BSDs Struggle With Open-Source Graphics Drivers

[brosis]

If GPL is academic, what research project was it part of?
BSD was part of TCP/IP, virtual memory, file system, sockets, ARPANET... remember?
GNU/GPL was not part of a research project, hence no innovation, hence not academic.

Research of userspace utilities, compiler and linker, runtime environiment, even kernel.
Presence of innovation also does not mean its academic. Academic = supported by academic instance such as university.

1) You think you can just disrespect history saying BSD was copypaste? please do yourself a favor and read: http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensourc...k/kirkmck.html
2) No, GPL is not academic, as pointed earlied. BSD, on the other hand, was. Also, I'm not an extremist when it comes to open/closed source; I think open-source is valuable, and personaly I had learned a lot from it, but I don't see closed-source as an enemy, as is usually seen by the GNU/GPL camp.
3) I don't find GPL's protection mechanism as freedom, nor BSD's abscense of them as anti-free.

1) BSD was using AT&T code = copypaste. When AT&T bite their sorry ass, they went ahead and rewrote huge part, but then settled an agreement. Settlement is not law, it is custom case.
2) Earlier point invalidated. I am not an extremist either, but I see closed source as enemy, because it inserts a lot of blackboxes requiring one-sided trust. Trust is a weakness. That means, closed source is much lower quality from my perspective, but it is not so criminal that it should be prohibited.
3) GPL protection = freedom protection. BSD = no protection, only advertizement = value of something written on public wall. If someone dislikes 1st, but likes 2nd so much that he carries a migration, that one clearly does not want freedom protected. Single goal - they want to relicence it later, and thus invalidate BSD license anyway. Call Apple as I requested earlier on opinion about GPL. The answer will be "GPL is too limiting (... freedom to relicence, ie remove original license)". There are no other exceptions. This happened by BSD folks themselves, so BSD is favoring anti-free. With BSD license stripped, there is no BSD - only EULA. With GPL, there is GPL and hence its conditions (freedoms) further apply. Fact.

Yes, it proves it and means a lot. It means that the main motivation for BSD has always been freedom, not support for companies. Put in another way: it is possible to get BSD code and close it, but that was never the purpose of BSD; as I said, BSD PREDATES all this. At most it can be seen as a side effect.

Anarchy, not freedom.
BSD goal was to support companies, but not *any companies*, rather closed source companies.
Because, otherway they would use GPL to actually stand behind their advertized freedoms.***
1) they dont
2) they cooperate A LOT with Apple
*** Single possible exception would be "We don't care enough to switch".
With recent migration from GPLv3 to BSD for everything, they have invalidated this point.

If this is the case, I see no problem with these; for me BSD represents freedom, but I also acknowledge the importance of GNU/GPL in the history of FOSS. I also give them their deserved merits.

To me BSD represents anarchy, while GPL represents freedom. I favor freedom over anarchy anyday, but I am not to forbid anarchy.

You are free to think like that. Now, I see a simple, short license like BSD/MIT represent my ideals of freedom more than GPL, which is a license so complex that you can't think about doing something with them without the help of a lawyer.

Incorrect!
Simple short licenses are *the* source of trouble, because they are not detailed and can be bent the way one sees fit.
Ask any lawyer!
GPL license is detailed, lacks excessive complexity and had maintained general direction since its first version: "To advertize and to protect four freedoms".

Something like this:
"The way it was characterized politically, you had copyright, which is what the big companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free software's way of making sure they can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had what we called ?copycenter?, which is ?take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want.?"
?Kirk McKusick, BSDCon 1999

Note 1: "Big companies" != "proprietary companies"
Note 2: Copyleft does not prevent proprietary companies to use its code. Copyleft prevents them to lock that specific code up.
Note 3: 'Copycenter' hence is worthless
Note 4: In 2012, the 'copycenter' will not work due to patents. Copying anything as in "putting fire with more gasoline" does not work anymore, as gasoline becomes patented.
Note 5: Even in 1999 Berkley's 'copycenter' was inefficient and underpowered due to n1&2, with even its supporters fighting for a few copies in order to just lock them down.

