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FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

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Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#61

Post by 4ad »

belorn wrote: post #60
4ad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is it a natural distinct difference when talking about licenses, and when picking software licensed under one of the two types? Of course there is. When I write some software project, of course I want it to be under a specific license, for example BSD. If I chose a BSD license I can't accept GPL patches because that means I can't chose what license I distribute my own software, I have to make it GPL. As the author,…

A distribution is not based on patches - its based on picking software packages which to bundled together into a working operative system. But okay, lets go with the distributions desire to chose what license to use. Who cares about the license? The whole point of pragmatism winning over idealism is to achieve a set of practical effects, regardless lofty concept such as "freedom of choosing license". A distribution i…

BSDs are not distributions. They are complete operating systems. They don't pick software packages, they develop almost all necessary software themselves (notable exceptions include gcc which the BSDs are trying to get rid of).

BSDs are pragmatic in that they don't restrict their users in their usage of the provided code. That's how Cisco's IOS and Juniper's Junos can exist.

The BSD ports contain many GPL software and non-GPL software (including closed source graphics drivers) that you can install on your own. They are not part of the base operating system.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#62

Post by belorn »

4ad wrote: post #61
belorn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A distribution is not based on patches - its based on picking software packages which to bundled together into a working operative system. But okay, lets go with the distributions desire to chose what license to use. Who cares about the license? The whole point of pragmatism winning over idealism is to achieve a set of practical effects, regardless lofty concept such as "freedom of choosing license". A distribution i…

BSDs are not distributions. They are complete operating systems. They don't pick software packages, they develop almost all necessary software themselves (notable exceptions include gcc which the BSDs are trying to get rid of). BSDs are pragmatic in that they don't restrict their users in their usage of the provided code. That's how Cisco's IOS and Juniper's Junos can exist. The BSD ports contain many GPL software an…

Some believe that permissive licenses are good because it do not restrict their users. Some believe that copyleft licenses are good because it do not restrict users of derivate version. Both are views, rather than practical actions. They are just thoughts about the promised land that licenses might give.

The parent post talked about porting hardware drivers from Linux to BSD kernel. The BSD project decide against it, citing the license as reasons. As a result, BSD users goes without because the drivers are not of the right license.

Pragmatism: Based on practical uses and successes rather than in terms of believing.

Idealism: Mentally constructed ideas on how things ought to be best. Its priorities what it believes over practical gain.

Deciding against practical gain because of an mentally constructed idea is Idealism over Pragmatism.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#63

Post by 4ad »

belorn wrote: post #62
4ad wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSDs are not distributions. They are complete operating systems. They don't pick software packages, they develop almost all necessary software themselves (notable exceptions include gcc which the BSDs are trying to get rid of). BSDs are pragmatic in that they don't restrict their users in their usage of the provided code. That's how Cisco's IOS and Juniper's Junos can exist. The BSD ports contain many GPL software an…

Some believe that permissive licenses are good because it do not restrict their users. Some believe that copyleft licenses are good because it do not restrict users of derivate version. Both are views, rather than practical actions. They are just thoughts about the promised land that licenses might give. The parent post talked about porting hardware drivers from Linux to BSD kernel. The BSD project decide against it,…

Porting a GPL driver to BSD helps only a few people (those who have the particular hardware) to the detriment of every contributor and every consumer of the code (like Cisco, Juniper and Apple).

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#64

Post by belorn »

4ad wrote: post #63
belorn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some believe that permissive licenses are good because it do not restrict their users. Some believe that copyleft licenses are good because it do not restrict users of derivate version. Both are views, rather than practical actions. They are just thoughts about the promised land that licenses might give. The parent post talked about porting hardware drivers from Linux to BSD kernel. The BSD project decide against it,…

Porting a GPL driver to BSD helps only a few people (those who have the particular hardware) to the detriment of every contributor and every consumer of the code (like Cisco, Juniper and Apple).

How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver. Are you implying that Cisco, Juniper and Apple don't have the expertise to exclude drivers that they don't want?

You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound. It takes a quite fundamental approach to ignore practical use over idealism present in a license text.

Not that this discussion matter much... FreeBSD has a linux compatibility layer, which mean they can often run said GPL drivers through its port system. Its only with the base system that useful drivers get thrown out with the bath water in favor of license purity.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#65

Post by 4ad »

belorn wrote: post #64
4ad wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porting a GPL driver to BSD helps only a few people (those who have the particular hardware) to the detriment of every contributor and every consumer of the code (like Cisco, Juniper and Apple).

How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver. Are you implying that Cisco, Juniper and Apple don't have the expertise to exclude drivers that they don't want? You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound. It takes a quite fundamental approach t…

> How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver.

No, it doesn't work like that. You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL.

> You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound.

