Why the FreeBSD license will not be changing

jrh29 at alumni.cwru.edu jrh29 at alumni.cwru.edu
Thu Jan 10 14:47:49 PST 2008


On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 11:34:59AM -0500, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote:
<snip>
> 
> And that is fine as long as people do not start to use it for *mission
> critical* apps... once this starts to happen there is real money and
> real jobs at stake and to some extent people would be reluctant to use
> a product that is treated as hobby (this is why windows is still the
> dominate OS... see
> http://www.detroitguy.com/2007/12/21/the-truth-about-linux/)... do you
> really want people who think war is fun running the DoD?

So your entire purpose of starting this thread is to say that "FreeBSD
will only be commercially viable if it's done the commercial way"?
Sorry, but proof that it's not the case exists in many places, you've
named one yourself -- Yahoo!.  Juniper, Apple, Cisco, and many others
also use FreeBSD and base their entire revenue stream on products based
on FreeBSD, and other BSD, code.

If I had more time available, I would contribute to FreeBSD.  As it
stands I have many other projects that are longer in the making.
However, I have submitted patches and bug reports, and they're all
answered in a reasonable time, or filed away for when developers get
enough time to look at them.

Guess what -- the Linux kernel is developed the exact same way.  If you
submit a bug report, there's no guarantee that it will be responded to
and fixed immediately, even though a large number of the contributors
_are_ paid by RedHat, SuSE, Mandriva, etc.  It just isn't possible.

> 
> Purely from my own personal self interest I would actually like to see
> FreeBSD and all other OS's fail... I am making these purposes for
> idealistic reasons only (and likelly to my material harm a few years
> down the road)
> 

I think we can all see this appears to be your ultimate goal, you're
taking a pretty heavy-handed approach to reaching it too.

> >
> > Now please, go away and stop putting your plans for whatever
> > project under whatever culture you're trying to establish, under
> > our banner, on our mailing lists.

I second, third, and fourth this.

- Justin


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