# kFreeBSD anyone ?



## alie (Feb 24, 2009)

for me its like DekstopBSD or PC-BSD... 



> Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port of the Debian operating system that consists of the GNU userland, GNU C library, Debian package management (dpkg, apt etc.) and system tools, on top of the FreeBSD kernel.



they're porting GNU app to FreeBSD, samething like ports


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## Oko (Feb 24, 2009)

alie said:
			
		

> for me its like DekstopBSD or PC-BSD...
> 
> 
> 
> they're porting GNU app to FreeBSD, samething like ports



To me it is like bunch of people trying to GPL kernel that they like but happens to have BSD license. Project was officially halted couple years ago but seems that there are some who will not learn the lecture until they are taken to court.


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## alie (Feb 24, 2009)

from what i can see from http://glibc-bsd.alioth.debian.org/install-cd/

this project still under development


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## Djn (Feb 24, 2009)

Oko: Or you can see it as a compliment. They admit that our kernel is so good they want to use it in their system.


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## Pushrod (Feb 25, 2009)

Waste of time.


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## Djn (Feb 25, 2009)

Pushrod said:
			
		

> Waste of time.


This is what's wrong with the internet these days.

It's a silly, fascinating, weird little frankensteinian hobby project that I'm sure they find entertaining to work on.
Yes, it's a waste of time. So is reading fiction or restoring old cars.


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## Brandybuck (Feb 25, 2009)

I just wish they would take the silly "GNU" off the name. You don't name an OS after the libc. The only genuine GNU OS out there is GNU/Hurd. Other stuff may use a few GNU parts, but that is insufficient to give GNU naming rights over it.


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## Oko (Feb 25, 2009)

Djn said:
			
		

> Oko: Or you can see it as a compliment. They admit that our kernel is so good they want to use it in their system.



It is much more serious thing than you would think. There are 
serious intellectual and legal ramification. Most OpenBSD guys love DTrace and ZFS but nobody tried to port it to OpenBSD and then change the license from CDDL to BSD. You might like your neighbor's wife but that doesn't mean it is OK to have sex with her. This is not the place nor the time to discuss issues involved in GPL-ing somebody's code.


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## alie (Feb 25, 2009)

> You might like your neighbor's wife but that doesn't mean it is OK to have sex with her



hahaha!!! see this http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_why

its silly and suck, there's no good aim/purpose for this project!


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## kamikaze (Feb 25, 2009)

Brandybuck said:
			
		

> The only genuine GNU OS out there is GNU/Hurd.


You mean it actually exists?

On topic, if it was similar to ports it wouldn't exchange the libc.


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## Djn (Feb 25, 2009)

Oko said:
			
		

> It is much more serious thing than you would think. There are
> serious intellectual and legal ramification. Most OpenBSD guys love DTrace and ZFS but nobody tried to port it to OpenBSD and then change the license from CDDL to BSD. You might like your neighbor's wife but that doesn't mean it is OK to have sex with her. This is not the place nor the time to discuss issues involved in GPL-ing somebody's code.



They're perfectly within their rights to GPL (or close-source, or whatever) BSD code. Keeping people from doing such things is what gave us the GPL in the first place.

Not that they are - last time I looked (admittedly a long time ago) they were perfectly content to leave the license on the kernel alone. It's probably easier for them to change the kernel as little as possible, so they can easily swap in a newer FreeBSD kernel.

And calm down with the examples. Remember, some people do this because they think it's fun. It's not a personal insult to you, nor an insult to FreeBSD, nor illegal. The worst you can definitely say is that they have a bad taste in userlands.


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## Oko (Feb 26, 2009)

Djn said:
			
		

> They're perfectly within their rights to GPL (or close-source, or whatever) BSD code. Keeping people from doing such things is what gave us the GPL in the first place.



HAHAHAHAHA. You made my day. Let me make a wild guess. You are not a law student I would suggest you to be careful with such statements because they can really get you in deep legal troubles especially if you live in U.S.


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## kamikaze (Feb 26, 2009)

Well, you mustn't remove the original license, but you can add the GPL as well.


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## Djn (Feb 26, 2009)

Ok, time to rephrase and partially disagree with my earlier post.
One point to Oko for making me look closer at this, which balances out the point subtracted for the style. 

1) Replacing a license with another, either direction: Not ok.
2) Adding chunks of BSD-licensed code (retaining license) into GPL code? Ok.
3) Adding chunks of GPL-licensed code (retaining license) into BSD code? Not ok.
4) Non-trivially modifying BSD-licensed code and adding a GPL license to the resulting work? Unsure. I'd guess "ok".
5) Adding the GPL license while retaining the BSD one as well, with no or trivial changes to the code? Unsure, but I'd guess "not ok".
6) Compiling a binary from some BSD sources and some GPL sources: Ok, though don't ask me how much of the source code you'd have to provide.

Better?

As for debian/kFreeBSD, I doubt they're doing any of this, anyway. You can use an unmodified FreeBSD kernel with their userland, and they move to newer FreeBSD kernels now and then. From their POV, messing with the kernel license would be a wasted effort.


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## oliverh (Feb 26, 2009)

From my point of view: meet Dr. Frankensteins very own distro or just nonsense. I don't see any advantage using the FBSD kernel only, because FreeBSD is a complete system and developed as such.


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## Djn (Feb 26, 2009)

It's essentially just debian with a different kernel; the userland experience isn't likely to be much different. And it's not without benefits: It's a test of portability and kernel/userland-separation for both sides.

