# Why all of innovations come from elsewhere?



## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

My friend has a very strong hatred for FreeBSD. The reason he gives me is that OS just a copy cat and didn't invented anything. So he's not respect such OS and foretell that when there is nothing left for that copy cat to copy, it will just die because of shooting itself on the foot. Then he gives me examples. All of the selling feature of that OS, is taken somewhere else:



Spoiler



Jails: isn't it just poor quality clone of Solaris zones?

ZFS: of course a Solaris thing, now even have to keep it alive thanks for the mercy of the ZFS On Linux project!

Bhyve: poor quality clone of Linux KVM, and sucks.

Ports: source based Linux distros are not rare, but the fact is they [FreeBSD] created that ports system because they have no real package maintainers like Linux! Everything is keep by the mercy of those ports maintainers, and when the ports is unmaintained and no one step up to take over it, the ports is just deleted! How stupid! On Linux, we have real package maintainers, take care of hundreds of packages, and maintaining it well, so none is broken or outdated! Even if it [FreeBSD] is the first one to implemented the idea (the ports system), it's not necessary to be the leading of the game. Remember, first in, last out. The Gentoo ports system is much more sophisticated!

PKGNG: poor quality clone of Solaris's pkg, come very late in the game and plagiarize many ideas from the Linux counterparts. But it doesn't matter. The way they [FreeBSD] maintaining packages is broken the same way as they maintaining their ports tree! It's "broken by design". Remember that they invented that term to prefer to BTRFS, but BTRFS is now up and kicking. That term should more applicable to them! In no way on Linux we observed users go to the forum and whining about their favorite packages was deleted for no reasons as much as on that OS. Not only because the ports is now unmaintained but also because the packages simply didn't build for them [FreeBSD} thus it's not available for the users, too. The reason is simple. On Linux, we have previous packages version to fall back. On that OS, the users are just doomed! The only thing they can do is switch to an outdated repo or waiting for the mercy of the ports maintainers and the miracle to make the packages build for them [FreeBSD] thus available to us [the users]. Another stupid one is base vs ports! On Linux, we always have the same version of OpenSSL. In no way we have to care about problems arise when the OpenSSL in base is mismatch with the OpenSSL required on ports! And the most ridiculous is they [FreeBSD] asked the users to upgrade to new OS version only because the ports expect the newer OpenSSL that only available on newer OS version! That's how LTS support on that OS works! Oops, almost forgot, that OS has no LTS release whatsoever.



I have no idea about these points but I'm fine with FreeBSD. What I need is a working browser so I could watch youtube and have up to date toolchains so I could do development occasionally. FreeBSD served all of that needs well. But I have to agree with him about this point: most of the new ideas come from Linux [I'm not said anything about innovations or selling points so far.]

e.g: Does someone in the FreeBSD community has ever come up with an idea like PuppyLinux? Yes, it's just a toy. I know. But the ideas of it is at least cool! Recently, I found a former Puppy based distro, Fatdog64. And I loved the idea of it and the way it customized the system. I think FreeBSD should definitely need more derivatives implementing many new ideas like this!


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

More examples:









						New Discourse forum for GoboLinux
					





					www.gobolinux.org
				









						Nix: reproducible builds and deployments
					






					nixos.org
				









						GNU's advanced distro and transactional package manager — GNU Guix
					

Guix is an advanced distribution of the GNU operating system.    Guix is technology that respects the freedom of computer users.    You are free to run the system for any purpose, study how it    works, improve it, and share it with the whole world.




					guix.gnu.org


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## unitrunker (Aug 8, 2020)

When you first learn about a feature while using an OS, it is easy to assume the feature was invented on that OS. 

Who invented the virtual machine? Some people think it was VMWare. Actually, it is much older.






						Virtual machine - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org
				




FreeBSD evolved direct from BSD which came direct from Research Unix.

Linux was a work-alike clone that copied Unix. Linus saw good ideas in Unix and copied them. 

When you see good ideas, you should take them and find a way to apply them to your OS. That model worked well for Linus. I see no reason for any OS to not do the same.


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

As Solaris was the origin of many of FreeBSD‘s features, I have started to use OmniOS as a potential replacement and it works just great.

FreeBSD was the only free system with ZFS and dtrace though, while Solaris was a closed system.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

I think I could counter his point regarding the ports system.



