VanLUG Email Archive
> Linux probably caught people's attention because of its novel open
> development model.
It's hardly a novel model. The idea of making code freely available
has been around for decades, and the BSD group made the code they'd
written freely available starting in the 1970s, well before Richard
Stallman started GNU.
The other part of this model, cranking out many new versions very
quickly, is somewhat dicy. As I pointed out before, this creates
problems of its own; more information is on www.linuxbase.com. Just
to quote a bit, Mark Bolzern, of Linux International, states
Linux also needs to be a slower moving target with both slow
stable (updated for bugs/problems only) and fast development
tracks just as the kernel itself has.
[from http://editorials.freshmeat.net/mark980522/]
This is something that the BSD folks have been doing for years.
> * the Linux open development model <=> the free economies of the West
>
> * the BSD development model <=> the centrally planned economies of
> cold war Eastern Europe.
I'm sure it's a fun analogy, but it's fatally flawed. The BSD
development model is just as open as Linux's, except you've got a
choice of three kernels to contribute to, not just one. If you
can't get your code into any of them, you can start your own BSD
group if you want to, just as is the case with Linux. Yes, the BSD
groups are a lot more picky about what they let into their systems,
but we consider that an advantage.
cjs
Curt Sampson
Info at http://www.portal.ca/
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