On Thu, Nov 18, 1999 at 09:59:28PM -0600, Andrew G . Feinberg wrote:
> If we were to release a BSD-based distro, we could have a corel-beta
> scenario all over again, and could do _nothing_. Bad.
A BSD-based kernel doesn't necessarily mean the end of Debian as we know
it. We already have BSD licensed components in Debian and it's not
killing anyone for us to have them. A Debian release based on the FreeBSD
kernel would almost certainly be primarily GPL'd code---just as Debian is
now.
It'd be very difficult and quite a lot of work for someone to steal our
work. If they were to try they would replace all of our work with BSD
licensed code out of the FreeBSD ports system (they could do that and
still enjoy the benefits of dpkg right? Oh damn! No they can't, the
second they hit apt or dpkg they're looking at GPL code they can't screw
around with. Oops!)
> > If somebody wants to do this, obviously we cannot stop them. However,
> > we have control over whether *WE* support it, and we must not.
> Right. This cannot become official, and we can't let it.
It could and it probably will simply because there are enough people who
want to see it that they'll work on it. My biggest fear is that BSD
kernel will invite non-free device drivers. Unfortunately Linus is
allowing non-free device drivers for Linux so we have not much help there.
People being absolutely evil to companies who aren't providing free
drivers are what's making the difference here.
I'm pleased to see Creative Labs and 3dfx coming around, that's for sure.
--
- Joseph Carter GnuPG public key: 1024D/DCF9DAB3, 2048g/3F9C2A43
- knghtbrd@debian.org 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3
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How many months are we going to be behind them [Redhat] with a glibc
release?"
-- Jim Pick, 8 months before Debian 2.0 is finally released
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