Spoiler



As it name shows, "port", it means the software is not natively developed there but being ported from somewhere else. So maintaining a huge amount of ports not simply as fetch and build them as is but also involving patching them [e.g: to remove the Linuxism or adding workaround for it], it's a huge job indeed. On Linux, as it's the native development platform for most software out there, they don't have to go through the same procedure as FreeBSD. So it's much less effort to maintaining a source based Linux distro than the FreeBSD ports system. FreeBSD doesn't have the resources needed to do all of this themselves so a community powered ports system is the only viable solution.



I have no idea how to counter his argument about pkg, though.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> As Solaris was the origin of many of FreeBSD‘s features, I have started to use OmniOS as a potential replacement and it works just great.
> 
> FreeBSD was the only free system with ZFS and dtrace though, while Solaris was a closed system.


As you said you also use OmniOS. It has both ZFS and dtrace, too. And I don't think it's not free.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> I think I could counter his point regarding the ports system.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


He refuted it by stating the the Gentoo portage system has to remove many systemd-ism, too. Gentoo is OpenRC based. I said regardless of SystemD or OpenRC, it's the same Linux system and GNU userland. He refuted my statement, too. I don't think I should continue to discuss with him. He's a typical phoronix forum user, pro anything Linux, GPL, progressive (SystemD, WireGuard, GNOME3,...) and against any thing conservative and permissive licenses (he said it's license of thieves), too.

p/s: There is anti systemd on phoronix forum, too. There are many of them indeed.


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> And I don't think it's not free.



Which is why “Solaris” is finally a very serious competitor to FreeBSD.


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## unitrunker (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin - you don't need to counter this persons argument. If it makes the other person feel superior - let them go on their merry way. Don't waste your time.

Understand the real issue is about licensing. Most people don't care about GPL vs. BSD licensing but some of us do.


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## unitrunker (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> He would said it's the past. Linux is now the top innovation and other systems are now just copy cat of Linux features.


This feels like one of the "Why can't FreeBSD be more like Linux" threads. 

So ... does this "friend" write code?


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> Which is why “Solaris” is finally a very serious competitor to FreeBSD.


I don't think so. I would rather consider Linux is the only serious competitor to FreeBSD, not Solaris. Solaris is dying and Illumos is stuck and dying, too. They tried to integrate bhyve but it's not enough for them to stay relevance. FreeBSD now is much better than Solaris and Illumos. The idea FreeBSD is underdog to Solaris and Illumos is the mindset of the past.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

unitrunker said:


> Understand the real issue is about licensing. Most people don't care about GPL vs. BSD licensing but some of us do.


I don't understand why these pro GPL people obsessed too much with the fear of someone stealing their code and think the GPL is the only way to keep this from happening.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

unitrunker said:


> This feels like one of the "Why can't FreeBSD be more like Linux" threads.
> 
> So ... does this "friend" write code?


Nope. GNOME3 + Wayland user. Pro SystemD. Pro Linus (Linus is the fact his idol!). Pro Rust (rewrite in Rust anyone?) and pro many things else. Addition: Anti Microsoft at any cost.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

@Mod: Please lock this thread. I think I'm too wrong to bring it here just because I failed to counter someone's arguments.


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> FreeBSD now is much better than Solaris and Illumos.



I found illumos to be more accessible and reliable, to be honest.


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## Alain De Vos (Aug 8, 2020)

I don't know which browser solaris or illumos have, but probably an old one


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

There’s pkgsrc for illumos...


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## unitrunker (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> @Mod: Please lock this thread. I think I'm too wrong to bring it here just because I failed to counter someone's arguments.


Nothing wrong with arguing *technical* merits. That's how we learn and grow.


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## forquare (Aug 8, 2020)

Jails aren't a clone of Solaris Zones, it's the other way around.

ZFS on Linux isn't so much a thing anymore.  They copied OpenZFS, made changes (as far as I can tell didn't follow one of their core philosophies of contributing back (they didn't have to, mind)) and drifted, but now their code has been moved to OpenZFS.  Input from the FreeBSD project has been accepted and multiple parties are now working together.

Ports have been around since 1994, when was the first Linux package manager introduced?  Personally I've no idea...
There was a recentish study (can't find the link now) that suggested that FreeBSD's Ports system was one of the most up to date repositories out there.

PKGNG, not sure on that one.

Linux is a big copy cat.  Copied Unix concept/tools, took things like LVM from HP-UX, IIRC systemd is a copy of launchd or SMF.  The list goes on.

Care not about copying idea.  Care about how they've been implemented and integrated. All of the points you've made are native parts of the FreeBSD system, they are integrated into the system well and work together when you want to use them together.

