4 ms·

that's quite the troll post there. intel, ibm, hp, and sun contribute to linux because it is the popular thing to do now, and it is in their interest to suppor

by there 18y ago

that's quite the troll post there. intel, ibm, hp, and sun contribute to linux because it is the popular thing to do now, and it is in their interest to support it as an operating system because they all sell hardware, not (necessarily) because they like linux or use it. sun has its own competing, commercial operating system and yet they contribute to a rival one. why? because they can sell sun servers that run linux. companies contribute patches, drivers, money, donations, and other resources to many of the free non-gpl projects because they use them internally and it is in their interest to keep those projects going. bsd licensed code and operating systems have been around for decades. where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back?

cabalamat 18y ago
> * where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back?* My understanding is that proprietary operating systems such as MS Windows use the BSD tcp/ip stack. Is this not true?
- dfox 18y ago
  Many operating systems have networking API that is similar to BSD one, but that does not necessary imply that TCP/IP stack is same (and in case of Windows it is certainly not, as the BSD-like API is to some extent emulated in userspace). On the other hand, some userspace parts of Windows are certainly traceable to BSD origins (i.e. some command line networking utilities and large part of POSIX subsystem userspace).
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    Windows had BSD code in their TCP stack for a couple releases of NT. There is still some BSD code in it and you can see the authorship notice if you do a strings on FTP.EXE; I think Windows Vista got rid of the POSIX part by now. Embrace -> extend -> extinguish -> done.
    - dfox 18y ago
      Having BSD-derived userspace (like ftp.exe and probably more) does not imply having BSD derived TCP stack. And the internal architecture of windows networking is significantly different from any unix (one could probably also call it "broken") so I find it hard to believe that there are major parts of BSD-derived code in there. Vista is probably first version of Windows where Microsoft actually advertises the POSIX part, so it's there and probably it's here to stay.
      - rbanffy 18y ago
        I cannot prove Windows had BSD code in its TCP stack as I never had access to its source code, but I never implied it must have been so _because_ ftp.exe has BSD code inside it. There seem to be numerous references to BSD code inside Windows TCP stack from the late 90s. Maybe it is only utban legend, but maybe it's not.
davidw 18y ago
> where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back? Sun Microsystems and BSD? They have given stuff back, but basically, they did take BSD proprietary in a way that it took years to 'recover' from, in terms of a purely open source system. This debate doesn't have one 'winner'. I suspect if you wanted to do some sort of rigorous, formal, analysis, you would turn to game theory. Barring that, though, I think that there are situations where the GPL is best: everyone can contribute knowing that no one will "run away with the pot", by, say, hiring up the core developers and taking the system proprietary. In other cases, BSD is best - with lots of software that gets used as a library, if it's under the GPL, even if companies want to contribute and be good open source citizens, they really can't, and so you lose any possibility of getting good work from companies. Even the FSF realized this and created the LGPL. So, like many things, it can't be boiled down to a simplistic "this one is better" type answer. It really does depend on the situation.

by there 18y ago

cabalamat 18y ago

> * where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back?* My understanding is that proprietary operating systems such as MS Windows use the BSD tcp/ip stack. Is this not true?

dfox 18y ago
Many operating systems have networking API that is similar to BSD one, but that does not necessary imply that TCP/IP stack is same (and in case of Windows it is certainly not, as the BSD-like API is to some extent emulated in userspace). On the other hand, some userspace parts of Windows are certainly traceable to BSD origins (i.e. some command line networking utilities and large part of POSIX subsystem userspace).
- rbanffy 18y ago
  Windows had BSD code in their TCP stack for a couple releases of NT. There is still some BSD code in it and you can see the authorship notice if you do a strings on FTP.EXE; I think Windows Vista got rid of the POSIX part by now. Embrace -> extend -> extinguish -> done.
  - dfox 18y ago
    Having BSD-derived userspace (like ftp.exe and probably more) does not imply having BSD derived TCP stack. And the internal architecture of windows networking is significantly different from any unix (one could probably also call it "broken") so I find it hard to believe that there are major parts of BSD-derived code in there. Vista is probably first version of Windows where Microsoft actually advertises the POSIX part, so it's there and probably it's here to stay.
    - rbanffy 18y ago
      I cannot prove Windows had BSD code in its TCP stack as I never had access to its source code, but I never implied it must have been so _because_ ftp.exe has BSD code inside it. There seem to be numerous references to BSD code inside Windows TCP stack from the late 90s. Maybe it is only utban legend, but maybe it's not.

davidw 18y ago

> where are your examples of companies taking that code and "closing it up", making significant money off of that work, and without giving anything back? Sun Microsystems and BSD? They have given stuff back, but basically, they did take BSD proprietary in a way that it took years to 'recover' from, in terms of a purely open source system. This debate doesn't have one 'winner'. I suspect if you wanted to do some sort of rigorous, formal, analysis, you would turn to game theory. Barring that, though, I think that there are situations where the GPL is best: everyone can contribute knowing that no one will "run away with the pot", by, say, hiring up the core developers and taking the system proprietary. In other cases, BSD is best - with lots of software that gets used as a library, if it's under the GPL, even if companies want to contribute and be good open source citizens, they really can't, and so you lose any possibility of getting good work from companies. Even the FSF realized this and created the LGPL. So, like many things, it can't be boiled down to a simplistic "this one is better" type answer. It really does depend on the situation.