I do not lie about freedom for stating what it means TO ME; you lie about it by stating what IT SHOULD MEAN TO EVERYBODY. I do not troll GPL; as said above, I give them their deserved credit.
I don't depend on "GPL people" so I would give a fuck if they give a fuck.

They give a fuck(4), because you gave a fuck(3), because they gave a fuck about BSD folks(2), that gave a fuck about them(1), not vice vesa. In chronological order (1) should excuse and stop trolling, not (4). This is your first lie.
You associated freedom with anarchy and continue to do so even after multiple corrections. This is your second lie.
Licenses are constructed in a way, to be understood completely and unambiguously. Your interpretations of "TO ME" or "TO EVERYONE" do not matter - this is your third lie. Even every sane country has constitution, first declarations of which protect freedom. And NOT anarchy.

I think it is possible to have a free Unix even without GPL, although I must admit that the license has been a great strenght behind Linux' success. My point was that, while BSD was motivated by academy, by research, GNU/GPL on the other hand had more "emotional" motivations as a response for proprietary companies. This, I believe, invalids the claims that BSD supports closed-source companies.

Without GPL, we will have BSD. Do you like BSD? I don't.
Linus made a mistake by using "GPL2" instead of recommended "GPL2 or later" and is now unable to gather all approvals for all the contributions in order to replace that with "GPLv3" or later". GPL stayed inline with the policy, by patching an exploit that prevented to use the four freedoms, so its perfectly fine to accept "GPL2 or later", even copyright assignments would be excessive as they introduce much bigger exploit, allowing to relicense all the code under *any* license.

And invalidation is not valid, because every human research is emotional. Humans tend to *strive* for goals. I doubt robots do the research in Berkley. And if one simply wants to publish an invention, one does declarative publication under public domain. Why BSD license? My understanding is that BSD license allows copyright declaration, which is lucrative if one seeks a company to monetize the development and has his copyright mentioned everywhere. The further development is then taken into EULA and original project either aborted (pre 2000) or completely forbidden to use and develop (post 2000 due to patenting).

GNU goal was to create guaranteed freedom operating system. Even today, they pursue the goal with Hurd, as Linux has accepted blobs in kernel; just like all xBSD. Yes, ofc Linux can be built without blobs as well as xBSD, but the difference is that GNU does not accept *any* closed source components within operating system limits, protecting from worked the AT&T exploit. In userspace, one can run whatever he wants; in kernelspace currently, if Nvidia strips its binary driver, Linux is left without any full-featured graphics stack. There are no binding agreements between Linux Foundation and Nvidia to my knowledge and I am sure there *are* agreements between Microsoft and Nvidia for that matter, although very likely subject to NDA. The goal of GNU was to write an OS that can't be broken or taken back all of the sudden, and thus they are on the right track.

Well, I would say to this that I prefer a license that lets me decide WHAT is freedom (you could GPL the BSD) instead of a license that FORCES a definition of it (GPL is GPL now and forever). You can decide what freedom means to you, but trying to force everybody to think like this is, to me, something stupid.

I'd love you to read http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensourc...k/kirkmck.html and tell me that the BSD folks weren't fighting for freedom if you dare.

Yes, you prefer anarchy, not freedom. Nothing wrong with that, personal choice. Freedom is ability to do things unrestricted. Using this freedom to restrict the freedom = remove freedom is anti-freedom act. It is outside of freedom, but inside of anarchy (everything allowed).

Perhaps the reaction to GPL3 can be seen extreme, but, have you really gone through that license? I give you again the case of Linus Torvalds: http://www.informationweek.com/softw...pocr/229215444
So, do you think that you, FSF, GNU, GPL or Richard Stallman really have the last word in this? You should stop thinking of yourselves as owners of the truth.