IIRC, the sendfile syscall is somewhat novel and was developed on FreeBSd for FreeBSD by Netflix (and contributed back!)
I'm not sure how easy things like that are in Linux, I've heard it's so notoriously difficult to add things to the kernel that people keep stuffing things in Userspace (see f-stack).


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## 20-100-2fe (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin, you don't have to counter his arguments, there is absolutely nothing wrong with adopting good things invented elsewhere!
In fact, it just proves the "copier" is smart enough to assess the quality and value of others' work.
And be sure FreeBSD will die if it stops doing this, it would mean it has lost its adaptivity.


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## sidetone (Aug 8, 2020)

FreeBSD can't copy Linux code, but Linux can copy FreeBSD's code, due to their licenses. So there's no way FreeBSD can copy Linux, apart from borrowing a very few things.

Ethernet card drivers are actually developed for FreeBSD by hardware manufacturers. Also, Microsoft has used FreeBSD's network stack. These are two things that originated on FreeBSD.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> I found illumos to be more accessible and reliable, to be honest.


I used to feel so, too. But the project has too few developers compared to FreeBSD. When it's stable, it's rock stable. When it breaks, no one here to fix it! It's my experience.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> I don't know which browser solaris or illumos have, but probably an old one


On OpenIndiana we currently stuck at Firefox 60.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> There’s pkgsrc for illumos...


Firefox doesn't available on Joyent's repo.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

forquare said:


> Ports have been around since 1994, when was the first Linux package manager introduced?  Personally I've no idea...
> There was a recentish study (can't find the link now) that suggested that FreeBSD's Ports system was one of the most up to date repositories out there.


As a FreeBSD user, I'm pleased with it. But saying the Ports system is one of the most up to date repo out there is plain wrong. There are so many broken and unmaintained ports, let alone not updated ones. I'm still waiting for the maintainer to update CodeLite to the latest version.



forquare said:


> IIRC systemd is a copy of launchd or SMF.


I have never used launchd but to be honest, I like SystemD more than SMF.


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## Crivens (Aug 8, 2020)

Maybe he just likes to argue. Some people like to argue for the sake of it.

And w.r.t. copying, before a fair in my industry profession the boss reminded us to check if the others copied our stuff. I replied that more worrying than seeing our stuff being copied would be to see nobody copying it. After thinking a bit he replied that he had to concur.


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> But the project has too few developers compared to FreeBSD.



The Solaris project predates FreeBSD by 8 years, so they have an advantage.


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## Hakaba (Aug 8, 2020)

About FreeBSD, a recent innovation was the Streaming optimisation.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> My friend has a very strong hatred for FreeBSD. The reason he gives me is that OS just a copy cat and didn't invented anything.


FreeBSD's roots are ATT UNIX. Not a copy. The real thing. Ask him what he thinks of Linux which originally copied how Unix works. Most of its utilities and base programs are all copies. No creativity. Strictly a copy.

ALL of your examples in your second post are copies. They are copies of the Linux operating system with different configurations and installed programs. Nothing original. Only copies.


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> FreeBSD's roots are ATT UNIX.



And, unlike Solaris/illumos, they were forced to remove any AT&T code.


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## rootbert (Aug 8, 2020)

to be honest, most innovation happens in Linux land, the portion in FreeBSD is tiny. Loads of apache projects are Linux only (lots of stuff coming from the Linux Foundation), Java is still big in business, software defined network projects as an example - many of them lack FreeBSD support.. If the discussion is about that you cannot hold up against it because that is a fact. FreeBSD has other strenghts, for example: it is *well designed: *in Linux you have fast innovation that pumps out a lot of code of questionable quality - short sighted/"immediate solutions" that tend to show its quirks after some time running. Look at the history of sound systems, the kernel message bus systems, or the ideas docker had with overlay filesystems/aufs: several buggy iterations. Also systemd is a great example: all my ~ 500 linux server have been quite stable until systemd came with the distributions: quite some distributions deliver bad unit files which leave the whole systemd ecosystem in a questionable, fragile state - there is a good reason why docker did not interact with systemd in the beginning and still cannot really cope with it without errors. 

Look at the lines of code of the Linux kernel: no wonder they discover new vulnerabilities almost every week, the Linux Kernel Self Protection Project was a good idea but definitely needs more drive. Just ask your friend if he is happy that he has to install weekly Ubuntu/whatever kernel patches and has to reboot.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> FreeBSD was the only free system with ZFS and dtrace though


And now Linux is copying this onto their system.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> There are so many broken and unmaintained ports, let alone not updated ones.


Does this mean there are no broken or unmaintained packages on Linux?