Aside from the fact that sound works better in FreeBSD compared to Linux (because of OSS4) and that graphics is at least on par with Linux (or better; the proprietary FreeBSD driver continues to work without recompiling the kernel shim every time the kernel is updated), you are completely missing the point. Some guy who complains on the Internet that FreeBSD doesn't work on his laptop is of no value to FreeBSD. Valuable users are those who contribute code, those who run large installations, and those who use the code to build their products. These always take priority and every decision happens with them in mind, not random dudes on the Internet. You're complaining about sound and graphics? I'm having a hard time believing this is a serious discussion, why not complain about the lack of sound and graphics on a PIC32 microcontroller.

> FreeBSD has a linux compatibility layer, which mean they can often run said GPL drivers through its port system.

No, this is impossible. Linuxemu is a compatibility layer for Linux user-mode binaries. It emulates the Linux system call interface. It cannot be used with Linux drivers. As mentioned above, the driver model is very different between different operating systems.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#66

Post by belorn »

4ad wrote: post #65
belorn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver. Are you implying that Cisco, Juniper and Apple don't have the expertise to exclude drivers that they don't want? You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound. It takes a quite fundamental approach t…

> How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver. No, it doesn't work like that. You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL. > You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound. Aside from the fact that sound wo…

> You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL.

That is factually wrong. You are perfectly fine in keeping the rest of the kernel under BSD. GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore.

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854519/gpl-component-in-...

Or this almost 2 year old answer on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359524

> Linuxemu is a compatibility layer for Linux user-mode binaries. It emulates the Linux system call interface. It cannot be used with Linux drivers.

Quoting Luigi Rizzo:

  I decided to start working on an emulation layer that would let
  us recompile the linux source code on FreeBSD, and provide a 
  sufficiently complete emulation of the kernel APIs so that 
  device drivers (or at least certain classes) could be used 
  without modifications to their source code.
-> http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/freebsd/linux_bsd_kld.html

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#67

Post by GalacticDomin8r »

belorn wrote: post #66
4ad wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is that to the detriment of every contributor? They can simply opt out of using that driver. No, it doesn't work like that. You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL. > You are trying to decide for those "few" people that they are better off without working drivers. Maybe some people do like having working graphic cards or working sound. Aside from the fact that sound wo…

> You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL. That is factually wrong. You are perfectly fine in keeping the rest of the kernel under BSD. GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854519/gpl-compo…

> That is factually wrong.

That answer is factually wrong.

Did you even bother reading the sources you cited or ever read the GPL? The first couple links side with the OP and the third doesn't address the OP's point.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#68

Post by belorn »

GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #67
belorn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL. That is factually wrong. You are perfectly fine in keeping the rest of the kernel under BSD. GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854519/gpl-compo…

> That is factually wrong. That answer is factually wrong. Did you even bother reading the sources you cited or ever read the GPL? The first couple links side with the OP and the third doesn't address the OP's point.

> Authors of individual files are clearly free to release their own work under BSD even inside such a GPL-licensed compilation, and if someone takes out all GPL code, the result can be distributed under BSD license.

> BSD doesn't need to "relicense" anything as the license to the existing code already permits combining with the GPL.

I don't see how it can be made any more clear. If you remove the GPL code, it no longer need to be under GPL. Did you bother to read the sources, and do you have any sources to support your clearly false claims?

The third link was about the linux emulation laying being used to including linux drivers into freebsd through the port system. You said it was impossible, yet they did it. The impossible happened, and is/was used for USB support particularly.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#69

Post by 4ad »

GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #67
belorn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL. That is factually wrong. You are perfectly fine in keeping the rest of the kernel under BSD. GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore. See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854519/gpl-compo…

> That is factually wrong. That answer is factually wrong. Did you even bother reading the sources you cited or ever read the GPL? The first couple links side with the OP and the third doesn't address the OP's point.

Don't bother. Look at his comment history; he seems to be a complete anti-BSD zealot and spreads FUD about the BSD projects and BSD licenses.

As for linux compatibility, the provided link has nothing, nothing whatsoever with linuxemu, the Linux API compatibility layer provided by the FreeBSD base system. I won't bother anymore, as by reading his post history it's obvious he mixes BSD technology and terminology because he is completely unfamiliar with the concepts he speaks about.

Re: FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 1 now available

#70

Post by GalacticDomin8r »

belorn wrote: post #68
GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is factually wrong. That answer is factually wrong. Did you even bother reading the sources you cited or ever read the GPL? The first couple links side with the OP and the third doesn't address the OP's point.

> Authors of individual files are clearly free to release their own work under BSD even inside such a GPL-licensed compilation, and if someone takes out all GPL code, the result can be distributed under BSD license. > BSD doesn't need to "relicense" anything as the license to the existing code already permits combining with the GPL . I don't see how it can be made any more clear. If you remove the GPL code, it no lon…

Do these words look familar?

> GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore.

Perhaps you should read your own work before replying.

> You said it was impossible, yet they did it.

O'rly? Where was that?

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