I am not FSF member. FSF, GNU and RMS are not "owners of truth".
If you dislike the license - do not use it.
If you do not understand the license - read their FAQ and ask them questions.
They have kept their line since version 1.0 of the license, that is "guarantee of availability of the four freedoms". Incremented license revisions just added more details and patched the exploits, ie improved fitness of the license to match the goals. Nothing more.
Linus is a living person, so he may have own opinion on topic, which does not qualify to be true. For example, he gave Nvidia a finger for refusing to opensource their graphics blob (which is paared only with Nvidia cards) while stating he is not a gamer (ie user of this case).

Specifically, in the article:
GNU: updated license patched known exploit that prevented use of four freedoms. Stayed true to its vector.
--
Linus: called that "doesn't match what I think"(1), stated ".. is morally"(2), stated "I think..."(3), stated "it is okay to control people's hardware"(4), stated "religious fanatics"(5), stated "... and totalitarian states"(6).
(1)&(3) - invalid, because subjective opinion. Requires objectively formulated policy instead.
(2) - invalid word in scope of jurisdiction, this word belongs to religion and is subjective.
(4)&(6) - self-excluding and self-contradicting
(5) - applied to (2) makes Linus himself religious fanatic. Without application, does not belong to jurisdictional scope - laws are not prayers, lawyers are not religious fanatics.

What Linus do is to damage himself. GPL guarantees four freedoms and seeks basement in local laws, local laws may require censorship of content for children. GPLv3 will hence have no power, trying to allow children utilize four freedoms in order to watch 18+ movie. So, Linus should not worry about GPLv3 as his children will be safe and will not be able to sue him.

I don't understand this statement; your are indeed defining freedom.
I think the term 'freedom' is one of the most controversial used throughout history, and neither of us are in the position to say what it is and what it isn't. The most we can do is say what represents closer our ideal of freedom

If you can't unambiguously describe a subject, you can't use it in law making. I prefer freedom, you prefer anarchy - I assume this is correct?

But remember that a null pointer is actually a pointer to address 0x0; it is fundamentally invariable from any other pointer.

As in any word is wrapper formed from a combination of letters. The meaning of word, the content its wrapped around, ie address its pointing to is what makes the word make sense. Using null pointer for anything, except initialization of something, has no sense due to absent content. When anarchy happens, it is instantly replaced by actual content in the moment this content (actor) appears.

You are already assuming a definition for freedom I do not agree with, hence I do not agree with your conclusions. (what if anarchy is the only true freedom?).

Anarchy is the true freedom, unorganized chaos. It is unavoidably coupled with "nobody exists/acts" condition.
If someone appears or acts, this condition is broken as he will bring own agenda favouring something over another.
Anarchy is incompatible with any life form, but is good for raw base material.

Also, notice that not everyone agrees with Stallman and the GNU/GPL project; it is not a BSD-exclusive thing. For example, look at the way Linus Torvalds thinks: https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/25/161
Torvalds is very critic with this whole issue: he likes GPL2, but does not agree with FSF, Stallman, GNU/GPL in all they say.

Nobody expects everyone to agree on one subject, otherwise there would be no need to build jails or murder civil population refusing to support local gang
Torvalds disagreement is because he is indirectly payed by TiVO, who earn money selling devices, that exploit GPL, invalidating granted freedoms.
GPL backfired patching the case, Torvalds sobed. Instead, he should have developed the way to sell the devices in question, without breaking user rights. He should have seen it and not cooperated with both the robbers and the police.

[LightBit]

Nobody expects everyone to agree on one subject, otherwise there would be no need to build jails or murder civil population refusing to support local gang
Torvalds disagreement is because he is indirectly payed by TiVO, who earn money selling devices, that exploit GPL, invalidating granted freedoms.
GPL backfired patching the case, Torvalds sobed. Instead, he should have developed the way to sell the devices in question, without breaking user rights. He should have seen it and not cooperated with both the robbers and the police.

