No BS In BSD 6
keepper writes. . . well, absolutely nothing actually. But he (or she) did send a pointer to There's no BS in BSD, another ZDNet think piece on the Walnut Creek/BSDI merger.
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No BS In BSD
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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
Re:while you're at it (Score:1)
Re:A real Switch (Score:1)
Actually, sir AC, I have grown up and I do "see the light." I simply fail to see what your point is.
FreeBSD can't really die, for the same reason that Linux can't really die. The nature of their respective open source licenses allows for the concept of forking. If enough people who work on FreeBSD don't like the new direction of the merged FreeBSD/BSDI parent company, they can simply take the latest copy of the pure FreeBSD source code and do their own thing.
Yes, the BSD license allows BSDI to take the FreeBSD code, merge into into their operating system, and keep the resulting changes proprietary. But that's the "price" you pay for using the BSD license. You allow people to keep their changes proprietary, and you accept that. But, as before, that doesn't mean that FreeBSD suddenly becomes proprietary as well. At worst, the evolution of FreeBSD may be stunted, but it won't die off if something drastic were to happen to the FreeBSD/BSDi merger.
As for your fears of OS cannibalism, mixing the two operating systems explicitly involves tearing down the two original systems and building a single, integrated system. After the two have been integrated, you won't have the same FreeBSD you have right now. That's the price of progress. The chance you have to take is that the FreeBSD/BSDi merger is going to integrate the best aspects of both operating systems to produce a superior OS and that the parent companies feel it's in their best interest to publish the code to their changes.
Re:A real Switch (Score:3)
They're basically taking FreeBSD and using that as a base for building a better FreeBSD. Over the next few years, they're going to selectively take BSDI code and merge it in, and release the resulting merged code as BSD licensed. That's not really "open sourcing" BSDI, and it doesn't count as such.
On the other hand, they *ARE* pursuing a more aggressive open source model. Rather than open sourcing BSDI, and adding another fragment to the BSD world, they're going to merge the two operating systems to build a much better operating system than either alone. While you can't say that it's "really" open-sourcing BSDI, in many ways it's a step better.
Kudos to BSDI for doing this - they make a better product in the end AND they do it in a friendly, intelligent manner.
A real Switch (Score:3)
to a Free/OpenSource software model. As to why this is not getting as much coverage as it deserves,
Beats me.
While it is true that they will continue on with a closed source BSD/OS, their aim is to integrate
all the code that is not under an NDA, to the FreeBSD code base, couting towards the release of FreeBSD 5.0.
They will also bring their support expertise to play. Which has a great deal of value due to their
Corporate support experience.
Hopefully, this will work out, and will show that taking such a bold venture, will pay off
FreeBSD..... The Daemon made me do it .
It's a HE (Score:3)
Re:A real Switch (Score:1)
We're talking BSDI here- the company that was formed by some of the world's biggest open-source gurus at the time, the CSRG at Berkeley, when they found out they were no longer going to recieve money to work on BSD. Considering they didn't think they could survive off of open source, they did what they had to so they could continue working and not starve. Might I add they've given back to FreeBSD and NetBSD over the years. Now they've gone full circle, and are open-source again. Neat, huh? :)