Does anyone use FreeBSD?

[lonewolf]

Does anyone use FreeBSD?

[Akshay]

Some time back.

[akhilis2cool]

Does anyone use FreeBSD?

woh kya rehta

[lonewolf]

Does anyone use FreeBSD?

woh kya rehta

Its a Unix operating system meant for all kinds of computers including your normal PC. Its different from Linux.



And I love this little devil!

[ycr007]

I've heard abt (NetBSD & OpenBSD also) it but never used t...mebbe fl wud have



@Lone:I had this niggling doubt in my head for a while.I subscribe to some Tech Mags that used to give away two free cd's wth them.whenever there was a new (Flavour or variant?) of linux,or for that matter any free OSes,they used to provide it.I remember getting BeOS,then Caldera,Ubuntu,Mandrake,Red Hat,Gentoo,Debian,SuSe,Knoppix and more recently Fedora core 4.

What I wanted to know is,where is the Open source foundation (or FSF) heading with all these multitude of softwares ? agreed that there won't be a monopoly and high-cost-software & all that but looking beyond the GPL (is it?I'm so unsure abt all this) won't this create a sorta confusion in the minds of the end users like u n me? And in case of Linux Enthus like u n fl,there never is an agreement that 'Yes,THIS Flavour of Lnux is da best'.One Pumps for Debian whereas one roots for FC4



As I see,the underlying principle of FSF is

Free software is a matter of liberty not price. You should think of "free" as in "free speech"

Now thatz an entirely different meaning of "free" as from a Layman's pov.



One article I recently read was This

It talks about the 'Opening Up' of the intellectual property it also talks about the 'Lack of Originality' that is prevalent among the Open Source Community.



now the two paras above may seem in entirely different planes but are not too disconnected even.So,should the Open source ppl take it as a challenge and streamline their stuff and maybe decrease or amalgamate a few products to create a bigger entity? I'd just like to know from a person who is in the knowhow,as to how this would or could affect end users like me.

[cowboy]

Does anyone use FreeBSD?

Tried it ages ago when FreeBSD was unable to recognize either my SATA drive or my ext3 partitions. Are things any different now? Would like to give the devil a shot. Brian Behlendorf personally recommended me FreeBSD.

[lonewolf]

I've heard abt (NetBSD & OpenBSD also) it but never used t...mebbe fl wud have

FreeBSD is based on ports while Gentoo is based on portage; I'm not sure whats the difference of similarity. I've never known anyone who has used both, so I can't get a real world proper comparison.

What I wanted to know is,where is the Open source foundation (or FSF) heading with all these multitude of softwares ? agreed that there won't be a monopoly and high-cost-software & all that but looking beyond the GPL (is it?I'm so unsure abt all this) won't this create a sorta confusion in the minds of the end users like u n me? And in case of Linux Enthus like u n fl,there never is an agreement that 'Yes,THIS Flavour of Lnux is da best'.One Pumps for Debian whereas one roots for FC4

Yes, there are too many options; this is good in a way because you have hundreds of flavours to choose from, and bad because for the newbie, it will just make him more confused about what to use. Long ago, I switched from Mandrake to Debian as my primary operating system. I also dabbled quite a bit with other flavours except Gentoo, which I thought was too much of a hassle at that time (last year). I'm very happy with Debian and will probably stick with it for a long time.

A Linux newbie (regular Windows user) may be comfortable with Fedora or UbuntuLinux with the KDE desktop since he may find many things common.

As I see,the underlying principle of FSF is

Free software is a matter of liberty not price. You should think of "free" as in "free speech"

Now thatz an entirely different meaning of "free" as from a Layman's pov.

To be honest, I never really understood the difference between free software and GNU from the legal point of view. I just know about copyleft, which is free distribution of the software; that is the author writes the software and gives the source and binary out for free. Imagine Microsoft doing that with any of their softwares! Well, I wouldn't expect them to, because if they do, the M$ employees won't be millionaires anymore.

What the open source developers are doing is basically philanthropic. Some of the best softwares are open source and the best servers are open source. Yahoo! and Google run on Linux servers and run Perl and Python scripts. They use MySQL database for storing the content.

it also talks about the 'Lack of Originality' that is prevalent among the Open Source Community.

Yes, that is partially right. Many of the OSS are basically reinventions of the wheel, except that the wheel they create is free and you don't buy it from a shop. Also, he free wheel is better than the one you buy.



But there are many instances where commercial applications were copied from open source. They don't just copy the design, but rip off the code too. In early 2000, one of my friends wrote a module for an open source software and later that year, a commercial Windows application starting using that same feature. It was a direct rip-off. I won't name that company which ripped off my friend's modules. Its about time the open source community looked into something like intellectual property, to protect their free software being copied by software giants and then sold!



Did you watch the movie Anti-Trust? It is very relevant to this topic.

[cowboy]

FreeBSD is based on ports while Gentoo is based on portage; I'm not sure whats the difference of similarity. I've never known anyone who has used both, so I can't get a real world proper comparison.

Both Ports and Portage are package management systems. And they perform similar work - fetch the latest source code, compile it with optimizations and install the stuff.

To be honest, I never really understood the difference between free software and GNU from the legal point of view.

There's nothing much to understand. GNU is the free (as in freedom, not as in free beer) OS RMS started writing back in 1984. The only piece yet to come together properly is GNU HURD - the kernel. Simply put, GNU is an Operating System.

