one group preaching to the same audience on how they're different - better - honest. Maybe its just annoyance because MS is to highly covered and to intertwined in all of this stuff.
Rick'sno journalist, he's a user. I wont go any more because I already defended him once.
The problem here is not that LinuxOne shouldn't make money off Linux, be allowed to exist, or that it could do nothing for us, but that from what we know so far, they have done very little. They have little of a product, a copy of Redhat Linux, and they have made deals with major names out of the blue (with one, it sounds, they are not following through on). In many ways, it sounds like they are going after an IPO scam, trying to make money off the Linux hype, etc. No one likes a company that scams investors and rides the title wave of someone elses (many someones) success. That's what many people fear, and Rick put his findings up. If LinuxOne doesn't disapear, others will do the same until we know what LinuxOne is, and what they're doing.
To survive, we have to be suspicious, because we have no entity to protect us. Its a natural reaction for self preservation.
PS. NetBSD is not obscure. I wish it would get more press, considering there are many ports of it that make a better system than Linux.
Moen did nothing of the kind. He stated things, he did not make major judgement calls or asumptions, he merely stated the fact. The distro being almost entirely RedHat, them not even using it on their server, the server not being run by a trained network administrator, and various other facts are from his investigation.
To know whether LinuxOne is a threat, someone has to dig a bit, and he took the initial step. If you don't believe he took enough time looking over the company / product, look at the SVLUG archives at ebay or linuxmafia (if you want direct links, get it from my earlier post).
Rick is known for being opinionated, but also being dedicated, knowledgable, and correct (as painful as it can be, at times). Rick has no call on whether a company can rightfully be a friend to the community, nor has he made that claim, and never could. I personally don't trust LinuxOne, from Rick's findings (here, and posted on SVLUG), from the IPO issue (ie. ticker symbol), and the info on the web site.
I pulled Linux in because a large amount of the community (sure, zealots, but they make big amount, or at least a large amount making noise), claim Linux is innovative. Its hypocritical to call your "enemy" a lier for being innovative and turn around and say "use Linux. Its innovative!"
Turn on tv, check your mbox (snail and elect), walk outside and see the billboards, walk into a deli and see the lcd screens - almost everyone makes claims that they cannot backup and are pure lies. Sure, I'd love it if MS would shut up already, but then I get enough crap as it is. So I take it with a (heavy) grain of salt.
We've seen innovative companies in the past. Its even becomes hard to say what exactly is innovative. We say Netscape.. but that was an offshoot of Mosiac (which was just a graphical lynx). I'd have to say the Xerox PA Labs were innovative (mouse, GUI, etc). Perhaps Apple for the "home computer" concept (or at least making it feasable).
The good aspect of Microsoft was taking the innovative ideas, embracing them, and making a better product for the consumer. The bad thing was destroying the innovator.
Nope.. when I was checking this out back when Rick posted his findings on LinuxOne (check Rick's archives of SVLUG.. www.linuxmafia.com.. I forget where. Or use, http://www.egroups.com/list/svlug/), I looked that up. VA is asking for LNUX, and L1 wanings LINX. Big difference, huh? The basic discussion from the ticker ended that it was enevitable, that at least VA was a trusted friend, and L1 is almost certaintly using the ticker for an IPO scam. Have fun in the archives.. there's lots of good discussions stored there.
I remember it was origionally 7,000 - 7,5000, and then the steps for upgrading to 9,000 (or so) proccessors was going to take place. Of course, that was the idea when it launched, so I'm sure its been at 9,000 for a long time.
ASCII Red is at Livermore Labs, right? To bad, I'm told, it hasn't been to useful for NIF...
I think for once, a regligious war type discussion actually came to a good agreement. Both work for different purposes, depending the relationship of the developer and entrepreneur. I wish people would just state this from the beginning, because all the other fuss is useless until you decide where you're fitting in. Both are good at their tasks, and neither will die. My single fear is that the GPL model (where the developer and businesses are mostly seperate) will become the de-facto, which unless businesses themselves go GPL, means developers have a rough time making money on their code, or also write closed code for income. Seems if there's a nice mix of GPL, BSD, and closed code (or 'published code' in SCSL's case) would be the best.
That makes more sense. His short bit on the site sounds like someone is pressing charges, yet it is illegal to press charges and not inform the charged party (offshoot from England's old court system, where the defendant had to defend against a party which he did not know, nor at times the crime committed).
