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The case of the unwelcome attributionThe case of the unwelcome attributionPosted Sep 20, 2007 2:10 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668)Parent article: The case of the unwelcome attribution
I installed FreeBSD on an old laptop of mine and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I wouldn't replace Debian with it on my main computers because its packaging is inferior (IMHO of course) but it is a pretty nice system to play around with and I figured I'd make sure everything I wrote worked with it.
But I don't know after all this. I always saw BSD as being another branch of Free Software. One that, perhaps undeservedly, has never gotten as popular, but certainly was as valid. Moreover, I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the Linux kernel and have been hoping that something like kFBSD would take off. But now I'm thinking that perhaps it's impossible to work with the BSD community in any kind of constructive way.
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The case of the unwelcome attribution Posted Sep 20, 2007 3:27 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] I went to grad school at Berkeley myself in the early 1990s (on the other side of the EE/CS divide, but I knew what was going on). I always found the BSD crowd to be a brilliant but also extremely unpleasant bunch, full of flame wars and personal attacks between developers, seeing conspiracy theories everywhere. This goes right back to the founding days, with the fights over 386bsd and BSDI.But then, I have a low tolerance for unpleasantness. I recently unsubscribed from my local LUG's mailing list because the level of personal attacks got to be too much for me. Others have thicker skins and might not care, but I find it actively painful to see good people flailing away at each other.
The case of the unwelcome attribution Posted Sep 20, 2007 4:20 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] This goes right back to the founding days, with the fights over 386bsd and BSDI.Heh...for some of us, the "founding days" would be considered to have happened more than a decade earlier than that. ;-) Greg
The case of the unwelcome attribution Posted Sep 21, 2007 6:33 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Of course I'm aware of how old BSD is, since I had a summer job in a lab that was running 4.1BSD on a Vax before the transition to TCP/IP. Yes, I'm an old fart, I used the Internet when it was only one day old (the Arpanet and connected networks became the Internet once it switched protocols on Jan 1, 1982).I was talking about the founding days of completely free BSD; the Jolitzes did the first completely free BSD and BSDI did the first supposed USL-free but proprietary BSD.
The case of the unwelcome attribution Posted Sep 20, 2007 8:24 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] Of course, watching some of the sausage get made on LKML, I'd say you'd have to have a pretty thick skin to be a heavy duty Linux kernel developer also.
The case of the unwelcome attribution Posted Sep 20, 2007 11:00 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] This definitely varies on a project-by-project basis. The GCC development community (by dint of conscious effort, and with one or two exceptions) is notably collegial, but even it pales before the welcoming nature of the TeX community. Other free software projects manage to be abrasive enough to drive people away.
I think it's a cultural thing, probably initially derived from the email habits of the founding developers, but adjustable over time. Also, though, it might be something to do with the software's complexity/popularity tradeoff: both GCC and TeX are arcane enough that they have to actively attract developers to some degree (GCC because it's fiendishly complex, TeX because it's simply arcane :) ), while most parts of OS kernels are much less complicated.
Fractious BSDers Posted Sep 20, 2007 6:10 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] It is certainly true that BSD has, at least since the late '80s, been subject to extreme personality clashes of the sort that make the great LKML conflicts seem positively tame. I am told that OpenBSD, for example, started after Theo cracked into the NetBSD repository he has just been shut out of, and backed out most of the patches he had previously committed. It is equally true that many of the people who work on a BSD are polite to a fault (at least in person), and tend to be a bit embarrassed by their colleagues' behavior.
I can see reasons for the the behavior. First and foremost, Linux serves as a common enemy that is much nearer to hand than Microsoft is to us; BSDers suffer more displacement by Linux than by Microsoft. Second, Theo acts in the role of a cult leader, so his followers are encouraged to froth as he does. Third, the real vitriol is by those people who don't really have much else to do, Theo aside.
In case it's not clear yet, there would have been no legal problem with applying the patches as posted, despite what Theo insists. The OpenBSD people should be thankful that the Linux people were so gracious as to bow to their wishes.
