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From: veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit)
Subject: Re: What happened to these projects ?
Message-ID: <1993Apr29.152307.14234@gmd.de>
Sender: veit@mururoa (Holger Veit)
Nntp-Posting-Host: mururoa
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany
References: <1993Apr26.001822.7537@knobel.GUN.de> <hastyC62oIE.BFH@netcom.com> <RAEBURN.93Apr29005633@cambridge.mit.edu> <1romuqINN4bs@hrd769.brooks.af.mil>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 15:23:07 GMT
Lines: 53
|> WARNING: POINT OF VIEW BIASED OPINION FOLLOWS:
This holds for my comment as well.
|>
|> I have been reading through the docs for 386bsd (again, and again, and again...)
|> and I really can't find a reason for NOT having NetBSD. One of the stated
|> purposes of 386bsd is for research. From that, I would say that the folks that
|> are putting NetBSD together have looked, found it to be good, and decided to
|> package the existing system as a 'ready to install, stable' platform.
|>
|> NetBSD seems to be a natural extension.
It *is* a natural extension from the concept of 386bsd. 386bsd wants to stand
in the tradition of the Berkeley CSRG BSD, which tries out novel things and
makes them publically available for *everyone*. This is why it is distributed
in source form. The copyright is constructed in a way that it doesn't make
commercial derivations (binary only) impossible. This is the difference
to Linux with the GNU Public License, which forces anyone to keep the
system entirely open. Drastically said: If you do research on 386bsd,
everyone (for instance Linuxers as well) may pick up the code, modify it,
use it and sell it (this *is* IMHO free) in any form that respects the
original copyright. If you do research on Linux, and on NetBSD if it becomes
GNUified (glibc.a and bison are quite sufficient), novel things cannot be
interesting for the commercial market, because they might need a major
re-engineering to avoid the absolute freedom of GPL.
Since most Linux/NetBSD users are interested in having a *NIX like beast
at home, and not following the height of fashion in OS research,
NetBSD is quite useful. The price we all have to pay is the difficult
decision what everyone of us really wants. Proposing to drop one or the other
line is stupid. There was a "market" for NetBSD, but there is also interest
for more than just a DOS replacement for the home PC.
Holger
|>
|> BTW. I will try to support BOTH in the FAQ.
This is good.
|>
|> --
|> ------
|> TSgt Dave Burgess
|> NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office
|> Brooks AFB, TX
--
Dr. Holger Veit | INTERNET: Holger.Veit@gmd.de
| | / GMD-SET German National Research | Phone: (+49) 2241 14 2448
|__| / Center for Computer Science | Fax: (+49) 2241 14 2342
| | / P.O. Box 13 16 | Three lines Signature space
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