I do wonder if the ISP has the right to take down sites in this manner. Unless somewhere in their contract, they cannot remove sites if legal (and suspicion of being illegal wouldn't fit here, unless in contract). If they recived a court order, they defininately could. Otherwise, I'm not sure.
Do take it in context, btw. At the moment that RMS created the GPL, the MIT Lab for Computer Science and MIT Media Lab was being quite literally plundered by DEC, by Symbolics, by Thinking Machines and many others, all of whom took many developers and their accumulated knowledge without offering anything to the academic community in return. Freeloading both code and people is a threat in this situation.
For the community, that is/was the problem. In most cases colleges/universities make their findings public, either public domain or a very light license (BSD, MIT, CMU). However, it has generally been customary that the students who do the work that the companies take and develop from, are highered at those companies. Thus, the work is meant for the community, but to the student himself, its for both knowledge and a better/secure job.
Citing sendmail as an example of successful BSD licensing producing a value-added product is rather disingenuous, since the value-added closed source version of Sendmail is quite a recent innovation.
But the closed source version of Apache is not new, which I also cited. You will also find many companies adding value to a BSD operating system, or other BSD tools. A company I briefly worked for, NetScaler, based their product off of FreeBSD. The general idea here, like with the colleges, is that the public code is then taken by businesses and improved / added value. As this has grown past starting and ending public research in academic study, the origional developers are not trying to entice job hunters. However, they still have a reference, and prove their skill (as well as GPL developers).
This, as you assert, might have been Bill Joy's intention, to allow freeloading. I believe you when you say it was.
I began believing it was when he went to Sun and never touted a word towards open source for years. In the recent article where he, ESR, and RMS battle a bit, he says this flat out.
However, the concept is just as relevant for BSD'ed applications as for GPL'ed; they're just as dependent, for the most part, on collective development.
Yep, they are. GPL forces the developement to return to the community, while BSD does not. Both recieve lots of development, thugh BSD does recieve support by businesses using their code. Not as much as one would hope, but it exists and is truly a gift (and is extremely appreciated by the developers/community). These do it because the more the BSD product succeeds, the better their product is, but nonetheless the gift was not forced. Often, I've heard people say the GPL's spirit is "here's a gift, now where's mine?' That doesn't make either bad, but the gift does seem to loose meaning.
If I emember correctly, the origional plates were UNIX Live free or die
and were given out to the origional UNIX hackers. I'm not surprised that DEC did that.. I have one from Linux world (from compaq) with Linux. The anervsity version is out too. Just an old cool thing Bell Labs did, and everyone copied.
What about NetBSD? NetBSD was the first open source OS to port to the Alpha, supports most alpha systems, etc. I'd guess NetBSD is a good deal ahead than Linux.
exception? Alright. In one of the dozen books I've got I remember it saying something about BSD network stack in Linux. Now I'm going to have to spend the whole week trying to find that section.:-)
umm.. the story was about getting high off freon (because their drugs hadn't arrived yet) and then shooting people because they got pissed by being spooked. This wasn't anything close to a school shooting.. so that was utterly dumb of them. Him talking about how he was getting high off freon and such seems far scarier than that. I can't see why anyone would make a fuss about the imaginary guns he had, and not the drugs.
Lots of stories by adolencents are with violence, just not many with drug use. That's what they should be concerned with. Otherwise, it was just a political thing.. as it had no relevence to columbine at all.
However, and I think that this is a fear which is always in RMS's mind: BSD's software can be moved from open to closed source by such entrepreneurs, who profit from the freely available work of other people - it's the apex of freeloading.
Of course it can, that was the origional intent. Bill Joy wanted the code to be available for both closed and open source use. That is not free loading, because to compete the entrepreneur must add value. Adding value means he will make money rather than people getting the free version, so he must do it. Look at Sendmail and Apache, both extremely successful BSD applications. Both have closed source versions that add value.
This claim of freeloading that will destroy the open source version is pure FUD. FreeBSD was attacked numerously on the basis that they would go closed source and exploit they're users, or whatever. The code is always available under the BSDL, but also under other licenses.
This "freeloading" means corperations can spend their time on other aspects of the system, they can reuse code. The GPL allows reuse at its terms, BSD does not. Reuse is the greatest reason for open source! That means developement is cut, bugs are reduced, technology evolves faster, better. BSD does this, the GPL kinda does this. The BSD networking code is used by Linux, Microsoft, and others. Would it be better if neither were able to use it, or just one? Microsoft has a system that already is buggy enough.. yet you would rather they didn't use BSD code, create code that's not proven to be stable and efficent, and spend programming time on that.. not fixing other bugs?
