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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom.cc.utah.edu!gateway.univel.com!gateway.novell.com!thisbe!terry From: terry@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Funding 4.4BSD Development Message-ID: <1992Jun26.021947.28286@gateway.novell.com> Date: 26 Jun 92 02:19:47 GMT References: <79@ampr.ab.ca> Sender: terry@thisbe (Terry Lambert) Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT Lines: 59 Nntp-Posting-Host: thisbe.eng.sandy.novell.com In article <79@ampr.ab.ca>, lyndon@ampr.ab.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes: |> At this point BSDI and CSRG aren't really that different. Yes, BSDI is |> in it for the bucks, but then again BSD from UCB was never really "free" |> either. We payed via the license fee, and the money that lets UCB operate |> to begin with doesn't come out of thin air. 1) CSRG sources are freely redistributable. 2) BSDI sources are a trade from one encumbered set of files (from AT&T) to another set of encumbered files (from BSDI). 3) The great attraction of CSRG is that I can freely distribute my hacks of their sources and thus look like a nice guy (8-)). Since I have SVR3.* and SVR4.* source licenses, I don't care about getting sources to BSDI's ideas of the "correct" files; I can have CSRG's, no problem; what advantage does BSDI give me? With sources, I can be my own support service. 4) As you say, given that UCB is a publicly supported University, and we paid to let UCB operate in the first place. Question: How does it make sense to pay BSDI, yet again for the same service? 5) Everyone who has paid a license fee for the BSD sources, which has, lately, been more of a Kermit style distribution charge/donation, has put money toward the work on BSD, work which BSDI is directly benefitting from in their product. 6) As has already been pointed out, and probably will be again, BSDI is rumored to be planning to provide source for only those items which have been, by virtue of "copyleft", required to be freely available: ie: a binary BDSI/source BSD distribution. 7) BSDI has benefitted from the efforts of a large number of people in this group, who have also provided code, "CSRG style", without hooks on use in a commercial product. I am not against anyone making a buck from public code which they have modified and put effort into; I am simply pointing out the glaring holes in your argument. BSDI and CSRG are certainly different. For what I would use the source for (teaching and reference, as well as a basis for derivative works), BSDI simply doesn't cut it. It's place is as a fine product to keep BSD alive in the marketplace as a viable alternative to megaconstructs like SVR4, and for the individual tinker and contract diff-provider for embedded applications requiring a changed UNIX kernel. Mt. XINU has done this sort of thing for a long time. If BSD UNIX is to be a commercial success, BSDI certainly offers impossible-to-live-without-in-commercial-UNIX *support*! But I`m not going to buy it if I can't, 1 year down the pike, show everything to a CS student, or have an undergraduate port it to a VAXStation 3100 as a 3 quarter project. My two cent's worth (making a total of four, for today), Terry Lambert terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com terry@icarus.weber.edu --- Disclaimer: Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.