Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 17:20:53 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: toor@dyson.iquest.net, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) Message-ID: <199704182220.RAA01776@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970418154140.00a1eb38@etinc.com> from dennis at "Apr 18, 97 03:41:43 pm"
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> At 02:02 PM 4/18/97 -0500, John S. Dyson wrote: > >> > >> Freebsd is *not* a commercial company and there is no benefit to secrecy. > >> Why does a "free" OS have secrets? And this is not about fixing bugs, > >> believe me I understand about bugs, its about having to reengineer > >> freebsd based systems every couple of months..... > >> > > > >Sorry, but we ARE dealing with VERY VERY VERY big commercial companies. > >Much bigger than etinc... Doesn't mean that etinc isn't valuable, but > >there IS stuff going on... > > > Ah, so FreeBSD is not as much of a Free O/S as we are led to believe? What > we, as the public, see is the by-product of special projects for these > "companies". > NOW, I understand....the motivation has little to do with good of the > general user > base.... > It is as free as free can be. Please read all of the private email that I sent you -- you are quoting very limited context. Sorry, but you are starting to look like a fool if you think that I can talk about what other companies are doing in public (especially when they might have asked me to be discreet and not make a public disclosure.) You are showing very poor respect to the other users in the user base if you think that people can be coerced into giving other peoples strategies away... Are you doing a service to the user base, say by contributing to the free part of the FreeBSD code base for example? No, you have PROPRIETARY drivers don't you? Does that mean that you are causing FreeBSD to have PROPRIETARY software in it? (BTW, I don't mind proprietary software, but you are kind-of like the pot calling the kettle black.) I think that it is great when companies can put proprietary layered products on various OSes (it is how industry works.) So, when are YOUR drivers going to be disclosed? When are you going to disclose your financials and strategies? If you told me privately, I would not disclose it without YOUR permission -- you are asking some people to do a very bad thing. I don't think that it is a very ethical practice to disclose other peoples proprietary information (including private email.) John
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