Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 10:55:49 -0800 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Jay Nelson <noslenj@swbell.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: What's in a name? (was: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers?) Message-ID: <20000322105549.M416@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <38D7C5FF.E407F830@originative.co.uk>; from paul@originative.co.uk on Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 06:57:03PM %2B0000 References: <200003171545.IAA16366@usr06.primenet.com> <xzpityif484.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <38D637E0.B9ABBBBB@originative.co.uk> <20000320211849.B522@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> <38D7C5FF.E407F830@originative.co.uk>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tuesday, 21 March 2000 at 18:57:03 +0000, Paul Richards wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> >> On Monday, 20 March 2000 at 14:38:24 +0000, Paul Richards wrote: >>> Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: >>>> >>>> Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> writes: >>>>> The point is that, if a driver already exists in BSDI, and FreeBSD >>>>> becomes the public shadow of the BSDI source tree, there is very >>>>> little incentive to write a new driver among volunteers, because >>>>> the job has already been done, and there are interesting things to >>>>> write that haven't yet been done. >>>> >>>> Why would FreeBSD become the public shadow of the BSDI source tree? >>>> From what I've read about the merger, the reverse (BSDI becoming the >>>> commercial shadow of FreeBSD) is more likely. >>>> >>>> Let me spell it out for you: BSDI WILL NOT CONTROL FREEBSD. >>>> >>>> Nobody can take arbitrary control of FreeBSD. It's open source. Even >>>> if Jordan, David & co. were to "sell out" to BSDI today, they couldn't >>>> stop committers from finding another place to host the project and >>>> carry on with its development. The worst they can do is stop us from >>>> using the name. >>> >>> Umm, that's more than a little ridiculous. >>> >>> Nobody can stop anyone taking the codebase and lauching another project. >>> If "Jordan, David & co" stop you using the name then what you're doing >>> is setting up a competing project not taking the project somewhere else. >> >> I think this is a matter of definition. Do you consider the project >> to be the name, or the product? Recall that we have already gone >> through a number of names: UNIX, Berkeley UNIX, BSD UNIX, BSD, >> FreeBSD. There's a continuity of product from one to the next. Sure, >> I wouldn't want to drop the BSD name, but then I wasn't too happy when >> we had to drop the UNIX name, either. But we survived. > > Who do you mean by "we". The community that has become FreeBSD. > The only name change that FreeBSD has gone through was from "386BSD > 0.1 Interim" to FreeBSD, which is actually a good example in that > the name change also resulted in a new project since it was > essentially a split from 386BSD in the same way that NetBSD was. If that's where you start, sure. But FreeBSD wasn't written from scratch the way Linux was. It goes back a long way, and that's what I was referring to. > Maybe some definitions would be useful. > > The project is neither the name nor the product. The name could be > changed, if the project felt we should rebrand, and maybe it will > following the merger, perhaps it will be BSD 5.0. Well, I'd go for 5BSD or 5.0BSD. > We could also change the product, say we decided that BSD/OS was > much better and we should just throw FreeBSD's code base away and > use that instead. That's a little at variance with the real intentions. > All the above would still take place within the project structure, with > the core team having executive control and the usual hierarchical peer > structure within the developer community. > > If you split from the project structure though then you are forming a > new project. If you disagree with core's decisions and take the code, > and even many of the developers and go off and do your own thing then > that is a project split. You are forced to change the name of your > product because the core team/foundation own it but it is not the name > that is relevant, it is the setting up of a competing project structure. > This is just like OpenBSD splitting from NetBSD. OK, now let's consider the object of this month's FUD: that BSDI tries to take over FreeBSD and change it beyond recognition. If a *majority* of FreeBSD developers left and formed a "new" project to continue the old tradition, would that be a new project? Is FreeBSD no longer UNIX, just because the lawyers say so? Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000322105549.M416>