Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2003 13:32:02 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Cliff Sarginson <clsn@raggedclown.net>, FreeBSD Chat <FreeBSD-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: In the land of the blind a one eyed man becomes king Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030104131923.03909350@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20030104201542.GA10588@raggedclown.net> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20030104112345.02a48b70@localhost> <200212312041.gBVKfr183480@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org> <3E120659.3D60EB30@mindspring.com> <20030101140530.GA11468@raggedclown.net> <4.3.2.7.2.20030104112345.02a48b70@localhost>
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At 01:15 PM 1/4/2003, Cliff Sarginson wrote: >A Norwegian, I think he goes by the name of Linus (or is that the dog >in .. Peanuts). Linus Torvalds is Finnish, not Norwegian. And the dog in the Peanuts comic strip is named Snoopy. >He was a brilliant student. Actually, his grades were OK but not outstanding. And he was known to fall asleep in class now and then. >He took a small project, invented to teach >students operating systems principles and created Linux. That's correct. Linux is a derivative work of Minix. Which means that, Andrew Tannenbaum, the author of Minix, has rights to it (though he's never exercised them). >GCC has been intimately involved, because it contains (now) language >constructs that are not found in "Muppets can Learn C in 24 Hours >Books". It has things in it to make writing device drivers easier. Exactly. Embrace and extend. When Microsoft does it, it's "evil," but when the FSF does it, it's OK. (Not!) >> Secondly, the FreeBSD project is insufficiently vigilant regarding >> the issue of dependency on GPLed code. Of the BSDs, FreeBSD >> has the most GPLed code, and would be the most crippled if >> that code were removed. This is sad, IMHO, because it prevents >> FreeBSD from being truly free. Most of FreeBSD may be licensed >> under the BSD License, but what good is that if one can't install >> it on one's machine without bringing in the GPL? >> > >The alternitve being ... ? Microsoft, for now. It would be nice if there were a truly free operating system that was not contaminated by the GPL. >OpenBSD. >Open to whom ? Open to anyone who cares to look. It's BSD-licensed, much more so than FreeBSD. >> >In any case, a >> >compiler is almost trivial; what's hard, and takes specialized >> >knowledge, is optimizing, and code generation, for more than >> >one CPU family. >> >> True. > >Is that true ? >Have you tried writing one ? >Come on,. make it public, Sorry, but I wrote them for commercial software vendors and do not have the rights to them. I'd love to start a project to produce a truly free compiler, though I'd prefer it to be for a better language than C. >> Also true. It's amazing how often one hears RMS described as >> a master coder, when in fact the original GCC was awful. >> >I have never seen RMS described so, >He was just someone with an idea. He was and is someone with a very deep need for revenge. Remember why the GPL, the "GNU Project," and the FSF came about. They were created to fulfill Stallman's desire to destroy commercial software developers -- in particular, those who left the MIT AI Lab to form companies. See Steven Levy's "Hackers" for the full story. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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