Walnut Creek CDROM And BSDi To Merge 164
It's been planned for some time, and on March 4 at a user
group meeting in the Netherlands, Jordan Hubbard let slip the
news that the ink was dry, and Walnut Creek CDROM, a big
player in the development and promotion of FreeBSD, and BSDi are merging. Obviously,
this has big implications for FreeBSD. You can read what's been
written so far at this DaemonNews article. Later today we'll have an interview with Walnut Creek president, Bob Bruce. If you've got questions, then you know the drill. . . Oh, OK. If you don't know the drill, post them here,
let the moderators moderate them up, and I'll make sure they get an
airing later.
Re:Some weirdities in the announcement: (Score:1)
People keep saying this, and I keep asking for the URL of this magic tool that causes the existing, BSD-licensed source code to disappear from every single server in the whole wide world.
Will you be the first to tell me where I can get this magic tool, so that I can stop FreeBSD, Sendmail, BIND, or Apache from being free just because some closed-source project uses code from it?
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:1)
Also, something like a console driver on an indy is really very different from something like a console driver for a dec station. The bus architectures are completely different, just the cpu happens to be from the same brand (and sometimes even indentical) and more or less compatible. (a nice problem in this is that the handling of big/little enndian code on SGI or DEC boxes is entirely different. A mips cpu in theory can operate in both modes, but not so on a dec station)
Anyway, different machines that happen to employ the same or very simular cpus can be 2 different ports for very good reasons like efficiency of the code and hardware specific requirements that are not cpu bound. By merging it into one big tree, and relying on 3rd party support to make it work isn't the same as supporting many platforms out of the box, and it is bound to be less efficient in both speed and memory usage because of the overhead of supporting entirely different pieces of hardware that happen to use the same instruction set.
It does however allow Linux to run on a huge amount of different devices.. that is of course true, but i personally don't care for that, I rather have a distribution that is actually built and maintained for the specific type of machine that I want to run (which in the case of my indy still happens to be Irix and not an open source unix... but that may change when XFree gets to supporting the Indies graphics hardware with some decent performance)
For my Vax linux is not a serious option given its still experimental state. NetBSD has a very decent release for Vax which so far proved to work very well. It doesn't support the graphics console of my vax, but heh, whats the use for a relatively slow 19' monochrome graphics console when I have 2 21' high speed true color graphics displays already). Linux so far gets as far as actually booting and initializing its kernel... after that it dies when actually trying to talk to the network. Since it netboots that is a rather big problem, and since it loads its kernel perfectly well from the bootserver (and it works perfectly well with NetBSD) I can assume that my ethernet hardware is not broken.
Anyway, its nice to support a zilion cpus, but its more usefull to have actual working implementations for different hardware platforms, and the requirements for a port are much more dictated by IO subsystems then by the actual instruction set used by a cpu.
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:1)
It's sad, really--if it weren't for that @#$% lawsuit, BSD would be where Linux is today. As it stands, Linux has a three-year head start.
Re:Is this True? (Score:1)
Re:Will this mean... (Score:1)
There are 2 simple problems with the soundcard support in FreeBSD (besides the cards that are supported)
- midi support. I use rosegarden to drive a set of synth modules. I would not mind doing this on my FreeBSD box, but since the old voxware style drivers don't work anymore for my card in 4.0 I can't use midi in/out, and the code for the new midi drivers isn't in the tree yet so I can not even get experimental code to try to get it to work.
- the pcm0 driver doesn't seem to want to work with things like vice and quake 3 arena. Not a big deal for most serious users, but if you have this dual cpu machine with matrox g400 and soundcard at home you want to play games on it every now and then.. at least I do. I can easily install a linux on it, but fact is that FreeBSD in the past was nicely capable of running those 2 while also run a small mail/webserver and a proxy cache... Linux doesn't do that very well. (it doesnt crash or so.. but responisveness is terrible, unlike with FreeBSD)
Promotion is going to be a very big part of this merger. I think we all recognize the success that Linux has had, and we want to do the same (or better ;-) with FreeBSD
That would be much needed. Also, BSDi has a much better name among corporate customers then companies like redhat etc, if only because BSDi never rode the tide of hype, rather they survived because there was a serious need for their stuff. (not to say there isn't one for redhats stuff, but so far they ddn't have to prove they can rely on that)
Bart.
Merger & FreeBSD revisionist history (Score:1)
The FreeBSD trademark has long been held by Walnut Creek CDROM, with some rather arbitrary restrictions on its use to describe derivative works that improve things such as the install process, or the overall "new user" experience.
I notice that Jordan Hubbard's FreeBSD History at FreeBSD History [freebsd.org] is a bit revisionist.
