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FreeBSD at COMDEX
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From: Brett Glass
Subject: FreeBSD at COMDEX
To: chat@FreeBSD.org
Just got back from COMDEX, where the response to FreeBSD was very, very different compared to previous years. Here are some random observations:
With few exceptions, all of the open source UNIX products and companies were relegated to a separate, "co-located" show: Linux Business Expo, in the Hilton. This had both good and bad effects. On the plus side, it gave open source a separate forum in which to strut its stuff (albeit with the Linux name hung on it). On the minus side, it segregated virtually all of the open source activity away from the mainstream. (Except for Linus, all of the keynote speakers for the Linux show were on a separate track and in smaller venues.) Companies which exhibited only in the Hilton didn't get as much attention as they would have on the main floor -- even if they had been crammed into one of the tiny "sheep stalls" which Microsoft uses to make ISVs seem small and insignificant. And those which had the financial wherewithal to exhibit in both places seemed unwilling to mention their open source activities on the main floor, where it was "Windows, Windows, Windows" all the way.
FreeBSD got a small, but not insignificant, amount of attention. Red Hat CEO Robert Young even mentioned it in his keynote -- a pleasant surprise.
Walnut Creek had a daemon "hostess" in the booth for the first time. ("You mean they haven't ALWAYS had one?" asked my wife, who was surprised that it hadn't been done before -- especially in Vegas. I suggested that a chorus line of female daemons -- remember the "Devil Girls" in Schmidt and Jones' classic musical "Celebration?" -- might be even more Vegas-like.)
Two fellows from the NetBSD project, including Charles Hannum, were at a booth elsewhere on the floor selling CDs. They didn't seem to be getting as much interest or recognition as they deserved, alas. The timing of the show was bad for the OpenBSD project, which is currently struggling like crazy to close a bunch of open issues so that it can ship Version 2.6. Perhaps this is why I saw no mention of OpenBSD on the show floor.
I noted that Digi was displaying some new serial hardware in the Red Hat booth, and asked them about BSD drivers. They said that they didn't have them, but "why don't you just port them from Linux?" (I tried to explain to them that the GPL, which is designed to monkey-wrench exactly such activities, precluded this; alas, they seemed not to understand the licensing issues. I plan to be in touch with them about getting "raw" technical specs, as I need a driver for a Digi 56K modem/channelized T1 board.)
The reps from Borland/Inprise -- whose booth was directly across from Walnut Creek's -- told me that they now had a Linux command-line compiler for Borland Pascal/Delphi. (This is a fantastic Pascal dialect which I'd love to use for UNIX projects. The GPLed "Free Pascal" simply can't compete in terms of code quality.) Unfortunately, despite the fact that recompiling and relinking a command-line compiler for BSD is nearly trivial, their PR people claimed that they weren't considering an implementation for FreeBSD. (This sounds like a company that's ripe for a bit of advocacy; there is NO reason why there should not be Delphi compilers for ALL of the BSDs.)
Hardware and software vendors on the main floors of COMDEX were, alas, focusing on Windows and NT. Few had driver support for any non-Microsoft operating system, and they seemed to be annoyed by the question -- as if they'd been asked quite a few times and didn't have a good answer. (Others denied ever having been asked for drivers for ANY other OS -- even Linux -- even though it's highly unlikely that this would be true.) I noted that the inkjet printer manufacturers were especially adamant about calling their printers "Windows printers," and claiming that it was impossible to run them from any other OS. Laptop vendors, when asked if their modems were "WinModems" (which I often call "lobotomodems" because they lack sufficient intelligence to work without MAJOR help from the host CPU), often couldn't provide an answer.
In general, the hardware vendors -- even more than the software vendors -- seemed to wish that all of this UNIX stuff would just disappear and leave them happily dependent upon Microsoft in a one-OS world.
The most extreme case of this of this phenomenon occurred when we wandered into the booth of a robotics vendor called Robix. We are working on a project for a client which will involve some robotics, and thought at first that this vendor's toolkit -- which contained a computer interface and enough servos and parts to build a complex manipulator -- might be just the thing. But when we inquired, we discovered that the included software, which ran the interface, was specific to -- you guessed it! -- Windows. Since "rolling your own" is the essence of robotics, we politely asked if we could obtain some sample code so we could adapt it to run under UNIX -- or, if not, the specifications for the interface so we could write something ourselves. We even offered to share the code we developed.
But instead of welcoming our interest, the owner of the company snapped in response: "We had enough trouble developing this for Windows, and we're not going to go through the sweat and tears to rewrite it for something else! Go away!" He scowled, turned his back and refused to talk to us further.
Our remark must have touched a nerve that had already been frayed by previous encounters at the show, and it was rather sad. We literally had our checkbook ready, but this one fellow was willing to throw away $500 of on-the-spot business (and that would just have been the initial order!) to avoid so much as thinking about supporting an alternative OS.
