6 ms·

I so wish that FreeBSD was GPL. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on

I so wish that FreeBSD was GPL. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on the coat tails of that. But I don't like Linux. I use it daily, but I don't like it. I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven.

a-dub 11mo ago
freebsd didn't have the hardware support base that linux did and suffered a huge delay in rearchitecture when x86 smp hardware became widely available. (only one cpu could be in the kernel at a time, the "bkl", was a major impediment in the early 00s). freebsd had better resource scheduling at the time and a beloved networking stack, but linux caught up with cgroups etc. i think linux was also just a trendy vanguard of sorts as the world learned of open source software by and of the internet.
CalChris 11mo ago
GCC vs LLVM. It isn’t the license.
- blueflow 11mo ago
  I think that's less because of the license and more because people found patching gcc to be a big pain.
  - CalChris 11mo ago
    Correct, it’s not the license.
  - tom_alexander 11mo ago
    To be fair, GCC's design was motivated by the same thing as the license. They intentionally didn't modularize GCC so that it couldn't be used by non-free code. > Anything that makes it easier to use GCC back ends without GCC front ends--or simply brings GCC a big step closer to a form that would make such usage easy--would endanger our leverage for causing new front ends to be free. https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html
- bigfishrunning 11mo ago
  I don't know about that... Llvm didn't exist until 2003. The BSDs and Linux both existed for a long time before that, and Linux already had much more momentum at that point.
  - coaksford 11mo ago
    BSD was mired in the uncertainty of a lawsuit over some of their code at the time that Linux was getting started, and the FUD around that gave Linux a head start that BSD had up until that point, so you can't infer much about the reasons Linux's early success over BSD through that fog. If Linux had been dealing with the same problem that BSD had instead, BSD almost certainly would be in Linux's place right now.
    - jm4 11mo ago
      Linux was dealing with SCO just a few years later. There was also a period where Microsoft was out to destroy Linux.
      - Gud 11mo ago
        The difference is that Linux was well supported by the corporate world when the SCO/Microsoft lawsuit took place
hnthrowaway0328 11mo ago
Can you please elaborate the str of Freebsd vs Linux?
pyvpx 11mo ago
It’s a nice belief for some but wholly divorced from historical facts and circumstances
cerved 11mo ago
It'll never happen. You can't distribute ZFS under GPL
- dardeaup 11mo ago
  Agreed. I'd say it goes much deeper than that in the case of FreeBSD though. It's just an ideological thing that can't be changed.
- sbseitz 11mo ago
  Comes in binary form from Debian and Ubuntu. I can add it to any other distribution via DKMS. Same core ZFS code as BSD uses.
  - matthewmc3 11mo ago
    Honest question - if it comes in binary form, how can you know it's the same core ZFS code BSD uses?
    - E39M5S62 11mo ago
      Same as anything else installed as a binary package - you trust the people packaging/providing the binary. If you don't, build it yourself. The source is publicly available.
      - pabs3 11mo ago
        Or you build it yourself and verify you got the same checksum. https://reproducible-builds.org/ https://reproducible-builds.org/
  - pabs3 11mo ago
    Debian only distributes it in DKMS form, not binary form.
cesarb 11mo ago
> but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft No, the success Linux has had is because it ran on the machines people had at home, and was very easy to try out. An instructive example would be my own path into Linux: I started with DJGPP, but got annoyed because it couldn't multi-task (if you started a compilation within an IDE like Emacs, you had to wait until it finished before you could interact with the IDE again). So I wanted a real Unix, or something close enough to it. The best option I found was Slackware. Back then, it could install directly into the MS-DOS partition (within the C:\LINUX directory, through the magic of the UMSDOS filesystem), and boot directly from MS-DOS (through the LOADLIN bootloader). That is: like DJGPP, it could be treated like a normal MS-DOS program (with the only caveat being that you had to reboot to get back to MS-DOS). No need to dedicate a partition to it. No need to take over the MBR or bootloader. It even worked when the disk used Ontrack Disk Manager (for those too young to have heard of it, older BIOS didn't understand large disks, so newer HDDs came bundled with software like that to workaround the BIOS limitations; Linux transparently understood the special partition scheme used by Ontrack). It worked with all the hardware I had, and worked better than MS-DOS; after a while, I noticed I was spending all my time booted into Linux, and only then I dedicated a whole partition to it (and later, the whole disk). Of course, since by then I had already gotten used to Linux, I stayed in the Linux world. What I've read later (somewhere in a couple of HN comments) was that, beyond not having all these cool tricks (UMSDOS, LOADLIN, support for Ontrack partitions), FreeBSD was also picky with its hardware choices. I'm not sure that the hardware I had would have been fully supported, and even if it were, I'd have to dedicate a whole disk (or, at least, a whole partition) to it, and it would also take over the boot process (in a way which probably would be incompatible with Ontrack).
- sellmesoap 11mo ago
  I'd say with modern hardware, like the xe Intel iGPUs on 11th gen Intel and up got driver attention quickly. Some things like realtek 2.5gb NICs took a little while to integrate but I think realtek offered kernel modules. I remember NIC compatibility was sparse when I started playing with it around 1999-2000. What trips me up is command flags on gnu vs freebsd utils, ask me about the time I DOSed the Colo from the jump machine using the wrong packet argument interval.
