4 ms·

> And here comes another problem - it’s very hard to back port anything from GNU/Linux kernel. There is a huge difference between what GPL and BSD license allow

> And here comes another problem - it’s very hard to back port anything from GNU/Linux kernel. There is a huge difference between what GPL and BSD license allows. Yes but the BSD license allows a lot more. So this isn't really a problem. > Firefox on FreeBSD is a hack layered over a hack running slowly. I have no idea how much work is required to support it, but it’s somewhere between “big” and “have mercy”. About that closed-source ones? No Office for you. Firefox works fine on FreeBSD. And MS office is not available on Linux either. Open source office stuff is. I use abiword myself. > Nada. GNU/Linux has plethora of sites, blogs, and vlogs. Any problem you may encounter, someone else already solved and documented This is actually a problem with Gnu/Linux. A solved issue on arch may not be the solution on Debian or redhat. Really these distros are different OSes but they are not treated as such. > You need to enjoy making it work for you. Otherwise, all you will find is annoyance and a swift OS change. Well yes. Here I agree. I love running my FreeBSD desktop. But it's not as much work as he claims and the community is really helpful. Because it's so small you can often reach out to the maintainers directly and because they're completely non-commercial you will get real answers, not the corporate line. This is the main thing I love about FreeBSD. There's no double motive. Nobody trying to make a buck or push their own intellectual property. If some corporation is paying to do work for you they're doing that because they're expecting to make more money off you one way or another. There's no win-win. Linux is more neoliberal, BSD more socialist and grassroots. > Next: do you like to call yourself an early adopter? Being in the bleeding edge is what gets you going? BSD are evolving slowly by design. If something works, let’s leave it alone. That’s the mantra. GNU/Linux is changing rapidly - Pipewire, Wayland, SystemD. Even good old ifconfig is being deprecated. At the same time BSDs still use technology from decades ago7. There was never a need to replace them, so no one did it. Yes this is a huge benefit of the BSDs in my opinion. No changes for the sake of it. Overall, l think the title of the article is way too black and white. Yes you need to be aware of what you're getting into. But if you're even trying this, you already do. Nobody runs BSD on their desktop because some magazine told them it's the best thing ever.

oaiey 3y ago
> Yes but the BSD license allows a lot more. So this isn't really a problem. ahm .... is not that the exact problem that a code with a higher amount of restrictions to be transferred into a licensed environment with less restrictions.
- jraph 3y ago
  Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. Unless you are fine with this and your only concern is that your code is permissively licensed and you don't care that much about further restrictions applying to the whole project. I believe the *BSD care and want to keep their projects licensed under BSD though. Some GPL code in the BSDs would suddenly prevent use case that are possible today.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    But that's only if you want to mix code. It's fine to mix software which is usually what's done. The BSD kernel layer is very small. Personally I think the whole license thing is a bit overrated anyway. It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, whereas the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want". Another thing why the BSD camp fits me better. Personally I don't really care about licenses, it's just some legalese to me (I never bother to read or obey EULAs either for example). And if I share some of my code as FOSS I don't even assign a license. But that's just my personal thing.
    - jraph 3y ago
      > But that's only if you want to mix code. Yes, although any GPL program in the BSD land cannot grant the same freedoms than BSD programs and will have to be filtered out for some use cases, which weakens the point of the BSD distributions a bit. That's not only the kernel, it's also userspace tools. > It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want" I don't believe this to be the case. Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL for instance because suddenly, they could not grant the rights to their users to take the code and put it into a proprietary product. Some people in the BSD world have a strong opinion on how permissive licenses are the right way to do open source / free software. > the GNU crowd making this a huge thing I believe this to be a huge thing though. It is a huge thing. You should care what people can and cannot do with your code. Maybe you care that people can do "whatever you want" with your code. I think it's worth stopping and thinking about this stuff and the consequences for a moment, at least once. The world is very little "don't care, whatever", things have consequences and maybe you care about some of them. Surely you deeply care about some things? (of course there's no bad answer, you can answer no) I myself think the GPL is the better option in most cases, because I care that the end users' freedom is guaranteed. I pretty much don't want developers to do "whatever they want" with my work, I want them to respect their own users' freedom. This is highly political/philosophical of course. (there are exceptions, for example for codecs you might want the code to be as permissive as possible so the free codec itself is spread and is not replaced with a proprietary one for instance)

oaiey 3y ago

> Yes but the BSD license allows a lot more. So this isn't really a problem. ahm .... is not that the exact problem that a code with a higher amount of restrictions to be transferred into a licensed environment with less restrictions.

jraph 3y ago
Yep it is. You don't want GPL code in your BSD/MIT licensed project or suddenly your whole project is under GPL. Unless you are fine with this and your only concern is that your code is permissively licensed and you don't care that much about further restrictions applying to the whole project. I believe the *BSD care and want to keep their projects licensed under BSD though. Some GPL code in the BSDs would suddenly prevent use case that are possible today.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  But that's only if you want to mix code. It's fine to mix software which is usually what's done. The BSD kernel layer is very small. Personally I think the whole license thing is a bit overrated anyway. It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, whereas the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want". Another thing why the BSD camp fits me better. Personally I don't really care about licenses, it's just some legalese to me (I never bother to read or obey EULAs either for example). And if I share some of my code as FOSS I don't even assign a license. But that's just my personal thing.
  - jraph 3y ago
    > But that's only if you want to mix code. Yes, although any GPL program in the BSD land cannot grant the same freedoms than BSD programs and will have to be filtered out for some use cases, which weakens the point of the BSD distributions a bit. That's not only the kernel, it's also userspace tools. > It's more the GNU crowd making this a huge thing, the BSD approach is more like "do whatever you want" I don't believe this to be the case. Some people in the BSD world are adamant that their code should not be contaminated by the GPL for instance because suddenly, they could not grant the rights to their users to take the code and put it into a proprietary product. Some people in the BSD world have a strong opinion on how permissive licenses are the right way to do open source / free software. > the GNU crowd making this a huge thing I believe this to be a huge thing though. It is a huge thing. You should care what people can and cannot do with your code. Maybe you care that people can do "whatever you want" with your code. I think it's worth stopping and thinking about this stuff and the consequences for a moment, at least once. The world is very little "don't care, whatever", things have consequences and maybe you care about some of them. Surely you deeply care about some things? (of course there's no bad answer, you can answer no) I myself think the GPL is the better option in most cases, because I care that the end users' freedom is guaranteed. I pretty much don't want developers to do "whatever they want" with my work, I want them to respect their own users' freedom. This is highly political/philosophical of course. (there are exceptions, for example for codecs you might want the code to be as permissive as possible so the free codec itself is spread and is not replaced with a proprietary one for instance)