So you think Torvalds (and others who don't like GPLv3) should be murdered or go in jail?
Or you think Stallman (and others who like GPLv3) should be murdered or go in jail?

[Sergio]

Research of userspace utilities, compiler and linker, runtime environiment, even kernel.
Presence of innovation also does not mean its academic. Academic = supported by academic instance such as university.

What? there was no research going on in GNU; it was an attempt to create a "free Unix", to replace existing kernel, systems programs and userland with free alternatives. This is not research.
Presence of innovation is precisely what academy is all about... that is what research really is, and that is what was going on with BSD Unix with support from DARPA; they were doing research, i.e innovating. GNU has never been academic.

1) BSD was using AT&T code = copypaste. When AT&T bite their sorry ass, they went ahead and rewrote huge part, but then settled an agreement. Settlement is not law, it is custom case.
2) Earlier point invalidated. I am not an extremist either, but I see closed source as enemy, because it inserts a lot of blackboxes requiring one-sided trust. Trust is a weakness. That means, closed source is much lower quality from my perspective, but it is not so criminal that it should be prohibited.
3) GPL protection = freedom protection. BSD = no protection, only advertizement = value of something written on public wall. If someone dislikes 1st, but likes 2nd so much that he carries a migration, that one clearly does not want freedom protected. Single goal - they want to relicence it later, and thus invalidate BSD license anyway. Call Apple as I requested earlier on opinion about GPL. The answer will be "GPL is too limiting (... freedom to relicence, ie remove original license)". There are no other exceptions. This happened by BSD folks themselves, so BSD is favoring anti-free. With BSD license stripped, there is no BSD - only EULA. With GPL, there is GPL and hence its conditions (freedoms) further apply. Fact.

1) BSD was basically Unix plus several funcionality. Lots of the innovatios from BSD research were incorporated into AT&T Unix as well. Their goal for 4.4BSD was to provide an AT&T-free distribution. How is this not fighting for freedom? Also, do you think an operating system can be rewritten overnight? You are clearly underestimating history and those who fought for your freedom.
2) Point keeps valid; BSD was born as a research project, while GNU was born as an anti-proprietary project.
Now, let me ask you something. When you fly a plain, do you ask the engineers for the 'source code' of the plane? do you ask civil engineers for the 'source code' of the building you live at? do you ask your car manufacturer for the 'source code' of the car your life depends on? So, why is software so special?
3) As I said, if BSD is favoring anti-free (assuming this is true, based on what you think freedom should be), this is only a side effect; as pointed earlier, BSD and its whole licensing comes from academy and the interest for giving a free Unix to the world. I value all the efforts from the BSD folks, unlike you. Now, I don't believe BSD is favoring anti-free, because I believe that BSD gives you the 'freedom' to decide what ultimately freedom means to you. No, I don't think it is anarchy.

Anarchy, not freedom.
BSD goal was to support companies, but not *any companies*, rather closed source companies.
Because, otherway they would use GPL to actually stand behind their advertized freedoms.***
1) they dont
2) they cooperate A LOT with Apple
*** Single possible exception would be "We don't care enough to switch".
With recent migration from GPLv3 to BSD for everything, they have invalidated this point.

You should stop saying that BSD goal was to support companies; I have provided enough evidence that BSD was basically an academic system used for research, and that 4.4BSD was an effort to provide a free (AT&T-less) Unix system. What the fuck companies have to do here?

2) they cooperate A LOT with Apple

Could you please back this up with something?

To me BSD represents anarchy, while GPL represents freedom. I favor freedom over anarchy anyday, but I am not to forbid anarchy.

Ok; for me BSD represents freedom, while GPL represents totalitarianism.

Incorrect!
Simple short licenses are *the* source of trouble, because they are not detailed and can be bent the way one sees fit.

Indeed as part of the freedom.

GPL license is detailed, lacks excessive complexity and had maintained general direction since its first version: "To advertize and to protect four freedoms".