FSF is Free Software Foundation - started to spread out the word about free (again, as in freedom) software. Also, it provides legal sanctuary to the free software coders.

I just know about copyleft, which is free distribution of the software; that is the author writes the software and gives the source and binary out for free.

There's the ambiguity all over again. Here's the deal. Whenever GNU or FSF folks use the word "free", they are not referring to the cost (unless explicitly mentioned). It refers to the users' freedom to view, modify and redistribute a software.

Copyleft gives the users this freedom to modify the software and develop extensions. You can sell free software - but you *must* provide the source code along with the package or make it available through other means (download from net, CVS etc).

Yes, that is partially right. Many of the OSS are basically reinventions of the wheel, except that the wheel they create is free and you don't buy it from a shop. Also, he free wheel is better than the one you buy.

That's where I respectfully disagree. Most of the OSSs are there because the authors are not satisfied with the software already present. It's like designing a new wheel if you don't like the one in use. I might be using wooden wheels but you might like rubber ones

Linux started because some non-descript Finnish geek didn't like what was going on with Minix. I wouldn't call that reinventing a wheel.

But there are many instances where commercial applications were copied from open source. They don't just copy the design, but rip off the code too.

Some folks have started an organization to prevent this. I don't have the site bookmarked but try searching /. for violation of GPL and similar lawsuits.

In early 2000, one of my friends wrote a module for an open source software and later that year, a commercial Windows application starting using that same feature. It was a direct rip-off. I won't name that company which ripped off my friend's modules. Its about time the open source community looked into something like intellectual property, to protect their free software being copied by software giants and then sold!

It is perfectly legal as long as they credit your friend as the original author and include the copyright notice. If you use GNU/Linux, your system must be infested with those licenses already - "modifying/redistribution in any medium is permitted provided this notice is preserved verbatim". Your friend can sue them if they are not providing the source-code of his module along with their commercial software. I'm not really sure of that though. Will have to check it out.

Did you watch the movie Anti-Trust? It is very relevant to this topic.

Yep. Perfect.

[lonewolf]

cowboy, thanks for the info, and welcome to this thread!



Actually when I mentioned I didn't know the difference between free software and GNU from the legal point of view, I meant legal.



I'm talking about the laws and regulations in the US regarding GNU. I took this Computer Ethics course back in my university and we had a few group discussions on this. Some of the guest professors were experts in legal issues regarding software copyrights, patents and trademarks. There is a very thin line between everything and laws are still being changed. Yes, RMS is throwing his weight everywhere

Yes, that is partially right. Many of the OSS are basically reinventions of the wheel, except that the wheel they create is free and you don't buy it from a shop. Also, he free wheel is better than the one you buy.

That's where I respectfully disagree. Most of the OSSs are there because the authors are not satisfied with the software already present. It's like designing a new wheel if you don't like the one in use. I might be using wooden wheels but you might like rubber ones

Linux started because some non-descript Finnish geek didn't like what was going on with Minix. I wouldn't call that reinventing a wheel.

It was re-inventing the wheel, albeit a better kind of wheel



Torvalds wrote the code from scratch and the functionality of what he did was more or less the same as what was already existing.

[Akshay]

FreeBSD licensing allows you to use their codebase and develop your own applications/operating-systems and also puvlish such without publishing your source code. All it demands is that FreeBSD be given its due credit by mentioning the use of FreeBSD code in the about, launch, bootup, etc messages.



This is quite different from GNU licensing, because GNU demands source code be published alongwith binaries. In the past this used to scare the coprporate world, but IBM, Novell, Sun, Oracle and others are accepting this idea a lot more now.



Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the FreeBSD system have been networking startups. In my previous company we based our router development off FreeBSD. Juniper is one of the notable network companies whose operating system was based of FreeBSD originally, I don't if it still is.

[cowboy]

cowboy, thanks for the info, and welcome to this thread!

Actually when I mentioned I didn't know the difference between free software and GNU from the legal point of view, I meant legal.

I'm talking about the laws and regulations in the US regarding GNU.

You missed my point. GNU is a software. It is just like any other free software. Legally, the software is protected by a copyright and the copyright holder permits you to modify and redistribute (commerically or otherwise) the software provided that you give your users the same kind of freedom. For example, you can sell Linux but you cannot distribute it in a *binary-only* form. Also, if you are using the name "Linux" in a commerical product, you have to pay some fee to Linus Torvalds as Linux is a registered trademark of Linus.

Free Software Foundation is set up to take the idea of Free Software into a wider perspective. These software foundations are needed lest an individual might be harrassed legally. The code of Apache webserver is guarded by the Apache Foundation. That is, if an apache developer faces charges of stealing code from some commerical (non-free) software, the foundation is bound to help him.

I took this Computer Ethics course back in my university and we had a few group discussions on this. Some of the guest professors were experts in legal issues regarding software copyrights, patents and trademarks. There is a very thin line between everything and laws are still being changed. Yes, RMS is throwing his weight everywhere

According to RMS, it is the *ethical* responsibility of a programmer to make the source code available. Hoping to see some of those computer ethics courses in Indian Universities too.

[fl]

dint read the whole thread



but i can say that ports and portage are very similar

havint tried it yet

just got 6 new comps

wanted to build a gentoo cluster

but might install freebsd on one of them