Another disturbing trend was that many of the embedded systems vendors seemed to be going with NT and failing to acknowledge its continued lack of fitness for mission critical applications. One vendor which had built a PBX around NT admitted, under duress, that to keep their system even semi-reliable they had to threaten to void the warranty if ANY other application was installed on the system. (I asked them whether they were concerned about the system blue-screening due to network activity, and told them so. The vendor seemed not to fathom the notion that NT could be crashed via a network. Duh.) Other companies had tape libraries and similar systems -- many of them likely to be mission-critical -- attached to NT boxes. Scary.
About the only exception I could find to this trend (at least on the main floor) was Maxtor. The company's MaxAttach dedicated file servers (a product line which they acquired when they bought Creative Design Solutions) have FreeBSD inside, and they're very proud of that. (They don't use Samba for SMB support; instead, they've written their own SMB server which seems fairly impressive. I didn't get all of the technical details, but their rep suggested that they may be doing some things in kernel space to increase performance.) Maxtor believes that FreeBSD will make their servers far more stable and reliable under load than Linux-based solutions such as the Cobalt RAQ.
All in all, it seems to me that FreeBSD, and BSD UNIX in general, need a LOT more promoting and a lot more vendor support -- on the main floor, not just in the Linux "ghetto." My personal approach, were I Walnut Creek, would have been to go for a booth on the main floor at the Sands and share a smaller booth with the NetBSD folks in the Linux pavilion. It's important that FreeBSD not preach only to the converted. It should not be seen as a "niche within a niche," but rather as moving toward the mainstream.
--Brett Glass
What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system? (Score:3)
I was just wondering whether anyone knows what happened to all those. BSD no longer seems to come with them by default. And at least on the open flavor of the same, I see no /usr/ports/lang/pascal directory.
The Good, The Bad, and Microsoft. (Score:2)
Preaching to the converted (Score:3)
Take, for example, a manager who, for some unknown reason, wants to convince the higher-ups to install only windows on their machines. This manager takes one of them to the main floor of comdex and says "Look - Only windows machines here. And all the hardware's for windows too". Even if the higher-ups know there's a bunch of unix gurus somewhere else, it's certainly going to make an impression on them that there's not a trace of open source on the main floor.
Depends who you talked too.. (Score:2)
But this year, I found many (Xerox, APC, WinTV,...) that were very helpful and were talking about doing more. WinTv for example told me last year, NO were are not doing anything with Linux. This year they had a display of there WinTV on Linux...
I have seen an overall improvement from last year. But yes you still have those Blind lost people who only know of windows or nt, because that took some cheap class (or expesive) for a week.
Sherm
To be expected... (Score:3)
The masses didn't have knowledge of reading/writing, and because of this, many things were well beyond their understanding. Under this condition, they had no choice but to trust their authorities to tell them what was right and wrong, and out of this came a strongly dictatorial ruling. (beyond this, my knowledge of that period of history is limited... anyone have corrections? Suggestions for how the age of enlightenment could relate to us fixing misconceptions in manfacturer's heads?)
Likewise, the mainstream OS manufacturer has managed to beat the party line into _OUR_ hardware manufacturers. They seem to believe that Windows is the only system worth programming for. At the same time, start-up programmers may assume that "*nix CAN'T be easier to program for then Windows! and (quote)We had enough trouble developing this for Windows, and we're not going to go through the sweat and tears to rewrite it for something else! Go away!"(/quote)
Now, through brute force, Linux is breaking into the mainstream... but it's still not addressing the root problem. The manufacturers, for one reason or another, do not understand how easy it is to support other platforms, especially platforms with a long history of standardization. Short of us (open-source/open-hardware advocates) starting to build our own hardware, we're going to have to start seriously putting it to the manufacturers... "open specs! open source drivers! rational thought!"
This is a VERY good sign, IMHO (Score:2)
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that businesses are mindless maintain-the-status-quo, do-whatever-everyone-is-doing creatures. But if you believe nothing else, believe that businesses love money, and they are now seeing, first-hand and repeatedly, that by not supporting alternative OSen, they are losing money. If their techs are not able to convince them that "M$ for everything" is folly, then at least their accountants will.
I'm glad to hear they sound frustrated and angry. It leads to the mentality that "I won't let this happen to me again next year!" I picture them saying "Dammit, next year we support this UNIX thing!" I'm hoping the year after that, people will pester them for Be ports. (And because Be is pretty much POSIX complient, the port will take less time.)
My take on COMDEX (Score:2)
Sure, the vendors are going to be ticked when a bunch of people start asking for something they didn't plan on making and supporting, and for a while they may just brush requests off. However, current trends withstanding, large companies (software and hardware) will realize that they cannot blindly develop only for Windows anymore.
This COMDEX was probably an eye opener for many, and even though they were annoyed, the smarter ones are going to ponder the meaning of it all.
The danger of course, is that in our zeal to get more support for alternative OSes, we annoy a little too much. Polite requests will most likely generate the best results, while angry demands will simply make matters worse (this is nothing new, but it bears repeting)
*note* I'm not in any way saying the author of this story did this.
