Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 20:34:25 GMT From: James Raynard <fdocs@jraynard.demon.co.uk> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: doc@freebsd.org, www@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Anyone up for a little triage on http://www.freebsd.org/about.html? Message-ID: <199607122034.UAA01705@jraynard.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <14029.837166189@time.cdrom.com> (jkh@time.cdrom.com)
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>>>>> "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> writes:
>
> I don't know about you folks, but that text's been looking a little
> shopworn to me lately.
Here are a few things I jotted down when I was thinking about a new
Intro to the FAQ (some of them based on existing entries). Feel free
to copy, amend or completely ignore them as appropriate:-
<sect1>
<heading> What is FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Briefly, FreeBSD is an implementation of BSD4.4 Unix for the PC, and
also draws on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2
distribution to the i386, known as 386BSD. However, a very
considerable number of bug fixes and enhancements have been made to
the original code base, resulting in a extremely powerful and highly
sophisticated operating system.
<p>
FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers,
researchers, computer professionals and home users all over the
world. See the FreeBSD Gallery for a list.
<p>
For a more detailed description, see the Introduction to the FreeBSD
<htmlurl url="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook.html"
name="handbook">.
<sect1>
<heading> What are the goals of FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may
be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us
have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would
certainly not mind a little financial renumeration now and then,
but we're definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe
that our first and foremost "mission" is to provide code to any
and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets
the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit.
This is, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free
Software and one that we enthusiastically support.
That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU Public License
(GPL) or GNU Library Public License (GLPL) comes with slightly more
strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced
access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional
complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software,
we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions
under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible.
<sect1>
<heading> Why is it called FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
<itemize>
<item>It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users.
<item>The full source code is freely available, and the minimum
possible number of restrictions have been placed upon its
use, distribution and incorporation into other work
(commercial or non-commercial).
<item>
Anybody who has an improvement and/or bug fix is free to
submit code and have it added to the source tree (assuming
of course that their code is of sufficient quality!)
</itemize>
<p>
For those of our readers whose first language is not English, it may
be worth pointing out here that the word ``free'' is being used in
two ways here, one meaning ``it costs nothing'', the other meaning
"you can do whatever you like". Apart from one or two
things you <tt /cannot/ do with the FreeBSD code, for example
pretending you wrote it, you really can do whatever you like with it.
(Note some of the URLs might need correcting and/or filling in as I
was off-line when I wrote it).
--
James Raynard, Edinburgh, Scotland
james@jraynard.demon.co.uk
http://www.freebsd.org/~jraynard/
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