The fear of freeloading is only in the GPL world, because the BSDL embraces it. By code and technological reuse, we evolve. We have for centuries, such as look at all the uses of the steam engine, the tweaks, and the evolution to other engines? If we forced it closed it would have been painful to evolve, and if we force it open it would reduce the incentive of evolution, yet evolution would accure, albiet slower. That is the difference.
Now, there are other issues in freedom, but when you talk about "freeloading," that is only a term relevent in the GPL.
Yes, in that sense it is superior. However, what about in the sense of technological evolution? Generally this is done through the free market, competition of small and large businesses. Perhaps a worse standard wins, but enough competition keeps it evolving, etc. You always have to fight the monopolies, but things keep going.
The GPL forces open source, which can hamper the rate of productivity. Now you need to re-invent the wheel at times. The only way "free software" can be more productive is when it has become main stream, where there are more people working on the free code than working on competition, as the way to create capital changes.
BSD allows anyone to use your code (a company cannot 'steal' your code, only use it just like everyone else). Small businesses add propitary value to the code (ie, Sendmail or Apache), and compete. This means the big guys have to work harder (ie. Netscape's, Microsoft's) to compete, so no stand still. Free Market. The threat of monopolies and exploitation has always existed.
IMHO, the GPL is like socialism and the BSD is like capitalism. The GPL tries to stop exploitation but needs the workers to unite, while BSDL creates the exact same thing as the free market. At least that's my impression afer readings in sociology...
Its high quality - Dell Inspiron 7000. I believe the 7500 is the same thing, with the newer graphics chip (which I have, ATI Rage mobility-P) and same or faster CPU (400mhz). I was able to get FreeBSD and Caldera both on, but still having pains getting the xfree86 config file working. For some reason, just not getting the tricks on the linux laptop pages to work... xfree4 should support it, so if I don't get to an installafest for help...
hmm.. so which should I install.. Corel or Caldera? I want a nice, easy-to-use distribution for my laptop, so when I need to bounce in and get to work on vacations, or go show off Linux I can have a nice grapical front, but with the srong UNIX CLI and apps. Only problem so far is getting the video to work, but that either just takes messing with xfree's config file, or waiting for v4.
If its public domain, couldn't they just GPL it? Then, even if they do play the scrouge, your code is up for use. That kills off the reason you'd make it public domain rather than GPL.. but the point of making it free was to allow anyone to do with it as they pleased.
Anyway, I doubt that only GPL code would be allowed, just anything that complied with OSI. A few reasons... much of anything done turns out to be for ego, it would reduce the ammount of code/apps submitted (thus reducing the quickness of success), and with the notion that open source = higher morals (and its not even ==), people would bash them for only GPL code (they might be all GPL-lovers, but its the social trend). The FreeBSD driver site that was announced a few weeks ago went BSD when people whinned (Linux people only I believe.. I didn't see anyone say "I'd love to have them support OpenBSD.. would make my life a lot easier." And of course.. the next thing I saw after the change.. "will they support Darwin?"
So never fear.. if they build it.. they'll take your code for right or wrong, but they'll happily take it.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps not. Marx doesn't spend much time on what exactly the ruling body, the government, will be in a communist society. He says first will come the revolution, then a "prolotariate dictatorship" (the majority ruling over the minority - the bourgeosie), and then when this becomes unneeded communism will form. It sounds close to a system where there is no government, but social order by pure morals. As Marx doesn't go in depth into what communism is, but more on his ideas of history and capitalism, communism has been easily critisized for not giving any incentive (except 'for the party') to work.
If you really wanted to compare the GPL and communist ideals / society, you could claim a few things.
1) As the GPL makes work owned by the workers, not the capitalists, the capitalists are forced to contribute back to use the code. This means the workers are in control.
2) The GPL advocates itself most effectively by claiming it is morally better than closed source (ie, BSD advocates are far less MS-bashers than GPL advocates). The overall goal of the programmer becomes ego, and thus strives for the community. This is just like striving for the 'party,' where the most cheered individuals are considered the most dedicated.
3) The GPL, like communism, does not mean freedom! In actuallity, it restricts freedom or has the potential to restrict freedom. If you don't understand this, read 1984 which shows a communist society (by all definitions, although one could argue whether the workers 'rule'), which is oppressive.
Funny you bring it up.. just wrote my own bot for robot wars, nice little guy.
