Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 22:45:27 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FreeBSD & GNU Message-ID: <002901c0b689$81fead20$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3ABF948A.26B750B1@acuson.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of David Johnson > >I didn't include Minix for two reason: 1) is wasn't open source or free; >2) it was meant to be a "teaching" OS rather than a production OS. I >also didn't include Xinu for the same reasons. > :-) Actually, years back FreeBSD _was_ meant to be a "teaching" OS rather than a production OS. Today, of course, most of the vestiges of this have been eliminated but I'll quote here the wording of /sys/i386/isa/mcdreg.h in FreeBSD 4.2 (this is an older file and hasn't been touched by the kernel people apparently): * This software was developed by Holger Veit and Brian Moore * for use with "386BSD" and similar operating systems. * "Similar operating systems" includes mainly non-profit oriented * systems for research and education, including but not restricted to * "NetBSD", "FreeBSD", "Mach" (by CMU). If you look at older versions of FreeBSD, such as 2.2 and 2.1 and 1.1 you will see a lot more of this, espically in code that William Jolitz wrote/modified. He put a lot of "not intended as commercial OS" stuff in the headers of the code, most of this has been exorcised from current files, of course. >> ...The overall BSD-ported-from-the-mainframe project was never to >> build from scratch. It has always been to re-use as much as possible the >> original free code that was pretty much given to AT&T for free, and AT&T >> then went out and sold. > >This isn't that different from GNU or Linux (the distributions). GNU >always preferred to use existing code rather than write from scratch. > >Perhaps I would have been a bit more accurate by saying "386BSD" instead >of just "BSD". I meant the nearest common ancestor of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, >NetBSD and BSD/OS. > Actually, 386BSD first version = FreeBSD first version. The name FreeBSD was only coined because Jolitz trademarked 386BSD and refused to allow it to be used due to some tiff or other. Later he relented but it was too late then. > >I think that, in part, this is one reason that RMS wants everyone to >refer to Linux at GNU/Linux, LiGnuX, or whatever the term du jour is. If >he gets everyone thinking that Linux is really GNU, then it's that much >easier to get people using HURD and the real GNU OS. > Well I have to say that the Linux camp was just as good at sucking the publicity from the GNU/GCC people in the beginning, now things are the other way around so they deserve what they are getting. >You are correct. Why use an unstable HURD when linux is working right >now? In a broader sense, why use The GNU System when everything I want >from GNU is already available in BSD and Linux? Because the whole point of all this is pure experimentation, right? :-) I think this kind of logic is just more evidence that FreeBSD and Linux have moved out of the techie's workbench and into mainstream. Time was that nobody cared that your FreeBSD server had 400 days uptime - the fact that it ran at all was cause for celebration. >But right now it seems >that they only people interested in HURD is the "monolithic kernels are >evil" crowd Which is a riot because the modern FreeBSD has moved very far away from that with all of the loadable kernel module code. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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