Note: nginx, the server, was originally created on FreeBSD. It only moved development to Linux recently due to marketing pressure.


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## forquare (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> As a FreeBSD user, I'm pleased with it. But saying the Ports system is one of the most up to date repo out there is plain wrong. There are so many broken and unmaintained ports, let alone not updated ones. I'm still waiting for the maintainer to update CodeLite to the latest version.



I found the link I was after, here.  74.9% of packages are up to date.  While "top 50" doesn't sounds amazing, it's sits above some of the big Linux players.  That percentage is impressive when you consider FreeBSD Ports is in the top 25 when it comes to number of available packages.

>5000 outdated packages is a lot, but some careful usage decisions can leave you with a nicely maintained system.  
By the way, the Makefile for CodeLite doesn't look hugely complicated, have you tried upgrading it and submitting a patch? If my experience is anything to go by, you'll find it easier that trying to patch some of the various Linux distributions packages!



gh_origin said:


> I have never used launchd but to be honest, I like SystemD more than SMF.



I've not done a tonne of stuff in systemd and it is _fine_, but it doesn't feel as powerful as SMF - then again I learnt SMF when I worked at Sun, so I may be biased


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## decuser (Aug 8, 2020)

As others have mentioned, FreeBSD is a continuation of BSD, which was an extension of Research UNIX. It is clear that neither the OP nor his friend have spent any serious effort to understand what they are talking about. BSD folks (Kirk McKusick, Bill Joy and others) contributed major contributions to UNIX (look ‘em up). FreeBSD continues that work in the present. Read Bruno Latour, if you want to blow up the myth of invention on a philosophical basis. To take a Clintonism completely out of context, “It takes a village”.  Another chestnut, “Let’s not reinvent the wheel”, and my personal favorite, where would we be if Reeses hadn’t dropped the chocolate into the peanut butter?


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Does this mean there are no broken or unmaintained packages on Linux?
> 
> Note: nginx, the server, was originally created on FreeBSD. It only moved development to Linux recently due to marketing pressure.



Sooner or later all need to move to Linux as the first class development platform.


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## Deleted member 63539 (Aug 8, 2020)

forquare said:


> By the way, the Makefile for CodeLite doesn't look hugely complicated, have you tried upgrading it and submitting a patch? If my experience is anything to go by, you'll find it easier that trying to patch some of the various Linux distributions packages!



I could get it build, but the build failed with something about kmem and kvm. I have no idea how to troubleshoot it.

BTW, the name is misleading, it's a FreeBSD library and have nothing to do with Linux KVM: kvm()


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## Cthulhux (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> Sooner or later all need to move to Linux as the first class development platform.



I have moved on from Linux to BSD as my first class development platform.


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## drhowarddrfine (Aug 8, 2020)

Cthulhux said:


> I have moved on from Linux to BSD as my first class development platform.


Long ago, when I started my web dev company, my brother-in-law worked as a project manager for a large Windows shop. So I got a bunch of free development tools from him. That wound up being a disaster so he recommended moving to Linux but, after a few days, we realized FreeBSD was the only logical choice. We grew to a development team of 10 developers--all using FreeBSD workstations and servers and never skipped a beat.


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## Jose (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> He refuted it by stating the the Gentoo portage system has to remove many systemd-ism, too.


The ignorance in this statement is staggering. Gentoo portage started out as a re-implementation of Freebsd ports in Python. Systemdisms are creeping _into_ Gentoo. Portage predates systemd by about a decade.



gh_origin said:


> Gentoo is OpenRC based. I said regardless of SystemD or OpenRC, it's the same Linux system and GNU userland.


What the heck does this have to do with anything? The creator of Openrc was chased out of Gentoo by politics. He's a Netbsd dev now. He gave up Openrc to a systemd fanboi that's busy killing it by making it bad-design compatible with systemd.


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## forquare (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> I could get it build, but the build failed with something about kmem and kvm. I have no idea how to troubleshoot it.
> 
> BTW, the name is misleading, it's a FreeBSD library and have nothing to do with Linux KVM: kvm()



The FreeBSD KVM library predates Linux's Kernel-based Virtual Machine by around 13 years, maybe more...The _man page_ you pointed to goes back to FreeBSD 2.0-RELEASE in 1993, whereas development for Linux's KVM started in 2006. 

So the name is not misleading, not least because we are on FreeBSD and not Linux


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## kpedersen (Aug 8, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> Sooner or later all need to move to Linux as the first class development platform.