- 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
toast0 11mo ago
What would FreeBSD as GPL give you? You could fork it and release FreeGPL with that license tomorrow. (Minus ZFS, but that's in contrib) Some users of FreeBSD prefer more freedoms than GPL offers. The contributors must not be put off by providing more freedoms. Places I've worked have contributed changes to FreeBSD and Linux, mostly for the same reason ... regardless of any necessity from distributing code under license, it's nicer to keep your fork close to upstream and sending your changes upstream helps keep things close.
- unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
  IANAL, but you can’t actually just relicense code, even if it’s under BSD‐like license. What you can do is to release this code in the binary form without providing the source code.
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    Right you can add gpl code on top, but the base is still BSD
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
assimpleaspossi 11mo ago
>>I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on the coat tails of that. Apparently many here are unaware of the history and story as to what stalled FreeBSD in a long lawsuit involving ATT. You need to read up on that. Copyleft had nothing to do with it.
movedx 11mo ago
Linux is OK. It’s a mess compared to BSD, but it’s OK. It’s the lazy man’s solution. It’s mainly for people who only want to “docker compose up” and walk away. The art of the OS has been lost. People think the OS is something to be abstracted away as much as possible and it’s evil and hard to secure. Shame.
- stackghost 11mo ago
  I'd offer in counterargument that Linux is for getting things done, whereas BSD seems to be largely for people who view the OS itself as the hobby. I have zero interest in tinkering with my operating system. I mostly want it to just get out of my way, which Linux does well 95% of the time.
  - quesera 11mo ago
    That used to be the argument for Windows over Linux. FreeBSD has always required far less tweaking or maintenance than Linux, though.
  - wkat4242 11mo ago
    I need to tinker less because there's no distro maintainers that constantly change stuff. It did take a while to set it up but then it runs fine. I don't view my OS as a hobby, but I do want to have full control over it and to be able to understand how it works. I don't want to have to trust a commercial party to act in my best interests, because they don't. The current mess that is windows, full of ads and useless ai crap, mandatory telemetry, forced updates, constantly trying to sell their cloud services etc is a good example. FreeBSD doesn't do any of those things. Most Linuxes don't either but there's still a lot of corpo influence. I feel like it's becoming a playing ball of big tech. You only need to see how many corp suits are on the board of the Linux foundation, how many patches are pushed by corp employees as part of their job etc. I don't want them to have that much influence over my OS. I don't believe in a win-win concerning corporate involvement in open-source. FreeBSD has a little bit of that (netgate's completely botched wireguard is and example) but lessons are learned.
    - 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
long__cat 11mo ago
[dead]
unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
I feel the same, because it seems that the only desktop-ready OS under GPL today is GNU/Linux, and it feels too bloated nowadays (not to mention that Linux is effectively stuck under GPLv2). Something like FreeBSD feels much lighter and better still being desktop‐ready. Looks like that guys from Hyperbola think the same and that’s why they are doing HyperbolaBSD. Btw there’s some progress in GNU Hurd, but they are still far from being desktop-ready.
- Klonoar 11mo ago
  There needs to be a new rule in technical discussion communities that outlaws bland comments that just spew "too bloated" and "feels much lighter". It is completely useless fluff description text.
  - unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
    No, it’s just you having some strange prejudices about these words (probably driven by blind faith in some overhyped technologies), so go better overregulate your preferred echo chamber.
    - Klonoar 11mo ago
      No, it's from reading 20+ years of people who say this junk and it's demonstrably not backed up by the real world. It's enthusiast tinker fantasy talk.
- wkat4242 11mo ago
  I had to laugh at the progress in gnu hurd. I've been hearing that one since the 90s
  - unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
    They now provide at least somehow working x86_64 images. It’s of course funny for a project started in the 90s to get x86_64 support only in the 2020s, but it’s still progress in relative terms.
zie 11mo ago
I don't understand this thinking. The GPL is more restrictive than the FreeBSD license. You have more freedoms with the FreeBSD license than you do with the GPL(of any version). > I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven. Well The BSD's were embattled with a lawsuit from AT&T at the time Linux came around, so it got a late start as it were, even if it's a lot older.
jeffjeffbear 11mo ago
I have seen this particular idea come up a lot lately. Personaly I think Intel's early investment in linux had a lot to do with it. They also sold a compiler and marketed to labs and such which bought chips. So linux compatibility meant a lot to decision makers. AMD the underdog went more in on Linux compat than NVIDIA. Which may have been a business decsion. I dunno, maybe the GPL effect was more a market share thing with developers than a copyleft thing. Nota Bene: I do love copyleft and license all my own projects AGPL
- adastra22 11mo ago
  The Linux vs BSD fight happened before NVIDIA vs AMD was a thing.
wkat4242 11mo ago
> I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven. I don't. That would break everything I love about it. If it was as big as Linux there would be a lot of corpo suits influence, constant changes, constant drive to make it 'mainstream' etc. All the things I hate about Linux.

