Subject: Re: Solaris becoming free a good thing for *BSD?
To: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
From: Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 11/22/2004 18:02:22
On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 01:56:31 +0100 (CET), Hubert Feyrer
<hubert@feyrer.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Andy Ruhl wrote:
> > Could this be a good thing for the *BSDs?
> 
> If "the *BSDs" can take code, i.e. if it is under a license compatible
> with the *BSD project's license handling, then this will definitely be a
> good thing. I'm not sure if that will happen, though, seeing all this IP
> and patent talk originating from Sun recently.
> 
> An "open source" operating system where you can only look at the source
> but aren't allowed to use it and pass it on is useless to BSD (and Linux).
> 
>   - Hubert

Yeah, I'm with you on the other problems, but what I was getting at is this.

I personally can't stand it when I'm running Linux and I have to troll
around the internet to find some piece of software that works. The
alternatives are either to build all the source myself and manage it
that way (not a good proposition from a sysadmin perspective), or
possibly run pkgsrc which I honestly haven't tried on anything but
NetBSD.

If Sun can latch onto this "all from one source" thing, and people
decide they like that, I see that as a benefit to *BSD. When they get
tired of Solaris or just decide that they want to hack code again,
then they have another alternative.

Andy