Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 19:37:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Kris Kennaway <kris@hub.freebsd.org> To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> Cc: James Howard <howardjp@wam.umd.edu>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu>, Hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD XFS Port & BSD VFS Rewrite Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9908131922350.78768-100000@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <199908140201.TAA00146@lestat.nas.nasa.gov>
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On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, Jason Thorpe wrote: > > I did, they have a feedback form I filled out yesterday. I mentioned that > > and that if they dual licensed the code, it could be used by the entire > > free software community, not just the hip Linux crowd and also mentioned > > that a great many in the BSD community are interested in the code. Of > > course, I phrased it more professionally. > > The thing is, they don't have to dual license it for it to be usable > by both Linux and BSD! > > Including BSD-licensed code in Linux is prefectly legitimate, and in > fact, there is already such code in Linux now. > > So, if they were to simply put a BSD license on the code, then everyone > would be happy, and there wouldn't be any of the dual-license confusion. Unfortunately, by BSD-licensing the XFS code, SGI would be allowing their direct economic competitors (Sun, Microsoft, etc) to add the technology to their products in a closed, binary form, for free. I have no illusions that SGI is releasing their code for the good of mankind; they're doing it to try and prop up ailing market-share by attaching themselves to the current rising star of the OS world. BSD-licensing their code would give them no economic benefit since it's free for all takers, except perhaps the rosy glow of being open source friendly and generous for giving away their IP. Having made the strategic decision to "go linux" they now perceive they have an advantage over their competitors which is furthered by their use of the GPL to prevent their competitors, who are not comfortable with GPLing their technology to follow suit. Of course, the question is whether SGI will actually benefit from the move. I'd be inclined to doubt it: the Linux hackers are smart - given a mostly working XFS (enough to fulfil SGI's "commitment") there's not going to be much time before SGI aren't needed to support the integration, and the two camps could quite easily part ways. On the other hand, the tactic could be to try and woo the Linux crowd into buying SGI hardware by feeding them trinkets from IRIX, trying to become the hardware platform of choice for Linux servers where IRIX and NT for SGI have failed. Kris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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