It casually mentions Bill Jolitz, but fails to mention John Sokol, who posted the original 386BSD code to the net, Jesus Monroy, who had a lot to do with the move from 386BSD 0.0 to 386BSD 0.1, or Terry Lambert, who wrote the original FAQ, patch kit, and patch kit production software, and then handed it off (as far as I can tell from the archives, the phrase "the patch kits last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and myself" means "everyone ever involved in administering or creating the patch kit, except Terry").
It also fails to mention that Bill Jolitz had originally lent official support a "386BSD 0.5" interim release, based on the patch kit work, or that "the patchkit swelled unconfortably every day" is a paraphrase of Lynne Jolitz's complaints, which resulted in Bill Jolitz's "rude" withdrawl of support.
This seems antithetical to the BSD credo of "credit when due", and bodes ill for a future where it appears the source tree will have to be closed down for a while, while proprietary bits are sorted out of BSD/OS for integration.
I am unsure of what will occur as a result of this merger, and the idea of the merger itself makes me rather anxious about the historically centralized control of the project by a few people who initially checked in a large amount of code, but later became a barrier to progress, and the centralized control of the "BSD" related trademarks.
People who argue over such issues have long suggested that it would be possible for a commercial entity to "hijack" a BSD project; I have always publically dismissed this, but it seems that perhaps I was wrong. If so, I have a lot of crow to eat, which would be made ever more bitter for it being the result of failed idealism on my part.
I hope that statements are issued soon, clarifying what this merger is going to mean, the process by which it is going to be accomplished, the status of the use of BSD/OS binary-only drivers in a future FreeBSD, the permissable public use of the FreeBSD trademark going forward (preferrably, a trust will be established), and so on.
I feel like Tim O'Reilly, decrying the Amazon patents. 8-(
Re:Merger & FreeBSD revisionist history (Score:1)
Jordan precisely describes his page as "FreeBSD History", and I don't think there is anything revisionist about it, but then, I'm probably part of the "FreeBSD Intelligensia" so what would my opinion be worth.
Your paranoia about FreeBSD being "captured" by BSDI is simply wrong, and without breaking the rules I can tell you that a large number of core members are very hell-bent on making sure that will *never* happen to FreeBSD.
The merge of code will be from BSD/OS *to* FreeBSD, the practical details have yet to be worked out, but they will be, in due time.
This is a major step *forward* for the BSD family, and as a BSD user since 1986 I'm looking forward to it.
I think FreeBSD is the best UNIX you can get, but I am not so simpleminded to not think we can make it better by adding capable people and good code to it.
I find it particular fitting, historically, that this happens so that the resulting code will be released as "FreeBSD 5.0" and I'm sure more than one old hand will shed a tear when that big five-oh finally hits the streets.
The Trademark will be transfered to a non-profit "FreeBSD foundation" which is, as we speak in the process of being set up for that purpose.
And finally we are negotiating with various parties about moving our development machines to a "neutral ground", and from the sound if it, we'll have the best connectivity in the world
If you have anything constructive to add, I can tell you that the committers and the core team are most open to sensible suggestions.
Poul-Henning Kamp
BSD user since 1986
FreeBSD Core Team member since 1994
Release engineer for FreeBSD 2.0, 2.0.5 &c &c &C
Re:Where is the new FreeBSD headed? (Score:1)
Actually this is not true. FreeBSD has always went where its developers wanted it to go.. Luckily a user can also become a developer and as such get some influence in which direction it moves. Like with any open source project, the direction it moves is the one for which the code happens to be there. There is planning involved of course, but the availability of code is always the thing that determines what will actually be there.
Is this direction going to be consistent with the new FreeBSD? Some people would like to see FreeBSD hit the desktop, or move into embedded systems; Where does FreeBSD want to go today?
As you can read on FreeBSD's site, FreeBSD aims to be a commercial quality unix like operating system.
So far it has been employed for both desktop and server usage, but its key strength seems to be in the area of (internet connected) servers. I think BSDi would have been killed over time by FreeBSD because the quality and continuity of development in FreeBSD has been causing many companies to support either generic or in more cases very specific implementations of it. Over time that would prolly have killed BSDi which till now had the advantages of slightly better technology in specific areas (smp to name one) and its much better support. Those 2 are welcome additions for FreeBSD, and this will save BSDos from simply going under without anyone profiting from it.
To me its a really good thing to see 2 major BSD distributions team up and merge, instead of the splitoffs that we got so used to in BSD land. Now lets indeed hope this spirit is allowed to stay so way can keep potential pissing contests to a minimum.
Bart.
Re:Improper moderation on parent comment (Score:1)
But I fully understand why it was moderated down. He made some statements that were patently false with no basis in fact or logic, whose only purpose was to cast FUD upon non-copyleft licenses. How would you moderate a post that had Anti-GPL FUD on the order of "you can't compile a non-GPL application with gcc".
Expected (Score:1)
This looks like it...
