VanLUG Email Archive
> Well, you don't have to convince the whole BSD world, you just have
> to convince one of the three BSD distributions. BSD is not as
> monolithic as you make out. Also, there's nothing stopping you from
> doing your own BSD distribution, should you not like the ones out
In fact, there is nothing stopping you from making your own proprietary OS
based on BSD code.
> there. I think that the fact that we don't have a zillion different
> distributions is a testement to the good design of the userland,
> and what is and isn't included in it.
BSD doesn't have a zillion different distributions? That's a good one!
BSD has a zillion different organizations with many distributions each!
Let's see, there is OpenBS, Net BSD, FreeBSD, BSD/OS... Then there
are operating systems that were derived from BSD code like SunOS,
ancient HP-UX, ...
Would the real BSD please stand up?
> And, as I've mentioned before, the fragmentation caused by the
> number of Linux distributions out there causes its own problems.
> You can take a binary compiled for NetBSD 1.0 and run it on any
> NetBSD system out there, so long as it's not been mucked up too
What about running them on BSD/OS? Or OpenBSD?
> much by the user. Under Linux? Well, you start hoping you have the
> right libc.
This is understandable; libc is under transition right now. This will stabilize
and there will only be one, once again. With the new libc come new benefits;
thread safety, integrated POSIX threads support, compliance with new UNIX
standards.
What steps are the various BSD sects taking toward Unix98 compliance?
> That's ok. I'm not asking you to be interested in it. I'm just
> responding to yet another propagation of the myth that BSD is more
> `closed' than Linux.
You mean there aren't any proprietary operating systems that are based on
BSD code? It's a question of which BSD derivative is open and which isn't.