It's going to be a long road though, just as firmly entrenched as the MS monolopy is in everyone's mind, that is how hard we will have to work to them to open their eyes to the alternatives.
Finkployd
Secret Interfaces (Score:3)
As in the cases mentioned in the parent article, companies make proprietary hardware with a proprietary interface that only runs with their proprietary binary which only runs on Microsoft systems. The proprietor feels that its his property, and he's done what he wants with it to recoup is investment. I understand that. But the network effect strikes again, and we're screwed.
If no vendor could create hardware with complete closed specs and Microsoft-only code, this would help a lot. But I can't see that the current MS-DOJ case could require that, since it's not a penalty to be imposed on the Evil Empire. It's all the myriad little companies nursing off their teat that are doing this to us. I don't know what kind of mechanism to fix this there could be that wouldn't be too overreaching.
Re:A step backwards ?! (Score:3)
Re:This is a VERY good sign, IMHO (Score:2)
Well, Linux still has a ways to go. (Score:2)
I think people are realizing that Linux still has a ways to go before it becomes extremely popular. The limitations can be defined in the following parts:
1. Lack of widespread hardware support. Most computer hardware out there have full Windows 98/NT/2000 support via software drivers, while Linux support is still limited to the most common hardware configurations. I mean, does Linux support all the functions of a motherboard with the Intel i810e chipset that has built-in video, sound, etc.?
2. Lack of a programming interface along the lines of Microsoft's Common Object Model (COM). This is where Linux really needs major improvements--and a number of commentators in the industry have noted this.
3. Lack of support for future technologies (with the current Linux 2.2.x kernel) such as Universal Serial Bus and IEEE-1394 "FireWire" hot-docked peripheral connections. This is going to be _critically_ important because Intel has already stated they plan to do away with serial ports, the parallel port, and even the PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors (!) on future motherboard chipset designs. I wonder does Linux support Fibre Channel "out of the box" or do you have to literally write from scratch your own Fibre Channel driver.
Once Linux overcomes these limitations (and Mr. Torvalds has admitted that they will be addressed in the upcoming Linux 2.4.x and 3.0.x kernels), THEN we can consider Linux a serious competitor--and possible successor--to Windows.
You Linux folks can flame me all you want, but think about it--many of you Linux users come from Computer Science college degree backgrounds, where learning to use UNIX is a must, since UNIX is the operating system of choice for most college campuses. Unfortunately, most home and corporate computer users out there don't have that type of experience, and frankly, they may get a bit overwhelmed at the enormous flexibility and unfriendly command-line structure of Linux (which is very closely related to UNIX).
Linux is getting better, but much work needs to be done in make it "user friendly" to the average computer user.
Re:BSD (Score:2)
Re:It's too bad about Brett. (Score:3)
Whining (Score:2)
Furthermore, the whining about the isolation of the Linux Business Expo is also invalid. We were there selling our Linux-based product [wirex.com] and promoting our free security portal [immunix.org] and it was our choice to place our booth in the Linux Business Expo. Anyone who wanted to be in mainland could have chosen to do so.
Crispin
Re:This is a VERY good sign, IMHO (Score:3)
Re:*BSD is hurting Open Source/Linux, time to stop (Score:2)
You've made your assertions. Now back them up.
Linux has BSD beat on reliability, scalability, security and popularity, you claim. That's provably either false or misleading or both. For example, consider popularity. Windows has Linux beat on popularity. So what? Next, security. Oh come now. Shall we please track the number of exploits for various Linuxes, and compare them with those for, say, OpenBSD? 'Nuff said. Now this scalability thing. Yawn. BSD ran on minicomputers and minisupers years before Linux was even a figment of your imagination. And those were big iron by today's standards, with separate I/O processors and hundreds of concurrent interactive users. BSD runs on little tiny machines, too. BSD scalability [daemonnews.org] is hardly an issue. Let's see, what was the other thing? Oh yes, reliability. Shall we compare mean-time-between-failure data? What are you talking about? I haven't seen either sort of machine go down on its own for the last couple years, and when it did, it was a Linux box, not a BSD box.
Your statement that BSD has done nothing innovative or positive for the OSI/Unix community is a blatant, flamethrowing, slanderous lie. I could list a hundred things. I challenge you to read the last 20 years worth of Usenix proceedings if you need details.
But I'm sure you don't need details. They would interfere with yours lies. Damn it, repeating a lie doesn't make it true. What the hell is wrong with some people?
Internecine Bellicosity (Score:2)
We're all on the same team, guys, except for the raving loonies. Try to keep that in mind.
Please.
Re:Well, Linux still has a ways to go. (Score:2)
Apparently not a single vendor of digital cameras has seen the wisdom of your pronouncement, as they foolishly plod ahead and use nothing but FW interfaces...
(gad, i hate using IE... all my emacs-like editing controls are gone)
Re:Whatever happened to udi? (Score:2)
Re:Secret Interfaces (Score:2)
And you really wouldn't want to have MS level their guns at the GPL -- they'd crack it like an eggshell. You'd want to come up with a specific directive or licence not linked to anything else.