GPL protects what it thinks freedom should be, thereby IMPOSING their meaning of freedom to everybody, just like a totalitarian state.

You associated freedom with anarchy and continue to do so even after multiple corrections. This is your second lie.

No; you have arbitrarily associated BSD with anarchy and GPL with freedom. Therefore, what you say is not a correction, but rather an OPINION. For me BSD represents freedom GPL represents totalitarism/communism. Why should you be right and not me?
Therefore you are the closest to lying; you are making assumptions you shouldn't.

Licenses are constructed in a way, to be understood completely and unambiguously. Your interpretations of "TO ME" or "TO EVERYONE" do not matter - this is your third lie. Even every sane country has constitution, first declarations of which protect freedom. And NOT anarchy.

So what if a license defines freedom as the ability to jump on one feet? We are not on court here, you know. So, if I live in Cuba, should I adopt their IMPOSED notion of freedom?
Again, BSD represents freedom to me, while GPL represents absolutism, totalitarism, etc. I don't care if GPL contains the word 'freedom' in it.

Without GPL, we will have BSD. Do you like BSD? I don't.

I like BSD. I also admire what Linux and GNU have done.

Linus made a mistake by using "GPL2" instead of recommended "GPL2 or later" and is now unable to gather all approvals for all the contributions in order to replace that with "GPLv3" or later". GPL stayed inline with the policy, by patching an exploit that prevented to use the four freedoms, so its perfectly fine to accept "GPL2 or later", even copyright assignments would be excessive as they introduce much bigger exploit, allowing to relicense all the code under *any* license.

Linus is a lot more open-minded than FSF/Stallman croud; he clearly states his philosophical views about GPL3, FSF, etc. He obviously doesn't like things IMPOSED; he have stated it explicitly.

And invalidation is not valid, because every human research is emotional. Humans tend to *strive* for goals. I doubt robots do the research in Berkley. And if one simply wants to publish an invention, one does declarative publication under public domain. Why BSD license? My understanding is that BSD license allows copyright declaration, which is lucrative if one seeks a company to monetize the development and has his copyright mentioned everywhere. The further development is then taken into EULA and original project either aborted (pre 2000) or completely forbidden to use and develop (post 2000 due to patenting).

Yes, let us ask ourselves: Why BSD license, considering the origins and history of BSD?
I think that, as academics, they were primarily interested in innovation; they were doing top-class research for DOD. Obviously there were different times, and you have to acknowledge this. They probably wanted their work to be free, but weren't interested in licensing or political issues; they were too busy doing research. But to say that while doing research they were thinking about helping (non-yet existant) proprietary companies, and thinking about how they could be more anti-free is just lame, EXTREMELY lame.

GNU goal was to create guaranteed freedom operating system. Even today, they pursue the goal with Hurd, as Linux has accepted blobs in kernel; just like all xBSD. Yes, ofc Linux can be built without blobs as well as xBSD, but the difference is that GNU does not accept *any* closed source components within operating system limits, protecting from worked the AT&T exploit. In userspace, one can run whatever he wants; in kernelspace currently, if Nvidia strips its binary driver, Linux is left without any full-featured graphics stack. There are no binding agreements between Linux Foundation and Nvidia to my knowledge and I am sure there *are* agreements between Microsoft and Nvidia for that matter, although very likely subject to NDA. The goal of GNU was to write an OS that can't be broken or taken back all of the sudden, and thus they are on the right track.

So I'm not free to install Nvidia or ATI blobs? I don't like that kind of impossition.

Yes, you prefer anarchy, not freedom. Nothing wrong with that, personal choice. Freedom is ability to do things unrestricted. Using this freedom to restrict the freedom = remove freedom is anti-freedom act. It is outside of freedom, but inside of anarchy (everything allowed).

No; again, BSD represents freedom to me, hence I prefer freedom.
"Freedom is ability to do things unrestricted. Using this freedom to restrict the freedom = remove freedom is anti-freedom act."
I think this is a valid proposition, although it is debatable. First, if freedom really is the ability to do things unrestricted, and given that what you call "freedom remove" is not fundamentally different from doing any other thing, according to your definition, removing freedom is part of your freedom. This, of course, assuming that freedom indeed is what you claim, which I doubt.

