Somebody was kind enogh to forward Charles' flame-bait to me.  I'll
see if I can't manage to respond in a rational manner.

<<On Sun, 2 Jul 1995 11:38:34 -0400, "Charles M. Hannum" <mycroft@ai.mit.edu> said:

> it.)  So far, the only `interesting' foreign program that FreeBSD has
> run is the Linux version of DOOM.

I have heard from people who are using the SCO emulation to run a
commercial database system (don't remember precisely which one).
Indeed, the SCO emulation has been around for quite a bit longer than
the Linux emulation (on the order of ten months to a year).

> But this has come at a cost -- GPLed code and other aggressive
> licensing terms

So what?  If you don't like the licensing terms (and I don't either),
then don't use the frobs that require GPLed drivers.  The only thing
presently in the FreeBSD kernel source tree covered by the GPL is some
guy's ISDN driver, which I very much doubt anyone would miss if it
went away tomorrow.

> BTW, it's also worth noting that major components (not the least of
> which is the shared library system) were taken wholesale from NetBSD
> to be used in FreeBSD.

Nonsense!  You know as well as I do that when Paul started down this
road he explicitly told everyone involved that he intended to
cooperate with both groups.  (I can dig the appropriate messages out
of year-old e-mail archives if you insist.)

> It's really a matter of goals.  The FreeBSD team is trying to compete
> with Linux at a feature level.

It sure would be nice if Charles could avoid making nonsense
statements about the goals of a group of which he is not a member
and to whose discussions he is not privy.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman   | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ... 
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
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