Intel Has Another Developer Working Now Working On FreeBSD Support

[stormcrow]

the only real major players who don't / haven't pushed back into the main tree are Sony and Nintendo.

most companies that use BSD code willingly give back to the community

Neither of these statements can be proven. Logically, those that use free source code but never give anything back to its upkeep or betterment are entirely unknown. Who uses FreeBSD? Lots of companies. How many give anything back? Some. That's the best that can be said. It's also a problem Linux and many free/libre projects have. The GPL doesn't require contributions to be returned to the public and upstream if the binaries are never distributed outside the user's walls. The difference is GPL advocates rightly believe it tends to level the playing field between users and corporations. BSD advocate rightly contend that their license allows the greater freedom to choose for themselves whether to contribute or not. It's a fundamental difference in philosophy that will unlikely ever be resolved. But I do get tired of hearing from BSD licensed projects that corporations "take" and don't contribute. If you don't like it don't use the BSD license. Yes, it's that simple.

There are corporations that see the value of giving back to those that make their infrastructure or product possible. I applaud them regardless of motivation. There are those that refuse to do so, that's not surprising. In a ruthless corporate world of business, it's a bit naive to expect good citizenry. Kinda why we have laws and regulations to protect consumers.

[jacob]

Its infantile code of conduct. SJWs ruin everything.

And its childish fanboyish community. Reminds me of the Linux zealots cca 1995.

[jacob]

Awwwww. Show me where the code of conduct hurt you, sad little boy. You weren't allowed to push your alt-right maga bullshit, I assume? Oh, sorry ... you don't contribute to shit either way, do you? You just defend the right of other hypothetical alt-right tools - who allegedly have the talent to contribute to something - to abuse others contributing.

Or, more likely, the OP, just like me, has no time for pseudoscientific (or rather anti-scientific) garbage about gender fluidity, Orwellian newspeak enforcing the use of imaginary pronouns that are not part of the English language, and walking on eggshells among Special Snowflakes who see signs of white supremacy in every bug report.

[dkasak]

Or, more likely, the OP, just like me, has no time for pseudoscientific (or rather anti-scientific) garbage about gender fluidity, Orwellian newspeak enforcing the use of imaginary pronouns that are not part of the English language, and walking on eggshells among Special Snowflakes who see signs of white supremacy in every bug report.

You too? Wow, the pathetic brigade are out in force today! What community were you contributing to, and how did all the bullshit you complained about actually pan out in your experience? Or are you, like most of your ilk, raging against injustices in your own retarded mind?

[jacob]

You too? Wow, the pathetic brigade are out in force today! What community were you contributing to, and how did all the bullshit you complained about actually pan out in your experience? Or are you, like most of your ilk, raging against injustices in your own retarded mind?

The question was what was wrong with FreeBSD, so here are a few answers. If that's too much to handle for your fragile mind, you can retreat into your Safe Space and spend the next two weeks crying and watching videos of kittens. You have nothing to worry about, no one is coming for you.

[Guest]

Plenty of corporations and businesses use Linux for free and never contribute anything back either. Now, if you're talking about them taking the source code, modifying it internally and not pushing those changes backup then you may have an argument. However, Netflix, Juniper, and NetApp are major sponsors and often do push code back into the main tree. If you look at the commit history and "Sponsored by" tags. Do they have proprietary bits they hang on to? For sure. Would those proprietary bits make any difference to you or I in our every day use of FreeBSD? Probably not. I think the only real major players who don't / haven't pushed back into the main tree are Sony and Nintendo. Intel certainly provides plenty of drivers updates and changes to make sure their hardware works.

One could easily argue that if FreeBSD didn't exist those same corps would certainly not have used Linux due to the GPL license and its aggressive Borg like license.

Not that Intel cares, but thanks anyway Intel.

