5 ms·

It’s so annoying that none of the corps using it aren’t putting a cent in and they ask individual developers to donate. Meh

sgt 1y ago
I'd hope at least some of the NetBSD developers are paid to work on the OS as part of their day jobs.
pjmlp 1y ago
That is the wonder of BSD like licenses for big corps. If Linux never happened, we would still be using big iron UNIXes, each taking whatever they felt like from BSD variants. Notice how all the new FOSS operating systems for IoT devices none of them use GPL, NutXX, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Arduino libs, IDF,...
- layer8 1y ago
  OTOH, if Linux never happened, much more work would be put into *BSD.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Not really, as anyone that was already using UNIX at the time is aware of, and the whole UNIX V6 vs BSD integrations as baseline for Aix, Solaris, Irix, HP-UX,....
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Absent something like OpenSolaris really taking off, the popular opinion in my circles is that *BSD would have (which is at least related to the same thing). Unless you believe Windows would have "won" which is certainly the side-bet a lot of companies were making at the time.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- spauldo 1y ago
  No, we wouldn't. Linux climbed its way up to overtake proprietary UNIX despite being less capable, which it very much was at the time. Linux came around at the right time when the Internet was going public and regular people had access to hardware that could run a decent UNIX. People latched onto it because it was free and an interesting project. The free BSDs were just late enough to the party that they missed out on the momentum. All the proprietary UNIX vendors (other than SCO) relied on expensive proprietary hardware sales. Intel ate their lunch while they were too busy stabbing each other in the back to notice. Linux killed SCO because SCO was, quite frankly, overpriced crap. None of this had anything to do with the license, other that the fact you could use it for free. It was all about hardware availability, the rise of the Internet, the wave of new IT people who had experienced Linux at home, and the fact that Linux on Intel was good enough to replace those pricy proprietary machines. Now, you wanna talk Apple, there's where your code "theft" kicks in. But that's a whole different thing.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    I was there, hence why it it easy to get quotes like these, > 1998: Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce their support for Linux. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux Without big money from UNIX vendors like those, cutting down their R&D costs, Linux would not have climbed anything. GPL was the reason why they collaborated instead of being able to assimilate the code as they were doing with BSD, like anything sockets related. Ironically IBM has recouped its investment, now as Red-Hat owners. That is where everything on GNU/Linux that is mainly done by Red-Hat like GNOME, Gtk, GCC, Java is being paid for.
    - spauldo 1y ago
      Yeah, I was there too. The three companies you list are horrible examples. IBM is kind of a UNIX vendor, sort of, but not like Sun or DEC. They sell solutions, and the solutions that use AIX don't overlap with what Linux was capable of in 1998. I'd argue that, given their complete disregard for Tru-64 and pretty much all things DEC, Compaq was never a UNIX vendor - they just inherited a bunch of legacy systems they needed to support. They certainly didn't push for new Tru-64 based systems. Oracle wasn't a UNIX vendor at all and wouldn't become one for quite some time. BSD sockets are also a bad example. They were the reference implementation, paid for by DARPA. The entire purpose of BSD sockets was to be copied into other operating systems. You'll notice that Linux copied them as well. IBM and Compaq invested in Linux because they wanted something that ran on their lower-end server hardware and could handle web traffic. Oracle invested in Linux because they wanted to be the backend to all these new websites that were cropping up. IBM, Oracle, and Compaq didn't give a rat's ass about the operating system code - they wanted the platform. If Linux had never happened and FreeBSD became the new hot thing all the online hackers were talking about, the result would have been exactly