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Date:      Fri, 18 May 2001 12:01:33 +0200
From:      Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Don Wilde <Don@Silver-Lynx.com>, Anders Nordby <anders@fix.no>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, core@daemonnews.org
Subject:   Re: [dn-core] Re: Perens' "Free Software Leaders Stand Together"
Message-ID:  <20010518120133.G48909@lpt.ens.fr>
In-Reply-To: <20010518190114.E7708@wantadilla.lemis.com>; from grog@lemis.com on Fri, May 18, 2001 at 07:01:14PM %2B0930
References:  <20010518112834.I55915@wantadilla.lemis.com> <002101c0df56$e6c62260$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <20010518190114.E7708@wantadilla.lemis.com>

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Greg Lehey said on May 18, 2001 at 19:01:14:
> 
> On Thursday, 17 May 2001 at 21:56:29 -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
> > In BSD-land, you don't have people making millions of dollars
> > primariarly off of repackaging the BSD distribution.
> 
> You don't in Linux-land either.  That's why the Linux companies are
> going broke.

As for BSD-land: how about Apple?  (They haven't made millions yet but
they're certainly hoping to.)

True, they didn't just repackage, but added a lot to BSD; but Red Hat
added a lot to Linux, too.  Red Hat made a point of releasing
everything they did under a free license, but they didn't have to (and
others like SuSE/Caldera don't.  And Red Hat doesn't seem to be going
broke, either.)

I think there's only one reason why companies don't "suck in" (as Ted
put it) and repackage the BSD systems, and that is that the BSD
systems didn't get the same mindshare as linux did.  It is also
true that unlike linux, the BSD systems are complete systems by
themselves, without the same need of repackaging; but they could still
benefit from some of the end-user polish which linux has been getting,
like the install process, autodetection of hardware, and so on.

- Rahul

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