From someone who manages a BSDI BSD/OS shop.. (Score:1)
Which components closed-source? (Score:1)
Re:What about Slack?! (Score:1)
--
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:1)
Re:What about Slack?! (Score:1)
Bullshit.
Slack has some services enabled in inetd.conf. Specifically: time, ftp, telnet, comsat, shell, login, ntalk, pop3, imap2, finger and auth. This is the same list that most distros enable, though other distros may enable more of them (RH used to...to lazy to check if they still do, so take that with a large pinch of salt).
Besides, I was speaking of the the programs in the distro and the basic framework (suid root programs/scripts, group and user level security, other approriate file permissions, etc. For any given environment it is up to the admin/user to take necessary steps to provide configuration level security. Slack has had a respectably low number of security advisories over the years, esp. comared to other Linux distros. I think it would be great if setup took pains to get a reasonable take on the use intended for the machine and set configuration accordingly. But the admin/user will always need to take some steps, as there are just too many variables.
As for the new updates...I don't think Slack will disappear. Folks like it. I am concerned that it will become even more marginalized and that the Linux standards process is missing out on some good input.
You are correct about one thing, though. This is off topic. My bad.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
Great news (Score:1)
At the same time, as a personal user of FreeBSD, I'm a bit apprehensive of this. Because I work in Corporate America, I have a healthy fear of companies and their motives. At the same time, however, I have faith in Hubbard, Lehey, and the rest of the FreeBSD team. They've worked long and hard, and I don't see how FreBSD could change from being open-source or free (beer, speech, take your pick). It would alienate their core user-base, and go against the grain of the thirty-year history of BSD UNIX.
All in all, I'd say this is a Good Thing(TM)
Re:infozip web site moved from cdrom to freesoftwa (Score:1)
In addition, the link you posted for Info-ZIP is incorrect. Right now, most of http://www.freesoftware.com/ [freesoftware.com] either redirects to http://www.cdrom.com/ [cdrom.com] or mirrors it; either way, the Info-ZIP tree on the latter is a 10-month-old broken mirror, and therefore so is anything that mirrors or redirects to it. The correct URLs for Info-ZIP and zlib are:
There is no local HTTP access to this tree currently. There are, however, mirrors overseas that provide HTTP service. Check the respective home pages, and if they don't mention "freesoftware.com" somewhere on them, they are not up to date!
--
Re:New Distribution Site? (Score:1)
Re:Remarkable. A OpenSource first ? (Score:1)
Re:License Clarification? (Score:1)
This is why supporters of both licenses have a legitimate point if they claim that their license if more free than the other one.
Re:Some weirdities in the announcement: (Score:1)
It is up to the author to decide whether he wants everyone to gain from his changes, or whether he wants only free-software/open-source users to gain from it.
I personally prefer to have everyone gain from my code, as small as it is. My theory is, that if someone gets to use my FOO code in their system, then that's great, because maybe their users will get a better FOO product than the original people could have provided.
On the other hand, some people like to assert in their licensing that since they provided the source code, they get to say that anyone who makes changes to it (and distributes that change) has to return their code free to the community. Unfortunately this occasionally prevents the use of that code in projects that are unable to provide the code that links with it for free for various reasons (Such as, the code was written under NDA to another company, and as such, the system provider cannot actually give that code away free, and as such, can't then use and change the "free" code that is available).
It could be (dangerously) generalized to depend on whether you're a "free everything" person, or a "improve everything" person, although I can see myself getting flamed for using such general terms. (:
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:1)
An interesting, although oft-mentioned, reason why we shouldn't start slating projects that do roughly the same job is to foster competition, to have a 'biodiversity'. A case in point is qmail vs. postfix in the "secure fast mailer" section (vs. exim vs. sendmail in general too).
While it's perl's motto that "There is more than one way" to do something, I think it is almost necessary that there should be, so that there can be users of differing ways, who can have friendly competition to improve their programs against each other, leading to two or more very good products.
(But then we were drinking, so maybe this requires more thinking *grin*)
Re:Source code merging (Score:1)
The only code not scheduled for inclusion is that which was written by BSDI under NDA to another company, since they're under obligation by the NDA not to release that code.
Re:License Clarification? (Score:1)
For some people, providing good code to all takers is what makes them feel happy and fulfilled, knowing that their code is going to benefit end-users of some system, where that system does not creating their own, possibly inferior, implementation. In the end, there'll be a massive collection of good code that anyone can use. Due to various reasons, many companies make their changes, use them for a few months for some competitive advantage, and contribute them back (Netgraph and other items from Whistle are a good example).
Other licenses, by restricting their uses to open source projects, may lead a system to reimplement something poorly, and their end-users will suffer for it. However, it does end up with a massive collection of good code, and may help non-open systems become open source, which provides all the benefits of open source to that whole system, instead of just the original code.
Re:Running? (Score:1)
About darn time (Score:1)
Not to mention the inherent wierdness of the way the ran the system.
