Re: [Nolug] BSD vs GPL

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 08:39:56PM -0400, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
> James Thompson <james@plainprograms.com> writes:
>
> > A lot of that has historical roots though. Linux came up as a "clean
> > room" style implementation of *nix tech. While Linux was being
> > developed in the '90s there was still a lot of concern about the legal
> > status of the BSD codebase in terms of ownership. So while Linux was
> > building momentum the *BSD community was dealing with legal questions
> > pertaining to the ownership of their code.
>
> Yes, Linux was ???clean room??? vs BSD's more organic development. But BSD
> had a 12 year head-start on Linux, an established userbase, built
> directly on a history of 25 years of UNIX. Throughout the 90s, BSD's
> maturity and stability was touted compared with Linux poor memory
> management and need to reinvent everything. People ran Linux servers in
> the 90s, but that wasn't common. SysAdmins had a deep and abidng
> respect for *BSD throughout the 90s. Yet, somehow, here we are almost
> 20 years since the birth of Linux, and the upstart has over-taken the
> kernel with everything on its side.
>
> A quick recap of history:
>
> According to Wikipedia: ???The (USL v BSDi) lawsuit slowed development of
> the free-software descendants of BSD for nearly two years [starting in
> 1992].???
>
> The lawsuit was settled in January 1994. Where was Linux at the
> beginning of 1994?
>
> Lets look at two areas: books and companies.
>
> By 1994, a number of books had been written about Unix. One good read
> was ???A Quarter Century of UNIX??? (1994, of which I own a copy).
>
> But beyond that there are these:
>
> UNIX Papers for UNIX Developers and Power Users (1987)
> The Design and Implementation of 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System (1989)
> UNIX SYSTEM Readings and Applications (1987)
> The Unix Programming Environment (1984)
> UNIX, POSIX, and Open Systems: The Open Standards Puzzle (1993)
> Practical Internetworking with TCP/IP and UNIX (1993)
>
> (and on and on and on)
>
> Remember that for UNIX had been around in some form for 25 years. BSD
> variants had been around for 12 years prior to the lawsuit.
>
> Linux had exactly one book by 1994:
>
> Linux Installation and Getting Started (1993)
>
> By 1994, there were a number of companies producing commercial BSD
> variants. Remember, the lawsuit only affected people trying to use BSD
> without a Unix license ??? 386BSD and BSDi. Most companies had no problem
> purchasing licenses. A few of the variants:
>
> SunOS
> Dynix
> NeXTStep
> Concurrent
>
> In contrast, there was a single commercial Linux distribution:
>
> Slackware
>
> Red Hat was around, but was only selling ???software accessories???
> according to http://www.redhat.com/about/companyprofile/history/. They
> didn't create a distribution until October 1994.
>
> > And at some point the Linux kernel got big-business buy-in behind it
> > which only accelerated its momentum even more.
>
> But BSD had commercial buy-in before then (SunOS, Dynix, NeXTSTEP,
> Ultrix, Tru64 UNIX) and still lives on in embedded devices (many
> firewalls and routers) as well as OS X.

It lives-on on most of my computers, too :)

Ya'll might find this interesting:

  http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/05/17/386bsd/

And I think I've said it before, but I really like SQLite's "license":

  http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

But, again as I think the point's been made, different licenses are
suitable for different things and it's pointless to argue about them.

>
> Perhaps when you say ???big-business buy-in??? you mean companies like IBM
> started supporting Linux? They'll go where there customers are.
>
> Really, if IBM was making a choice between freely-licensed kernels (BSD
> v. Linux), they would have chosen BSD. The ???big-business buy-in??? was
> driven by smaller companies and the free software developers they
> employed, not big businesses. ???Big Business??? needs to make a buck and
> goes where the customers are. Obviously they see more customers using
> Linux.

I know for a fact that IBM can't legally distribute GPL'd software. In
fact, it must be listed as "user supplied" (even the OS, SUSE Linux!) on at
least one legal document I have seen. Their software is listed as "vendor supplied."
So, this brings up an interesting question - what dog does IBM have in
the GPL/BSD fight other than it is a way to weaken its chief
competitors? In other words, while BSD gives them a base upon which
they may build a product (and maintain, but give away for peanuts if
they wish to sell what they really want to, hardware) or just support
GPL and its horde of minions doing its bidding? If you ask me, it is a
brilliant strategy. For me, however, it is the BSD community that is more
in touch with reality and their own dignity, and are more concerned with hacking
than with pushing a political agenda. I mean isn't it a motto of
OpenBSD to, "shut up and hack"?

Brett

>
> Mark.
>
> --
> http://hexmode.com/
>
> Every day, mindful practice. When the mind is disciplined, then the
> Way can work for us. Otherwise, all we do is talk of the Way; everything
> is just words; and the world will know us as its one great fool.
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Received on 07/15/09