If you want a 'inspired' version, for DOS (haven't tried it under dosemu, but doubt any problems) go here: http://www.iit.edu/~acm/robotwars/
Why is this on the frontpage of slashdot? There have been better posts in the bsd section than this one.. and he mentions BSD so little (and incorrectly) its only significant that at least the guy has heard of it and seems impressed. Guess he must really like those sysadmins and developers working under him, who decided on freebsd over linux..
I'd have to agree, but ask one question. Is it innovative to prove a concept, or is it innovative to create a concept? Or.. is it both? Richard Stallman deserves cedit for the licensing and distribution, for the idea of free software, and (hopefully) envisioning the distribution model as it is. Linux took Stallman's idea, embraced it, and showed that it worked.
Oh, and considering that the GNU project's goal was to create an OS based on the GPL, that's not Linux's idea, it just got the team together before FSF did. The GNU project created the tools - working backwards. Linus came and got the glory by beating FSF to the kernel.
And make sure to get overtime.. there's no fun in working weekends.
And I think its quite clear I agree. My mere statement is that its ok to be annoyed at MS, because I am. I don't like false advertising, I don't like big companies manipulating others and killing the innovators. I just also don't like the same people bashing one group preaching to the same audience on how they're different - better - honest. Maybe its just annoyance because MS is to highly covered and to intertwined in all of this stuff.
Rick'sno journalist, he's a user. I wont go any more because I already defended him once.
The problem here is not that LinuxOne shouldn't make money off Linux, be allowed to exist, or that it could do nothing for us, but that from what we know so far, they have done very little. They have little of a product, a copy of Redhat Linux, and they have made deals with major names out of the blue (with one, it sounds, they are not following through on). In many ways, it sounds like they are going after an IPO scam, trying to make money off the Linux hype, etc. No one likes a company that scams investors and rides the title wave of someone elses (many someones) success. That's what many people fear, and Rick put his findings up. If LinuxOne doesn't disapear, others will do the same until we know what LinuxOne is, and what they're doing.
To survive, we have to be suspicious, because we have no entity to protect us. Its a natural reaction for self preservation.
PS. NetBSD is not obscure. I wish it would get more press, considering there are many ports of it that make a better system than Linux.
Moen did nothing of the kind. He stated things, he did not make major judgement calls or asumptions, he merely stated the fact. The distro being almost entirely RedHat, them not even using it on their server, the server not being run by a trained network administrator, and various other facts are from his investigation.
To know whether LinuxOne is a threat, someone has to dig a bit, and he took the initial step. If you don't believe he took enough time looking over the company / product, look at the SVLUG archives at ebay or linuxmafia (if you want direct links, get it from my earlier post).
Rick is known for being opinionated, but also being dedicated, knowledgable, and correct (as painful as it can be, at times). Rick has no call on whether a company can rightfully be a friend to the community, nor has he made that claim, and never could. I personally don't trust LinuxOne, from Rick's findings (here, and posted on SVLUG), from the IPO issue (ie. ticker symbol), and the info on the web site.
I pulled Linux in because a large amount of the community (sure, zealots, but they make big amount, or at least a large amount making noise), claim Linux is innovative. Its hypocritical to call your "enemy" a lier for being innovative and turn around and say "use Linux. Its innovative!"
Turn on tv, check your mbox (snail and elect), walk outside and see the billboards, walk into a deli and see the lcd screens - almost everyone makes claims that they cannot backup and are pure lies. Sure, I'd love it if MS would shut up already, but then I get enough crap as it is. So I take it with a (heavy) grain of salt.
We've seen innovative companies in the past. Its even becomes hard to say what exactly is innovative. We say Netscape.. but that was an offshoot of Mosiac (which was just a graphical lynx). I'd have to say the Xerox PA Labs were innovative (mouse, GUI, etc). Perhaps Apple for the "home computer" concept (or at least making it feasable).
The good aspect of Microsoft was taking the innovative ideas, embracing them, and making a better product for the consumer. The bad thing was destroying the innovator.
hehe, umm.. its right here...
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/svlug-archive/
Nope.. when I was checking this out back when Rick posted his findings on LinuxOne (check Rick's archives of SVLUG.. www.linuxmafia.com.. I forget where. Or use, http://www.egroups.com/list/svlug/), I looked that up. VA is asking for LNUX, and L1 wanings LINX. Big difference, huh? The basic discussion from the ticker ended that it was enevitable, that at least VA was a trusted friend, and L1 is almost certaintly using the ticker for an IPO scam. Have fun in the archives.. there's lots of good discussions stored there.