Some weirdities in the announcement: (Score:1)
How is that a "feat"? AFAICS, it just illustrates the weakness of the BSD license: Anyone could easily keep a closed-source OS competitive with an open-source template that was free for the taking. What was that somebody said about "Microsoft's" implementation of DNS (or whatever it was) in Windows 2000...?
And before you call me a "zealot" again, Arandir, let me say I'm not. (Not much, anyway! :-) It's just that IMnshO, there's such a thing as too "free" -- if you want something to remain free, you better not give away the "freedom" to make it non-free. And if something can't remain free longer than it takes the first "entrepreneur" to grab it and lock it up, how "free" is it really?
But which "open source concept" is it that is "completely commercially viable"?I'm not sure about the commercial aspect -- maybe BSDi has been making money like hay, and much of the current Linux boom is just artificial stock-exchange valuations that seem totally out of whack with the real world -- but I am pretty sure that precisely this fact -- that Linux, not *BSD, is now the second-most-widely-used PC OS in the world -- says something about which licensing scheme it is that is more "viable" as an "open source concept".
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Re:What about Slack?! (Score:1)
But, back on topic.. I don't think slackware is going to disappear.. if you look at the article right below this one.. slackware just released a new version!
Re:Free or Proprietary? (Score:1)
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:1)
They just want to be here. We don't really see our place as Linux competitor, but merely as another Open Source OS which strives to be around making sure people have a choice of decent OS's to use for their goals.
Re:Where is the new FreeBSD headed? (Score:1)
Frankly the roots clearly are in the server market, but FreeBSD is just as good as for the desktop. I think the modest and non-flashy default install makes this possible.
Personally I wouldn't mind FreeBSD staying in the server side of the whole ballgame, but given the `legion' of commiters, of which I am one, we clearly have one side leaning more to servers and one side more to the desktop and this will most definately ensure that the result will be usuable for both.
Actually, FreeBSD is already there for embedded systems, in which case we call it picoBSD and which resides in the source tree as well.
And all in all, to be fair, the larger part of where the OS is going depends on the userbase, and the userbase has been predominant by ISP-like types from the start...
Re:License Clarification? (Score:1)
Just strings(1) through, for example, ftp.exe.
Re:Which components closed-source? (Score:1)
Please read the Daemon News article prior to posting here.
I am sure that a lot of the committer base at either camp is mature enough to sort any problems, should they even arise, out. That will probably have been discussed to death by WC and BSDI prior to the merge.
Re:More power to the BSDs? (Score:1)
this is good thing (Score:1)
Having been introduced to unix through linux, and then introduced to FreeBSD through linux. IMHO, I am very impressed with FreeBSD 3.4 and their ports system.
Having said that, I'm not suprised in the least that BSDi wants to use freeBSD as the core of their OS. This would definitely result in faster FreeBSD developement.
I can just see it now, linux users, like myself, making a switch to freeBSD with the next killer version!
I'm also assuming BSD/OS will, essentially, be a commercially packaged FreeBSD?
Re:New Distribution Site? (Score:1)
The most interesting thing about this merger is the effect on Slackware, if it is still affiliated with Walnut Creek, BSD license is too liberal for this to make a difference.
Your Signature (Score:1)
That's a pretty fucked up .sig you have there. All Advantage causes half the fucking spam there is.
s#Intel/Sparc#Intel/Alpha# (Re:In the beginning) (Score:1)
Free or Proprietary? (Score:1)
Re:License Clarification? (Score:1)
The problem with that is that its STILL UNDER THE BSD LISCENSE. There are ~200 committers, and the FreeBSD project does not pay anyone. JKH and a few others do work for WC Cdrom, but that was because they were offered jobs to work closer to full time on the project. WC was already a major supporter of FreeBSD before that. JKH and others didn't just jump out and make some firm and IPO BSD to death. They followed the code, not the $.
That said, BSDI does not own FreeBSD. What they own is WC Cdrom, who is the main distributor of FreeBSD. BSDI also employees top FreeBSD developers, but as they have no say in what FreeBSD itself does, the most they can force upon them is to merge the two codebases. If they don't feel like committing it, they can leave BSDI with their own splinter.
If BSDI did close FreeBSD with JKH's support, then the ~180 or so major developers on the project would splinter off and make it open again. The closed would die without developers. Actually, the closed would be considered a splinter from FreeBSD, and simply the developers that left.. There are FreeBSD derived OSes out there. With BSD, unless developerrs just get tired with the project, it can't die..
Re:What about the social implications? (Score:1)
My first thoughts were about the two places I'm most likely to be found at: loader and sysinstall. They are both critical elements at support, so I expect seeing new faces around soon.
