Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 18:57:03 +0000 From: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Jay Nelson <noslenj@swbell.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <38D7C5FF.E407F830@originative.co.uk> References: <200003171545.IAA16366@usr06.primenet.com> <xzpityif484.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <38D637E0.B9ABBBBB@originative.co.uk> <20000320211849.B522@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com>
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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 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. 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. 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. Even both might be appropriate and the project just works on BSD/OS and calls it BSD 5.0. 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. Effectively, the foundation will own FreeBSD. Even if every member of the project decided to take the project somewhere else we would still be splitting from FreeBSD because FreeBSD is by definition the project that the foundation owns. The foundation would then recruit new developers and carry on as FreeBSD without all the existing members who would then be part of some other project. It's would be a classic 386/Net/Free/Open BSD project split, no different in any extent than any of the others that have preceded it. There is of course nothing to stop this happening other than a desire on the part of FreeBSD developers to avoid fragmentation of the BSD movement but it is somewhat inevitable if a sizeable group of developers are unhappy with the decisions being made by the project leadership, that fact is down to human nature and particularly hacker nature, since we all like to hack code the way we enjoy and if that doesn't fit in we are likely to go off and do it ourselves anyway. The art of good project leadership is to avoid this happening by being accomodating and flexible and keeping everyone happy within the project community. If the leadership is overbearing in its control then there's a high chance that members will desire to do things their own way and split. These same developers may have "their own way" of running projects or businesses so their decision to split is just as likely to be for project management reasons as it is for technical ones, possibly even more so since good developers generally can agree to much more easily what is technically correct than they can agree on how a business/project should be run. The trademark dispute has a high chance of being a catalyst in a split since those who are more business minded will find it hard to accept any bias in its usage. I think the foundation/core team should be careful to avoid that situation since as Terry says, the name is nothing at the end of the day and successfull marketing will be the key to any projects success. We would all be better off if the marketing could be shared by a large association of FreeBSD users rather than diluted by fragmentation into separate projects. Paul. 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