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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!pacbell.com!UB.com!daver!dlb!megatest!mithril!albrecht From: albrecht@megatest.com (Dave Albrecht) Subject: Re: So you say you want an interim release of 386bsd? (What to do?) Message-ID: <C6oF5x.9or@megatest.com> Organization: Megatest Corporation References: <C6M5J0.AIq@sugar.neosoft.com> Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 21:56:04 GMT Lines: 30 From article <C6M5J0.AIq@sugar.neosoft.com>, by peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva): > In article <1993May6.133359.7640@gmd.de> veit@mururoa.gmd.de (Holger Veit) writes: >> Since this is apparently not the direction, the serious question arises >> what NetBSD is really good for, > > A common base for a free production operating system that can be used by > hobbyists and small entrepreneurs alike, as opposed to a pure-hobby system > like Linux or a pure-research system like 386BSD. > -- Equally important in my view, it provides a large repository of code pieces of which can be used in the workplace or home projects that I then have the freedom to sell or not without including the source. In some ways it is more frustrating to have to re-invent the wheel when wheels are available that are perfectly adequate but the wrong color (i.e. GPL when you are doing work that you might want to commercialize) than if there were no available wheels at all. While I admire and respect and yes, use GNU software it isn't as useful to me as it could be because I won't borrow any of the code in it for my own purposes as it restricts my freedoms with how I choose to distribute the result. I am very much pleased that NetBSD is going the direction it is. i.e. as unGNU as possible, moving to standards rather than experimentation. I have no relationship to movers/shakers in NetBSD but it is laid out exactly as I would do it and as that so rarely happens I must say I was quite surprised. With all the efforts in languages to foster and encourage reusable code it is nice to see lights in the GPL murk producing code that will be resuable by everyone, not just those producing GPLed software. David Albrecht