Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 01:16:12 +0000 From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> To: scanner@jurai.net Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514011612.B16058@happy.checkpoint.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0005131247090.48183-100000@sasami.jurai.net>; from scanner@jurai.net on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 12:48:55PM -0400 References: <20000513215350.A6803@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0005131247090.48183-100000@sasami.jurai.net>
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On Sat, May 13, 2000 at 12:48:55PM -0400, scanner@jurai.net wrote: > > > Is it possible that there may be more useful things for other people > > to do than rewrite existing well-written code? > > I assume you mean BSD people *not* reinventing the wheel? > Because all you have to do is open your eyes to see that the GNU people > have tried in almost every case to re-write well-written code just to make > it available under the GPL. This is grossly anti-historical. At the time many GNU utilities were written, the original UNIX utilities were not available in source form freely. You had to buy a UNIX source license. In other words, it's not like GNU people didn't like the BSD ls(1), they *couldn't* provide a free-for-use source of ls(1), and had to write their own. Of course, there's an easy way for you to prove me wrong. Please point out to me a GNU replacement of sendmail, perl, or bind. These are (some of) large free software projects that *were* available for free use in source form. Surely the GNU people must've rewritten them all to release them under the GPL? I find myself in an awkward situation, defending a project (GNU) which I don't like *too* much (and certainly prefer BSD to it) simply because the unfair treatment it's given here is too ridiculous to ignore. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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