Strawman. When comes to FreeBSD nobody has to give anything back. You see this with leeches like Apple. If Linux' license is aggressive it's only aggressive toward thieves. Good to know freebsd boys like stealing. Facts says for themselves: Linux has FAR more support than FreeBSD ever had. It's mainly thanks to it license. And what can be improved? GPL over corporate friendly bitch license and there are more areas that needs to be improved like: security and code quality (even trivial bugs present in code due to lack of manpower and lack of interest), drivers (graphics!), schedulers (no, one doesn't fit all), file system (zfs is ok, but something lighter for desktop would be nice and hfs* sucks), more responsive kernel (RT capabilities), better scalability (DragonflyBSD doesn't mind learning from Linux, but it seems FreeBSD doesn't want to improve from some reason), support graphical environments developers - they receive dozens of reports from Linux users, but nearly none from *BSD, so they don't care too much about supporting it.

[stormcrow]

Good to know freebsd boys like stealing. Facts says for themselves...

How about this fact: You can't steal what's freely given. (BSD license = freely given, just one step short of public domain)
Or how about this one (at least in the US): Copyright infringement is neither stealing nor theft. (SCOTUS case Dowling v. United States, 1985)

Fact based opinions: FreeBSD and the other BSDs' adoption in the early days (early 90's) was somewhat hindered by USL v. Berkeley Software Design (1992) casting doubt over the copyrights for code in the Berkeley Software Distribution. The software code that FreeBSD is a descendant from. That lawsuit was settled in 1994 and the terms were finally released in 2004 by the Berkeley Regents. Linux was first released in 1991 and people quickly took notice. I remember first downloading it sometime in early 1993. In November 1994 FreeBSD 2.0 was released with the USL claimed files removed and replacements coded from scratch. Back then it was still the wild west with software. Software licensing was often ignored and the UNIX code trees had been floating around universities for years. This is what got USL in trouble because contributions muddled the copyrights to the point where there was no way to determine who owned what. This was the environment Linux first released into. FreeBSD's lineage came directly from the Berkeley Software Distribution. But in some ways that was also its weakness. BSD was the old school, old busted if you will. Linux, also free (of charge as well as available source code), was the new hotness. Not many cared about the license outside of the FSF. So, new hotness, didn't cost major bucks for a license, took off like a rocket. I encountered the first commercial version of Linux on a DEC Alpha 3100 roughly 1996. It never stopped growing the userbase, even when SCO Group launched its lawsuits.

Do some companies and corporations choose Linux because of the GPL? Yes, for various reasons. Do all? No. Do some people not give much of a care about which license they use? Certainly. You fit the tool to the job at hand. The rest is up to the lawyers.

Also, all this talk about the FreeBSD code of conduct? The toxic tone of your post and those like it is exactly why it was adopted. You have a right to express yourself, this is true. But likewise no one else has to listen to your expletive laced rant if they don't want to. Your right to speech doesn't trump a person's right to not listen or deny you a forum. How one expresses oneself is as important in gaining and keeping an audience as the content.

[aht0]

Pretty funny reading.

If company does not want to contribute back, it will not - regardless of a license. It either throws lawyers on it or would circumvent GPL in a way that you have exactly nothing to do with released "sources" - which are for example provided in a unusable form (no instruction, dependent components are closed source or something else) but nobody can claim sources weren't made available. What you can do with these? Nothing.

About Code of Conduct and SJW (Social Justice Warriors). Why do you think you are any better? LOL. Just different kind of lunacy - bash any non-linux/non-GPL OS/software piece because it dies not fit your vision of "properness". You are exactly the same, just "fighting" for different ideas but attitude is exactly the same.

About infantile behaviour and unfriendly BSD folks. There are very few IT forums which are more toxic than Phoronix and it's predominantly Linux-crowd.

Ponder that. I am still laughing.

[jacob]

There are very few IT forums which are more toxic than Phoronix and it's predominantly Linux-crowd.

One of them being forums.freebsd.org.

[Awesomeness]

If FreeBSD developers actually used it on their PCs, FreeBSD's desktop usability would improve in no time but the sad reality is that a sizable number of them just use Macs and iPhones and code on FreeBSD for server and embedded use only.

This is from Euro BSDCon 2001: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Albums/bsd...11112#Photo-19

This is a slide from a keynote at Euro BSDCon 2014: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/jorda...?cb=1420957209

Dogfooding results in software getting better because there are bugs that you'll only notice when you use an OS all the time.