I remember it was origionally 7,000 - 7,5000, and then the steps for upgrading to 9,000 (or so) proccessors was going to take place. Of course, that was the idea when it launched, so I'm sure its been at 9,000 for a long time.
ASCII Red is at Livermore Labs, right? To bad, I'm told, it hasn't been to useful for NIF...
I think for once, a regligious war type discussion actually came to a good agreement. Both work for different purposes, depending the relationship of the developer and entrepreneur. I wish people would just state this from the beginning, because all the other fuss is useless until you decide where you're fitting in. Both are good at their tasks, and neither will die. My single fear is that the GPL model (where the developer and businesses are mostly seperate) will become the de-facto, which unless businesses themselves go GPL, means developers have a rough time making money on their code, or also write closed code for income. Seems if there's a nice mix of GPL, BSD, and closed code (or 'published code' in SCSL's case) would be the best.
That makes more sense. His short bit on the site sounds like someone is pressing charges, yet it is illegal to press charges and not inform the charged party (offshoot from England's old court system, where the defendant had to defend against a party which he did not know, nor at times the crime committed).
I do wonder if the ISP has the right to take down sites in this manner. Unless somewhere in their contract, they cannot remove sites if legal (and suspicion of being illegal wouldn't fit here, unless in contract). If they recived a court order, they defininately could. Otherwise, I'm not sure.
Do take it in context, btw. At the moment that RMS created the GPL, the MIT Lab for Computer Science and MIT Media Lab was being quite literally plundered by DEC, by Symbolics, by Thinking Machines and many others, all of whom took many developers and their accumulated knowledge without offering anything to the academic community in return. Freeloading both code and people is a threat in this situation.
For the community, that is/was the problem. In most cases colleges/universities make their findings public, either public domain or a very light license (BSD, MIT, CMU). However, it has generally been customary that the students who do the work that the companies take and develop from, are highered at those companies. Thus, the work is meant for the community, but to the student himself, its for both knowledge and a better/secure job.
Citing sendmail as an example of successful BSD licensing producing a value-added product is rather disingenuous, since the value-added closed source version of Sendmail is quite a recent innovation.
But the closed source version of Apache is not new, which I also cited. You will also find many companies adding value to a BSD operating system, or other BSD tools. A company I briefly worked for, NetScaler, based their product off of FreeBSD. The general idea here, like with the colleges, is that the public code is then taken by businesses and improved / added value. As this has grown past starting and ending public research in academic study, the origional developers are not trying to entice job hunters. However, they still have a reference, and prove their skill (as well as GPL developers).
This, as you assert, might have been Bill Joy's intention, to allow freeloading. I believe you when you say it was.
I began believing it was when he went to Sun and never touted a word towards open source for years. In the recent article where he, ESR, and RMS battle a bit, he says this flat out.
However, the concept is just as relevant for BSD'ed applications as for GPL'ed; they're just as dependent, for the most part, on collective development.
Yep, they are. GPL forces the developement to return to the community, while BSD does not. Both recieve lots of development, thugh BSD does recieve support by businesses using their code. Not as much as one would hope, but it exists and is truly a gift (and is extremely appreciated by the developers/community). These do it because the more the BSD product succeeds, the better their product is, but nonetheless the gift was not forced. Often, I've heard people say the GPL's spirit is "here's a gift, now where's mine?' That doesn't make either bad, but the gift does seem to loose meaning.
If I emember correctly, the origional plates were
UNIX
Live free or die
and were given out to the origional UNIX hackers. I'm not surprised that DEC did that.. I have one from Linux world (from compaq) with Linux. The anervsity version is out too. Just an old cool thing Bell Labs did, and everyone copied.
What about NetBSD? NetBSD was the first open source OS to port to the Alpha, supports most alpha systems, etc. I'd guess NetBSD is a good deal ahead than Linux.
exception? Alright. In one of the dozen books I've got I remember it saying something about BSD network stack in Linux. Now I'm going to have to spend the whole week trying to find that section. :-)
umm.. the story was about getting high off freon (because their drugs hadn't arrived yet) and then shooting people because they got pissed by being spooked. This wasn't anything close to a school shooting.. so that was utterly dumb of them. Him talking about how he was getting high off freon and such seems far scarier than that. I can't see why anyone would make a fuss about the imaginary guns he had, and not the drugs.
Lots of stories by adolencents are with violence, just not many with drug use. That's what they should be concerned with. Otherwise, it was just a political thing.. as it had no relevence to columbine at all.
