*BSD News Article 56011


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From: erik@kroete2.freinet.de (Erik Corry)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.misc
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 23:40:55 GMT
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John S. Dyson (root@dyson.iquest.net) wrote:
: Linus owns Linux and through his generosity, you can use it -- isn't
: that nice of him?.

I'm wondering what you mean by this. Linus does not own all the copyright
in the Linux kernel, and certainly not in a complete Linux system. He
has no way of regretting his generosity and withdrawing permission to
use old versions. He couldn't even do it for future versions without
replacing vast amounts of code written by others, or getting their
permission.

What Linus could do is withdraw from Linux development altogether.
That wouldn't kill Linux, but it would be a heavy blow. Or he could
go mad and start releasing really bad code. That would be even worse,
but I think in both cases Linux could move to a FreeBSD-style
core team type system, or a new 1-person core team might appear.
The Linux distribution creators would probably have a lot of
influence in this case.

Linus also can't prevent anyone creating a core team now, grabbing
the Linux kernel sources and developing using a similar system
to FreeBSD. But if anyone did that they would have to be pretty
damn good to compete with Linus, and to persuade other developers
to send their work to them, rather than to Linus.

--
Erik Corry ehcorry@inet.uni-c.dk