Now, you must consider the following: a BSD-licensed software IS FREE; it is there and will always be there, independent of a company taking it to do some closed work. So, where is the freedom taken away, if the original code is (and will always be) available? What the company is doing is making use of the freedom of the code to make their own closed-source product, but that, in no way, removes the freedom (availability, if you wish), of the original code.

I am not FSF member. FSF, GNU and RMS are not "owners of truth".
If you dislike the license - do not use it.

If they are not owners of truth, then why do they get to IMPOSE what freedom is and what it isn't?
Same goes for BSD: Don't like it, don't use it.

If you do not understand the license - read their FAQ and ask them questions.
They have kept their line since version 1.0 of the license, that is "guarantee of availability of the four freedoms". Incremented license revisions just added more details and patched the exploits, ie improved fitness of the license to match the goals. Nothing more.
Linus is a living person, so he may have own opinion on topic, which does not qualify to be true. For example, he gave Nvidia a finger for refusing to opensource their graphics blob (which is paared only with Nvidia cards) while stating he is not a gamer (ie user of this case).

Linus' opinion is very representative due to what he means to the software world. He tends to be more critique than most of the FSF/Stallman followers that take his word as some kind of absolute truth not worth even questioning.
I don't believe in the so called "four freedoms", so I don't believe GPL aims for freedom.

Linus: called that "doesn't match what I think"(1), stated ".. is morally"(2), stated "I think..."(3), stated "it is okay to control people's hardware"(4), stated "religious fanatics"(5), stated "... and totalitarian states"(6).
(1)&(3) - invalid, because subjective opinion. Requires objectively formulated policy instead.
(2) - invalid word in scope of jurisdiction, this word belongs to religion and is subjective.
(4)&(6) - self-excluding and self-contradicting
(5) - applied to (2) makes Linus himself religious fanatic. Without application, does not belong to jurisdictional scope - laws are not prayers, lawyers are not religious fanatics.


What Linus do is to damage himself. GPL guarantees four freedoms and seeks basement in local laws, local laws may require censorship of content for children. GPLv3 will hence have no power, trying to allow children utilize four freedoms in order to watch 18+ movie. So, Linus should not worry about GPLv3 as his children will be safe and will not be able to sue him.

Stop talking about "four freedoms" as if they were indeed THE four freedoms. I don't believe in those freedoms, hence I don't believe in your freedoms, hence I have a different notion of freedom. I DON'T AGREE WITH FSF/GPL/STALLMAN; they are forcing me to think like them, and I don't, so they are practicing totalitarism/absolutism. Is Stallman a god? No; he is just a person with an opinion, no different than me, no different than BSD guys. He DOES NOT represent freedom, at least to me, Linus and BSD guys.
Now, if your answer to any disagreement about this is "then you are an anarchist", you are just applying the same totalitarism/absolutism as FSF/Stallman, hence you are far from knowing what freedom really

If you can't unambiguously describe a subject, you can't use it in law making. I prefer freedom, you prefer anarchy - I assume this is correct?

I don't care about laws; humanity throughout history have questioned the true meaning of freedom. Just because there is definition in paper for the sake of law doesn't mean the problem is solved.
No, it is not; I pursue freedom.

As in any word is wrapper formed from a combination of letters. The meaning of word, the content its wrapped around, ie address its pointing to is what makes the word make sense. Using null pointer for anything, except initialization of something, has no sense due to absent content. When anarchy happens, it is instantly replaced by actual content in the moment this content (actor) appears.

