Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 17:08:04 -0800 From: Joey Garcia <bear@pacificnet.net> To: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD Utopia? (Cool BSD history lesson in a nutshell) Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19980403170804.0069b7b0@pacificnet.net> In-Reply-To: <199804031617.IAA12115@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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Thanks David....I really didn't know much about the BSD history and I
appreciate the bit of history lesson. I didn't know that Berkeley had a
less-restrictive licencse. I have come to the conclusion that because of
that the BSD projects that we have today...is really a reincarnation of BSD
4.4 Lite. (that's my interpretation of it - these guys took the code,
added what was missing in order to run, enhanced it to run on certain
architectures, and then arrived at a working stable OS) Am I on the right
track?
I agree with you on the different view point that the BSD projects have. I
had already come to the conclusion that was most of the reasons why they
didn't come together and form one project. I can respect that. It does
offer choice, but some confusion as well (at least I had to break down all
the pros and cons from each to decide which was the one for me). I guess
I'd rather choose if I want FreeBSD over Linux rather than FreeBSD, over
OpenBSD, over NetBSD, over Linux. Know what I mean. But I respect what
all the projects are doing.
Cheers,
Bear
At 08:17 AM 4/3/98 -0800, David Wolfskill wrote:
>Please note that altough I'm still a "newbie" to FreeBSD, I've been in
>the UNIX community for a while....
>
>>Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 22:54:00 -0800
>>From: Joey Garcia <bear@pacificnet.net>
>
>>Well, I've been thinking....sometimes that can be a bad thing. *grin* But
>>anyways, I was wondering why you guys have chosen FreeBSD over the other
>>*BSD's (OpenBSD and NetBSD). Is it because of the support? Or do you just
>>think it's better than the others? I was just curious.
>
>'cause that's what they run here at work. :-) (At home, I use Suns.)
>
>>Anyways, I was wondering why there is such a choice in *BSD's....
>
>Well, a lot of this is historical. From my recollection.... CSRG
>("Computer Science Research Group") at Berkeley is the group that
>coordinated the BSD releases up to 4.4BSD. (How UC Berkeley got
>involved in the first place is another story, and has to do with Ken
>Thompson taking a sabbatical year from AT&T Bell Labs & teaching an
>Operating Systems course at his alma mater -- UC Berkeley....)
>
>Reason it stopped at that point is basically lack of funding: by the
>time 4.4BSD was released, CSRG had dropped down to 5 folks, then (I
>think) down to 2.5 or so -- Mike Karels joined Rob Kolstad & Co. at BSDI
>(though I believe this was done in a way that allowed/encouraged his
>continued contribution to CSRG, as long as it lasted).
>
>This was all rather complicated by the AT&T lawsuit filed against UC
>Berkeley, the UC Regents, & BSDI -- and followed by UC counter-suing,
>and AT&T selling UNIX to (..Novell? I fail to recall).
>
>Adding to all this was Bill & Lynne(sp?) Jolitz' publishing of the bulk
>of the work necessary to get (most of?) BSD to run on a 386 (I think
>that was in Dr. Dobbs' Journal -- but I had dropped my subscription by
>then, since I perceived it as much too PC-oriented, and thus irrelevant
>to me).
>
>There was a great deal more going on, but my memory isn't sufficient to
>do it justice. I expect there are write-ups from various perspectives
>on the Web -- and I do recall that there was much passionate
>disagreement.
>
>As for GPL: my perspective is that the Berkeley license is far less
>restrictive than the the GPL. With the Berkeley license, folks are free
>to take the code & incorporate it into a commercial product, as long as
>there's a "boilerplate" copyright notice that gives credit to the UC
>Regents.
>
>With the GPL, the company would also need to make provision for
>supplying the source. This tends to give the lawyers at companies like
>IBM indigestion: what happens if someone uses the source to compile a
>new version of something that the company has supplied, and there's a
>malfunction of some sort? The legal costs of defending against such a
>thing could be mind-boggling....
>
>Note that with the Berkeley copyright, it's possible to start with BSD
>sources, customize them with various proprietary bits & pieces (that you
>might want to keep as a trade secret, for example, if this is part of a
>product), and there's no problem at all. This is much more difficult
>with GPL.
>
>>I was considering what would happen if FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD would
>>conjoin to one BSD project....
>
>Indeed. However, the different projects have different perspectives &
>different goals. For example, one group is focusing more on portability
>(so you can have your favorite BSD environment no matter how weird the
>hardware is); another focuses on IBM-compatible PCs.... And I expect
>that there's some interplay with different personalities in there....
>
>david
>--
>David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 401-0168
>
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