Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 13:58:30 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Revisionism Message-ID: <20000611135830.C79101@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <394337DA.6F05BA42@softweyr.com>; from wes@softweyr.com on Sun, Jun 11, 2000 at 12:55:22AM -0600 References: <394337DA.6F05BA42@softweyr.com>
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Wes Peters said on Jun 11, 2000 at 00:55:22: > Mr. Vereen, > > I am writing you directly because neither the print version nor the > on-line version of your magazine, Embedded Systems Programming, > includes information on who to contact for errors and omissions. I am > writing about Mr. Alexander Wolfe's article, "Alliances Drive Embedded > Linux Toward Prime Time" in Vol. 13 no. 6, June 2000. Do you have a URL? > While generally factual and well written, Mr. Wolfe repeats a bit of > revisionism that I must ask you to correct. In the article he writes > > And because Linux is "open source" -- a concept pioneered by > the Cambridge, MA Free Software Foundation... > > This is patently untrue. Both the UNIX /usr/group and the Berkeley > Software Distributions existed for many years before the FSF and the > Gnu Project were created. Richard M. Stallman did NOT create the > concept of open source software, his "innovation" was to use the > distribution of open source software to advance his political agenda. > Please clarify this situation for your readers. True enough if you define "open source" simply as "having access to source code". However, you should note that that's not how Stallman or the open source initiative define it and moreover Stallman refuses to use the term "open source" for the FSF's software. Stallman's aim at that time was to have a complete free (as defined by him) operating system, and BSD was not a complete operating system by itself; moreover, I've heard you needed an AT&T license to use most BSD code at all. There certainly was other free software around (apart from BSD, there was TeX, X etc) but I don't think your suggested clarification is any better than the original. > And perhaps while we're at it, Mr. Wolfe can clarify what the vendor > of that internet radio is supposed to do when the user upgrades it to > kernel 2.4.33 and glibc 6.1.43 and it no longer works? A valid point but I think these things can be much better expressed, this sort of language would just tend to irritate a linux user rather than spark any curiosity about BSD. Maybe the article provoked it, but many linux people seem basically friendly towards the BSD's and there's no need to sound so hostile. Besides, I don't think the implication (that upgradation problems necessarily occur with linux but cannot occur with BSD) is accurate, it's just that such problems tend to be less common and less severe with BSD. On a related topic, sometime back I'd suggested writing an advocacy howto similar to the one already available for linux users, and had received a reply from Chris Coleman suggesting that I go ahead. I wrote to the linux howto author, Paul Rodgers, and got a reply (somewhat late) telling me that I am welcome to use parts of his document, and he himself is thinking of including the BSD's in the next version of his howto. I'm a bit busy at present, but I'll do this as soon as I can. Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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