Re: Debian/GNU Freebsd
>>>>> Chris Waters writes:
CW> Gordon Matzigkeit wrote:
>> I don't know if the FreeBSD people will like the idea of you
>> ``hijacking'' their kernel, throwing a bunch of GPLed software on
>> top of it, and calling it a distribution.
CW> If they don't want it "hijacked", they should use a license that
CW> forbids hijacking. It would be preposterous for them to object
CW> to a GPL'd version when they don't object to proprietary
CW> versions.
Actually, the situation is different. I'm talking about developer
mindshare.
A proprietary version of BSD doesn't have much potential to steal
developers from the existing *BSD projects. A free derivation of BSD,
on the other hand, has lots of that potential.
BSD folks are actually *happy* when a new proprietary version gets
attention, because it usually results in lots of profit for that
company, and they might donate some of that profit to the free version
they derived from.
With a new free version, though, there's guaranteed to be almost no
financial or technological contribution back to the upstream sources,
because nobody wants to maintain two separate projects when their not
getting filthy rich off of at least one of them.
Why is Debian GNU/Hurd so different? Because the Hurd developers both
agreed with the idea, *liked* the idea of a Debian distribution, and
shared a huge common heritage and philosophy (free software via GPL).
The thought of doing their own distribution from scratch also made
them ill.
With *BSD it's different: they already don't like the GPL as much as
the BSD license (this is an understatement in some cases), they have
alternatives to everything Debian has, and I highly doubt they'll want
to jump ship from a stable, working system to vapourware.
dpkg is the only technological benefit in it for them, and they'd have
to really love the idea in order to port *everything* to it.
Otherwise, you've got YABF**, and that probably won't make any of the
existing 3 projects too happy.
** Yet-Another-BSD-Fork
--
Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@fig.org> //\ I'm a FIG (http://www.fig.org/)
Lovers of freedom, unite! \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)
[Unfortunately, www.fig.org is broken. Please stay tuned for details.]
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