FreeBSD 16 Retires the Last of Its GPL Code (phoronix.com) 49
FreeBSD 16 has removed the last GPL-licensed code from its base system, retiring the old GNU 'dialog' implementation after the installer moved to 'bsddialog' and the final dependency was disabled. Phoronix reports: This ticket to retire dialog was opened back in February while is now merged to the FreeBSD source tree for what will become FreeBSD 16.0. With dialog removed, the latest FreeBSD code now retires the GNU sub-tree of the FreeBSD base system now that no more GNU code remains. FreeBSD 16.0 is working its way toward release that is expected to happen in December 2027.
Context? (Score:2)
Re:Context? (Score:5, Funny)
If only there was something about FreeBSD that might provide a clue about what license they would be wanting the software to use...
Re:Context? (Score:4, Funny)
Eric.
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If only there was something about FreeBSD that might provide a clue about what license they would be wanting the software to use...
If the "Free" in its name means someone else can take the source-code, change it, and hide the changes from others, then it's no longer Free, is it?
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> That's why many commercial companies like to base their systems on FreeBSD.
Oh you were doing so well until then...
Curious actually to know whether FreeBSD is being used anywhere these days in a finished product? IIRC there was some firewall/router software based on it but for the most part everything, even the crap in your router, your phone, your SCSI controller, etc, is Linux.
Apple uses and supports FreeBSD (Score:3)
Curious actually to know whether FreeBSD is being used anywhere these days in a finished product?
Apple's macOS. Apple contributes code and employs some FreeBSD developers.
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Names you might recognize of include Juniper, Citrix and Netapp.
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Efficient IP's DDI/IPAM solution runs on top of FreeBSD 14.4
i tried paste the output of a CLI command to demonstrate but Slashdot will not let me post it
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Exactly. But you have to keep the original BSD license intact. You can modify the files, but you have to acknowledge, that you got them from FreeBSD. That's why many commercial companies like to base their systems on FreeBSD.
You're missing the point. Commercial companies can usurp the code without sharing back to the project that made their business possible. It's quite likely that a commercial company's version can dominate the market, thus strangling the original free version. In fact, this has happened many times. The GPL prevents that from happening.
BSD started out taxpayer funded (Score:2)
Exactly. But you have to keep the original BSD license intact. You can modify the files, but you have to acknowledge, that you got them from FreeBSD. That's why many commercial companies like to base their systems on FreeBSD.
You're missing the point. Commercial companies can usurp the code without sharing back to the project that made their business possible.
"Usurp" is mistaken. BSD code was originally written by the University of California, a publicly funded entity. The BSD license reflects this making the code accessible and usable by ALL taxpayers, which includes commercial companies.
It's quite likely that a commercial company's version can dominate the market, thus strangling the original free version. In fact, this has happened many times. The GPL prevents that from happening.
By being less free, of taking away options. The GPL is based on the "benevolent ruler" concept, not freedom.
Also, the GPL does allow companies to "usurp" code, as long as the company does not distribute the binary of that code. Put the code on a server and only let the publi
Re: Context? (Score:2)
Wasn't the advertising clause determined to be non free and long since removed?
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If the "Free" in its name means someone else can take the source-code, change it, and hide the changes from others, then it's no longer Free, is it?
You confuse the concept of "free" with a benevolent ruler who orders you to act in a certain way. Benevolence does not change the fact that you did not have the freedom to choose.
Also, if someone privately forks and does not share the code, no one has lost anything. The full code pre-fork is still available. Nothing contributed under a BSD license has been lost. Don't like what the fork author did, don't use their software, continue using the entirely free fork. See, you have a choice, that's freedom.
Re: Context? (Score:2)
You're right. It's the BSD part of the name that is the clue, not the Free part.
At least in the past "Free" was the copy lefted part of OSS software, with many OSS puriwta believing a BSD type licence was more Free as others thought it was less so.
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So the article says that it's now free of GPL. Great. So what was it moved to?
The one that the Regents of the University of California provided us so that publicly funded code would remain freely available to the entirety of the public, to all the taxpayers.
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The GPL is (intentionally) coercive, forcing those that use it to do something one might otherwise not do
Nonsense. Nobody is "forced" to incorporate GPL code into their project.
(although in practice, many of the large FreeBSD using organizations do end up contributing back
They're not obliged to do so, and many don't. With GPL, they must. That keeps the software free for others to do the same.
Your freedom is not always my freedom.
Whatever "freedom" means for a piece of software is determined by its author, not the user.
I am sure all your code, and all your employers code, is open source and GPL (or equivalent), and if not, you, yourself, do not actually believe in the freedom you are claiming is better.
You should be careful about making such a claim. I can believe in the freedom of the GPL and still respect the wishes of my employer. And I have worked for companies that have used software under a variety of licenses, includin
Must? (Score:2)
>>>With GPL, they must.
"Must" is doing an awful lot of work in that statement. I'm guessing that finding a blatant, longstanding, notorious GPL violator is easier than finding a penny on the street.
Re: Context? (Score:2)
Nonsense. Nobody is "forced" to incorporate GPL code into their project.
I may want to use the code modified and not share my modifications. The GPL prevents this.