You missed something. (Score:2)
The Borland compilers, on the other hand, don't link against anything but system libraries, are under a proprietary license, and Borland is free to compile them on any OS they want to, and redistribute them however they want to.
Re:What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system? (Score:2)
marc@oranje$ gpc -v Reading specs from /usr/ports/lang/gpc/inst2/lib/gcc-lib/i386-unknown -freebsd4.0/2.8.1/specs
gpc version 19991030, based on gcc-2.8.1
marc@oranje$
If you need it badly, send me a mail. Otherwise have a bit of patience until I submit it to the ports people.
Re:What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system? (Score:2)
Re:Did I miss something? - Yes! (Score:2)
Unfortunatly, the Delphi compiler is not Open-Sourced, and is to be released under a commercial licence - neither BSD or (L)GPL or any other Open Source licence,
Borland (Inprise) can release their product under any licence they like (provided it is under legal terms) and for any platform - provided they don't violate the terms of anything on that platform.
The BSD/GPL non-compatitbility only come into play whe the non-original authors want to change the licence, anyway. If Diga wanted to release their drivers under the BSD licence they could, because they own the code - but if anyone else tried it they would be in breach of the GPL.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]
Yup. You missed something... (Score:2)
Borland, as the copyright holder for their compiler, can compile it and sell it on anything, for anything they want. Legality doesn't come into play.
The Digi drivers are GPL and distributing them with BSD would 'infect' BSD. In other words, if Apple (or anybody who used BSD as the basis for their OS) shipped the Digi drivers as part of their OS, they would be compelled by the GPL to release the source to the entire OS (including proprietary modifications).
I'm a GPL biggot myself, so I would be fine with this, but the BSD folks are proud of their license and would refuse to encumber their OS in this way.
Note that if the Digi drivers are written and maintained entirely by Digi, they could change the license to BSD and (I believe) the code would be useable in either operating system. Of course this would leave the door open for other companies to appropriate the Digi drivers without contributing changes back to the community - that's why some people prefer the GPL.
Re:Brett Glass?!? (Score:2)
But you know, Coward, if you keep posting this crap, you'll get enough -1's against your IP that you won't trouble us anymore. At least, that can be our hope.
Re:Hypocracy (Score:2)
And you have failed your Hippocratic Oath, too.
What the devil is wrong with these people?
Re:Hypocracy (Score:2)
Just remember that BSD predated the GNU copycat stuff by aeons. For a real education, go take a good look around on any of the Linuxes and notice how much BSD code is actually there. Don't take my word on it. See for yourselves. This selective blindness discredits you even further.
Would a bevy of moderators please track down all these cowards who are trying to create a bsd bashing festival and zap them into negativity?
Ever notice how you don't see raving loonies bashing Linux the way you see them bashing BSD? That should tell you something.
Re:*BSD is hurting Open Source/Linux, time to stop (Score:2)
... (Score:2)
Vendors don't "get it", and I don't mean open source - technical specs should be open, if for no other reason than to allow a) peer review which b) promotes your product, if worthy, to be the "best" on the market, which leads to c) lots of money. Right now they're a) not publishing which b) pisses off alot of computer enthusiasts who c) either ignore the hw all together, or d) even go a step further and publically denounce the product. Geee..... Anybody from Sales heard about this? You know - meeting quota would be alot easier if you took the development heads out for a "friendly" game of paintball.... *hint, hint*
--
License FUD (Score:2)
But then Mr. Glass goes on to state the following:
I noted that Digi was displaying some new serial hardware in the Red Hat booth, and asked them about BSD drivers. They said that they didn't have them, but "why don't you just port them from Linux?" (I tried to explain to them that the GPL, which is designed to monkey-wrench exactly such activities, precluded this...
That is FUD in the finest Microsoft tradition, and I'm surprised and ashamed that someone from the BSD camp is emitting it. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, and assume it was a slip of the tongue (er, finger), but I also want to set the record straight.
The GPL is designed to ensure that the source code for a piece of software remains available to everyone at all times. That is all. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Thus, the GPL prevents Microsoft or some other Evil Empire taking the code, "embracing it and extending it", and releasing proprietary, incompatible versions.
It also prevents a single company (for example, Red Hat) from taking control of the Linux world. No matter how many developers and maintainers Red Hat buys, the GPL ensures that Linux remains free.
A lot of people, developers and users both, consider this a Good Thing. In any event, it is the developer's choice. The BSD people choose their license, Microsoft chooses their own, and so on. All fine by me, personally. Some people seem to think there is only One True License, but that goes against the ideas of freedom and choice that most of the Linux and BSD movements are all about.
The problem the author sees is that the BSD license allows you to do pretty much whatever you like with their software, except claim that you wrote it. Thus, you cannot take GPL code and integrate it into a potentially proprietary BSD package. Right so far.