the same. They'd have poured money into the projects rather than trying to make their own thing because that's the financially sensible thing to do. The UNIX wars were over, and proprietary software lost. Meanwhile, the last major UNIX vendor - Sun Microsystems - was giving away its own source code under the CDDL. FreeBSD ended up adopting a lot of it. That's the complete opposite effect from what you're talking about. Sun got involved in the GNOME project and even deprecated their own CDE desktop in favor of it. Was it because it was GPL? No. It was because they saw that all the new desktop software was coming out of the Linux community, who didn't have access to CDE. Even if GNOME had been BSD licensed they would still have switched to it, because they were still trying to keep the workstation market alive at that point and CDE was quickly becoming irrelevant. As far as I can see, the only companies interested in taking operating system code were the network appliance vendors and Apple. It only worked for them because they didn't care about compatibility.
- bentley 1y ago
  > That is the wonder of BSD like licenses for big corps. You mean any free software license, BSD or otherwise. Notice how NetBSD isn’t asking for code contributions, but for monetary contributions. The GPL doesn’t cover that either. Observe the current rugpulling fad to relicense free software (both permissive and copyleft) to nonfree protectionist licenses like BUSL and SSPL in order to monetize.
unleaded 1y ago
I wonder if there'll be some big cultural shift in open source as people get more annoyed at cases of big companies taking their code and giving nothing back/demanding them to work for free. Might already be happening just slowly
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  The people at the big companies who share the cause are not the ones who have anything important to decide there.
- forgetfulness 1y ago
  AGPL and non-compete licenses like SSPL and FSL have been steadily adopted —Redis, ElasticSearch and Liquibase notably switched to them—, pretty much motivated by not wanting to be screwed over by Big Tech one way or another. More than fine if you ask me, giving away your work for megacorps and oligarchs to steamroll your business or otherwise society at large isn’t much of a public service in the end
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    Yeah I have been thinking more and more about source available. I am not sure about AGPL as I feel like, some companies might still use it. honestly, it depends but all the companies which use non compete license somehow diverts back to AGPL if they were open source before So if some company/product was open source and then used source available license, the backlash would be so much that they go to something like AGPl most of the time but that happens because people feel betrayed because some might have contributed thinking its foss forever so its a rug pull I think a good idea could be to have a source available license from the start so that everybody who ever contributes knows this as a fact. What are your thoughts? What should I or anyone else pick? As a "foss" advocate, I would prefer AGPL but I don't want to get screwed by Big Tech ever with all the loopholes that they can have (like AWS), Honestly I don't know which is why I am asking really.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
fidotron 1y ago
Are there any major corporations using NetBSD today? I know in the past things like the network stack had been repurposed to other mainstream products.
- jaypatelani 1y ago
  Well NASA currently using pkgsrc of NetBSD for their NAS https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-packages-in-pkgsrc_493.html https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-pack...
alecco 1y ago
From Big Tech to startups, most corporations waste billions in ridiculous and frivolous projects and yet insignificant money is sent back to the projects they owe their very existence. But don't you dare switch to a proprietary license or you will be dragged across social media as an evil selfish person. Even if it's only postponing source releases for a couple of years.
spauldo 1y ago
I doubt NetBSD gets much use by "big corps." It's used by hobbyists, researchers, and universities.
dlcarrier 1y ago
Amazon and Netflix have both made major BSD contributions, although I don't know if any are specific to NetBSD.

