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As far as the road towards feature parity goes, it seems that Linux is mostly evolving technical solutions rather than replicating them. Dtrace on Linux is a bi

As far as the road towards feature parity goes, it seems that Linux is mostly evolving technical solutions rather than replicating them. Dtrace on Linux is a big project being superseded by eBPF[0] - its the primary example that comes to mind. As a counterpoint, OpenBSD's pledge has been re-implemented on Linux using bpf & seccomp[1]. I still value BSDs as they are developed as complete operating systems rather than as cobbled-together distributions. Users benefit from a more cohesive experience on BSD vs. Linux. >and the only reason to select FreeBSD is the ability to close-source everything you're doing? I'd love to have a GPL-licensed BSD operating system. Ideally new features would be prototyped in BSD-licensed BSDs and eventually make it into a stable GPL-licensed version. (I know it sounds crazy...) I don't want to get my hopes up, but the people behind the Hyperbola BSD project have been working on it for some years now[2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22987696 [1] https://justine.lol/pledge/ https://justine.lol/pledge/ [2] https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbolabsd-is-an-operating-system-and-not-a-system-distribution/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbolabsd-is-an-operating...

toast0 3y ago
> I'd love to have a GPL-licensed BSD operating system. Ideally new features would be prototyped in BSD-licensed BSDs and eventually make it into a stable GPL-licensed version. (I know it sounds crazy...) Why? What does a GPL license let you do that you can't do with a BSD license? If the base is BSD licensed, why would commercial users not use the base rather than the GPL one?
- 1MachineElf 3y ago
  >If the base is BSD licensed, why would commercial users not use the base rather than the GPL one? Non-copyleft licences are not a universal business need for commercial users. See Red Hat, Suse, and Canonical for examples. BSD licences are also GPL compatible, so for whoever feels the need to contribute open source BSD licensed code, there is also a one-way street for redistributing it under the GPL. I believe this is an advantage that GPL projects & their username can leverage. >Why? What does a GPL license let you do that you can't do with a BSD license? I believe that bad people should not have access to good software. Bad people are incentivized to do sneaky things, and therefore, they avoid GPL licensed software because it legally binds them to be open and honest about their code/intentions. Take what happened with MINIX and Intel ME for example. MINIX has a permissive license that Intel exploited in ways that I'd bet most people here agree are net a negative. If MINIX had been GPL licensed, then Intel would have just chosen an alternative for Management Engine, but at least the options available (i.e., attack surface) would have been reduced. I even support the SSPL. I don't care if it doesn't meet the pure definition of "open source" because what matters more to me is that it prevents large companies from abusing those who do most of the work supporting FOSS. I believe that a successful GPL-licenced BSD is possible, and I'd take delight in knowing that big tech companies would be disincentivized to used it for some surveillance capitalism product i.e. Google's plans for Fuchsia. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-op...
  - toast0 3y ago
    > I believe that a successful GPL-licenced BSD is possible, and I'd take delight in knowing that big tech companies would be disincentivized to used it for some surveillance capitalism product i.e. Google's plans for Fuchsia. I guess I understand that, although it doesn't match my philosophy; but as described where HEAD is BSD and release branches (or similar) are GPL, it just doesn't seem compelling. Release changes aren't nothing, but most of the stuff happens in HEAD, so... If you really want BSD ancestors encumbered by GPL or whatever, you've got to do more of a hard fork and add something compelling after the fork. On philosophy re MINIX etc. If I'm writing software and releasing it to the world, I want people to use it. If I think I've got the best OS, why wouldn't I want people to be able to use it in their products? I want the world to have better products, and that means embedded computers running embedded operating systems should run my OS.

toast0 3y ago

> I'd love to have a GPL-licensed BSD operating system. Ideally new features would be prototyped in BSD-licensed BSDs and eventually make it into a stable GPL-licensed version. (I know it sounds crazy...) Why? What does a GPL license let you do that you can't do with a BSD license? If the base is BSD licensed, why would commercial users not use the base rather than the GPL one?

1MachineElf 3y ago
>If the base is BSD licensed, why would commercial users not use the base rather than the GPL one? Non-copyleft licences are not a universal business need for commercial users. See Red Hat, Suse, and Canonical for examples. BSD licences are also GPL compatible, so for whoever feels the need to contribute open source BSD licensed code, there is also a one-way street for redistributing it under the GPL. I believe this is an advantage that GPL projects & their username can leverage. >Why? What does a GPL license let you do that you can't do with a BSD license? I believe that bad people should not have access to good software. Bad people are incentivized to do sneaky things, and therefore, they avoid GPL licensed software because it legally binds them to be open and honest about their code/intentions. Take what happened with MINIX and Intel ME for example. MINIX has a permissive license that Intel exploited in ways that I'd bet most people here agree are net a negative. If MINIX had been GPL licensed, then Intel would have just chosen an alternative for Management Engine, but at least the options available (i.e., attack surface) would have been reduced. I even support the SSPL. I don't care if it doesn't meet the pure definition of "open source" because what matters more to me is that it prevents large companies from abusing those who do most of the work supporting FOSS. I believe that a successful GPL-licenced BSD is possible, and I'd take delight in knowing that big tech companies would be disincentivized to used it for some surveillance capitalism product i.e. Google's plans for Fuchsia. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-op...
- toast0 3y ago
  > I believe that a successful GPL-licenced BSD is possible, and I'd take delight in knowing that big tech companies would be disincentivized to used it for some surveillance capitalism product i.e. Google's plans for Fuchsia. I guess I understand that, although it doesn't match my philosophy; but as described where HEAD is BSD and release branches (or similar) are GPL, it just doesn't seem compelling. Release changes aren't nothing, but most of the stuff happens in HEAD, so... If you really want BSD ancestors encumbered by GPL or whatever, you've got to do more of a hard fork and add something compelling after the fork. On philosophy re MINIX etc. If I'm writing software and releasing it to the world, I want people to use it. If I think I've got the best OS, why wouldn't I want people to be able to use it in their products? I want the world to have better products, and that means embedded computers running embedded operating systems should run my OS.