[NTLUG:Discuss] RMS's Speach

[Chris Cox]

What blew it for me with BSD was:

1. License confusion.  These guys didn't have anything straightened out
in
1993.  Arguably, if you look at the recent BSD news  you'll see it still
seems unclear between all of the BSD factions.

2. It's BSD.  Ok... I realize that for most that is a good thing....
however,
as a commercial Unix developer, I can safely say that SysV interfaces
were what everyone was using.... shoot... even Sun gave up when the
created
their alliance with AT&T which ultimately produced Solaris (which would
have
been very SysV.4 if AT&T and Sun hadn't broke ties toward the end of its
development).  Linux of course is NOT SysV.4, but the interfaces are
POSIX and the SysV bunch drove POSIX... not the BSD guys.  It's a lot
easier
to port a SysV program to Linux than to port to BSD (BSD is better about
this now I believe, but certainly not in 1993).

3. ...this I learned much later...
Linux comes out with some really cool stuff.  Granted there are parts of
BSD that are very nice, but people really go wild with Linux!  (for some
that may be a con rather than a pro point.... but I love to see free
innovation!).  I hear if you don't mind missing some of the bells &
whistles,
BSD is supposed more "rock solid" (when things don't change much, they
do
tend to harden though).

I would not be running any GNU software at home if it weren't for Linux.
But I cetainly won't mind if you call it GNU/Linux.... just don't think
it should be one of the number one issues.  I still think work on the
Hurd
is continuing just because of this "naming" issue....

I doubt you would see too much GNU software at all without the Linux
kernel.
IMHO,
Chris

Steve Baker <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>  said:
...snip...
> No - it absolutely isn't.  GNU deserves at least as much (and perhaps
> much more) credit than Linus for what happened.  But Linus deserves
> more credit than his lines-of-code count would imply.  Without the
> Linux Kernel, people would be running GNU tools on...what?
> 
> * HURD - I don't *think* so.  That has been churning for longer
>   than I can remember - and how many machines have you ever seen
>   running it?
> 
> * BSD - Possibly, but the impression I get is that BSD only became
>   popular outside of VAX minicomputer users once Linux lead the way.
> 
> * Minix - Maybe.
> 
> * Windoze - Probably.
> 
...more snip...