In mathematical logic this is known as formalism; an alphabet, formation rules and axioms. Just syntax, no meaning. But a null pointer is actually a pointer to address 0x0, which is fundamentally invariable from a pointer to, say, 0xDEADBEEF. The convention that you talk about is exclusive of the C programming language and modern operating systems. In embedded environments, programmed in Assembly Language, however, I'm pretty sure a pointer to 0x0 (a null pointer) is in no way special.
Again, I do not defend anarchy.

Anarchy is the true freedom, unorganized chaos. It is unavoidably coupled with "nobody exists/acts" condition.
If someone appears or acts, this condition is broken as he will bring own agenda favouring something over another.
Anarchy is incompatible with any life form, but is good for raw base material.

Again, I do not defend anarchy.

Nobody expects everyone to agree on one subject, otherwise there would be no need to build jails or murder civil population refusing to support local gang

You say this while at the same time establish a whole bunch of arbitrariness, like what freedom should be to everybody, that GPL invariable represents this freedom while BSD represents what you call anarchy. I don't think you are really considering the diversity in though here.

[frantaylor]

What? there was no research going on in GNU; it was an attempt to create a "free Unix", to replace existing kernel, systems programs and userland with free alternatives. This is not research.

...

GNU has never been academic.

So let's see here, the otherwise-unknown art of text buffer management that emacs brought to the table, ALL of the work on gcc, the innovations in bash, guile's advances in dynamic language design, these things are not research??? Remember that all this stuff happened back in the 80's when Apple IIs were the desktop computer and MS-DOS was "state of the art".

And GNU has never been academic? Are you talking about the project that was started in a university research laboratory? The project that was nutured for many years by a tenured college professor? The project which employs mostly college students to do the grunt work? The project whose results are used for research and education all over the globe? This project has NEVER been academic?

WOW and you expect anyone to take you seriously?


WOW

[frantaylor]

anybody who thinks that gnu was not doing "research" they are clearly delusional

why don't you go back to 1986. Get yourself a nice sized text file, say a megabyte or two. Yeah, it's WAY bigger than your machine's available physical memory, back in 1986. Now I would like you to try to open and edit this document with ANY text editor program that was available in 1986.

you will find to your vast chagrin that emacs will be the ONLY editor that will edit this file that is bigger than your physical memory. tell us more about gnu does no research.

[Sergio]

So let's see here, the otherwise-unknown art of text buffer management that emacs brought to the table, ALL of the work on gcc, the innovations in bash, guile's advances in dynamic language design, these things are not research??? Remember that all this stuff happened back in the 80's when Apple IIs were the desktop computer and MS-DOS was "state of the art".

And GNU has never been academic? Are you talking about the project that was started in a university research laboratory? The project that was nutured for many years by a tenured college professor? The project which employs mostly college students to do the grunt work? The project whose results are used for research and education all over the globe? This project has NEVER been academic?

WOW and you expect anyone to take you seriously?


WOW

Didn't Vi already have that otherwise-unknown art of text buffer management? What research-level work in GCC? What research-level innovations in bash?
When I say research I mean: first, the purpose of the project and second, effectively the research-level things its development brought.
If GNU started at the University it doesn't necessarilly imply it was conceived for academic purposes; indeed it was not.
Rewriting user-space tools and a kernel isn't research either, even if done by students. Linux is also used as base system for doing research. This doesn't mean Linux is an academic project. The same goes for GNU.
But BSD was the system that connected to world; this was possible due to research.
If you consider the "innovations in bash" a research-level project, do you expect anyone to take you seriously?
WOW.

[Sergio]

anybody who thinks that gnu was not doing "research" they are clearly delusional

why don't you go back to 1986. Get yourself a nice sized text file, say a megabyte or two. Yeah, it's WAY bigger than your machine's available physical memory, back in 1986. Now I would like you to try to open and edit this document with ANY text editor program that was available in 1986.

you will find to your vast chagrin that emacs will be the ONLY editor that will edit this file that is bigger than your physical memory. tell us more about gnu does no research.

Are you talking about virtual memory? the same that was available since 1961 through the Atlas Supervisor? But virtual memory is completely transparent to applications, so yes, you could in theory edit a file bigger than the available physical space.

