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Thanks for writing this up, you make some excellent points. Could you comment on why the BSD's (FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD) has so far not made inroads against

by dman 11y ago

Thanks for writing this up, you make some excellent points. Could you comment on why the BSD's (FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD) has so far not made inroads against Linux which happens to be GPL2 licensed?

microtherion 11y ago
First of all, BSD, in the form of OS X and iOS, is more than holding its own. On the desktop, I believe that BSD was (a) hamstrung by the AT&T / BSDI lawsuit at a critical time and (b) suffered from fragmentation brought about more by incompatible forceful personalities than by technical issues.
- cjbprime 11y ago
  > First of all, BSD, in the form of OS X and iOS, is more than holding its own. Those are proprietary forms. I think we were talking about whether the decision to be BSD-licensed has been good for the health and contribution of the *BSD projects that OS X and iOS originated from. Then we can draw a conclusion (but hopefully after gathering more data) on whether releasing your codebase GPL or BSD is more likely to lead to long-term health for that open source codebase.
- wooger 11y ago
  Please stop this bizarre insistence that OS X = BSD. Different kernel, radically different OS overall, not open sourced. Still shares some userland, but this is irrelevant. For a true picture, look at how well their open sourced Darwin OS project is doing in terms of update and support. Apple gutted the FreeBSD core team back in the 90s, hiring them all away.
  - microtherion 11y ago
    Different kernel But fairly similar userland. Still shares some userland, but this is irrelevant. I would say that for most people, the API matters far more than the kernel implementing it. not open sourced http://www.opensource.apple.com http://www.opensource.apple.com has the kernel sources under "xnu". I don't think that substantially less is open sourced than e.g. for Android. look at how well their open sourced Darwin OS project is doing in terms of update and support The updates are fairly current (10.10.1 corresponds to the version of OS X shipped last fall), though there doesn't seem to be a very large community building on it.

by dman 11y ago

microtherion 11y ago

First of all, BSD, in the form of OS X and iOS, is more than holding its own. On the desktop, I believe that BSD was (a) hamstrung by the AT&T / BSDI lawsuit at a critical time and (b) suffered from fragmentation brought about more by incompatible forceful personalities than by technical issues.

cjbprime 11y ago
> First of all, BSD, in the form of OS X and iOS, is more than holding its own. Those are proprietary forms. I think we were talking about whether the decision to be BSD-licensed has been good for the health and contribution of the *BSD projects that OS X and iOS originated from. Then we can draw a conclusion (but hopefully after gathering more data) on whether releasing your codebase GPL or BSD is more likely to lead to long-term health for that open source codebase.
wooger 11y ago
Please stop this bizarre insistence that OS X = BSD. Different kernel, radically different OS overall, not open sourced. Still shares some userland, but this is irrelevant. For a true picture, look at how well their open sourced Darwin OS project is doing in terms of update and support. Apple gutted the FreeBSD core team back in the 90s, hiring them all away.
- microtherion 11y ago
  Different kernel But fairly similar userland. Still shares some userland, but this is irrelevant. I would say that for most people, the API matters far more than the kernel implementing it. not open sourced http://www.opensource.apple.com http://www.opensource.apple.com has the kernel sources under "xnu". I don't think that substantially less is open sourced than e.g. for Android. look at how well their open sourced Darwin OS project is doing in terms of update and support The updates are fairly current (10.10.1 corresponds to the version of OS X shipped last fall), though there doesn't seem to be a very large community building on it.