sgt 1y ago

I'd hope at least some of the NetBSD developers are paid to work on the OS as part of their day jobs.

pjmlp 1y ago

That is the wonder of BSD like licenses for big corps. If Linux never happened, we would still be using big iron UNIXes, each taking whatever they felt like from BSD variants. Notice how all the new FOSS operating systems for IoT devices none of them use GPL, NutXX, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Arduino libs, IDF,...

layer8 1y ago
OTOH, if Linux never happened, much more work would be put into *BSD.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Not really, as anyone that was already using UNIX at the time is aware of, and the whole UNIX V6 vs BSD integrations as baseline for Aix, Solaris, Irix, HP-UX,....
- ghaff 1y ago
  Absent something like OpenSolaris really taking off, the popular opinion in my circles is that *BSD would have (which is at least related to the same thing). Unless you believe Windows would have "won" which is certainly the side-bet a lot of companies were making at the time.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
spauldo 1y ago
No, we wouldn't. Linux climbed its way up to overtake proprietary UNIX despite being less capable, which it very much was at the time. Linux came around at the right time when the Internet was going public and regular people had access to hardware that could run a decent UNIX. People latched onto it because it was free and an interesting project. The free BSDs were just late enough to the party that they missed out on the momentum. All the proprietary UNIX vendors (other than SCO) relied on expensive proprietary hardware sales. Intel ate their lunch while they were too busy stabbing each other in the back to notice. Linux killed SCO because SCO was, quite frankly, overpriced crap. None of this had anything to do with the license, other that the fact you could use it for free. It was all about hardware availability, the rise of the Internet, the wave of new IT people who had experienced Linux at home, and the fact that Linux on Intel was good enough to replace those pricy proprietary machines. Now, you wanna talk Apple, there's where your code "theft" kicks in. But that's a whole different thing.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  I was there, hence why it it easy to get quotes like these, > 1998: Many major companies such as IBM, Compaq and Oracle announce their support for Linux. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux Without big money from UNIX vendors like those, cutting down their R&D costs, Linux would not have climbed anything. GPL was the reason why they collaborated instead of being able to assimilate the code as they were doing with BSD, like anything sockets related. Ironically IBM has recouped its investment, now as Red-Hat owners. That is where everything on GNU/Linux that is mainly done by Red-Hat like GNOME, Gtk, GCC, Java is being paid for.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    Yeah, I was there too. The three companies you list are horrible examples. IBM is kind of a UNIX vendor, sort of, but not like Sun or DEC. They sell solutions, and the solutions that use AIX don't overlap with what Linux was capable of in 1998. I'd argue that, given their complete disregard for Tru-64 and pretty much all things DEC, Compaq was never a UNIX vendor - they just inherited a bunch of legacy systems they needed to support. They certainly didn't push for new Tru-64 based systems. Oracle wasn't a UNIX vendor at all and wouldn't become one for quite some time. BSD sockets are also a bad example. They were the reference implementation, paid for by DARPA. The entire purpose of BSD sockets was to be copied into other operating systems. You'll notice that Linux copied them as well. IBM and Compaq invested in Linux because they wanted something that ran on their lower-end server hardware and could handle web traffic. Oracle invested in Linux because they wanted to be the backend to all these new websites that were cropping up. IBM, Oracle, and Compaq didn't give a rat's ass about the operating system code - they wanted the platform. If Linux had never happened and FreeBSD became the new hot thing all the online hackers were talking about, the result would have been exactly the same. They'd have poured money into the projects rather than trying to make their own thing because that's the financially sensible thing to do. The UNIX wars were over, and proprietary software lost. Meanwhile, the last major UNIX vendor - Sun Microsystems - was giving away its own source code under the CDDL. FreeBSD ended up adopting a lot of it. That's the complete opposite effect from what you're talking about. Sun got involved in the GNOME project and even deprecated their own CDE desktop in favor of it. Was it because it was GPL? No. It was because they saw that all the new desktop software was coming out of the Linux community, who didn't have access to CDE. Even if GNOME had been BSD licensed they would still have switched to it, because they were still trying to keep the workstation market alive at that point and CDE was quickly becoming irrelevant. As far as I can see, the only companies interested in taking operating system code were the network appliance vendors and Apple. It only worked for them because they didn't care about compatibility.
bentley 1y ago
> That is the wonder of BSD like licenses for big corps. You mean any free software license, BSD or otherwise. Notice how NetBSD isn’t asking for code contributions, but for monetary contributions. The GPL doesn’t cover that either. Observe the current rugpulling fad to relicense free software (both permissive and copyleft) to nonfree protectionist licenses like BUSL and SSPL in order to monetize.

unleaded 1y ago

I wonder if there'll be some big cultural shift in open source as people get more annoyed at cases of big companies taking their code and giving nothing back/demanding them to work for free. Might already be happening just slowly

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
The people at the big companies who share the cause are not the ones who have anything important to decide there.
forgetfulness 1y ago
AGPL and non-compete licenses like SSPL and FSL have been steadily adopted —Redis, ElasticSearch and Liquibase notably switched to them—, pretty much motivated by not wanting to be screwed over by Big Tech one way or another. More than fine if you ask me, giving away your work for megacorps and oligarchs to steamroll your business or otherwise society at large isn’t much of a public service in the end
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  Yeah I have been thinking more and more about source available. I am not sure about AGPL as I feel like, some companies might still use it. honestly, it depends but all the companies which use non compete license somehow diverts back to AGPL if they were open source before So if some company/product was open source and then used source available license, the backlash would be so much that they go to something like AGPl most of the time but that happens because people feel betrayed because some might have contributed thinking its foss forever so its a rug pull I think a good idea could be to have a source available license from the start so that everybody who ever contributes knows this as a fact. What are your thoughts? What should I or anyone else pick? As a "foss" advocate, I would prefer AGPL but I don't want to get screwed by Big Tech ever with all the loopholes that they can have (like AWS), Honestly I don't know which is why I am asking really.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago

fidotron 1y ago

Are there any major corporations using NetBSD today? I know in the past things like the network stack had been repurposed to other mainstream products.

jaypatelani 1y ago
Well NASA currently using pkgsrc of NetBSD for their NAS https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-packages-in-pkgsrc_493.html https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/support/kb/using-software-pack...

alecco 1y ago

From Big Tech to startups, most corporations waste billions in ridiculous and frivolous projects and yet insignificant money is sent back to the projects they owe their very existence. But don't you dare switch to a proprietary license or you will be dragged across social media as an evil selfish person. Even if it's only postponing source releases for a couple of years.

spauldo 1y ago

I doubt NetBSD gets much use by "big corps." It's used by hobbyists, researchers, and universities.

dlcarrier 1y ago

Amazon and Netflix have both made major BSD contributions, although I don't know if any are specific to NetBSD.