a-dub 11mo ago

freebsd didn't have the hardware support base that linux did and suffered a huge delay in rearchitecture when x86 smp hardware became widely available. (only one cpu could be in the kernel at a time, the "bkl", was a major impediment in the early 00s). freebsd had better resource scheduling at the time and a beloved networking stack, but linux caught up with cgroups etc. i think linux was also just a trendy vanguard of sorts as the world learned of open source software by and of the internet.

CalChris 11mo ago

GCC vs LLVM. It isn’t the license.

blueflow 11mo ago
I think that's less because of the license and more because people found patching gcc to be a big pain.
- CalChris 11mo ago
  Correct, it’s not the license.
- tom_alexander 11mo ago
  To be fair, GCC's design was motivated by the same thing as the license. They intentionally didn't modularize GCC so that it couldn't be used by non-free code. > Anything that makes it easier to use GCC back ends without GCC front ends--or simply brings GCC a big step closer to a form that would make such usage easy--would endanger our leverage for causing new front ends to be free. https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html
bigfishrunning 11mo ago
I don't know about that... Llvm didn't exist until 2003. The BSDs and Linux both existed for a long time before that, and Linux already had much more momentum at that point.
- coaksford 11mo ago
  BSD was mired in the uncertainty of a lawsuit over some of their code at the time that Linux was getting started, and the FUD around that gave Linux a head start that BSD had up until that point, so you can't infer much about the reasons Linux's early success over BSD through that fog. If Linux had been dealing with the same problem that BSD had instead, BSD almost certainly would be in Linux's place right now.
  - jm4 11mo ago
    Linux was dealing with SCO just a few years later. There was also a period where Microsoft was out to destroy Linux.
    - Gud 11mo ago
      The difference is that Linux was well supported by the corporate world when the SCO/Microsoft lawsuit took place

hnthrowaway0328 11mo ago

Can you please elaborate the str of Freebsd vs Linux?