However, the author drops it at that. Perhaps he should look beyond his personal dislike of the GPL. There are several options open. One would be to create a GPL'ed BSD fork. That is pretty radical, though, and I doubt it would be what most people want.
Another possibility is to port the driver to the appropriate BSD kernels, but keep the driver seperate from the main distribution. All your GPL drivers would have to be distributed separately under their own license, but that is not that big a deal. As long as you keep your interfaces clean (always a good idea), the GPL can co-exist with BSD just fine.
A third possibility would be to contact the driver authors and see if the would be willing to relicense the driver to the BSD folks. A good many driver authors will be quite happy with doing this.
My point is, the author seems to think the GPL is some virus that infects all code it goes near and prevents anybody from touching it. That is a common misconception, and far from the truth.
End of tirade.
Expect it (Score:2)
The people you run into on trade show floors are usually just out of college and putting their CS degree to good use in sales. They have no clue what's going on and they're certainly not going to know what UNIX is. If they ever start questioning the Microsoft way of life, it'll be long after they've been promoted out of sales. Next year you'll have completely new people on the floor and get the same reaction from whoever just converted over from Windows.
Re:*BSD is hurting Open Source/Linux, time to stop (Score:2)
I figure that your refutation deserves a refutation of its own, of sorts. First off, I agree with you for ninety percent of what you said. That said, let's go.
Shall we please track the number of exploits for various Linuxes, and compare them with those for, say, OpenBSD?
I think you're giving the original poster more credit than is deserved and, in some way, you're making the same mistake. The mistake of the original poster is in believing that a difference means either a superiority or an inferiority. This is, IMO, absolutely not the case. Godzilla may be able to beat King Kong up, or vice versa, but either one of them can stomp Tokyo flat if they feel like it. When it comes to urban demolition, there is no substantial, quantifiable superiority between the two.
Same with Linux and the BSDs. For ninety percent of all uses, Linux and the BSDs can interoperate without a problem. I prefer Linux machines as desktops and OpenBSD machines as servers. Big deal. With some work, I can make Linux into a reasonably secure and perfectly good server, and turn OpenBSD into a good desktop.
The original poster thinks that since Linux is different and s/he uses Linux, Linux must be superior. It's not. It's different. That's all.
Original poster -- for the love of God, man, get a clue. BSD is not the enemy. The enemy is internal divisions, fractiousness and backbiting. If you want to help the free UNIX community, and help Linux, then stop flaming our BSD brothers.
Re:Brett Glass?!? (Score:2)
The point was that he's just managed to present himself as another cowardly GPL flag waver and general rabble rouser, who, like so many others of his ilk, apparently doesn't have the integrity and conviction to post under his real name.
Brett obviously had thought these things through. To assert that Brett should be censored because he prefers free and open software over encumbered software is a revolting idea, and you should be ashamed of yourselves, one and all.
Re:What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system? (Score:2)
I too, remember using the Berkeley Pascal system on VAX 730 and 780's (and later on an 8250) under 4.2 and 4.3 BSD. I absolutely detest VMS (which is what the undergrad work was done on back in those days where I went to college), but I worked for a place that ran BSD. Not only that, but the Comp Center's machines were grossly overloaded with users, while I virtually had the VAXes at work to myself at night.
Actually, I hate Pascal too, so what I would do was write the assignments in C under BSD, then hand convert the C source code to Pascal once it was finished, and compile and test it under BSD using pi. I really liked the quick syntax check in pi (it would even fix small errors like missing semicolons and begin/end keywords). Once the Pascal version of the code was working under BSD, I would upload it to VMS, compile, test and turn it in. It took a little explanation to the instructor of one class as to why my source code was always version 1 or 2, and why I used very little 'funny money' on my VMS account.
I suspect that the old pi/pc/pix isn't included in current *BSD's because of two things. One, I suspect that the originals are highly VAX-centric, especially pc. I also suspect that the code may be AT&T encumbered because I remeber seeing mention in a recent interview with Bill Joy that BSD did the work on that code as a summer project that was funded by AT&T.
At any rate, it seems that in general, Pascal has mostly fallen out of favor in the world with the exception of Borland's Delphi which seems like it is still kind of struggling.
Re:License FUD (Score:2)
NT, POSIX, and what they mean (Score:2)
No. NT includes an optional POSIX subsystem. By all accounts, it is unstable, incomplete, and fails to implement much of what is required for decent POSIX compliance. It also has huge security problems; Microsoft recommends you disable it completely, or NT will not be considered secure.
In short, Microsoft did what was needed to pass the POSIX compatibility, tests. Running actual POSIX software was not one of their goals.
What's your point? How does POSIX compliance really help us, if at all?
POSIX is essentially the UNIX operating system turned into an OS API standard.
If you write a program that is POSIX compliant, and the underlying OS provides a good POSIX implementation, then your program will port to other OSes with little to no modification.
Re:Well, Linux still has a ways to go. (Score:2)
What about Sony? (hey, didn't that use to be one of their ad slogans?)
The whole Mavica line uses a good ol' 1.4M 3.5" floppy disk as its interface.
