From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Jul 11 1:34:53 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from softweyr.com (softweyr.com [208.247.99.111]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B68C37B403; Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:34:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from localhost.softweyr.com ([127.0.0.1] helo=softweyr.com ident=d7c409c2860e2391302635e4860f1dc7) by softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 15KFXj-0000QF-00; Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:40:23 -0600 Message-ID: <3B4C10F7.7CBDB859@softweyr.com> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:40:23 -0600 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Eivind Eklund Cc: j mckitrick , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? References: <20010630174743.A85268@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010707160255.A18525@thinksec.no> <20010710151059.A52201@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010710175800.A77023@FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Eivind Eklund wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 03:10:59PM +0100, j mckitrick wrote: > > | More emotionally laden nonsense. There are a bunch of reasons to contribute > > | changes back to the open source projects: > > | (1) You get much less integration work when you want to utilize newer version > > | of the open source project. Basically, the changes you have now made > > | maintain themselves WRT the open source project for free, rather than > > | needing more care. > > > > That's one I never thought of or hear stated in that way. > > Weird. It's more or less the canonical argument for why contribute back to > BSD-licensed projects. We obviously need a FAQ or good paper about this. I've heard it referred to as the theory (or doctrine) of enlightened self- interest. What we need is a really good article (mandatory plug: Daemon News) on the advantages of the BSD license. > > Could you give an example of these 'levers' ? > > A few examples (tilted in favour of work I've done and contributed back, > because that's what's easiest to remember): > > - netgraph, developed by Whistle and contributed to FreeBSD. This was viewed > as strategic for a while, but when the Interjet was developed enough, it was > degraded to being viewed as tactical and reasonable to contribute back. > > - The CAM code in FreeBSD, developed by Plutotech for their embedded video > editing system and contributed back. This is the present basis for the > FreeBSD SCSI subsystem. > > - The original PnP support for the ed driver, developed by Yours Truly for Yes > interactive and donated back to FreeBSD. This also contained a simple but > significant bug (one line difference) that was found by Bruce Evans after it > was contributed back (thus demonstrating the point of getting multiple > experts to look at it) > > - Support in i4b (the FreeBSD ISDN code) for using userland PPP. Developed by > Yours Truly for Yes Interactive and contributed back. My work on i4b also > avoided the reproduction of a significant bug that used to be present in > bisdn (the predecessor to i4b) in i4b. This was a bug I found when making > bisdn work for userland PPP, and which had blocked the tty driver there from > working properly (instead giving sporadic crashes) through all releases of > bisdn, and which I would not have found if I hadn't worked on that code for > proprietary use (a week of debugging.) > > - Support in libalias (the backing library for ppp -nat and natd) for punching > minimal holes in an ipfw firewall for active protocols (ftp, irc dcc). > Developed by me for Yes Interactive, and contributed back. > > - A lot of the VM system work done by John Dyson for FreeBSD was sponsored by > Network Computers (a subsidary of Oracle) because they needed a better VM > system for the servers they used for the NCs. > > And that's just a sample. What an excellent starting point. A few obvious other ones leap to my mind, including Kirk's softupdates code, Grog's vinum volume manager, and a lot of the VM work contributed by Matt Dillon in the search for more performance for his applications. I'll really look forward to reading that article, Eivind. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message