And then straight onto Windows... bye


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## richardtoohey2 (Aug 9, 2020)

Why do you have to choose ONE operating system?  They all have strengths and weaknesses.  I've yet to find the perfect OS for all tasks on all hardware on all budgets.

And it's not just the OS - it's the windows manager (Xfce, Gnome, KDE), the editor (emacs/vim), the database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, etc.), the CPU (AMD, Intel, ARM), the hardware (spinning drives, SSDs), programming/scripting languages (Perl, Python, Tcl, C, PHP, C++, Java), shells, blah blah blah.

For task t, if you NEED x or y  and they are ONLY available on OS MegaOS, then you gonna need MegaOS for that task.

Otherwise, _shrug_, it's up to you. People have different likes/dislikes, different thresholds of what annoys them, different things are of value to them.

This is like being back at school and arguing which 8-bit micro is "best" ... best for what?

In terms of innovation - for server use - I don't want a fast pace of innovation.  I want something rock-solid and conservative.  That has evolution rather than revolution.  FreeBSD suits me fine because of that.  It can't stay stuck in the 1980s, or 1990s or whatever so changes have to come.  Some changes come from other places - that's OK.   On the GUI side - things seem to change all the time regardless of OS ...


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## Hakaba (Aug 9, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> Sooner or later all need to move to Linux as the first class development platform.


One certitude, this assertion is false.
in the past I ear :
«Sooner or later all website will be in flash.»
«sooner or later all worksration will use Windows»
«Sooner or later, all web project will be developed in ruby»
...


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## 20-100-2fe (Aug 9, 2020)

In this particular case, as an individual, it doesn't matter what OS you use to develop as long as your software runs on Linux.
As a VC-funded start-up, it's a different story: when you live on others' money, you have to abide by their will.
And what they require from you is what they've read in Gartner's et al. reports, because their customers use the same references to make their investment decisions.


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## rigoletto@ (Aug 9, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> I don't understand why these pro GPL people obsessed too much with the fear of someone stealing their code and think the GPL is the only way to keep this from happening.



As I expressed several times in this forum, GPL community isn't really about "copyleft" but about parasitism. This is not about someone stealing their GPL code[1] these people are afraid[2] of but losing the ability of _hijack_ (in very lazy terms) someone else code into GPL. If you develop an important code and use a custom license with the same characteristics of GPL but being incompatible with GPL (all copyleft licenses are incompatible with each other by nature) you will receive the same hate because they cannot pull your code in.

This is the typical "I'm saving the world" complex. These people think the GPL community is fundamentally important to the world, and the GPL licensed code is the most important code in the world when in reality, the most important code in the world (nuclear power plants, ICBM, avionics, railway; safety critical software in general) is running anything[3] but Linux, GPL, or open-source code in general.

The closest Linux/GPL/open-source software get of a safety-critical system is in the entertainment system of the passenger cabin in commercial jets, which is the most irrelevant code in the whole jet (not safety critical at all).

[1] mostly completely irrelevant anyway.
[2] yet, as proven, GPL code is often stole and they don't go anything against the thief.
[3] VxWorks and other *certificated* proprietary software, including the filesystems (Datalight come to mind), a lof of custom OSes and _applications_.


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## Jose (Aug 9, 2020)

rigoletto@ said:


> As I expressed several times in this forum, GPL community isn't really about "copyleft" but about parasitism. This is not about someone stealing their GPL code these people are afraid of but losing the ability of _hijack_ (in very lazy terms) someone else code into GPL. If you develop an important code and use a custom license with the same characteristics of GPL but being incompatible with GPL (all copyleft licenses are incompatible with each other by nature) you will receive the same hate because they cannot pull your code in.


Whereas I largely agree with you, the interesting question to me is "are the GPL fanatics wrong?" I'm not sure. Quoting Adrian Chadd:



> I used to bend over backwards to try and get stuff in to stable releases of the open source software I once worked on. And that was taken advantage of by a lot of people and companies who turned around to incorporate that work into successful commercial software releases without any useful financial contribution to either myself or the project as a whole.





rigoletto@ said:


> ...the most important code in the world (nuclear power plants, ICBM, avionics, railway; safety critical software in general) is running anything but Linux, GPL, or open-source code in general.


There's at least one important exception:








						From Earth to orbit with Linux and SpaceX
					

SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which flew NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, is powered by liquid oxygen, rocket-grade kerosene, and Linux.




					www.zdnet.com


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## kpedersen (Aug 9, 2020)

Jose said:


> Whereas I largely agree with you, the interesting question to me is "are the GPL fanatics wrong?" I'm not sure.



