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From: phr@soda.berkeley.edu (Paul Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Restrictions on 'free' UNIX / 386BSD (Re: selling 386BSD)
Message-ID: <PHR.92Aug16224207@soda.berkeley.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 92 03:42:07 GMT
References: <PHR.92Aug15151100@soda.berkeley.edu> <63DILTJ@taronga.com>
<PHR.92Aug15214245@soda.berkeley.edu> <YSDIBS4@taronga.com>
Organization: CSUA/UCB
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In-reply-to: peter@taronga.com's message of 16 Aug 92 17:33:24 GMT
In article <PHR.92Aug15214245@soda.berkeley.edu> phr@soda.berkeley.edu (Paul Rubin) writes:
> If 386BSD was copylefted, it would be Linux. It's the absence of copyleft
> that leads to the possibility of more than a bunch of random hackers
> benefiting from it.
>Please clarify this. How is anyone else prevented from benefitting
>from it? Say, for example, the same people who now benefit from GCC?
OK, I missed one aspect of this in my previous article. There is a large
category of people who now benefit from GCC who would not be able to
benefit from a GPL-covered 386BSD. Next, Sun (In Solaris 2), and I believe
MIPS ship GCC with their products, in some cases as the primary compilers.
This sort of distribution is not practical for an operating system.
OK, I missed one aspect of this in my previous article. There is a large
category of people who now benefit from GCC who would not be able to
benefit from a GPL-covered 386BSD. Next, Sun (In Solaris 2), and I believe
MIPS ship GCC with their products, in some cases as the primary compilers.
This sort of distribution is not practical for an operating system.
Why is it practical for compilers and not OS's?
In the old days, OS's came with source code, and users and system
maintainers benefited greatly from this. I wish a copylefted kernel
would become the standard, which could happen for the 386/486 (the
hardware is generic enough and the vendors are not obsessed with
proprietary software the way workstation vendors are).
When that happens, Solaris (etc.) users will be in the kind of
situation that VMS users are in now. (Well, maybe not -that- bad...)
I know of at least one company (not Cygnus) planning to enter the
business of distributing and supporting free kernels very soon.