From owner-freebsd-chat Sat May 13 15:16:36 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from happy.checkpoint.com (happy.checkpoint.com [199.203.156.41]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 852A537B7C0 for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 15:16:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mellon@pobox.com) Received: (from mellon@localhost) by happy.checkpoint.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA16217; Sun, 14 May 2000 01:16:12 GMT (envelope-from mellon@pobox.com) Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 01:16:12 +0000 From: Anatoly Vorobey To: scanner@jurai.net Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514011612.B16058@happy.checkpoint.com> References: <20000513215350.A6803@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: ; from scanner@jurai.net on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 12:48:55PM -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, May 13, 2000 at 12:48:55PM -0400, scanner@jurai.net wrote: > > > Is it possible that there may be more useful things for other people > > to do than rewrite existing well-written code? > > I assume you mean BSD people *not* reinventing the wheel? > Because all you have to do is open your eyes to see that the GNU people > have tried in almost every case to re-write well-written code just to make > it available under the GPL. This is grossly anti-historical. At the time many GNU utilities were written, the original UNIX utilities were not available in source form freely. You had to buy a UNIX source license. In other words, it's not like GNU people didn't like the BSD ls(1), they *couldn't* provide a free-for-use source of ls(1), and had to write their own. Of course, there's an easy way for you to prove me wrong. Please point out to me a GNU replacement of sendmail, perl, or bind. These are (some of) large free software projects that *were* available for free use in source form. Surely the GNU people must've rewritten them all to release them under the GPL? I find myself in an awkward situation, defending a project (GNU) which I don't like *too* much (and certainly prefer BSD to it) simply because the unfair treatment it's given here is too ridiculous to ignore. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message