Fractious BSDers Posted Sep 20, 2007 8:32 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] First and foremost, Linux serves as a common enemy that is much nearer to hand than Microsoft is to us; BSDers suffer more displacement by Linux than by Microsoft. Second, Theo acts in the role of a cult leader, so his followers are encouraged to froth as he does. Indeed! It's actually rather sad to see a comment like this: Theo has thrown himself, once again, against the spears of the Linux community and their legal vultures in order to protect our software freedoms. How many of us can say we've done our part to defend truly Free Software? Murrh? OpenBSD defending Free Software from Linux? Yeah. The assumptions, mind set and meanings wrapped up in that are just mind boggling. In the grand scheme of things, we really ARE on the same side. This is like two siblings fighting with each other, when the real problem is the big bully next door.
Fractious BSDers Posted Sep 20, 2007 15:37 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] It is their usual attitude: Linux (and other GPL software) is not really free because you don't have the basic freedom of turning it proprietary. But then when people take their code proprietary (or GPL) they complain loudly. Is it inconsistent? Not really; granting you the freedom to do something doesn't mean you think it is right to actually do it, at least in their view.In a sense they are right. The GPL does not grant the freedom to go proprietary because of a conscious choice: it is a compromise. I think Stallman's way of thinking is more solid. First define the freedoms you think are desirable, then go for them, and try to avoid unsocial attitudes in the process. The BSD approach works well for certain kinds of code. You can see the same arguments in Apache land (although they tend to be more polite), and their libraries are usually top quality. In other places it does not work so well, and OpenBSD seems to be one of bad ones. Let me close this inane message with the inevitable cheap analogy. BSD is like a protestant religion: you are free to do as you wish, even if some actions are frowned upon (and others plainly wrong). GPL takes an approach more similar to Catholicism: it acknowledges human weakness and tries to help us stay away from them, while working with our strengths. And if still you sin, Father Moglen will approach you and let you confess your sins, and repent. While the protestants will condemn you to eternal Hell for having sinned; you have crossed the chasm and there is no way back. Which is indeed what we see in this case.
Fractious BSDers Posted Sep 20, 2007 16:29 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] Yeah, I've always thought the dichotomy of how Linux is treated vs. how Microsoft is treated wrt. to BSD software was schizophrenic at best.
If you take a look at MS's initial set of TCP/IP tools, they're all the BSD tools. Sure, buried somewhere in all their documentation etc. is a copyright notice for the BSD stuff. "Yay, our name in Flyspec-3 lights! Woo!" But have you seen any of the updated source code? "Who cares, our name in lights! Who cares if it's on the back page of a manual nobody will look at, or buried in a README nobody will open? THEY KEPT OUR COPYRIGHT MESSAGE! YES! Viva la freedom!" *sigh*
So, we goof on the copyright message but leave the code and its changes out in the open. "Bad Linux. You messed up our copyright message. And we don't like your dual license. What if Microsoft wants a copy? You owe it to us to let them copy it again. At least they print our copyright message." "Dude... wait, what?"
I personally agree with you that Stallman's position is more consistent. "I will your give you this code with some restrictions. The restrictions are merely that whatever rights I grant you are transitive: I give you the code with certain rights and responsibilities. All I require is that you do the same for the next guy." Makes sense to me. You lose the right to hoard, in exchange for the generosity of others.
Eh, I think we're both preaching to the choir here.
Fractious BSDers Posted Sep 20, 2007 9:00 UTC (Thu) by ernest (subscriber, #2355) [Link] Apparently the BSD community has a tendancy to forget that their licence allows anybody from using and including BSD licenced code, even if the result is propritairy, without any need to contribute back. The GPL community seems to be much more aware of that fact, and so doesn't want their own GPL code to enter the BSD world.
As far as I can see, there doesn't seem to be any animosity towards the people behind the BSD licence within the GPL community, so it is so troubling that there is apparently such an outspoken animosity in the other direction.
Ernest.
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