A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Mikhail Ramendik]

Hello,

It's somewhat strange to read through debates on the supposed offer for
BSD-licensing the Linux kernel for $$$, for quite some time, with nobody
noticing that the operation would be totally redundant.

A Unix-like kernel, ported to many platforms, well written, well
supported, actively developed, and widely used, is already available
under this license. You can download it from http://www.netbsd.org . 

(FreeBSD and OpenBSD are ported to a less extensive list of platforms,
thus NetBSD).

Now if it lacks some driver or feature that is necessary for the
potential purchaser, the said purchaser will spend the money in a much
wiser way by contacting the developers of the Linux driver/feature, and
asking them to port that code to BSD, under the BSD license, for $$$. 

A side effect would be *huge* popularity of the project in the BSD
community. They've been losing out "the masses" to Linux due to the
latter's commercial success; and they believe (go ask them!) that the
BSD general design is actually better than the Linux one. Big commercial
support for BSD might be seen as a long-awaited revolution, at least by
them. 

This is especially interesting doe to the remark that "some other
enterprising individual will replicate similiar code". There's your
similar code under the BSD license. *All*, 100%, of a big, nice, usable
kernel!

Yours, Mikhail Ramendik
REALLY curious why BSD has not popped up in the discussion before...

P.S. I am neutral on the technical merits of BSD vs. Linux; I use Linux,
but the sole reason is better distro support.

Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Matt Kavanagh]

> REALLY curious why BSD has not popped up in the discussion before...

Perhaps no-one else wanted to troll the LKML.

Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 16:30, Matt Kavanagh wrote:
> > REALLY curious why BSD has not popped up in the discussion before...
> 
> Perhaps no-one else wanted to troll the LKML.

Perhaps because it is lacking the buzzword factor in certain
departments.

	Bernd
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
mobil: +43 664 4416156                 fax: +43 1 7890849-55
          Embedded Linux Development and Services

Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Lee Revell]

On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 13:39, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 16:30, Matt Kavanagh wrote:
> > > REALLY curious why BSD has not popped up in the discussion before...
> > 
> > Perhaps no-one else wanted to troll the LKML.
> 
> Perhaps because it is lacking the buzzword factor in certain
> departments.

Slow day, huh?

Lee

[OT] Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Kyle Moffett]

On Oct 10, 2004, at 06:41, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:
> Big commercial support for BSD might be seen as a long-awaited
> revolution, at least by them.

Err, it's already happened.  Mac OS X is BSD-based and open
source, and it has a pretty large amount of commercial support
(see Apple's Mac OS X Server).  I think I recall some recent
statistics that showed that OS X has the largest market share of
any of the BSDs, but I could be wrong.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett

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Re: [OT] Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Christoph Hellwig]

[it's getting really offtopic now, but anyway..]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2004 at 05:34:58PM -0400, Kyle Moffett wrote:
> On Oct 10, 2004, at 06:41, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:
> >Big commercial support for BSD might be seen as a long-awaited
> >revolution, at least by them.
> 
> Err, it's already happened.  Mac OS X is BSD-based and open
> source, and it has a pretty large amount of commercial support
> (see Apple's Mac OS X Server).  I think I recall some recent
> statistics that showed that OS X has the largest market share of
> any of the BSDs, but I could be wrong.

MacOS X only has some BSD heriate, but lots of guts from Mach and other
funky things.  And large parts are not BSD licensed but under Apple's own
pseudo-Free Software license.

Re: [OT] Re: A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Lee Revell]

On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 17:52, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> [it's getting really offtopic now, but anyway..]
> 
> On Sun, Oct 10, 2004 at 05:34:58PM -0400, Kyle Moffett wrote:
> > On Oct 10, 2004, at 06:41, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:
> > >Big commercial support for BSD might be seen as a long-awaited
> > >revolution, at least by them.
> > 
> > Err, it's already happened.  Mac OS X is BSD-based and open
> > source, and it has a pretty large amount of commercial support
> > (see Apple's Mac OS X Server).  I think I recall some recent
> > statistics that showed that OS X has the largest market share of
> > any of the BSDs, but I could be wrong.
> 
> MacOS X only has some BSD heriate, but lots of guts from Mach and other
> funky things.

4.4BSD was based on Mach.

Lee