Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:06:25 +0000 From: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Jay Nelson <noslenj@swbell.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What's in a name? (was: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers?) Message-ID: <38D927C1.5ACA28B3@originative.co.uk> References: <200003171545.IAA16366@usr06.primenet.com> <xzpityif484.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <38D637E0.B9ABBBBB@originative.co.uk> <20000320211849.B522@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> <38D7C5FF.E407F830@originative.co.uk> <20000322105549.M416@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > On Tuesday, 21 March 2000 at 18:57:03 +0000, Paul Richards wrote: > > Greg Lehey wrote: > >> > >> I think this is a matter of definition. Do you consider the project > >> to be the name, or the product? Recall that we have already gone > >> through a number of names: UNIX, Berkeley UNIX, BSD UNIX, BSD, > >> FreeBSD. There's a continuity of product from one to the next. Sure, > >> I wouldn't want to drop the BSD name, but then I wasn't too happy when > >> we had to drop the UNIX name, either. But we survived. > > > > Who do you mean by "we". > > The community that has become FreeBSD. > > > The only name change that FreeBSD has gone through was from "386BSD > > 0.1 Interim" to FreeBSD, which is actually a good example in that > > the name change also resulted in a new project since it was > > essentially a split from 386BSD in the same way that NetBSD was. > > If that's where you start, sure. But FreeBSD wasn't written from > scratch the way Linux was. It goes back a long way, and that's what I > was referring to. The codebase goes back a long way but the project doesn't. I'm not arguing that the code will continue for a long time to come, under whatever guise it feels appropriate at the time and in that sense, yes it has gone through many name changes, but each of those name changes was due to the fact that a new project structure came in to being. Yes, FreeBSD is still Unix as far as we're all concerned but can we call it Unix, no because a previous project structure owns the trademark (passed around a lot I know). The analogy holds very true, while anybody can take the code and setup another project they cannot take FreeBSD somewhere else, just as we couldn't take Unix somewhere else. > > Maybe some definitions would be useful. > > > > The project is neither the name nor the product. The name could be > > changed, if the project felt we should rebrand, and maybe it will > > following the merger, perhaps it will be BSD 5.0. > > Well, I'd go for 5BSD or 5.0BSD. > > > We could also change the product, say we decided that BSD/OS was > > much better and we should just throw FreeBSD's code base away and > > use that instead. > > That's a little at variance with the real intentions. It was only meant as an example of the sorts of things that could be done by the project, to illustrate that the project and the codebase are not the same thing. > > > All the above would still take place within the project structure, with > > the core team having executive control and the usual hierarchical peer > > structure within the developer community. > > > > If you split from the project structure though then you are forming a > > new project. If you disagree with core's decisions and take the code, > > and even many of the developers and go off and do your own thing then > > that is a project split. You are forced to change the name of your > > product because the core team/foundation own it but it is not the name > > that is relevant, it is the setting up of a competing project structure. > > This is just like OpenBSD splitting from NetBSD. > > OK, now let's consider the object of this month's FUD: that BSDI tries > to take over FreeBSD and change it beyond recognition. If a > *majority* of FreeBSD developers left and formed a "new" project to > continue the old tradition, would that be a new project? Is FreeBSD > no longer UNIX, just because the lawyers say so? Of course it would be a new project. The *FreeBSD* project would continue, even if a majority of the current developers left to form a new project. This is *exactly* what happened with the previous splits from 386BSD, where's the difference. You can argue that we're all still BSD or even all still Unix, but I don't feel that's a very useful interpretation since we're really discussing is the project, not what the software is that the project produces. The software from the new project could never be FreeBSD, you can call it a FreeBSD derivative, or BSD derived or a Unix clone, but you can never actually brand it as any of those because they all belong to other projects and you cannot change that fact by picking up the code and moving to a new home. Yes, we're all still Unix but no we're not still part of the Bell Labs project that started it all. Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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