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From: mandtbac@news.abo.fi (Mats Andtbacka)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Date: 5 Dec 1995 23:30:22 GMT
Organization: Unorganized Usenet Postings UnInc.
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Distribution: comp
Message-ID: <4a2kme$32d@josie.abo.fi>
References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <49rm0g$o8o@daffy.anetsrvcs.uwrf.edu> <DJ2IBL.71t@nntpa.cb.att.com> <DJ3DM7.n0L@kroete2.freinet.de> <4a14v5$1lq@dyson.iquest.net>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:30151 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:10343
John S. Dyson, in <4a14v5$1lq@dyson.iquest.net>:
>In article <DJ3DM7.n0L@kroete2.freinet.de>,
>Erik Corry <erik@kroete2.freinet.de> wrote:
[deletia]
>>Until now Linus seems to have shown very good judgement in this, so
>>most people don't regard it as a problem. Of course the internal
>>layers in the kernel are used to minimise the interaction between
>>patches as far as possible.
>That keeps people from becoming intimately involved and keeps the
>development centralized. It still does not appear to be open -- in
>fact, I accepted patches and mods from users when working on SVR4 --
>that does not make SVR4 open :-).
I still fail to see what's so much more "closed" about Linux
development that isn't similarly closed in *BSD. In both systems, if
you want to change something, you've got to convince the Powers That
Be that it needs to be changed, and that your change is the right way
to do it; or become a Power That Is yourself.
In Linux, you need to convince (usually) one person, exactly who can
vary; in BSD, convincing one person is enough to get your change into
the code, unless maybe some of the other persons you could have
convinced instead objects. Same thing, different method.
[...]
>Whatever the reasons for the seperate groups it has caused
>significant competition in the BSD community and has caused the
>development to be open to more people and many new ideas have
>formed. Case-in-point, my baby, the FreeBSD VM system, we already
>had a VM system, and it sucked. I had a champion on the newly
>emerging FreeBSD team (David Greenman) and both of us knew that the
>VM system was "not very good". It had been meant to be a research
>project to prove viability, but as such projects go, it turned into
>"product." I thought that the original code was very very good as a
>feasibility study -- but it needed to be made more robust. If we had
>a silly monarchy, the code would never had been incorporated, as I
>would not have wasted my time trying to convince someone
>long-distance as to the limitations of the current scheme.
If the code had been so bad as you described, you wouldn't have had
much trouble convincing people about it; there would've been dozens or
hundreds of people screaming for it to be changed on the 'net. Such
outcries have happened repeatedly concerning Linux weaknesses, and are
still happening - the NFS inefficiency gathers complaints every few
months, and will likely get some seeing-to just as soon as somebody
gets sufficiently fed up with it to take the time to do it. (Linux
developers - anyone feel up to implementing write fusioning yet?)
>I could probably say the same thing about the Linux networking code, or
>the Linux VM system right now.
Could you? Care to look over the Linux VM system (since that is your
area of specialization) and offer some constructive criticism? The
networking code might be hard to comment on, since it's currently
seeing intense development; you might want to wait for 1.4 before
saying anything definitive.
>Linux as it is, has not had the problems of
>the Net-2 copyright thing, and it only performs marginally better in some
>areas and is significantly slower in others... If it was a truely an open
>development, then I think that others could take ownership of the broken
>pieces (especially if they got some credit other than part of a GPLed thing.)
What do you mean they're not getting credit? Looked at the Linux
sources recently - read the CREDITS file? There are people's names
smothered all over the sources; authors near as I can tell always get
credited for their work.
As for the GPL, I don't enter into political flamefests. All I know
is, I've read the thing, I've liked it; used properly for the things
it was meant to do, I happen to think it's a very Good Thing.
>>You say the FreeBSD kernel is 'unencumbered with the GPL'. The GPL
>>may be an encumberance to you, but to Linux/GNU developers, the
>>BSD license is also an encumberance: which means you can't use
>>BSD code in the Linux kernel or in a GPL'ed application.
