Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 17:56:11 +1000 From: John Saunders <john.saunders@scitec.com.au> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD Utopia? Message-ID: <3524961B.736AE04E@scitec.com.au> References: <3.0.1.32.19980402225400.00698fd4@pacificnet.net>
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Joey Garcia wrote:
>
> Hey all!
>
> Well, I've been thinking....sometimes that can be a bad thing. *grin* But
> anyways, I was wondering why you guys have chosen FreeBSD over the other
> *BSD's (OpenBSD and NetBSD). Is it because of the support? Or do you just
> think it's better than the others? I was just curious.
Personally I use it because I find it supports more PC peripherals
than the others, and has nifty things like the packages and ports.
I used to use NetBSD because I started out with an Amiga. I still
have NetBSD 1.2 running on the Amiga and a PC news server. It's a
very stable system that uses minimal disk space. It seems to me
that FreeBSD is like NetBSD + extra good stuff. For example to get
the bash shell going took 30 seconds in FreeBSD, but 15 minutes for
NetBSD because I had to configure and compile it manually.
I've never played with OpenBSD but I know it started with some NetBSD
people not happy with the time taken to fix simple security holes.
It's probably grown to be a lot more than NetBSD+fixes by now.
> Anyways, I was wondering why there is such a choice in *BSD's. I was
> wondering what would happen of all the BSD project would unify in order to
> create one Free/Open BSD. I know it would be a utipian idea, but I guess
> that I just have alot of time on my hands to think about these things.
> (Most of the time I think of these things while I'm at my work...my job
> isn't very mentally challengint enough for me to actually concentrate on
> what I'm doing *grin* - I work for a Bank by the way) Anyways, whatever
> happened to the BSD project at Berkley? Did it just die with BSD 4.4 Lite
> and was later picked up by BSDi and all the "free" *BSD's? If so, why
> doesn't Berkley support the idea of free software and just give out the
> source code, or licence it under the GPL?
Berkley released 4.4 Lite which is basically their latest when they
stopped working on BSD, less the encumbered code. All the free BSDs
took that and added the missing bits to create a workable system. I
don't know if they were forced to stop working on it, or if they
decided that it was time to pass the baton on and do something else.
Anybody can get hold of the 4.4 Lite tapes if they want, it's under
the Berkley copyright which is _less_ restrictive than GPL. However
by itself it's not a working system due to the stuff that the SysV
people made them remove because it was encumbered.
> I was considering what would happen if FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD would
> conjoin to one BSD project. One thing I thought about was that there would
> be conflict between whose code would be the main choice, and probably other
> things of that sort. Although, going by the old cliche "two heads are
> better than one", won't a larger team mean faster development? I wonder.
> Another plus I was considering, was that whatever BSD that would be
> produced it would be most likely ported to other architectures which seems
> like a great idea. I'm sure there are other pros and cons, but it's just
> an idea.
Actually having some competing teams isn't as bad as it seems. It
creates an environment of friendly rivalry to push people just
that little bit extra to be able to say "our feature X is better
that yours". And then they all grab the best version and try and
make it better. However some features like SMP would benefit from
a larger team working on it for some solid time.
I've found a lot of stuff gets cross ported between the camps so
it's not as if everything is developed many times over from scratch.
And lastly there is choice. Why does anyone pick a Ford over General
Motors? Personal choice.
Cheers.
-- +------------------------------------------------------------+
. | John Saunders mailto:John.Saunders@scitec.com.au (Work) |
,--_|\ | mailto:john@nlc.net.au (Home) |
/ Oz \ | http://www.nlc.net.au/~john/ |
\_,--\_/ | SCITEC LIMITED Phone +61 2 9428 9563 Fax +61 2 9428 9933 |
v | "By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends." |
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