In another life I could have been a religious GPL zealot. I very much like the idea of ensuring that free software remains free. However as we know, companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc still find ways to sh*t on their users even with GPL'ed software.

Disappointingly, from what I see, the viral effect doesn't really work for the big guys and ends up just punishing other open communities. I.e the example of LibreOffice sucking dry OpenOffice is a little sad. Coupled with the fact that the ODF now have very little competition as a result and are feeling fairly untouchable right now. This is probably the main drive for them trying to monetise in the cloud (along with "enterprise" partners) with LibreOffice Online rather than actually improve things for the open-source community.

I would like to see a more weaponised GPL license however. For example "this software is not allowed to be run on a platform with known DRM schemes". I think free software also needs to be compiled to be more aggressive, like refusing to work if it detects Valve's Steam DRM service, etc. Embed this "feature" into something like Gtk+ and it will propagate fast!
I would even suggest go so far as to enforce the GPL license behind GCC to ensure that it cannot be used to build proprietary software. That would have pretty much eliminated Android (before it moved to clang) and many other locked down embedded crap.

The AGPL is good though. I wish more people would use it. It would be especially effective in the "web development" space where people drag in a load of random crap just to split a string. It would "infect" projects very quickly.

One of my favorites was the original Open-Motif license (before it moved to standard GPL). It was open-source but did not allow for building on commercial operating systems. So no Windows port was allowed, even with Cygwin.

I feel sorry for Richard Stallman. He has the right idea and has been fighting for free software for years. And yet the industry just keeps on getting worse and worse. I couldn't do it, I would become too bitter!


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## Beastie7 (Aug 9, 2020)

I think developers should have the liberty of doing whatever they want with their contributions; individual or corp. Coercion is never a good thing and there is no debt obligation with Free Software. If they leave it permissively open, great. If something is proprietised, so what? You still have your own code/user experience/whatever to live with. By the way, the GPL isn’t going to magically make something ’good’ or a great user experience. In fact, a lot of GPL’d software are managed by developers who’re completely inept (ie. GNOME). If X software is proprietary, and Y software is open source, but Y application is useless shit or functionally inferior; I will be using X software to get work done.


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## Jose (Aug 9, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> In another life I could have been a religious GPL zealot. I very much like the idea of ensuring that free software remains free. However as we know, companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc still find ways to sh*t on their users even with GPL'ed software.


I think the original gangsta was Tivo. Hence why "Tivoization" was coined.



kpedersen said:


> I would like to see a more weaponised GPL license however. For example "this software is not allowed to be run on a platform with known DRM schemes". I think free software also needs to be compiled to be more aggressive, like refusing to work if it detects Valve's Steam DRM service, etc. Embed this "feature" into something like Gtk+ and it will propagate fast!
> I would even suggest go so far as to enforce the GPL license behind GCC to ensure that it cannot be used to build proprietary software. That would have pretty much eliminated Android (before it moved to clang) and many other locked down embedded crap.


I believe this is what the GPLv3 aims to be.



Beastie7 said:


> I think developers should have the liberty of doing whatever they want with their contributions; individual or corp. Coercion is never a good thing and there is no debt obligation with Free Software. If they leave it permissively open, great. If something is proprietised, so what? You still have your own code/user experience/whatever to live with...


Linus Torvalds agrees with you, and so do I, for whatever that's worth. I found it interesting that he admits he's not concerned with what's good for users of Linux. He actually liked Tivo because they helped make Linux on MIPS more robust.


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## kpedersen (Aug 9, 2020)

Beastie7 said:


> If X software is proprietary, and Y software is open source, but Y application is useless shit or functionally inferior; I will be using X software to get work done.



I used to think that where proprietary software is *always* inferior to open-source software was lifespan. You cannot choose that, the business director behind the company developing the software decides that. In the ideal world this would possibly be true but looking at crapware like Gnome 3, I can quite clearly see that Gnome has in-fact died and a completely different project with the same name has been started.

However, I certainly don't actively seek to use proprietary software (which I feel is a common mistake made by those coming from Windows).



Jose said:


> I believe this is what the GPLv3 aims to be.


Hmm, perhaps but it just doesn't seem to be "restrictive" enough. Perhaps we shall wait until v4. "You are not allowed to use this software unless you have a UNIX(-like) beard".


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## rigoletto@ (Aug 9, 2020)

Jose said:


> Whereas I largely agree with you, the interesting question to me is "are the GPL fanatics wrong?" I'm not sure. Quoting Adrian Chadd:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This is impossible to know how much GPL (or any open-source) code is used in proprietary software since they are proprietary... a GPL developer can just assure its compliance when this is possible to somehow check if some software comply if it.



