--- Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> On Monday, 16 December 2002 at  7:32:56 -0800, Jason
> R Thorpe wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 04:36:00PM +0530, Ram
> Chandar wrote:
> >
> >> .....
> >> explaining how  UNIX began,  how Net/2 tapes 
> helped see the  birth of
> >> 386BSD, what BSD was and how BSD was exploited by
> Proprietary Software
> >> companies like Sun  Microsystems, how GNU was
> born  and the concept of
> >> .....
> >>
> >> Well, I know that the word "exploitation" is
> illegal, as use, if any,
> >> is completely valid as per the BSD license.
> >>
> >> But did they use any code from any
> (Free,Net,Open)BSDs at all?
> >
> > Well, Sun's BSD-based OS existed long before any
> of the free BSD
> > projects did.  And back then, BSD wasn't "open
> source" in the sense
> > that it is today -- it required a license from
> AT&T, since it still
> > had AT&T code in it.
> 
> More to the point, Sun did BSD a great service. 
> It's completely
> inappropriate to call it "exploitation".  If Sun
> hadn't based its
> operating system on 4.2BSD back in the early 80s,
> BSD may never have
> become as well known as it is.  Yes, others, notably
> DEC, also used
> BSD, but they were copying Sun.

Other than taking the source code without giving
credit, how is it possible to "exploit" BSD code? I
thought one of the feathers in the cap of the BSD's
was that so many commercial products cite the BSD
license. That's acknowledgement that there isn't any
better way to do whatever they decided to use isn't
it? Seems like the opposite of exploitation to me...

Andy

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