pyvpx 11mo ago

It’s a nice belief for some but wholly divorced from historical facts and circumstances

cerved 11mo ago

It'll never happen. You can't distribute ZFS under GPL

dardeaup 11mo ago
Agreed. I'd say it goes much deeper than that in the case of FreeBSD though. It's just an ideological thing that can't be changed.
sbseitz 11mo ago
Comes in binary form from Debian and Ubuntu. I can add it to any other distribution via DKMS. Same core ZFS code as BSD uses.
- matthewmc3 11mo ago
  Honest question - if it comes in binary form, how can you know it's the same core ZFS code BSD uses?
  - E39M5S62 11mo ago
    Same as anything else installed as a binary package - you trust the people packaging/providing the binary. If you don't, build it yourself. The source is publicly available.
    - pabs3 11mo ago
      Or you build it yourself and verify you got the same checksum. https://reproducible-builds.org/ https://reproducible-builds.org/
- pabs3 11mo ago
  Debian only distributes it in DKMS form, not binary form.

cesarb 11mo ago

> but I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft No, the success Linux has had is because it ran on the machines people had at home, and was very easy to try out. An instructive example would be my own path into Linux: I started with DJGPP, but got annoyed because it couldn't multi-task (if you started a compilation within an IDE like Emacs, you had to wait until it finished before you could interact with the IDE again). So I wanted a real Unix, or something close enough to it. The best option I found was Slackware. Back then, it could install directly into the MS-DOS partition (within the C:\LINUX directory, through the magic of the UMSDOS filesystem), and boot directly from MS-DOS (through the LOADLIN bootloader). That is: like DJGPP, it could be treated like a normal MS-DOS program (with the only caveat being that you had to reboot to get back to MS-DOS). No need to dedicate a partition to it. No need to take over the MBR or bootloader. It even worked when the disk used Ontrack Disk Manager (for those too young to have heard of it, older BIOS didn't understand large disks, so newer HDDs came bundled with software like that to workaround the BIOS limitations; Linux transparently understood the special partition scheme used by Ontrack). It worked with all the hardware I had, and worked better than MS-DOS; after a while, I noticed I was spending all my time booted into Linux, and only then I dedicated a whole partition to it (and later, the whole disk). Of course, since by then I had already gotten used to Linux, I stayed in the Linux world. What I've read later (somewhere in a couple of HN comments) was that, beyond not having all these cool tricks (UMSDOS, LOADLIN, support for Ontrack partitions), FreeBSD was also picky with its hardware choices. I'm not sure that the hardware I had would have been fully supported, and even if it were, I'd have to dedicate a whole disk (or, at least, a whole partition) to it, and it would also take over the boot process (in a way which probably would be incompatible with Ontrack).

sellmesoap 11mo ago
I'd say with modern hardware, like the xe Intel iGPUs on 11th gen Intel and up got driver attention quickly. Some things like realtek 2.5gb NICs took a little while to integrate but I think realtek offered kernel modules. I remember NIC compatibility was sparse when I started playing with it around 1999-2000. What trips me up is command flags on gnu vs freebsd utils, ask me about the time I DOSed the Colo from the jump machine using the wrong packet argument interval.
11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

toast0 11mo ago

What would FreeBSD as GPL give you? You could fork it and release FreeGPL with that license tomorrow. (Minus ZFS, but that's in contrib) Some users of FreeBSD prefer more freedoms than GPL offers. The contributors must not be put off by providing more freedoms. Places I've worked have contributed changes to FreeBSD and Linux, mostly for the same reason ... regardless of any necessity from distributing code under license, it's nicer to keep your fork close to upstream and sending your changes upstream helps keep things close.

unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
IANAL, but you can’t actually just relicense code, even if it’s under BSD‐like license. What you can do is to release this code in the binary form without providing the source code.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  Right you can add gpl code on top, but the base is still BSD
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

assimpleaspossi 11mo ago

>>I believe that success Linux has had is because of copyleft, and *BSD are riding on the coat tails of that. Apparently many here are unaware of the history and story as to what stalled FreeBSD in a long lawsuit involving ATT. You need to read up on that. Copyleft had nothing to do with it.