[frantaylor]

Are you talking about virtual memory? the same that was available since 1961 through the Atlas Supervisor? But virtual memory is completely transparent to applications, so yes, you could in theory edit a file bigger than the available physical space.

WOW how thick are you??? I am talking about a TEXT EDITOR! I am talking about MACHINES WITHOUT VIRTUAL MEMORY like PDP-11. Back in 1986 we were running UNIX and emacs and lots of other programs on PDP-11 systems with NO VIRTUAL MEMORY!!! OMG can you believe it!

I am talking about BUFFER MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE which was NOT AVAILABLE in editors like VI at the time. If you tried to use vi to edit a file bigger than RAM, it would just FAIL with an out-of-memory error BECAUSE THERE WAS NO VIRTUAL MEMORY!!! However emacs was VERY CLEVER in this reduced memory situation and could edit this file.

By the way, I LOVE how you assume that virtual memory was everywhere in 1986! Back in that time, virtual memory was not considered to be a real solution to anything at all. In order to have virtual memory you needed to purchase additional hardware that cost even more than the CPU and used more power than the CPU. It inserted wait states into your memory fetch cycles and it slowed your computer way down. Virtual memory was considered to be the "lazy way out" for people who were too stupid to fix their software.

Back in those days of 4 MHz processors and 250 ns memory cycle times, you needed lots of cleverness and RESEARCH if you wanted your program to run in any kind of sane manner. You couldn't just wait until next year and buy a faster machine, progress was much slower then.

[Sergio]

WOW how thick are you??? I am talking about a TEXT EDITOR! I am talking about MACHINES WITHOUT VIRTUAL MEMORY like PDP-11. Back in 1986 we were running UNIX and emacs and lots of other programs on PDP-11 systems with NO VIRTUAL MEMORY!!! OMG can you believe it!

I am talking about BUFFER MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE which was NOT AVAILABLE in editors like VI at the time. If you tried to use vi to edit a file bigger than RAM, it would just FAIL with an out-of-memory error BECAUSE THERE WAS NO VIRTUAL MEMORY!!! However emacs was VERY CLEVER in this reduced memory situation and could edit this file.

You said that only Emacs let you edit a file bigger that physical memory. So, suppose there was no virtual memory (PDP-11 HAD virtual memory in the form of segments). So, did Emacs invented overlaying? or perhaps bank switching? No. So, Emacs implemented a form of overlaying that allowed to edit a file bigger than physical memory without virtual memory? WOW, WHAT A TOP-LEVEL RESEARCH! HOW COULD I MISS THAT!

How thick are you...

Any way, I admire and value what the GNU folks have accomplished, but my point was that the GNU system wasn't meant to be a research-level system; its purpose was to provide a free Unix. Ok, so they did interesting things, maybe I wouldn't call that research, maybe you would. But in that respect, BSD and GNU were fundamentally different in that BSD was born as a research system.

[frantaylor]

the GNU system wasn't meant to be a research-level system

I have in front of me at the moment, a copy of the famous "Chine Nual", dated 1984. The preface to this document is the VERY FIRST PUBLIC MENTION of the gnu project:

"I believe that the commercialization of computer software has harmed the spirit which enabled such systems to be developed. Now I am attempting to build a software-sharing movement to revive that spirit from near oblivion"

WHAT is the "spirit" that develops systems??? It is RESEARCH! HELLO! What else is it?

and DO YOU SEE YOUR ERROR? You see GNU as a software project. It's NOT a software project. It's a project to invigorate software design. It's a project to get people thinking, to stir their brain cells and be better. YOU think it's about the software.

And by the way, WHAT DO YOU THINK HURD IS FOR, ANYWAY?? Do you REALLY think the developers have any intention of "shipping a software product"??? Hurd is a learning experience, it's a RESEARCH PROJECT, it's a sandbox for new ideas and experiments. It spins off ideas like FUSE that get integrated into other things.