FreeBSD's Executive Director Calls For Linux + BSD Devs To Work Together

[ryao]

Flicking through the slides, I didn't find much in terms of cross pollination between FreeBSD and Linux. It looks mostly like standard FreeBSD presentation boilerplate. Do developers from BSDs themselves regularly work together?

They tend to get drivers from each other. pf is from OpenBSD. NetBSD ports have been ported through pkgsrc to work on nearly all POSIX systems (with varying degrees of compatibility).

[bridgman]

It's impossible to retain a permissive license when you use GNU GPL. FreeBSD and the GNU operating system are incompatible, and the only way to collaboration is to move FreeBSD to GNU GPL.

That doesn't sound quite right... a number of the graphics drivers in the Linux kernel have MIT/X11 licensing. When you build them into a Linux kernel the result is definitely covered by GPL, but in isolation they keep their permissive license.

[Guest]

That doesn't sound quite right... a number of the graphics drivers in the Linux kernel have MIT/X11 licensing. When you build them into a Linux kernel the result is definitely covered by GPL, but in isolation they keep their permissive license.

If you want to contribute to both, you have to water down your work to a crappy permissive license. I don't think that's the right way to go, as you let corporations take your effort and use it to further their proprietary software.

[Guest]

The FSF disagrees with you:



https://www.gnu.org/licenses/bsd.en.html

I haven't said it's incompatible, but that due to it's lack of a copyleft it enables abuse, completely missing the point of GNU GPL.

[ryao]

I haven't said it's incompatible, but that due to it's lack of a copyleft it enables abuse, completely missing the point of GNU GPL.

You said:

"FreeBSD and the GNU operating system are incompatible, and the only way to collaboration is to move FreeBSD to GNU GPL."

That is not true. First, the GNU operating system is not relevant because it is kept on life support as an organ donor for others, so I am just going to refer to it as the GNU project. Second, the GNU project includes a X11 licensed component called ncurses:

https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

The GNU project has copyleft components, so you can tell them that they are "completely missing the point of the GNU GPL" too.

By the way, I would greatly prefer that well made software be used in critical systems where failures can cause people to die. Between a permissive license and a copyleft license when the designers of such systems are adverse to copyleft licenses, I prefer the permissive license. In automobiles for example, copyleft software licenses are banned by US federal law prohibiting manufacturers from making it easier to modify certain vehicle systems. If people's deaths from things like sudden acceleration could have been avoided by having OSS under permissive licenses, then using permissive licenses is a good thing. When "abuse" keeps people from dying, "abuse" is a good thing.

[ssokolow]

There is something to be said for their internet protocol stack, but as was said before, FreeBSD's 'rape my ass like Apple' license is a dead end.

How is the GPL supposed to work with code/developers that can set their house on fire at any moment? I think, bouncing ideas off each other is fine- but code swapping is not until Linux either decides to commit suicide or FreeBSD switches to a GPL fork.

You can't fork the GPL. Its text is licensed to you under the condition that you don't modify it to protect it from having people strip out the "no other restrictions" clause.

(Yes, I'm misinterpreting "GPL fork" for humor's sake.)

[ryao]

If you want to contribute to both, you have to water down your work to a crappy permissive license. I don't think that's the right way to go, as you let corporations take your effort and use it to further their proprietary software.

Would you be okay with them not taking your work in a way that causes someone to die because they implemented something inferior in a mission critical system?

That said, the benefits of the GPL are somewhat overrated. Companies that run websites and other network services don't have any reason to release any of their changes. The GPL is effectively the same as the 3-clause BSD license for them. They can "take your effort and use it to further their proprietary software". Companies that ship hardware using GPL software might publish the code, but unless they actually get involved with upstreaming it, releasing the source code is often fairly useless. Also, unless the copyright holders are willing to go to court over GPL violations, their software might as well be under the 3-clause BSD license because there is nothing you as an end user can do to force them to release their changes to GPL software.

[ryao]

I can think of Sony Interactive Entertainment using FreeBSD for the PS4 and Linux for their Gakkai streaming video servers but that's about it. I suppose my last company also used OPNsense firewalls in front of their Linux servers but it's not like we did much beyond the web UI.

They are using Gentoo Linux for Gaikai. Gentoo is the result of Daniel Robbins being inspired by FreeBSD ports.

[Volta]

pf, capsiculum and netmap are interesting.

Netmap is available on Linux, pf is slow.

[kpedersen]

you let corporations take your effort and use it to further their proprietary software.

Android, WSL and cloud services (FB, Google, Amazon) are a good example of the GPL license being used but corporations still taking the code and for all intents and purposes not allowing you to a) compile it and run it yourself, b) contribute c) change it.

You probably want to look into the less popular Affero GPL license if you think your code is so valuable and do not want to give people ultimate freedom.