Yes, I am a happy Mavica owner.
Re:Internecine Bellicosity (Score:2)
Pascal / Porting between the BSDs (Score:2)
Please make sure the openbsd people get it, too. Any idea how much difficulty it is to cross-port between the two? My guess is that it's trivial. Yes if that were true, you'd think we'd see more ports than we do.
Sure, it will be much more easier than porting from Linux. I just installed openssh on my box - the first FreeBSD port I ever saw, that fetches not some tarball somewhere but does an anonymous CVS checkout from OpenBSD.org's tree. Wow.
Indeed I feel great sympathy and admiration for the other BSD projects and would love to make it cross BSD. My problem is tracking the differences and testing.
Example:
In theory, I already put in OpenBSD and NetBSD support for another project I work on, the CD Index [cdindex.org] client. This was attempted by studying the man pages from these systems, that are available on the German FreeBSD web server [freebsd.org]. But I never tested it out so far, because I simply have no machine running OpenBSD or NetBSD or access to one.
Even if I had a second box running OpenBSD for example, I doubt somewhat, that I would follow development here as closely, as I would for FreeBSD. It is just a matter of personal preference and limited time resources.
So I believe the various projects should hold test accounts ready for volunteers from the other projects who are willing to test and adapt their stuff, but who are not willing or able to keep up a test system themselves. I would be very happy to get such a opportunity, as ported software seems better to me in the sense that it forces one to better program organization. Maybe one of the reasons why usually UNIX software is of good quality.
Re:*BSD is hurting Open Source/Linux, time to stop (Score:2)
However, if you mean ease of use for Unix programmers, then I lament to report that there, the burden of remedying the currently deficient usability concerns points quite strongly in the opposite direction.
Re:Brett Glass?!? (Score:2)
Re:TOM CHRISTIANSEN YOU MISSED THIS ONE (Score:2)
Re:Internecine Bellicosity (Score:2)
/me looks for the Slashdot twitlist feature.
Re:What ever happened to the Unix Pascal system? (Score:2)
You are right, it is a new development that uses gcc as backend. In fact you need a gcc source tree, add the gpc source tree, use a fitting diff from p/diff to integrate or better say patch gpc into gcc and do the usual configure/make incantations. In between you perform some FreeBSD specific patches (I am very happy that it is possible to put all this knowledge into a nice handy FreeBSD port)
The gpc is still alpha and has bugs, but personally it was already useful for me, as I use it to develop the homework for a computer science course on imperative programming, where Pascal is required as language.
The gpc folks work on covering standard Pascal as well as the glorious Turbo Pascal dialect of the past.
Actually, I hate Pascal too, so what I would do was write the assignments in C under BSD
I personally first learned Basic on an Apple ][ then 6502 Assembler with Big Mac/Merlin and then Pascal with UCSD Pascal and later Kyan Pascal. Then came Forth, then Turbo Pascal for CP/M and the for the IBM PC which was good enough for several years until I hit C++ in 1990 and then Java in 1996. With C++ still my favourite language. (Perl is not bad either)
This learning history also represents an increasing order of difficulty. Pascal is certainly easier to grasp and less mighty than C or C++. And therefore suited for teaching programming.
Pascal also suffered from the facts that it has never evolved as nicely as has C into C++ (and Java to some degree). Not to forget the admirable effort by Bjarne Stroustup to forge the ISO C++ Standard. That was certainly sucking work, but he did it.
When Pascal creator Nikolaus Wirth once came from ETH Zurich to give a talk on his Oberon language at the RWTH Aachen, I annoyed him with my opinion, that Pascal had no worthy successor. :-)
The purpose of the GPL (Score:2)
The GPL is for people who want to make sure nobody can usurp their code. If I code, and make that code available to the community at large, I don't want somebody to take my code, use it in their own way, and sell it back to the community from which they stole the code in the first place unless they also release their code.
This is all very equitable-- you benefit from my code, and I benefit from yours in return. Everybody wins.
The GPL does this by putting restrictions on the code, that's true; but those restrictions are designed to keep others from hijacking the code. Name one instance where the code might be used legitimately where the GPL is a hinderance. (Conflict with the BSD license does not count; if everything released under the BSD license were instead released under the GPL, there would be no conflict.)
The BSD license assumes a perfect community, one which will not use your own code against you. (For instance, if Linux were released under the GPL, and Microsoft felt Linux were a serious threat, it could use the Linux code to create a new operating system that looked like Linux, but worked only with Microsoft software.) The GPL protects the interest of the programmers and the community at large.
BSD's interests are not with coders or the community; they are with the world. The BSD license is very liberal-- and that is not necessarily a bad thing. For those who trust other people to use their code wisely, the BSD or Artistic License is a better license than the GPL, as it provides more freedom.
But for those of us who are just cynical enough to distrust the intentions of the rest of the world, the GPL is a better choice.
Re:Pascal / Porting between the BSDs (Score:3)
When I noticed it first, it was aesthetically very pleasing to see that you have managed to dynamically link those two BSD source trees.