movedx 11mo ago

Linux is OK. It’s a mess compared to BSD, but it’s OK. It’s the lazy man’s solution. It’s mainly for people who only want to “docker compose up” and walk away. The art of the OS has been lost. People think the OS is something to be abstracted away as much as possible and it’s evil and hard to secure. Shame.

stackghost 11mo ago
I'd offer in counterargument that Linux is for getting things done, whereas BSD seems to be largely for people who view the OS itself as the hobby. I have zero interest in tinkering with my operating system. I mostly want it to just get out of my way, which Linux does well 95% of the time.
- quesera 11mo ago
  That used to be the argument for Windows over Linux. FreeBSD has always required far less tweaking or maintenance than Linux, though.
- wkat4242 11mo ago
  I need to tinker less because there's no distro maintainers that constantly change stuff. It did take a while to set it up but then it runs fine. I don't view my OS as a hobby, but I do want to have full control over it and to be able to understand how it works. I don't want to have to trust a commercial party to act in my best interests, because they don't. The current mess that is windows, full of ads and useless ai crap, mandatory telemetry, forced updates, constantly trying to sell their cloud services etc is a good example. FreeBSD doesn't do any of those things. Most Linuxes don't either but there's still a lot of corpo influence. I feel like it's becoming a playing ball of big tech. You only need to see how many corp suits are on the board of the Linux foundation, how many patches are pushed by corp employees as part of their job etc. I don't want them to have that much influence over my OS. I don't believe in a win-win concerning corporate involvement in open-source. FreeBSD has a little bit of that (netgate's completely botched wireguard is and example) but lessons are learned.
  - 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

long__cat 11mo ago

[dead]

unexpectedtrap 11mo ago

I feel the same, because it seems that the only desktop-ready OS under GPL today is GNU/Linux, and it feels too bloated nowadays (not to mention that Linux is effectively stuck under GPLv2). Something like FreeBSD feels much lighter and better still being desktop‐ready. Looks like that guys from Hyperbola think the same and that’s why they are doing HyperbolaBSD. Btw there’s some progress in GNU Hurd, but they are still far from being desktop-ready.

Klonoar 11mo ago
There needs to be a new rule in technical discussion communities that outlaws bland comments that just spew "too bloated" and "feels much lighter". It is completely useless fluff description text.
- unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
  No, it’s just you having some strange prejudices about these words (probably driven by blind faith in some overhyped technologies), so go better overregulate your preferred echo chamber.
  - Klonoar 11mo ago
    No, it's from reading 20+ years of people who say this junk and it's demonstrably not backed up by the real world. It's enthusiast tinker fantasy talk.
wkat4242 11mo ago
I had to laugh at the progress in gnu hurd. I've been hearing that one since the 90s
- unexpectedtrap 11mo ago
  They now provide at least somehow working x86_64 images. It’s of course funny for a project started in the 90s to get x86_64 support only in the 2020s, but it’s still progress in relative terms.

zie 11mo ago

I don't understand this thinking. The GPL is more restrictive than the FreeBSD license. You have more freedoms with the FreeBSD license than you do with the GPL(of any version). > I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven. Well The BSD's were embattled with a lawsuit from AT&T at the time Linux came around, so it got a late start as it were, even if it's a lot older.

jeffjeffbear 11mo ago

I have seen this particular idea come up a lot lately. Personaly I think Intel's early investment in linux had a lot to do with it. They also sold a compiler and marketed to labs and such which bought chips. So linux compatibility meant a lot to decision makers. AMD the underdog went more in on Linux compat than NVIDIA. Which may have been a business decsion. I dunno, maybe the GPL effect was more a market share thing with developers than a copyleft thing. Nota Bene: I do love copyleft and license all my own projects AGPL

adastra22 11mo ago
The Linux vs BSD fight happened before NVIDIA vs AMD was a thing.

wkat4242 11mo ago

> I wish FreeBSD held the position Linux does in the market today. That would be heaven. I don't. That would break everything I love about it. If it was as big as Linux there would be a lot of corpo suits influence, constant changes, constant drive to make it 'mainstream' etc. All the things I hate about Linux.