> The Falcon 9's onboard operating system is a stripped-down Linux running on three ordinary dual-core x86 processors. The flight software itself runs separately on each processor and is written in C/C++.



Interesting, but the article doesn't explain what the "SpaceX Onboard OS" actually do and that is fundamental in this context, because this information alone means absolutelly nothing in practice. These kind of complex vehicle are never running with one "computer" but several, sometimes thousands, maybe millions of heavy specialized embedded ones...

If you compare with modern advanced ships, there are hundreds but sometimes thousands of separated tiny computers: engines, radars, lighting, locks, hydraulic, propulsion, power/main switches, navigation, communications, zillions of sensors etc. The best I can understand as "Onboard OS" in this scenario is some kind centralized user interface connected to some SCADA system to ease the operation from the bridge; something like "Wärtsilä NACOS Platinum".

Also, I have no idea of the regulations related with space activities, and I don't have idea if this software needs to be certified[1] somehow but if it needs the amount of Linux code is so little that it doesn't pose super extra costs (including time) to certificate, otherwise that would be cheaper to proof the code (use of formal methods) which almost always lead to re-write the whole existing code (better simple write a new one from the begining), and then that would not be Linux anymore.

[1] I suppose it is not because people avoid C++ like a plague when the software needs to be certified (among the worse to proof, and by a large margin), except when there is a real intention to make the development costs skyrocket (pun intended), a quite common practice of the USA defense establishment btw. Otherwise, the most used language is Ada (SPARK in particular) followed by C.


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## Jose (Aug 9, 2020)

rigoletto@ said:


> Also, I have no idea of the regulations related with space activities, and I don't have idea if this software needs to be certified...


The Falcon 9 had to be rated to carry humans by NASA. The certifications were numerous and involved. There are hundreds of links I could post on the subject, but I'm just going to post this one because of the delicious irony:


			https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/18/boeing-faced-only-limited-safety-review-nasa-while-spacex-got-full-examination/


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## rigoletto@ (Aug 9, 2020)

Jose said:


> The Falcon 9 had to be rated to carry humans by NASA. The certifications were numerous and involved. There are hundreds of links I could post on the subject, but I'm just going to post this one because of the delicious irony:
> 
> 
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/18/boeing-faced-only-limited-safety-review-nasa-while-spacex-got-full-examination/



This is not how it works, when there is* actual* certifications requirements this obviously of the best interest of the owner of the code (SpaceX in this case) to pay to get the software certificated, otherwise they would not be allowed to operate the vehicle. Also, the certification should happen against a specialized set of rules, what does not seems the case. They talk about "safety review" but of what and how? Operational safety, software design assurance, runtime errors, etc. and against what?

The certification rules should be in place since day zero, before doing anything, because the software should be designed to match those rules in first place. If you try to certify a "random" designed software (ever with it is perfect and have no bugs) against a formal set of rules you get 99% of chances to have to re-design and re-write at very least a large part of it, but quite more likely the whole thing.

Also, they are comparing the SpaceX with 737 Max controversy which is in a complete different field (one is aviation the another is space), in this sense they could also compare the SpaceX with railway implementations too. Yet, avionics and railway have very clear set of international formal rules for certification purposes, and the 737 Max controversy happened exactly because those rules were not respected, the authority turned blind to a lot of things.

I don't follow space market but every time I see something about SpaceX, I see they telling how many advanced "cool" things they did to lower the costs, but they never explained why, after all of that, the *actual* SpaceX launch cost[1] is considerably higher than the Soyuz, while bringing ZERO benefit to the client.

[1] this is more than well know (they just need to officially assume it at this point) the price they charge is heavily dumped, otherwise they simply can't be competitive against the Soyuz, specially because SpaceX have absolutely no track record.


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## Jose (Aug 9, 2020)

rigoletto@ said:


> This is not how it works, when there is* actual* certifications requirements this obviously of the best interest of the owner of the code...


Cursory Google search yields:


			https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NNK14MA74C-Attachment-J-03-PWS.pdf
		


I'm not going to look into this for you any further. Nor am I going to engage your argument about Soyuz v. Dragon costs beyond saying that I would require more than your opinion. Besides, we're way off topic.


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## rigoletto@ (Aug 9, 2020)

Jose said:


> Cursory Google search yields:
> 
> 
> https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NNK14MA74C-Attachment-J-03-PWS.pdf
> ...



