Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 10:36:23 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: dev_webmaster@sgi.com Cc: FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.org>, advocacy@NetBSD.org, advocacy@OpenBSD.org Subject: Tom Mead's article at http://www.sgi.com/developers/oss/sgi_resources/feature2.html Message-ID: <19990927103623.X46202@freebie.lemis.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I can't find any feedback addresses on your web site, so I'm asking you to forward this to Tom Mead: I've just read part of this article, in which you state: Another model is the cooperative model, in which a diverse community of cooperative developers work together, even if separated by thousands of miles, to build an operating system. BSD UNIX [from the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at Berkeley] is an example of this model. BSD was an early Open Source project and it worked very well. But then it went from being a university effort to a commercial one. Commercial vendors splintered it into proprietary, competitive efforts supported by different companies fielding expensive development teams, and we got another example of the remarkably inefficient system software world we've ruefully come to inhabit. I am completely at a loss to understand what you mean with this statement. Personal opinions are one thing, but this is just so far from the truth that I can't understand what you mean with it. Can you name one commercial vendor who did this? It's possible, I suppose, that you're thinking of Sun Microsystems in the 80s, but that's rather inaccurate: the development wasn't Open Source (it relied on AT&T's UNIX licence, which cost big money). On the other hand, there are currently three healthy Open Source BSD projects which do very well without commercial interests. I can't believe you haven't heard of them, but if you haven't, you should check out http://www.FreeBSD.org/, http://www.NetBSD.org/ and http://www.OpenBSD.org/. The dangers you describe in this article appear to apply more to the way that Linux is going. We don't have to look further than SGI to see which Open Source project is attracting commercial attention. I'd appreciate it if you would clarify and correct what you mean in this paragraph. Greg Lehey -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19990927103623.X46202>