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System administrator and former ski instructor, Albert Valbuena, has posted a table with accompanying analysis comparing several of the BSDs against Illumos and Linux. Among the topics in the analysis are licensing, how licensing is abused by companies, benchmarking, and of course a comparison of how various features are or aren't implemented across the spectrum.
The writing of this piece comes from the annoyance I get from reading about the prominence of Linux (the kernel) in almost all the computing spaces. And since electronic devices are gaining relevance in our daily lives and society in general this question of prominence of not just Linux but 'X' gains importance too.
More specifically this writing comes after reading someone who has participated in relevant software which is in a gazillion people's pocket. In a very unfortunate reply to the question: 'What are the advantages Linux has over BSD now?' the individual in question (which I'd like to preserve his identity) replied something close to (I do paraphrase): Linux receives much more investment from companies and therefore more paid developers are in it, plus BSD's feature parity with that of Linux doesn't hold.
This is mainstream opinion. Linux is better than anything else and money is poured in constantly, more than in other platforms. And aside this is not true, this is not based in facts but on feelings. Most GNU/Linux distributions are very average on many aspects. The fact they run on many servers on this planet and many developers work on them, doesn't make them better than 'X'. They are popular but that's it.
The individual in question did not, because he could not, point to relevant feature differences bettween the two operating systems.
Now go back to the top of this article and start checking features in a specific OS and start comparing, from that fastly written, from the top of my head, chart. Have fun doing that.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday November 06 2019, @04:38AM (2 children)
If Unix had been released under GPL, would we be here talking about it? I first went online with a BSD 4.3 based TCP/IP stack and am posting this with a BSD 4.4 based stack. That freedom to tweek and keep closed the stack while needing to inter-operate was one of the things that allowed the internet to take off. Companies could quickly have a working stack without too much worry in a time when the GPL was new and frowned upon by big companies.
There's other examples of successful BSD or similar licensed standard software, zlib (including zip) for example is still perhaps the most used compression library/program.
Personally I think both BSD and GPL have their places with LGPL being a good compromise at times. I also at times find the GPL too strict, can't link with, for example, openssl even if distributing all the sources.
Personally, I like the idea of keeping source open and no matter what the license, I treat open source as GPLish but sometimes I don't release failed experimental source if the license allows it, as in why bother with a crashy program until its working, though if someone asked and I had it, I'd share but sometimes you try something and it don't work so you try something else.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 06 2019, @06:34PM (1 child)
A definite point. There are lots of edge cases, and the LGPL has a wide range of reasonable uses. But it UNIX had been GPL, there never would have been a Linux developed. The LGPL would still be needed for libraries of various sorts. And the BSD + trademark would be needed for interfaces and language definitions. And proprietary would still exist for those who felt that the best choice. I'm really not sure of the justification for the pure BSD, except that public domain is pretty much impossible any more until the copyrights expire. And "trade secrets" would still exist...though I'm not sure why they should have any legal basis, with works being automatically copyright.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:41AM
There might have been a Linux that no one heard about and faded away like so many experimental kernels that people write to scratch an itch.
Public domain also has a big problem with people stealing it and copyrighting it. Try making a Snow White movie and be prepared to spend a lot of time in court with Disney for example.