Proprietary? Not according to the court case settlement. FreeBSD is the work of a cast of thousands who contributed to the
evolution of the system from MH1127 code to BSD4.1c and Net2 through SunOS and onward.
Further, it is exactly as the name sez: FreeBSD is available to anyone and everyone to do with as strikes their fancy, subject to the one constraint that credit must be given to the various authors
so that contributions can be recognized if they wish to be.
What FreeBSD is NOT is a social engineering tool carefully designed to force very specific, tightly controlled behavior on several generations of software authors. Worse, the siren song
of RMS is based on the insane doublespeak that following the RMS edicts somehow conveys “freedom”, the freedom to join his church and worship his social theology.
As for agreeing with Stallman about anything, much less the promotion of “Arbeit macht frei!”, no! Not now, not ever.
Unix became free in the strongest sense of the word when the original SOSP paper appeared in CACM. It described a powerful set of simple, but very subtle ideas that transformed operating systems. Stallman can make all the demands he wants to be venerated as a luminary, but in reality he is the Knight Errant who believes controlling intellectual output of others is the path to Nirvana. And he has the unmitigated gall to call it “freedom”.
You worded it correct, Bryan. I acknowledge the massive influence Unix had at the computer industry. But the free BSDs are not Unix and GNU's not Unix — as we all know. There is a problem with Unix on which Stallman and the free BSD people agree on. It's proprietary.
Proprietary? Not according to the court case settlement. FreeBSD is the work of a cast of thousands who contributed to the
evolution of the system from MH1127 code to BSD4.1c and Net2 through SunOS and onward.
Further, it is exactly as the name sez: FreeBSD is available to anyone and everyone to do with as strikes their fancy, subject to the one constraint that credit must be given to the various authors
so that contributions can be recognized if they wish to be.
What FreeBSD is NOT is a social engineering tool carefully designed to force very specific, tightly controlled behavior on several generations of software authors. Worse, the siren song
of RMS is based on the insane doublespeak that following the RMS edicts somehow conveys “freedom”, the freedom to join his church and worship his social theology.
As for agreeing with Stallman about anything, much less the promotion of “Arbeit macht frei!”, no! Not now, not ever.
Unix became free in the strongest sense of the word when the original SOSP paper appeared in CACM. It described a powerful set of simple, but very subtle ideas that transformed operating systems. Stallman can make all the demands he wants to be venerated as a luminary, but in reality he is the Knight Errant who believes controlling intellectual output of others is the path to Nirvana. And he has the unmitigated gall to call it “freedom”.
You worded it correct, Bryan. I acknowledge the massive influence Unix had at the computer industry. But the free BSDs are not Unix and GNU's not Unix — as we all know. There is a problem with Unix on which Stallman and the free BSD people agree on. It's proprietary.