Subject: What's in a name? (was: NetBSD: Certified mom-ready.)
To: Bob Nestor , Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
List: current-users
Date: 04/20/1999 12:30:12
On Monday, 19 April 1999 at 19:21:24 -0500, Bob Nestor wrote:
> Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> wrote:
>
>>> It sure doesn't look that way to me.  Though they have always spent a lot of
>>> effort to make it look so at a casual glance...
>>
>> The general masses seem to know about OpenBSD more than they know about
>> NetBSD.  I know, it's hard to judge that .... but for example,
>> regarding the User Friendly cartoon we saw a little while ago, it was
>> FreeBSD versus OpenBSD ... why wasn't it FreeBSD versus NetBSD?
>
> How much of this is caused by the names?  FreeBSD is obviously "free",
> OpenBSD is obviously "open", but what is NetBSD?   A Network BSD?  That
> doesn't sound free.

That can work both ways.  On the FreeBSD lists we sometimes get people
saying "why should I use FreeBSD if it doesn't have networking".

The biggest problem I find with the names is that it's difficult to
find a term to describe the three "free" BSDs (see the problem?).
Call them "open source" BSDs and you're not much better off.  In many
ways, NetBSD is the best of the three names.

Greg
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