Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 16:18:19 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> Cc: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NetBSD/Linux 'distribution' Message-ID: <36CF42BB.D21920A2@softweyr.com> References: <19990220172712.N93492@lemis.com> <199902202004.NAA10980@usr04.primenet.com> <19990220143410.B16910@debian.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
David Welton wrote:
>
> > [ ... a "Debian BSD" distribution ... ]
>
> Basically, what I wanted to know was not particularly whether it was a
> good or bad idea (I'm not particularly interested in it myself), but
> what sort of reaction peole might have - if they would see us as
> 'hijacking' their work. One of the advantages to the BSD's is that
> individually, they are "complete" distributions, and maybe someone
> would take offense at us creating another 'distribution', ala Linux.
There is a difference between being offended by it and just considering
it incredibly stupid. I think you'll find most here fall into the
latter camp.
As you point out, the BSDs are a complete set. I fail to see any value
added by sticking a GNUish userland on top of a BSD kernel. If others
do see value in that, let them have at it. Personally, I think it would
be rather like painting a Jaguar with a brush. ;^)
> > It's free software. They can do anything they want with it, except
> > change the license or claim they invented it while talking about
> > features that came from someone else's sweat and blood.
Well, no, they *are* allowed to change the license. They're still
required to give credit, though.
> The distribution would hypothetically be named Debian GNU/FreeBSD or
> something like that, and we would obviously give back anything good we
> happened to create.
But would it be infected with the GPL virus? I doubt anyone here in
BSD-land would be at all interested, if it were to be.
> > If they want to do it, I say let them. I'm betting they just grab a
> > kernel, and the hardware support was why they approached NetBSD.
>
> This "let them" is kind of what I was curious about - we wouldn't
> really want to do anything like this without at least a neutral
> reaction from whichever group's work we used. It would be a waste of
> our time if we were openly in conflict with the group..
I doubt you'll hear an considerable shouting over it. Our license
allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including compile
it, run it, GPL it, smoke it, or get it tattooed onto your behind.
You just have to give credit where it's due.
And yes, I *will* be ready, willing, and able to inspect that tattoo
for the copyright notice. ;^)
> As far as bets, mine would be on nothing happening at all, as I'm not
> sure there are enough people interested in actually *doing* something
> (I'm not one of them, I have plenty of other projects to work on:-).
Ditto.
> As far as why NetBSD - that was my initiative. Of course, people
> interested in doing this would have to battle it out amongst
> themselves over which BSD to use.
I think from your standpoint the differentiation factor would be how
many different platforms you want to support. There are other
differences, but I'm not sure they'd really stand out to a project
such as this.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?36CF42BB.D21920A2>