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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sgiblab!sgigate.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!slovax!lm From: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Linux vs. BSD?! Date: 22 Feb 1995 00:51:07 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 57 Message-ID: <3ie1pr$olb@fido.asd.sgi.com> References: <3i7ar8$ahv@marton.hsr.no> <3i83js$avl@ivory.lm.com> <3i9aa3$sbp@fido.asd.sgi.com> <3iae19$8do@agate.berkeley.edu> <3iakqv$aj5@fido.asd.sgi.com> <bakulD4DE2s.JpA@netcom.com> Reply-To: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: slovax.engr.sgi.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Bakul Shah (bakul@netcom.com) wrote: : I bet they will ship Linux sources but most likely no application : sources. They may even enhance Linux so that they can add their : own crufty user level hacks without releasing sources. At any : rate, the battle is where the applications are, not the OS. Sure, I agree with that. The OS has little value, just enough that people should pay enough for it that it stays nice and solid. No more than that. Applications can be whatever the market will bear. : > If SunOS had been GPLed, *BSD wouldn't : >exist, you guys would be having fun hacking SunOS (as would I), and the : >customers would be happy. : The same thing would've happened if SunOS had been released under : a BSD style copyright. I checked through the SunOS kernel at one point. It would have taken me, personally, less than 3 months to make it completely BSD based, i.e., free source. I took that story and the evidence that said I spoke the truth to McNealy & Co. Bill Raduchel, Sun's CFO, told me there was no way they would ever give SunOS away - it was too valuable. They clearly don't understand where the value is. How do you explain it to them? You don't - but you make damn sure that the next generation of business dweebs can't screw up again. : Also note that nothing stops *you* (and like minded people) from : adding GPL code to your version of 4.4BSDlite (or FreeBSD or : NetBSD for that matter) and calling it GNUBSD or whatever. If The BSD copyright is more restrictive (in a legal sense) than the GPL. The BSD copyright insists that you announce in documentation, etc., that it is BSD copyrighted code (a fairly reasonable request, actually). But the GPL does not require that particular sort of announcement and the GPL prohibts you from putting the GPL on anything that has a more "restrictive" copyright. So it is not legal to simply take and distribute a copy of the BSD sources under the GPL. Bummer. It's also not legal to add BSD sources to a GPLed program and call it GPLed. The BSD copyright holder has to release the restriction about docs or the BSD copyright takes precedence over the GPL. Double bummer - means Linux doesn't get the TCP stack. : Speaking as a OS hacker, as far as I am concerned neither *BSD : nor Linux are technically all that great and yet they are rather : top-heavy. Both of them *are* very useful but there is a : definite need/niche in the `free' market for a more modular & : extensible, lean and mean, MP capable OS with a BSD-like API. Well, Linux is a pretty reasonable generic workstation OS at this point. I like it as well as my Suns running SunOS and better than my SGI workstation (but I don't do graphics - if I did, the SGI blows the doors off everything else, I've seen it do so). -- --- Larry McVoy (415) 390-1804 lm@sgi.com