Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 13:19:44 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: jef53313@bayou.uh.edu, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman takes credit for BSD? Message-ID: <19990411131944.E2142@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904102209570.77613-100000@fosburgh.dyndns.org>; from Jonathan Fosburgh on Sat, Apr 10, 1999 at 10:10:38PM -0500 References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904102209570.77613-100000@fosburgh.dyndns.org>
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On Saturday, 10 April 1999 at 22:10:38 -0500, Jonathan Fosburgh wrote: > I found the following on the FSF website: > > Aside from GNU, one other project has independently produced a free > Unix-like operating system. This system is known as BSD, and it was > developed at UC Berkeley. The BSD developers were inspired by the example > of the GNU Project, and occasionally encouraged by GNU activists, but > their actual work had little overlap with GNU. BSD systems today use some > GNU software, just as the GNU system and its variants use some BSD > software; but taken as wholes, they are two different systems which > evolved separately. A free operating system that exists today is almost > certainly either a variant of the GNU system, or a kind of BSD system. > > The page is: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html > > Is Stallman taking credit for the creation of BSD? No: "Aside from GNU, one other project..." > Or is he taking credit for the BSD derivatives, FreeBSD included. Partially, by the looks of it. > Either way, this paragraph is certainly misleading and possibly > intentionally so. I think he's probably right. If the FSF hadn't already existed, I suspect that the CSRG, particularly Jolitz, wouldn't have had the idea of making BSD free, or if they had, they would have found it much more difficult to do so, probably impossibly difficult. > The implication that there is more in common between BSD and GNU > than there truly is. I don't see that. What I *do* see is that he's trying to pretend that Linux and GNU are the same thing: A free operating system that exists today is almost certainly either a variant of the GNU system, or a kind of BSD system. > It would seem to me that this is a PR problem for us, since more > people, unfortunately, are likely to read the FSF webpages (and I > got to think page originally from www.gnome.org) than FreeBSD's at > this time, and it might cause people to think BSD is a clone of GNU > rather than BSD being a derivative of UNIX. Where do you read that? What I read is: they are two different systems which evolved separately. > Opinions? I think this is a positive message. As you say, more people probably read the FSF web pages than ours. Stallman is doing *BSD a service by mentioning us. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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