Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!news-xfer.netaxs.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.sesqui.net!uuneo.neosoft.com!web.nmti.com!peter
From: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: BSD or Linux?
Supersedes: <5i1pfd$ieu@web.nmti.com>
Date: 4 Apr 1997 02:37:10 GMT
Organization: Network/development platform support, NMTI
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <5i1pgm$if0@web.nmti.com>
References: <3341d1a6.6644689@news.uni-mannheim.de> <5hp65n$fd1@chronicle.concentric.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sonic.nmti.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:2936 comp.os.linux.misc:167848
In article <5hp65n$fd1@chronicle.concentric.net>,
Rick Evans <Rkevans@cris.com> wrote:
> The one
> thing you can't do with FSF programs is try to steal them from their
> original owners.
Actually you can do that, so long as you keep them GPL (that special kind of
free). It's more complex, and we'll have to get into some of the more subtle
advantages and disadvantages some other time, lest we get into a flame war.
> Time passed, and there was more than one set of BSD tapes, but the
> details aren't important here... Until people who didn't have a
> license to the original Unix started using BSD, thinking that it
> had so many changes from the original that it was a 'different
> thing' altogether.
Actually, no. CSRG (Berkeley) went through and removed all the original
UNIX parts of UNIX at this point, and released them. AT&T claimed they
hadn't removed them all, and that in any case the "overall structure"
was theirs. CSRG riposted with "but you used our code (csh, vi, some other
nifty and free stuff they'd done at Berkeley) without giving us credit".
So USL (AT&T) said "Um, sorry, tell you what, remove a few more files
so we can save face and we'll drop our suit if you drop yours".
The BSD code is also a special kind of free. It's a different special kind
of free than the Linux code. And that's a good thing, because if it wasn't
then they wouldn't have been able to get USL to back down.
This may seem a nitpick, but it really is important. There's no "pirate blood"
in the BSD past, which is what you made it sound like.
--
The Reverend Peter da Silva, ULC, COQO, BOFH, KIBO.
Har du kramat din varg, idag? `-_-'
(how do you say "We are all Kibo" in Norwegian?)