And that is where my mind end up wandering to: the new faces. I have been following FreeBSD mailing lists for many, many years, and have a general knowledge of who's who among the ~200 committers. Now there will be many new faces in a short period of time, people with very strong technical background, and very familiar with certain parts of the system, and I don't know them. I wonder what the implications of that will be.
Re:USUAL, YOUR INFORMATION STINKS :) Re:This seals (Score:1)
<p>
The newbus vs newconfig approach, though, it's quite different.
Re:Slow boat to nowhere,... (Score:1)
Source code merging (Score:1)
How will this affect companies involved in virtual hosting modifications to BSDI?
Re:I've always wondred... (Score:1)
Hehheh.. :) I've been trying to figure out how I can get a couple of the dolls shipped with our next subscription set and get work to pay for them. ;)
F.
#include sig.h
Re:Remarkable. A OpenSource first ? (Score:1)
What next, should Redhat and the other successful companies run around buying closed source companies and release their source, maybe they should do this immediately before their market price crashes :-). Even if they go belly up afterwards they still will have achieve opening up the source. A cunning idea methinks
I was really hoping that when RH aquired cygnus, it would lead to cygnus being fully opened up. Sadly this hasn't happened (yet). dammnit...
- Aidan
YAE/.BMS (Score:1)
Re:Is this True? (Score:1)
matt
Re:If I was a FreeBSD user.... (Score:1)
1. They wouldn't have had to merge to accompilsh this
2. If they contribute _one_ more (they've contributed stuff in the past) thing (And they've stated intent to contribute everything save code under NDA) to FreeBSD, it's all good. We aren't reliant on them to, but it'd be great.
3. Perhaps more important than the source base is the fact that BSDI has money and resources. This is A Good Thing.
I hadn't expected this (Score:1)
Please Moderate Up previous (Score:1)
thanks for your comments. I am glad to hear a non-WC core member's take on the situation.
As far as "the best connectivity in the world", may I speculate (no, I don't have any knowledge) that this might have something to do with a large corporate supporter of FreeBSD?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1)
Codebase Release (Score:1)
Redhat is eating BSDi's market. (Score:1)
Joining with FreeBSD may be a way for BSDI to get on the open source bandwagon, and save their jobs in the process.
I bought a BSDI distro once, to make my idiot IT manager happy. (He wanted to be sure we we're only running liscensed software.) It was funny to see that BSDI was at least a year behind FreeBSD on features and architecture. Looked like a bad Slakware knockoff.
The next question is, when will RH or VA buy SCO? Are there any good reasons to do so? Tarantella for example?
Be Inc. has no appreciable market share, and unless it eventually becomes profitable, it might make a good front end replacement for X. (It already implements a UNIX-flavoured backend.) But who would be willing to put up with Fearless Leader?
Just to clarify... (Score:1)
Specifically, I'd expect to see various BSDI developers who are doing useful merge work being granted commit privileges to apply their changes to FreeBSD directly, subject to the usual architectural and review policies, overseen by FreeBSD core.
"The FreeBSD Project" is being set up as an independent, nonprofit organisation of some description to ensure it stays independent of control by BSDI/WC.
Basically, what I expect to see is pretty much what we've seen from FreeBSD's main corporate sponsor in the past (Walnut Creek), namely that they pay a number of developers to work full-time on FreeBSD as members of the wider developer community, and they profit from selling the resulting product on CDROM. Since it's open source, any other company can also sell it as well (CheapBytes does).
FreeBSD-derived distributions are another issue - if someone wants to change bits of the "official FreeBSD" and repackage it, it's arguable they should have to obtain permission to use the FreeBSD trademark, which is intended to be transferred to the Foundation.
The main difference I expect to see from the status quo that we'll get a LOT more developers contributing code, and a lot of this code will hopefully be juicy BSD/OS code (e.g. I'm told their SMP implementation is quite good). The new combined company will have a lot more resources to contribute to FreeBSD-related services, like support contracts, training, book publication, advertisement, paid development sponsoring, etc.
I think this is great!
Re:finger @bsdi.com (Score:1)
The www.bsdi.com website has a fairly good section on the company and its history..
infozip web site moved from cdrom to freesoftware (Score:1)
[freesoftware.com]
which came as somewhat of a surprise to the infozip people; we've still got a lot of broken links to clean up. The PNG site has also moved, to
[freesoftware.com]
but the cdrom.com PNG site is still there for now. At least it was last night...yup, still there.
Re:In the beginning (Score:1)
NLFUG (Score:2)
- Much better SMP support
- FreeBSD ports to SPARC and probaly StrongARM
and a lot more
- Snowdude!
Re:Linux still a desktop joke (Score:2)
Linux may be a "joke" as a home user desktop, but as a corporate desktop it works, it is low maintenance (the users cannot trash their system no matter how hard they try, and all user-changable files are mounted off of the NFS server so that all user files are backed up every night without any special software other than plain old BRU), and the users have a pre-defined desktop with easy-to-use icons for all the software they need to run. And any user can log in to any machine on campus and get his own desktop -- no "roaming profiles" needed!