And don't forget, BSD people are quite proud that Microsoft uses BSD code. Proves the point entirely.
damn it.. forgot the / on the close bold bracket.
However, and I think that this is a fear which is always in RMS's mind: BSD's software can be moved from open to closed source by such entrepreneurs, who profit from the freely available work of other people - it's the apex of freeloading.
Of course it can, that was the origional intent. Bill Joy wanted the code to be available for both closed and open source use. That is not free loading, because to compete the entrepreneur must add value. Adding value means he will make money rather than people getting the free version, so he must do it. Look at Sendmail and Apache, both extremely successful BSD applications. Both have closed source versions that add value.
This claim of freeloading that will destroy the open source version is pure FUD. FreeBSD was attacked numerously on the basis that they would go closed source and exploit they're users, or whatever. The code is always available under the BSDL, but also under other licenses.
This "freeloading" means corperations can spend their time on other aspects of the system, they can reuse code. The GPL allows reuse at its terms, BSD does not. Reuse is the greatest reason for open source! That means developement is cut, bugs are reduced, technology evolves faster, better. BSD does this, the GPL kinda does this. The BSD networking code is used by Linux, Microsoft, and others. Would it be better if neither were able to use it, or just one? Microsoft has a system that already is buggy enough.. yet you would rather they didn't use BSD code, create code that's not proven to be stable and efficent, and spend programming time on that.. not fixing other bugs?
The fear of freeloading is only in the GPL world, because the BSDL embraces it. By code and technological reuse, we evolve. We have for centuries, such as look at all the uses of the steam engine, the tweaks, and the evolution to other engines? If we forced it closed it would have been painful to evolve, and if we force it open it would reduce the incentive of evolution, yet evolution would accure, albiet slower. That is the difference.
Now, there are other issues in freedom, but when you talk about "freeloading," that is only a term relevent in the GPL.
Yes, in that sense it is superior. However, what about in the sense of technological evolution? Generally this is done through the free market, competition of small and large businesses. Perhaps a worse standard wins, but enough competition keeps it evolving, etc. You always have to fight the monopolies, but things keep going.
The GPL forces open source, which can hamper the rate of productivity. Now you need to re-invent the wheel at times. The only way "free software" can be more productive is when it has become main stream, where there are more people working on the free code than working on competition, as the way to create capital changes.
BSD allows anyone to use your code (a company cannot 'steal' your code, only use it just like everyone else). Small businesses add propitary value to the code (ie, Sendmail or Apache), and compete. This means the big guys have to work harder (ie. Netscape's, Microsoft's) to compete, so no stand still. Free Market. The threat of monopolies and exploitation has always existed.
IMHO, the GPL is like socialism and the BSD is like capitalism. The GPL tries to stop exploitation but needs the workers to unite, while BSDL creates the exact same thing as the free market. At least that's my impression afer readings in sociology...
Its high quality - Dell Inspiron 7000. I believe the 7500 is the same thing, with the newer graphics chip (which I have, ATI Rage mobility-P) and same or faster CPU (400mhz). I was able to get FreeBSD and Caldera both on, but still having pains getting the xfree86 config file working. For some reason, just not getting the tricks on the linux laptop pages to work... xfree4 should support it, so if I don't get to an installafest for help...
hmm.. so which should I install.. Corel or Caldera? I want a nice, easy-to-use distribution for my laptop, so when I need to bounce in and get to work on vacations, or go show off Linux I can have a nice grapical front, but with the srong UNIX CLI and apps. Only problem so far is getting the video to work, but that either just takes messing with xfree's config file, or waiting for v4.
If its public domain, couldn't they just GPL it? Then, even if they do play the scrouge, your code is up for use. That kills off the reason you'd make it public domain rather than GPL.. but the point of making it free was to allow anyone to do with it as they pleased.
Anyway, I doubt that only GPL code would be allowed, just anything that complied with OSI. A few reasons... much of anything done turns out to be for ego, it would reduce the ammount of code/apps submitted (thus reducing the quickness of success), and with the notion that open source = higher morals (and its not even ==), people would bash them for only GPL code (they might be all GPL-lovers, but its the social trend). The FreeBSD driver site that was announced a few weeks ago went BSD when people whinned (Linux people only I believe.. I didn't see anyone say "I'd love to have them support OpenBSD.. would make my life a lot easier." And of course.. the next thing I saw after the change.. "will they support Darwin?"
So never fear.. if they build it.. they'll take your code for right or wrong, but they'll happily take it.