Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:40:23 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.org> Cc: j mckitrick <jcm@freebsd-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? Message-ID: <3B4C10F7.7CBDB859@softweyr.com> References: <20010630174743.A85268@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010707160255.A18525@thinksec.no> <20010710151059.A52201@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010710175800.A77023@FreeBSD.org>
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Eivind Eklund wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2001 at 03:10:59PM +0100, j mckitrick wrote:
> > | More emotionally laden nonsense. There are a bunch of reasons to contribute
> > | changes back to the open source projects:
> > | (1) You get much less integration work when you want to utilize newer version
> > | of the open source project. Basically, the changes you have now made
> > | maintain themselves WRT the open source project for free, rather than
> > | needing more care.
> >
> > That's one I never thought of or hear stated in that way.
>
> Weird. It's more or less the canonical argument for why contribute back to
> BSD-licensed projects. We obviously need a FAQ or good paper about this.
I've heard it referred to as the theory (or doctrine) of enlightened self-
interest. What we need is a really good article (mandatory plug: Daemon News)
on the advantages of the BSD license.
> > Could you give an example of these 'levers' ?
>
> A few examples (tilted in favour of work I've done and contributed back,
> because that's what's easiest to remember):
>
> - netgraph, developed by Whistle and contributed to FreeBSD. This was viewed
> as strategic for a while, but when the Interjet was developed enough, it was
> degraded to being viewed as tactical and reasonable to contribute back.
>
> - The CAM code in FreeBSD, developed by Plutotech for their embedded video
> editing system and contributed back. This is the present basis for the
> FreeBSD SCSI subsystem.
>
> - The original PnP support for the ed driver, developed by Yours Truly for Yes
> interactive and donated back to FreeBSD. This also contained a simple but
> significant bug (one line difference) that was found by Bruce Evans after it
> was contributed back (thus demonstrating the point of getting multiple
> experts to look at it)
>
> - Support in i4b (the FreeBSD ISDN code) for using userland PPP. Developed by
> Yours Truly for Yes Interactive and contributed back. My work on i4b also
> avoided the reproduction of a significant bug that used to be present in
> bisdn (the predecessor to i4b) in i4b. This was a bug I found when making
> bisdn work for userland PPP, and which had blocked the tty driver there from
> working properly (instead giving sporadic crashes) through all releases of
> bisdn, and which I would not have found if I hadn't worked on that code for
> proprietary use (a week of debugging.)
>
> - Support in libalias (the backing library for ppp -nat and natd) for punching
> minimal holes in an ipfw firewall for active protocols (ftp, irc dcc).
> Developed by me for Yes Interactive, and contributed back.
>
> - A lot of the VM system work done by John Dyson for FreeBSD was sponsored by
> Network Computers (a subsidary of Oracle) because they needed a better VM
> system for the servers they used for the NCs.
>
> And that's just a sample.
What an excellent starting point. A few obvious other ones leap to my mind,
including Kirk's softupdates code, Grog's vinum volume manager, and a lot
of the VM work contributed by Matt Dillon in the search for more performance
for his applications. I'll really look forward to reading that article,
Eivind. ;^)
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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