Posted by jaypatelani 3 days ago
My main reason for using NetBSD for this is to have easy access to the man pages. Like the other BSDs, the man pages are exceptionally well-written and are a tremendous resource for doing POSIX programming. Plus I find myself digging through the code when I'm interested in how something is implemented. Having a local repository of good C code with a liberal license is worth having the extra OS to manage.
Not sure what people use it for now.
...and as others mentioned it: the rump kernel.
I suppose after 30+ years, any chance of consolidation is hopeless and undesirable?
The Linux codebase, on the other hand, is licensed under a copyleft license that only allows its use in open-source projects that themselves only allow their codebase to be used in open-source projects, and so on. Because of this, Linux can incorporate BSD codebases, but not the other way around.
FreeBSD: I always got the impression this was trying to be full modern UNIX but non-linux
NetBSD: I guess this is for older/less powerful computers based on comments here?
OpenBSD: ???Security???
Dragonfly: a schism over threading, but FreeBSD?
For hardware, can a single device driver be made for all variants of BSD? If so, then I agree.
From what I've seen, the BSD community swaps code around on a regular basis. But they pick and choose what code to use based on their own goals. It seems to work pretty well.
If Linux never happened, we would still be using big iron UNIXes, each taking whatever they felt like from BSD variants.
Notice how all the new FOSS operating systems for IoT devices none of them use GPL, NutXX, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Arduino libs, IDF,...
You mean any free software license, BSD or otherwise.
Notice how NetBSD isn’t asking for code contributions, but for monetary contributions. The GPL doesn’t cover that either. Observe the current rugpulling fad to relicense free software (both permissive and copyleft) to nonfree protectionist licenses like BUSL and SSPL in order to monetize.
Linux came around at the right time when the Internet was going public and regular people had access to hardware that could run a decent UNIX. People latched onto it because it was free and an interesting project. The free BSDs were just late enough to the party that they missed out on the momentum.
All the proprietary UNIX vendors (other than SCO) relied on expensive proprietary hardware sales. Intel ate their lunch while they were too busy stabbing each other in the back to notice. Linux killed SCO because SCO was, quite frankly, overpriced crap.
None of this had anything to do with the license, other that the fact you could use it for free. It was all about hardware availability, the rise of the Internet, the wave of new IT people who had experienced Linux at home, and the fact that Linux on Intel was good enough to replace those pricy proprietary machines.
Now, you wanna talk Apple, there's where your code "theft" kicks in. But that's a whole different thing.
> 1998: Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce their support for Linux.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux
Without big money from UNIX vendors like those, cutting down their R&D costs, Linux would not have climbed anything.
GPL was the reason why they collaborated instead of being able to assimilate the code as they were doing with BSD, like anything sockets related.
Ironically IBM has recouped its investment, now as Red-Hat owners.
That is where everything on GNU/Linux that is mainly done by Red-Hat like GNOME, Gtk, GCC, Java is being paid for.
The three companies you list are horrible examples. IBM is kind of a UNIX vendor, sort of, but not like Sun or DEC. They sell solutions, and the solutions that use AIX don't overlap with what Linux was capable of in 1998. I'd argue that, given their complete disregard for Tru-64 and pretty much all things DEC, Compaq was never a UNIX vendor - they just inherited a bunch of legacy systems they needed to support. They certainly didn't push for new Tru-64 based systems. Oracle wasn't a UNIX vendor at all and wouldn't become one for quite some time.
BSD sockets are also a bad example. They were the reference implementation, paid for by DARPA. The entire purpose of BSD sockets was to be copied into other operating systems. You'll notice that Linux copied them as well.
IBM and Compaq invested in Linux because they wanted something that ran on their lower-end server hardware and could handle web traffic. Oracle invested in Linux because they wanted to be the backend to all these new websites that were cropping up.
IBM, Oracle, and Compaq didn't give a rat's ass about the operating system code - they wanted the platform. If Linux had never happened and FreeBSD became the new hot thing all the online hackers were talking about, the result would have been exactly the same. They'd have poured money into the projects rather than trying to make their own thing because that's the financially sensible thing to do. The UNIX wars were over, and proprietary software lost.
Meanwhile, the last major UNIX vendor - Sun Microsystems - was giving away its own source code under the CDDL. FreeBSD ended up adopting a lot of it. That's the complete opposite effect from what you're talking about.
Sun got involved in the GNOME project and even deprecated their own CDE desktop in favor of it. Was it because it was GPL? No. It was because they saw that all the new desktop software was coming out of the Linux community, who didn't have access to CDE. Even if GNOME had been BSD licensed they would still have switched to it, because they were still trying to keep the workstation market alive at that point and CDE was quickly becoming irrelevant.
As far as I can see, the only companies interested in taking operating system code were the network appliance vendors and Apple. It only worked for them because they didn't care about compatibility.
More than fine if you ask me, giving away your work for megacorps and oligarchs to steamroll your business or otherwise society at large isn’t much of a public service in the end
So if some company/product was open source and then used source available license, the backlash would be so much that they go to something like AGPl most of the time
but that happens because people feel betrayed because some might have contributed thinking its foss forever so its a rug pull
I think a good idea could be to have a source available license from the start so that everybody who ever contributes knows this as a fact.
What are your thoughts? What should I or anyone else pick? As a "foss" advocate, I would prefer AGPL but I don't want to get screwed by Big Tech ever with all the loopholes that they can have (like AWS), Honestly I don't know which is why I am asking really.
My personal (non-mainstream) thought on this topic is: work on open source projects that serve a purpose that is very antithetical to the interests of bigtech companies. This way, such companies will be a lot less interested in "using" your project (without contributing back).
I know in the past things like the network stack had been repurposed to other mainstream products.
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-pack...
But don't you dare switch to a proprietary license or you will be dragged across social media as an evil selfish person. Even if it's only postponing source releases for a couple of years.