I'm not going to read 60 pages but I skimmed and found some minor certifications things, and they don't look quite related with software design and certification; however they can do wherever they want, but yet the fact they compare space with aviation already tell a lot of about them.

An argument about behind the scenes costs is irrelevant, there is only two really relevant points from the client point of view:

how much it will cost to err.. put the satellite in orbit;
the risks involved. What are the chances of the product not getting in there or be destroyed for some reason?
And SpaceX have both playing hard against them, except because they are heavily[1] dumping the price, and of course available political pression running behind the scenes. Also, I'm quite sure NASA have quite good reasons to keep purchasing seats on Soyuz as backup, when they have the brand new SpaceX stuff to dispose.

*[EDIT]*

One thing common to *all* heavy industries is the labor cost playing a pretty heavy hole in the costs sheet, often begin responsible for +50% of the total cost. Raw materials usually don't get even close of what people think it is in the total cost.

Labor in US is very expensive, in Europe even more, while in Russia labor cost is just a fraction of those. There is little to no possibility of SpaceX to be able to build a spaceship in USA (specially a considerably more complicated one) cheaper than the Russians unless with heavy subsidies.

There are very good reasons for Boeing, Airbus[2] and almost every other major aircraft producer to build the most complicated and expensive parts (specially the wings) of their products in Russia.

*[EDIT]*

If you are thinking about the reusable stuff, yes it can play a hole but first of all there is something called "fatigue crack", heavy limiting the amount of times the part can be reused and rather increasing the maintenance cost, since that part mandatory needs to pass thought a very detailed inspection (made by heavy specialized and expensive professional) every time it is used.

Also, the reusable part need to be rescued later, and this is supposed to happen at the sea... do you known how much it cost to fill the tank of a large ship? Easily $1M USD, the whole rescue operation should probably cost not less than $3M USD but in practice more like $5M USD (I in fact believe this is actually more because the service providers would charge a lot of more than the usual for this purpose).

Put all this extra cost together to rescue something you have no guarantee you will actually be able to reuse, and this whole reusable thing start to not look so great.

[1] and this is not my opinion, but a well know fact.
[2] Airbus also build in other places since they follow a more distributed strategy, and also more aircraft than the others.


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## a6h (Aug 10, 2020)

The term innovation is an abstract object (that's my opinion). Similar to number, science, lunatic, etc.
You can argue about them forever. They are good subjects for debates, bad material for friendship.


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## Hakaba (Aug 10, 2020)

vigole said:


> The term innovation is an abstract object


I think the same.
Apple is a good exemple for me about UI/UX. The innovation is not in hardware or software for Lisa. (Except for the cheaper mice) but in guideline and framework. (Resedit show that for menu entries, icons ...)

For FreeBSD, the organisation of the project is innovative (and democratic). That is for me a strong reason about the impress of lack of innovation in FreeBSD. All modification is a shared view of a «path» so there is no broken change for change. And this is often the perception of the innovation (because we remember easily breaking change).


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## Beastie7 (Aug 10, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> However, I certainly don't actively seek to use proprietary software (which I feel is a common mistake made by those coming from Windows).



I wish software discovery were better in the open source world. The Freshports website isn’t really conducive to helping users easily find new (And perhaps good) open source software, and showcase what it does in action. It could use a more interactive re-design IMO.


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## mark_j (Aug 10, 2020)

gh_origin said:


> My friend has a very strong hatred for FreeBSD. The reason he gives me is that OS just a copy cat and didn't invented anything. So he's not respect such OS and foretell that when there is nothing left for that copy cat to copy, it will just die because of shooting itself on the foot. Then he gives me examples. All of the selling feature of that OS, is taken somewhere else:



May I suggest your friend get a life. Hatred of an OS seems to indicate a very narrow view of the world.

But, regardless, I guess you might inform him that every OS and Kernel (like Linux) is a copy of another, in either concept, design or both. Linux (not an OS) is inspired (ahem) by Minix.

Everything in this world is copying someone and something else. Housing, politics, planes, ships, drugs,clothing, culture etc. If your friend can name anything singularly unique, then have him/her state it, otherwise suggest they get a dose of reality real soon.

Even God apparently created heaven and earth and when we look out into the heavens, it's just the same stuff repeated to infinity. [Ok, the universe will eventually collapse]. So even God copied!


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## chrcol (Aug 11, 2020)

He hasnt looked hard.

Ports tree, although its declining from its hay day.
ZFS I suppose can say this came from elsewhere, but it wasnt from linux.
sysctl counters.
A certain threading library originated on FreeBSD.


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