Still, yes - I don't think it's the most useful distro/OS ever.


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## Brandybuck (Feb 27, 2009)

You can compile BSD code and release the binary under any license, including the GPL. But you cannot change the BSD license it self. It must always be attached to the source code. In other words, you may sublicense however you want, but you may not relicense.


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## rliegh (Feb 28, 2009)

oliverh said:
			
		

> From my point of view: meet Dr. Frankensteins very own distro or just nonsense. I don't see any advantage using the FBSD kernel only, because FreeBSD is a complete system and developed as such.


There's a much stronger argument for using the NetBSD kernel -on the Debian/NetBSD port's page they essentially say that they want to take advantage of NetBSD's portability and the fact it runs on so many platforms. 

The FreeBSD kernel doesn't really offer enough of an advantage to swap it in in place of the Linux kernel.

[uneducated opinion]
Of course, tinkering with the kernel in the first place is the wrong thing to focus on. The Debian folks would be a lot better off spending their time porting glibc to different platforms and getting it to compile than anything else. They'd end up with a more portable libc, and it would make porting "Debian" to new platforms much easier.
[/uneducated opinion]

If you can close off BSD code behind a proprietary license -as was done many times during the 80's and 90's- then I see no reason that you couldn't hide a BSD kernel behind a GNU license.


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## oliverh (Mar 1, 2009)

>If you can close off BSD code behind a proprietary license -as was done many times during the 80's and 90's- then I see no reason that you couldn't hide a BSD kernel behind a GNU license.

It's not about hiding anything, it's about using in the proper environment. And I don't think using the kernel only will result in anything useful - in my opinion the development from one source is a major advantage of *BSD. Btw. Gentoo has got a similar project.


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## tobe (Mar 2, 2009)

On one side, Debian is a really good distro, packages are stable and well configured.
On the other side, FreeBSD kernel without FreeBSD userland just doesn't make sense.


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## Oko (Mar 2, 2009)

tobe said:
			
		

> On one side, Debian is a really good distro, packages are stable and well configured.
> On the other side, FreeBSD kernel without FreeBSD userland just doesn't make sense.


One one hand Debian packages are broken. Debian people have a nasty habit of patching, tweaking, and re-licensing upstream code.
Typical example of that behavior is what they did to cdrtools or 
the mess they created with OpenSSL.Apt-get is broken for serious users. In terms of kernel they have nothing to offer because the kernel is 90% RedHat work. Some things are just plain broken in Linux period. Like dump for instance.

On the another hand FreeBSD kernel without using userland makes no sense as its puts you in disadvantage with respect to the number of kernel drivers as well as number of proprietary applications which are certified to run on FreeBSD.

So it is lose-lose situation which looks to me as a bad joke.


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## Djn (Mar 3, 2009)

If you get anymore negative you'll start ionizing.


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## macbias (Mar 3, 2009)

Djn said:
			
		

> If you get anymore negative you'll start ionizing.



lol


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## malexe (Mar 3, 2009)

Oko said:
			
		

> One one hand Debian packages are broken. Debian people have a nasty habit of patching, tweaking, and re-licensing upstream code.
> Typical example of that behavior is what they did to cdrtools or
> the mess they created with OpenSSL.Apt-get is broken for serious users. In terms of kernel they have nothing to offer because the kernel is 90% RedHat work. Some things are just plain broken in Linux period. Like dump for instance.
> 
> ...




Oko, I think you should take it more easy, seriously there is nothing wrong with them doing this. If there are having fun doing, that is all that matters.


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## oliverh (Mar 4, 2009)

malexe said:
			
		

> Oko, I think you should take it more easy, seriously there is nothing wrong with them doing this. If there are having fun doing, that is all that matters.



Sure there is nothing wrong with it, apart the fact if Gods own distro (aka Debian) is involved ;-) Because they spread such FUD for example: http://wiki.debian.org/WhyDebian (aka Linux Vs BSD) etc. Furthermore they are patching software (like OpenSSH) and later, if some bug occures, they make the original developers responsible for their "fork". "Code audits are in a more advanced stage for OpenBSD; though one must bear in mind that despite all the audits there have been high profile bugs in OpenSSH recently -- so take the audited label with a pinch of salt."


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## tobe (Mar 5, 2009)

I've been using debian for some time without "oh shit i've upgraded and now everything is broken". Really, i'd switch to debian packages if i can keep FreeBSD kernel & userland.


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## alie (Mar 5, 2009)

@oliverh: nice link!
@tobe: me too  for me FreeBSD & Debian is almost equal... i nvr got any bad experience with Debian...

OOT: anyone have any link like this http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/  ?


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## malexe (Mar 6, 2009)

oliverh said:
			
		

> Sure there is nothing wrong with it, apart the fact if Gods own distro (aka Debian) is involved ;-) Because they spread such FUD for example: http://wiki.debian.org/WhyDebian (aka Linux Vs BSD) etc. Furthermore they are patching software (like OpenSSH) and later, if some bug occures, they make the original developers responsible for their "fork". "Code audits are in a more advanced stage for OpenBSD; though one must bear in mind that despite all the audits there have been high profile bugs in OpenSSH recently -- so take the audited label with a pinch of salt."



wow, I never read the "whydebian" page x( It let me feeling a little ..sad toward debian. 

Poor them.


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