I am not sure about the implications of this approach, yet. Made me wonder if that is the way a future united BSD source tree will look like. Not one single organization, but a tree distributed over 3 or more focal sites, that specialize in some aspect of the grand system.
Microsoft's POSIX Myth (Score:3)
If you truly believe that this alleged POSIX compliance is in the least bit useable, then please compile up trn or perl or nvi on that system. It's part of a sick and twisted joke, and the joke is on the American taxpayer, too. Read Heinz's article.
Outsider (Score:3)
Both parties want code to be "free" (liberated), and both believe their license does that. Both believe the other license is more restrictive than theirs because it fails to be "free" in a way theirs does.
The GPL seems to advocate End User/Consumer "freedom". The goal: Get the source code to the people. GPL cannot discriminate corporations, and like anybody else they must give access to any modifications they distribute.
The BSD
However, the GPL sees that BSD does not strive for its goal because corporations may then choose to NOT redistribute that source, and that the end users may never get access to the customized corporation code. BSD sees that GPL, by not allowing corporations to incorporate and withold GPLed source, is
There are two stratas of consumers then: the end user, and the corporation. Each license tries to get their stuff to the most people, but the distribution accross these stratas are just different.
Well, that's my blurry impression of it anyway. If I'm innaccurate in some way it's not because I'm a troll...It seems to me that both licenses want to do "good", however there are differing approaches to the end result of "good".
On the Oxymoronity of Mandated Moralities (Score:3)
The words which you deemed an insult were in fact reflective of sentiments that were anything but.
You then continued to write:
What's happening is that we're not talking about the same thing. Yes, you're right that the BSDL and the AL permit binary distributions. The AL goes further than the BSDL in what it says about making the source for that binary distribution available.That really wasn't the thrust behind my comment. What I was trying to express was that if you put any of these OSI-style licences on a bit of code, then that code will always have that licence. You can't just take a bit of AL'd code (or whichever licence) and throw away the old licence and re-license it as you feel like. The originally licensed code stands, and it stands forever--or at least until the owner himself releases it under an alternate licence. That means that the original code is not going to "go away" or be "taken over". You can't do that with the original code. It's got a free licence on it, and that's that. The difference is that free licences other than the GPL allow you to license your own software that uses the original stuff in any way that you care to. Even if you do so, the original remains inviolate. Nothing can happen to it.
That's what I meant when I said that the other free licences make sure that the code "stays free". Surely you must see that they do this. But you're talking about something else: code that wasn't in the original. Yes, you're right, the other licences make no claims upon that code the way the GPL does. But this hardly changes the original code.
(Yes, some of that was redundant.)
Microsoft's old strategy of "embrace and extend"--which in fact is often "embrace, extend, and extinguish"--is going to be with us no matter what we do. Look at the whole MS-HTML [perl.com] fiasco. This was an open standard. That didn't stop Microsoft from using it to screw the world into reliance upon them through Microsoft-only extensions. Do you really think getting a copy of their exact code to handle this crud would make any difference? I don't think it would. I don't see that licensing could make any difference here. Even if you define in the standard that extensions would make the result no longer be standard [whatever], as for example, I have heard said about XML, I can't see this stopping the Microsoft juggernaut from attempting to give you a "better" version. They'd say, well sure, MS-ML isn't XML (or whatever), it's better, and it's fully compatible with simple XML (or whatever). Think about POSIX, again.
So I think your fears about "embrace and extend" are well-founded, but your apparent conclusion that the GPL would adequately address this issue, and do so in a way that other free licenses would not, seems incorrect.
My colorful use of "viral fingers" is simply that. I grow weary of the times that I see the term "FUD" used to brand an opinion with which the antagonist disagrees. That's what I think you're doing, and I don't think it's fair. I've been completely up-front about why I consider the FSF to be dangerously dishonest in the whole GPL issue. I have repeatedly requested that they stop spinning stories and twisting common definitions. Their doing so has without a doubt tricked at least some people into misunderstanding how the GPL works, why it's there, and what its ramifications entail. I believe that this is an intentional deception, a cheap word game they will never admit to, but from which they clearly benefit. It would not take more than a few small fixes in the surrounding literature to clarify matters for honesty's sake. No licence changes. Just spin changes so as not to misrepresent what's happening.They don't do that. Therefore, they don't mind that it tricks people. Hard to see how using "sneaky" is inappropriate there.
As for "viral", this, too, has a long tale behind it, and it was hardly I who first made the observation and coined the term. I don't care that the term should discomfit the FSF. There are clearly ways in which the term is descriptive of the action. Yes, it has a negative connotation. Yes, I intended to use a term with a negative connotation. I did so, quite simply, because to my mind the term fits. I did not do so to cause people to fear something they did not understand, nor to be uncertain about the reality of the matter, nor to doubt for some nebulous and amorphous reason the intentions of the parties involved.