Upsides: Low maintenance. Easy to swap out dead machines without disrupting user's work (he can just go to another machine, or I can slide in a backup machine, he logs in, and is back to his desktop).
Downsides: User can't install games that he brings from home. Hmm, is that really a downside? (grin).
-E
Improper moderation on parent comment (Score:2)
The guy had some reasonable points, with which you may agree or disagree. But, have the decency to reply to him in a comment, instead of using your moderator points to respond. Moderators who do this sort of thing are the real "Anonymous Cowards."
New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Re:Improper moderation on parent comment (Score:2)
That is not a legitimate reason to moderate a post down.
there is HUGE difference you zealot.
But thanks for the impartial, reasoned analysis!
New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
finger @bsdi.com (Score:2)
Over the years I recognize a lot of people working on FreeBSD, but I know nearly nothing about the folks at BSDi. Anyone has informations about their staff and the company history?
Re:New Distribution Site? (Score:2)
EraseMe
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:2)
Re:New Distribution Site? (Score:2)
Re: the linuxes disappearing from cdrom.com
S'OK, so has FreeBSD... WC sold the cdrom.com domain sometime ago. The new domain is (I think) freesoftware.com. WC can still be found at wccdrom.com.
N
Re:If I was a FreeBSD user.... (Score:2)
The relationship between BSDI and the other BSD's hasn't been ill. Basing on all the FUD I have been encountering in the comments posted it seems as if most people whom seek something ill behind the merger are Linux users whom think that BSDI is a Microsoft kind of company. Well it isn't guys, in fact, the people there are actually pretty cool.
That said, BSDI already used large parts of all BSD source trees without the individual projects building a grudge about that towards BSDI. That's why we use the BSD License and that is why we are not concerned; we _explicitely_ allow such things!
Re:A couple of questions (Score:2)
And yes, the intent is a merged source tree at some future date.
Re:License Clarification? (Score:2)
In practice, OS-level code isn't *worth* stealing if your system isn't fairly similar, on an architectural level.
Could NT try to steal our code? Sure. Just like they could steal NetBSD or FreeBSD code today. They don't, because it's easier to engineer from scratch, using our code as a reference base - which they could have done at any point for the cost of a source license.
And yes, I think this may be YAOSL, but I think it's a temporary one only. FreeBSD will still be under the BSD license.
Re:Remarkable. A OpenSource first ? (Score:2)
It's not that big a deal; BSD/OS has always been based largely on 4.4BSD code, and we've given away code to other systems before; NetBSD-current has our 'login.conf' code, for instance.
Re:Running? (Score:2)
USUAL, YOUR INFORMATION STINKS :) Re:This seals it (Score:2)
BSD/OS is *not* the same thing as FreeBSD, and it sure as hell isn't "the same thing two years older". It's a different system, with different goals, targeted at a different market.
I'm sorry you didn't find that BSD/OS met your needs, but I think it's a little drastic to talk about "things which don't suck nearly as much". BSD/OS may not be the be-all and end-all of systems, but it doesn't *suck*, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, as the code starts getting shared between the systems, we'll see a lot of changes for both communities, and I think they'll all be for the better. FreeBSD will get a "real" SMP, instead of a "pretty-good-hack" SMP. BSD/OS will quite possibly get the bus_space code.
(Of course, that's NetBSD's work, not FreeBSD's, originally.)
It's amazing; it's almost as though, when multiple groups of developers work on different projects, they produce different things. What's really amazing is that this surprises people.
Re:Codebase Release (Score:2)
Remember, a bunch of the drivers are still under NDA, and *CANNOT BE RELEASED*.
That said, calm down a little, and wait and see what happens. No one will be harmed by waiting a few days to hear more about release plans.
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:2)
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:2)
I don't think it's unreasonable to consider the Amiga and the Sun3 different "ports", because they're substantially different systems, even if they have the same CPU.
I do think it's unfair to use the existance somewhere of a port of a piece of software to a platform maintained by a third party as "support" for that platform.
It's all trade-offs; if nothing else, can we at least agree that Windows NT is *not* the multi-platform leader?
Re:License Clarification? (Score:2)
Heh. I wonder if they ever give credit for that ftp client; if not, maybe someone should whack them.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re:I've always wondred... (Score:2)
Okay, so after 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 I am getting bored of the stickers. I hope they have some nice shiny new ones for FreeBSD 4.x :-) Maybe on a cunning silver metallic background that does pretty things when you hold it up to the light and tilt it.
I must buy a FreeBSD Daemon doll at some point...
Re:Running? (Score:2)
Questions for Bob Bruce (Score:2)
I look forward to the good things that will come from this merger!
