Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 11:18:51 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> Cc: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be>, Doug Barton <Doug@gorean.org>, Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <4.2.2.20000313110822.03d71ee0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003131257170.94516-100000@sasami.jurai.net> References: <4.2.2.20000313103859.0410fe30@localhost>
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At 11:02 AM 3/13/2000 , Matthew N. Dodd wrote: >Yes, but its -not- FreeBSD unless its the release rolled by the >project. If you're gonna take the official release and write your own >installer and setup the system with all sorts of eye candy and drool proof >toys then I could maybe see calling it "Foobaz2000 (based on FreeBSD >4.5-RELEASE), or "(Contains FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE!)" somewhere small. In that case, Walnut Creek's "FreeBSD Power Pak," which IS FreeBSD plus all sorts of goodies, should be required to be renamed for the sake of fairness. In fact, even the Walnut Creek 4-CD FreeBSD set should be required to be named differently, because it contains hundreds of third party products. Sound fair? >It looks like you're trying to take something that the FreeBSD project has >worked hard for (good PR) and profit by it, while offering nothing in >return Part of the BSD philosophy is that anyone should be able to take the project's IP and use it for any purpose. Also, as I've mentioned, experience in the Linux world has shown that a bad product bearing the name Linux has not hurt Linux one bit. The market quickly eliminates bad products, solving the problem with no outside intervention. And there's no danger of bias on the part of some "sanctioning committee." >nd quite possibly damaging user/market trust in the brand. In that case, isn't Walnut Creek doing exactly that by selling its "FreeBSD Power Pak" and other products which > > If new products are not clearly labeled as distributions of the work of one of > > the existing projects, they will be perceived as fragmentation. > >Well, here's your big chance to create a FreeBSD based >distribution. Whats stopping you? I don't want to hurt FreeBSD. If I ship a product which doesn't have the FreeBSD name on it, it will hurt FreeBSD and in fact all of the BSDs by giving the Linux zealots the opportunity to claim that the BSDs are fragmenting rather than consolidating. There's also a fundamental issue of fairness which needs to be resolved here. If Walnut Creek is allowed to ship products and packages which bear the name FreeBSD and which include enhancements and additions to the FreeBSD project's output (including whole CD-ROMs of third party software!), I (or anyone else) should be able to do so as well. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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