Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 16:30:32 -0800 From: Wilfredo Sanchez <wsanchez@apple.com> To: Jeremy Lea <reg@shale.csir.co.za> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Apple's open source... Message-ID: <199903240030.QAA11060@scv2.apple.com> In-Reply-To: <199903191936.LAA33678@scv4.apple.com>; from Wilfredo Sanchez onFri, Mar 19, 1999 at 11:37:31AM -0800
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| This makes me a bit happier. I haven't had a chance to look into the | code, since when I posted this the site was on it's knees. I think the server load is down considerably from Day One. Probably it was the pipe to Apple getting clogged, not the machine (it's just one Mac), since it seemed to be quite happy the whole time; we don't have all that much bandwidth and the Star Wars trailer isn't helping. | It would be nice to get a direct mention of NetBSD and FreeBSD on the | main page, since people seeing 4.4BSD wont associate it directly with | either product, and people only follow links anyway. I'm trying to figure out how we can do this well for all of our upstream sources, including FreeBSD. | > We'd love to get a better-established relationship with FreeBSD, | > as I mentioned before. We really like FreeBSD. We have a nice | > arrangement with NetBSD and a really excellent one with the Apache | > Group. I think we may want to be more plublic about these things; it | > may be good for all involved. I'll see what I can do about that. | | What's stopping this, and what do you have in mind? Mostly, I need to do some legwork here to make it easy to manage code from FreeBSD in the same way I did for NetBSD. I've been a little swampped lately, but I do intend to get that set up. | The second concern is licensing. FreeBSD needs to remain free If I send you patches, they will not have the APSL attached to them; we tend to hand patches back under the original code's terms. Certainly there is no intent to pollute FreeBSD's code with YAPL. Note we've been doing this for some time (though not yet with FreeBSD), independant of Darwin. | I think what irritated | me the most was that Eric Raymond was invited to the launch, and that | Linux was given most of the credit in the press - while Eric Raymond | subtly slammed us with comments about Linux having a 'better licensing | situation and better social organisation'. It would have been really | nice to have some BSD people there. How about also putting FreeBSD | on that Dell Poweredge on http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/apache.html | or did it beat out the Mac... The reason Linux is on the Dell and not FreeBSD, is because that is a marketing document, and the world knows about Linux, and there is a perception that Linux tends to kick butt over commercial software. In fact, the Linux machine beats the Sun machine in the picture, so that seems a fair perception. The fact that FreeBSD isn't in the public eye as much as Linux is the reason it isn't on that page. It just wouldn't make as big am impression. I find that unfortunate, but it is the state of things today. The Linux vs. BSD press problem is not something we created, and, although we happen to be BSD fans, it is not in Darwin's charter to correct for BSD's PR shortcomings with respect to Linux. That said, I think mentioning who our major upstream contributors are is a reasonable idea. | Probably would have avoided the bad PR from | associating with the FSF and OSI, and their incessant struggles about | what's "open source" and "free software". We aren't terribly interested in getting into that debate. What we want to do is to foster an open community around our product, and which terms (free vs,. open) people want to use to describe that isn't all that exciting. We do want to do The Right Thing by our developers and users, including those we bring in via Darwin. | A suggestion: Do you want to regain some PR ground that you've been | loosing due to infighting amongst the FSF and OSI? I don't think Apple has lost any ground due to that debate. I do think that both the FSF and OSI are losing credibility because of it. Aside from OSI's endorsement of Darwin and the FSF's lack thereof, we aren't involved. | Get a gentleman's | agreement about contributing back patches to NetBSD and FreeBSD, and | then do a joint press release with Apple, NetBSD and FreeBSD (and | OpenBSD?). Announce that Darwin has been welcomed into the BSD family, | how the BSD license allows for development of commercial products like | MacOS X Server from the source base and how BSD technology provides an | excellent base for the development of internet servers. I think this is a good idea. Let me run that up the food chain here. -Fred To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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