Re:Linux still a desktop joke (Score:2)
What about the social implications? (Score:2)
But, the more difficult question is going to be, what about the developers?
While I don't think anyone will have a problem with giving Mike Karels any commit privs he wants, what about Joe Random Developer inside BSDi? Will he/she have to go through the same things that FreeBSD developers have historically gone through?
Clearly, this isn't something where there are only a few developers, and I expect that most people wouldn't even be able to tell if FreeBSD added a few dozen committers (FreeBSD has a boatload already), but inside the community, this is of some importance.
Re:Running? (Score:2)
I quote:
--
Brad Knowles
Viewpoints from a User/Advocate (Score:2)
If Jordan thinks this is a good thing, I've know jkh long enough to know, that while he is human, generally he considers long term implications of things. the BSD's now have a commercial backing. Walnut Creek, while having funded FreeBSD developnment for a while, did not have the commercial power of BSDi.
Also, this signals the change in strategy for BSDi, instead of keeping things relatively closed, most things being distibuted by BSD Inc. will be Open Source. However I wonder about the funding of Slackware development, but I'm sure provisions have been made.
This was bound to happen, Kirk Mc. has been involved with both FreeBSD and BSDi, and it was just a matter of time before something like this happened.
I personally will wait to see what happens. while I trust jkh's judgement, I also reserve the right to be cautious
lets hope this *does* turn out to be for the best.
-Pat
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:2)
The numbers aren't artificially inflated; I can't run MacLinux on an Amiga, just as I can't run NetBSD/mac68k on an Amiga. And quantity isn't the only measure of which OS "owns" multi-platform. I think NetBSD's integration of all of its ports into a single source tree counts for a lot, as does having a clean split between arch-dependent code and arch-independent code so that, e.g., most of the drivers are shared between all the arches. Someone wrote a driver for sound cards using ForteMedia FM801 chip on his x86 machine. I added the driver to my Alpha's kernel config file, compiled a kernel, and had the sound card working perfectly, with no changes to the source code. I wouldn't be surprised if the same driver would work in a PowerMac or Ultrasparc (perhaps there may be some endian issues the author overlooked, but those would be very minor things to fix).
Similarly, the S/390 Linux port is one Linux port but would be four NetBSD ports, assuming NetBSD ever gets around to supporting S/390 (the Linux port runs on the bare metal or as a virtual session under any of the three OSes available for S/390).
I dunno about that... isn't the idea of the S/390 that the virtual machine looks identical to the bare metal? If there aren't really major differences in OS's view of the hardware, I'd think that NetBSD would put it all in one port. After all, although they were originally separate, NetBSD even managed to combine the sun3 and sun3x ports (I think the sun3x machines looked more like the sun4 SPARCs, except they had a 68k processor).
Re:What is BSD's place in the future? (Score:2)
Actually, I'd say that NetBSD owns multi-platform. No clue about SMP, other than NetBSD definitely doesn't own it ;)
How does this benefit people? (Score:2)
License Clarification? (Score:2)
This paragraph seems a bit confusing. First, does this really mean that there is Yet Another Open Source license available?
Furthermore, since the BSDi code will be released as part of BSD which follows the BSD license, is BSDi's code is now available for commercial operating systems (eg, Windows 2K+1?, *nix)
What steps will new company take to protect against this scenario?
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:2)
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:3)
Many geeks haven't considered support contracts as useful, but he (the manager) says he'd love to have that to back things up if I find myself unable to deal with something. (And he gets the CEO to support an open source project without making it look like a donation we don't get anything directly out of.)
Re:How does this benefit people? (Score:3)
Right away, Nothing Happens.
Over time:
* NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD all get neat new toys.
* BSDI gets a bunch of the "non-server" driver code they've historically ignored, which means better desktop support.
* FreeBSD gets sexy new SMP.
* Over time, I believe *all* the BSD's get a better support framework.
* I get a free copy of FreeBSD in the mail.
* BSD Stronger == MS Weaker.
The last one is worth remembering; people tend to argue about Linux Vs. BSD. Screw it; the world's big enough for the both of us. The question is, how much *Microsoft* can we all displace?
Re:More power to the BSDs? (Score:3)
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard"
Subject: FreeBSD 4.0 release candidate #3 now available.
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/alp
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/i38
With ISO images available from:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO
.. just as soon as they finish uploading (the i386 image is already
there and the alpha image is about 8% there and should be in place by
the time most of you read this message).
This will probably be the last release candidate image before release
day unless folks find some real show-stoppers here, so please look
thoroughly
- Jordan
So, barring any big problems, FreeBSD-4.0 will be released on Monday, March 13th.
Re:More power to the BSDs? (Score:3)
You may start to see some BSDI code being integrated in the coming months, but the two codebases probably won't be completely merged for at least a year or perhaps two. This means that 5.0-RELEASE or perhaps 6.0-RELEASE would be the first realistic version that would be completely merged.