Aside from the corner case of libraries incrementing proposed standards I think this is a plus, but it certainly is a restriction that a copy left license has and a BSD/MIT one doesn't.
GPL is software herpes (Score:3)
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In your world, Herpes makes you popular and desirable?
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No it is infectious and some thing to be avoided.
Oh, that explains why BSD which predates Linux is an also-ran, while Linux is the world's most popular operating system and many major contributors told us in so many words that they chose to contribute to Linux instead of BSD specifically because of the license.
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Oh, that explains why BSD which predates Linux is an also-ran, while Linux is the world's most popular operating system and many major contributors told us in so many words that they chose to contribute to Linux instead of BSD specifically because of the license.
Some of it is the licensing, with the BSD license having fewer restrictions on reuse, but a lot of it was the early fighting over Unix copyrights, including between AT&T and BSD, when Unix proved to be a viable commercial OS, like with 386BSD (which I used - yes, I'm old :-) ), rather than just a research and university item. While companies were fighting over who would control and profit from Unix, Linux got a head start actually being used. Both have their pros and cons and places where one may be
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Some of it is the licensing, with the BSD license having fewer restrictions on reuse, but a lot of it was the early fighting over Unix copyrights, including between AT&T and BSD, when Unix proved to be a viable commercial OS
That was a thing, but it was resolved well before Linux became popular.
Both have their pros and cons and places where one may be a better choice than the other.
IME FreeBSD is realistically almost all drawbacks because development happens on Linux. OpenBSD has its selling point I guess, but my personal experiences with it taught me that if you aren't qualified to fix your own problems with e.g. the kernel, you should avoid it. NetBSD has some meaning as the last available OS for a lot of old hardware, so I guess there's that? In-kernel ZFS is cool but hardly worth the hassle unless what you are
What the world wants is Unix on commodity hardware (Score:2)
Oh, that explains why BSD which predates Linux is an also-ran ... ...
That is a complete fluke, an accident. What the world wanted was Unix running on inexpensive commodity PC hardware. That's it. A certain type of OS on a certain type of hardware. Most do not give sh*t about the license and any political baggage that comes with it.
Both BSD and Linux were on track for this goal. BSD got sidetracked by a major lawsuit, it stalled the project. It let Linux win the race. Linux won due to an externality, their competition stalled by lawyers. It had nothing to do with the GPL,
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> That is a complete fluke, an accident
Are you sure about that?
The legal stuff was sorted out before either became popular, and BSD had the benefit of name recognition, 20 years of development (and thus a mature base), familiarity by academics across the world, and so on. While Linux was some hobby project written by an unknown programmer as a quick and dirty 32 bit replacement for the MINIX kernel so he could run MINIX with applications able to access gigabytes of RAM and be completely secured from one
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The legal stuff was sorted out before either became popular
The lawsuit occurred at a critical moment as both FreeBSD and Linux were becoming useable, 1992. There was an injunction against distributing source code.Corporations reluctant to adopt it given the uncertainty. This was a massive opening for Linux. I started using Linux around 1993. It was a godsend for grad school, my university had a BSD based program. At work many engineers were desperate for Unix on PC hardware. And for school and work, Linux was a fine Unix.
most popular operating system on Earth. While BSD was basically dead in the water by the early 2000s.
BSD today is bigger than Linux. macOS uses F
Re: What the world wants is Unix on commodity hard (Score:2)
"BSD today is bigger than Linux."
Hahhahahahahahbahahabbahaha
Re: What the world wants is Unix on commodity hard (Score:2)
"That is a complete fluke, an accident."
Completely wrong.
"What the world wanted was Unix running on inexpensive commodity PC hardware. That's it."
Right, the average user does not give a shit about the license. But wrong, because how they got it was from people who do care. BSD already existed and they could already be contributing to it, but they chose not to. And they made that choice specifically based on the license, which we know because so many major contributors told us so. You are ignoring what they
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Linux is certainly in a lot of places -- including on the laptop I'm writing this from. But BSD is as well, including on tens to hundreds of millions of devices that are running it without explicitly mentioning it, and of course on everything running a contemporary version of MacOS. Not to mention all the systems that are running OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or one of the other variants.
It would be an interesting exercise to try to enumerate all computing syste
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GPL is viral, but in the sense of HIV, not herpes. You absolutely know when you're doing something that could cause your code to be controlled under the GPL. Specifically, incorporating GPL source-code into your project.
In short, if your code becomes licensed under the GPL, it's because you want it to. No excuses.
I think I started this (Score:5, Interesting)
27 years ago, I wrote a clean implementation of grep, specifically for this purpose. It has since been adopted by (at least) FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Haiku, Minix, MacOS, iOS, and who knows what else. So this is really cool to see this.
Re: I think I started this (Score:2)
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HA!
Re:I think I started this (Score:4)
I wrote that line. But use the source. https://github.com/freebsd/fre... [github.com]
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I can't find it because your grep is not working ;-)
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Weird that Haiku picked it up, what with actual BeOS having been chock-full of GNU utilities. I know because I did the first released port of GNU file for BeOS.
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I just remember someone emailing me as a courtesy to say it was added. As someone who has maybe 10 minutes total clocked between BeOS and Haiku, I would have to take their word for it.
netcraft? (Score:2)
I was told that BSD is dead! Netcraft confirmed it!