>What is the problem with the BSD copyright? -- I'll bet it is
>primarily that one must give credit to the developers and not take
>credit for work that others have done...
No part of the GPL grants you any right to claim others' work as your
own. No part of the GPL forbids you from crediting your own work to
yourself.
I'll grant you that authorship crediting is not explicitly spelled
out in the text of the GPL, but it is certainly implied; many parts
of it would make little sense if authorship was not properly credited
and attributed. In fact, section 2.a of the GPL (version 2) would
make next to no sense unless this principle is seen as implicit.
As for what's "wrong" with the BSD copyright, I'm not sure if there's
anything wrong with it at all; I've never even read it, so I couldn't
tell.
>>The other major encumberance of the GPL is that noone can 'do a BSDI'
>>with Linux, i.e. copy the code and create a private version. That's not
>>perceived as a disadvantage by most Linux developers, in fact for many
>>it is a prerequisite. For example, Alan Cox has stated that he does
>>GPL development for free, but wants to be paid for development under
>>other licenses.
>I don't care if BSDI takes my code
Doesn't this somewhat contradict what you said above about crediting
people for their work? Or does BSDI list you as co-developer of their
private, proprietary OS? I really don't know.
[...]
>>And patches have flowed back from Caldera in a way that I don't
>>imagine BSDI has done (corrections welcome).
>Actually, there was a time that BSDI patches made it into the other
>*BSDs -- but it appears to be long gone. That is ok, we keep up pretty
>well -- and have been proactive in finding and resolving bugs. FreeBSD
>has been leading in several areas and out-performs other *BSDs by
>being innovative.
You seem to have proven his point, I'm afraid. I'm glad you're
managing anyway, but so long as Caldera makes money from their code
additions to Linux - the IPX stuff, foremost - *I* see it as only
right and proper that they contribute that code back to the rest of
Linux. Of course, the GPL pretty much forces them to, but...
[...]
>I see the GPL as an ideal that if studied, is very scarey. Socialism
>is another such ideal.
Careful, you're committing a logical fallacy here in trying to make a
connection GPL <==> socialism. If you want to argue against one of
them, showing the bad sides of the other won't do.
Me, personally, I find neither one of them scary; but my point is, I
definitely do not think there's any connection between them.
>I think that de-facto in both cases (BSD copyright or GPL) people
>are giving away code. The difference is that the BSD copyright is a
>gift without strings, except one -- give credit where credit is due.
>That credit costs maybe about 4-5k -- the source code as the GPL
>implies, costs multi-megabytes!!!
No it doesn't; you don't have to supply full source with every
ten-byte utility, you have to _make source available_. Naming a
publically available anon FTP site qualifies perfectly well; even an
explicit notice (good for >= 3 years, mind) that you'll snail-mail
anybody who wants it the source is good enough.
But even so, gzip'ped source trees tucked away on the last one in a
set of distribution CD-ROM's do not hurt these days. Don't try to fool
me that it does.
>Let me explain a case-in-point... If someone makes a fancy mod to
>the FreeBSD VM system thereby gaining a 50% performance increase and
>makes it private, do you think that I cannot do the same???
Maybe you can, I wouldn't know. If FreeBSD was GPL'ed, neither one of
you could legally do that.
[...]
>GPL to me is a bit more lazy -- "well, no-one can take the code and make
>it private anyway, because I am protecting myself with a license". :-).
>I have much more confidence in myself and the *BSD groups than that!!!
The GPL is more legalistic - it doesn't trust in the good intentions
of a lot of people, it puts down in legal terms what you can and can't
do, and if anybody does it anyway, they'll have _broken the law_.
So maybe you won't be able to do anything about it because you can't
afford the lawyers. But if the BSD copyright doesn't make those same
things explicit in much the same way, then even if you _could_ afford
the lawyers, you wouldn't be able to do anything.
At least the GPL tries.
--
" ... got to contaminate to alleviate this loneliness
i now know the depths i reach are limitless... "
-- nin