by redmail.netbsd.org with SMTP; 20 Feb 1999 17:53:04 -0000
	id 419C7182; Sat, 20 Feb 1999 12:53:02 -0500 (EST)
To: davidw@debian.org
Cc: netbsd-advocacy@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: NetBSD/Linux 'distribution'
References: <19990219211709.A25512@debian.org>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: 20 Feb 1999 12:53:01 -0500
In-Reply-To: David Welton's message of "Fri, 19 Feb 1999 21:17:09 -0600"
Message-ID: <871zjlc682.fsf@jekyll.piermont.com>
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David Welton <davidw@master.debian.org> writes:
> Someone brought up the idea of using most of the current Debian
> userland tools on top of a BSD kernel, which of course sparked
> discussions about which one might be most appropriate (at this point,
> I should note that no one has actually *done* anything about this, and
> I sort of doubt it will ever be more than speculation).

I doubt anyone will get angry or upset about this, but I'm not
entirely certain of what benefit the project, as you've stated it,
would bring. NetBSD is not (as Linux is) just a kernel -- it is the
full system, including userland. Replacing NetBSD's userland doesn't
strike me as being particularly useful, especially given how well
integrated the two are.

On the other hand, I don't see any reason why working with interested
people from Debian on various projects of mutual interest would be
bad.

To clarify, btw, there isn't any real hostility about Linux in most of
our community -- we just tend to have very different ideas about how
we want to get things done. Linux tends to aim towards
usable/featureful, while we tend to aim towards clean. We also try to
avoid GPL because we explicitly want people to be able to build
proprietary software with our work -- something RMS would be upset
about, but which we don't mind.

Perry