I think, perhaps, we are not understanding the word "infect" to mean the same thing, because I cannot see how a reasonable man could say what you have just said if his understanding of the words and the effects involved were the same as I myself hold. I note with some amusement that many GPL advocates disagree with your statement. Their standard retort is that it doesn't stop you from doing that; it merely imposes conditions upon your use of the resulting work. This is deceptive sophistry on their part. I agree with you here, and commend you for not falling into their webs of deceit.Nevertheless, this prevention that hardly seems sporting, not does it? I can barely think of a potent disincentive to code reuse. And code reuse frees programmers from needlessly reinventing the wheel.
I think either we are actually in profound but subtle agreement, or else we have severely disparate notions of what constitutes "complete and total ownership of your code". If I have complete and total ownership of my code, then I as owner may do whatsoever I please with that code. Alas, the FSF would have you believe otherwise.One can of course avoid this through linking. The FSF really hates this idea, and they routinely cluck enough about its legal viability that fair-minded people everywhere are uncertain about the true effects. But in the client-server days of RPC, CGI, DLLs, CORBA, OLE, COM, mobile agents, and other segmented forms of computation, it becomes increasingly obvious that the GPL cannot possibly be as infective/effective at reaching across those boundaries as the FSF wishes it were. That's how I made removed the virus from all GPL'd libraries and made them LGPL'd. Even Bruce Perens has confessed here in this forum that such separations are going to happen in the computing models we see today, and that the GPL does not address them. My recollection is that he called them "loopholes".
I agree with you that my code code is not affected. The FSF, however, most vociferously disagrees with both of us. They claim that the GPL means that I cannot distribute my own code under my own terms. If I can't do as I will with my own code, then it is hardly unaffected, nor am I its complete and total owner. That's there position. Mine is that I am complete and total owner, and am consequently free to do whatever I please with that which is mine. It is, well, peculiar at best, that copyright law should extend its notion of a derived work in this way. The FSF recognizes no notion of proportion in their figmentational notions of what constitutes a derived work, staying completely boolean in their thinking. The courts have never been so binary.In any event, that's not what the issue is. The issue is that the FSF feels that their code affects my code, that their licence on their code spreads to everything their code touches, meaning my code, and that this process continues in perpetuity, without regard to dilution or proportionality. It is this very complete silliness that they espouse which has engendered the notion of the GPL being an infectious virus. If you prefer another way of thinking about how silly it is, consider it as an application of digital homeopathy.
Surely you don't really believe that, do you? Free licences will do that, but not the GPL. The GPL affects other code in a way that a free licence does not. This is my entire point. Yes, it forces. But it forces something else. It forces what happens to something other than the original code. It allows the author of one work to restrict what happens to the work of an entirely different author.Can you imagine how silly it would be if a book were published whose copyright included a restriction that the book could not be used by black people, or in a public library, or placed on the same shelf as a book by a different author? Imagine if a song were published under a restriction that it could not be played a station that also played a song by a competing musician, and that any other songs played by that station fell under the same restriction as the first song? Really, it's completely silly.
I've always found "use" restrictions very strange. See my previous paragraph. And I find it nothing short of mendacious that the FSF should claim their restrictions are anything but that. Yours is a very common sentiment, and I can certainly respect your feelings on this matter. A lot of people feel this way. That's why you so many licensing terms that in effect grant unlimited non-commercial use, but that for commercial use, you must contact the author to make other arrangements. I can hardly fault them too strongly for this, because I do hear what they're feeling. They've done their work for free, and they don't want people to get some benefit out their work which they themselves are not getting.According to the FSF, this is not free source, open software, or anything else you care to call it, because it's got anti-commercial restrictions. And then they tell you that their restrictions which bar anyone from using their software in what any businessman would be call a commercial sense (traditional fee-for-licence schemes) is not anti-commercial. Who but George Orwell could be so proud of the boldness of this spin job?
It would be more honest of the FSF to get out of the business of word games and related spin. But they are, fundamentally, a politico-economic foundation, not a technical one. They wish that all software were GPL'd, because they could thereby impose their morality upon others by the--what word do you want me to say here other than the completely honest "infective nature" or "viral nature"--perhaps "collateral damages", then--of the GPL.
I must confess that I have on a few occasions in the past, and doubtless several in the future, contemplated places where I would dearly delight in seeing the GPL installed and enforced. Oh, you do not know how sorely tempted I have been! One example is with Microsoft's operating systems products, because if they were court-ordered to slap the GPL on their OSes, that would be a likely end to their strategy of putatively "integrating" into the OS any application area that they care to monopolize.
But you know what? This is a personal weakness of mine, and I must overcome the urge. Tempting though it may sound, I must reject the temptation. I must. That's because it is fundamentally immoral to coerce others to behave in accord with your own sense of morality. It doesn't matter whether your morality happens to be the best around, or even the best there can ever be. Coercion is by its very nature by definition immoral. As with the paradox of having your cake and eating it too, morally you simply cannot enforce your own morality on others without sacrificing that very moral high ground which you would claim to occupy. Without free will, there can be no morality at all.