--
Brad Knowles
Re:Some weirdities in the announcement: (Score:3)
- How is that a "feat"? AFAICS, it just illustrates the weakness of the BSD license: Anyone could easily keep a closed-source OS competitive with an open-source template that was free for the taking. What was that somebody said about "Microsoft's" implementation of DNS (or whatever it was) in Windows 2000...?
Obviously you don't have much experience with actually participating in Open Source development of operating systems.The reality of it is that people who take a freely available OS with a BSD-style license and then add on their own proprietary enhancements, have a real problem with having to constantly re-apply those patches every time the freely available version is updated. As a result, they usually are actively interested in getting those changes re-incorporated into the base system, so that they don't have to continue to maintain their own private branch.
The primary problem that maintainers of code with BSD-style licenses have is that sometimes the changes are quite big, and the maintainers are usually unpaid volunteers, thus making it rather difficult for them to incorporate changes of that scale.
These kinds of problems are precisely what the merger between BSDI and Walnut Creek will help solve, since they will now have some real money to be able to pay some programmers to take all these changes from all these various different sources and start serious work on incorporating them into the FreeBSD baseline.
--
Brad Knowles
Remarkable. A OpenSource first ? (Score:4)
What next, should Redhat and the other successful companies run around buying closed source companies and release their source, maybe they should do this immediately before their market price crashes :-). Even if they go belly up afterwards they still will have achieve opening up the source. A cunning idea methinks
C.
Interview Question (Score:4)
We're all aware of how this dynamic drives the feature-rich but bug- and complexity-riddled MS offerings, but it appears that this is starting to happen in the Linux world as well. Most of the Linux users I personally know have switched from RedHat due to problems with 6.x being too unwieldy. One would hope for better from a relatively expensive boxed distro produced by a company with a huge recent IPO. (Don't flame me!
Will there be binding, concrete mechanisms, such as user-community input into decisions, or something like the sepate foundation set up to mediate the Troll/QT relationship, to prevent feature-creep from warping FreeBSD out of shape? What will these mechanisms be?
The ready answer, of course, is that the BSD license and market forces, combined with the philosophyies of the principal players in the merged company, will prevent this from happening. However, I worry that these aren't enough to stand up against the lure of big money --- or the pressure of big money from wealthy outside companies.
More power to the BSDs? (Score:4)
This is a good move for the BSDs in general. They have been losing ground to Linux, which is the more 'media friendly' OS. It is good to see that BSDi are contributing a lot of their code (except that under NDA - still available as a plus-pack though) to the BSD code base, under the BSD license (not under some other license).
I wonder what ramifications this has for FreeBSD 4.0? It hasn't been released yet, so will it be delayed while several core BSDi components are added? I doubt it, but FreeBSD 5.0 will occur before the end of the year otherwise, as I imagine the differences between FreeBSD and BSDi are significant enough to warrant a version increase. OTOH, it could just be that they will be merged smoothly into the 4.x series...
They could have called it FreeBSDi :-)
What about Slack?! (Score:5)
I would hate to see Slack go the way of the Dodo because of this. Granted, this announcement means that the box that I was going to wipe RH6.1 off of (I test each new RH, Deb and Slack distro as they come out and I have the time and drive space) and put Slack back onto will probably be getting a FBSD 3.4 install instead. Time to start playing in that space a bit. Most of the mainstream Linux distros (RH, Deb, SuSE, Turbo) don't suit me well. Deb is nice once it's set up, but the devel process is broken. Evolution will fix this, but I don't have the time to waste on it right now. Great distro, just not for me. RH...well, it's really not bad, but I don't much like their config style. Not the SYSV part...that's ok. The /etc/sysconfig directory mess is what I'm refering to. Makes the construction of the official admin tools easier, but at the expense of making manual or custom config/mgmt a pain. Don't even get me started about SuSE in this regard! As for Turbo, I've not done more than a simple install, so no comment. (And the crowd goes wild!!!)
Anyhoo....this rambled on longer than I had inteded. I suppose I should just email the Slack crew and WCCDROM for a real answer, rather than asking here. I would say that it was to save the time, but typing all this drivel took at least as long as the emails would have.
[1] Yes, I know they do a great job of following the file hierarchy standerd. I was refering the the LSB, which is going to be good, but would be better with Slack folk working on it, too.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
A couple of questions (Score:5)
Big implications for all BSD, and Linux too (Score:5)
- Most of the BSD/OS code will be available to open source projects.
- BSD now has a commercial backer on the same scale, or at least potentially so, as some of the Linux backers.
- A more competitive BSD means that Linux will have to respond to an increased rate of BSD improvements (just as BSD has had to respond to a faster rate of Linux improvements!), forcing general innovation.
(disclaimer: I work for Daemon News [daemonnews.org], and wrote the merger article [daemonnews.org])