SGI: Discussion

A lot of people argue quite cogently that one of the main reasons for the success of Linux was the Unix System Laboratories vs. BSDi lawsuit in the early nineties...

Umm, Objective C, anyone ?


If the entire society is based on lies, then is 'success' based on hypocrisy a moral shortcoming ? Seems pretty mainstream to me.


Actually, if they hadn't been so greedy and selfish, they could have competed with anyone. Unix was far better than anything Mickeysoft ever came up with - in fact, most of Mickeysoft is just a watered-down version of what Unix had already done. But that would have required cooperation and self-restraint. They don't teach that in the United States.

I think that must have been a major part of it -- both the lawsuit and their lateness in porting BSD to the PC platform. Andy Tanenbaum said that he didn't take Linux seriously, or try to develop MINIX into a serious OS previously, because he thought that "BSD was going to take over the world." The old Usenet debate shows that Linus was thinking something totally different, though -- that the future would be GNU/HURD, and so Linux would just be a hobby project in the meantime. As it turned out, BSD was late to the game, and GNU HURD never ended up as much except vaporware.

Since that time, though, BSD systems have lagged behind on hardware support. Having a Unix system like BSD that purports to be more stable and carefully audited is only relevant if it actually works with your hardware. If you can't use hard disks or networking, or if there is no video acceleration and you want to do 3D modeling, then who cares about the rest? The BSD's haven't taken drivers very seriously in the past, a lot of the effort seems to be toward developing new server security features instead. I will say, though, that crucial things like hardware support are far more important and fundamental than the next new ZFS / containers / jails / VM / clustering whatever crap. It seems that they are satisfied with their server OS niche, and aren't willing to take the necessary steps to turn the BSD's into good general purpose Unix systems.

Trust me, that may not be the case for everybody.

It's not really the case for anyone who's moved past the playing-with-their-dick stage

The point being?

Objective C is one of the many languages gcc supports. Gcc is not just a C compiler but a compiling infrastructure. NeXT extended gcc in the 80s to be their original Objective C compiler. I don't think that an actual stand alone Objective C compiler existed at that point.

That the success of Linux is something of a historical accident. BSD Inc. was too busy slugging it out in the courts and Stallman was too busy fighting with Lucid over the future of Emacs to work on the HURD. Linux wins by default, not by knockout. Oh, and the HURD could still rock our world if those jackwhackers would ever get off their dead asses and code the thing...

what's wrong with companies being involved, if they play along the rules (which are defined by the GPL license, which is actually used to sue companies really high fines if they don't comply)? The promise was never that it has to stay hobbyist only, the promise was that everyone could join in, that doesn't exclude companies.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2011-04-01.html

R.

I personally don't have a moral objection to companies being involved, but the people who actually created Linux do. Or did. Or would have, if they could have seen the future.

If you were around at the time you remember virulent animosity for corporate control of software - most of it understandable. A screen-saver used to cost $400. People hated IBM in particular, but the rest of them as well.

Those people did not work on Linux so that SGI could get a free operating system. There was a good deal of animosity towards SGI as well. Still is, if you want to come by my house

It is ironic that the very same companies who couldn't get it together enough to create a standard Unix and couldn't see far enough past their noses to sell reasonably-priced software, later on came rushing over to free-as-in-beer Linux as their savior. Those guys should join the circus, they get so much practice jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon.

As for practical objections, there are many. If you look at history, corporations are shit. They rob, cheat, and steal. They can't help themselves, it's part of the genetic makeup. All they can see is how much money can they get. In the long run, corporate involvement in anything is a bad thing.


Oh yeah, right ... Many many companies have violated the terms of that license worse than Hades took Persephone. At least she came upworld for six months of the year.

In the beginning they may play by the rules but after some time has gone by and profits are not increasing quarter-over-quarter, they buy new rules. Then they play by the rules they bought.

For example, look at Pandora. A mere couple of years ago these same people were DMCA ! Copyright law ! Pirates ! We must pay the artists for their work ! Now it's "oh gee, we can't pay those high royalties and make as much profit as we want. Those damned artist fees are killing us, we need to pay less." Eventually they will buy a few congressmen and get their own little "loophole" inserted into law, probably as a rider to something that really needs to be passed. The public is screwed, the artists are screwed, but the ceo and lawyers and a couple congresscritters made out fat.

This is how it works in today's USA. Sweet, eh ? It's easy to play by the rules when you are the one making them.

I don't think After Dark did cost more than $49.95

That's ridiculous also but you are right. I was thinking of screen capture programs. Crossed synapses

By the time linux started, it wasn't mature enough to be serious competition for major unix vendors anyway.

because they have been allowed to. But how would a company "steal" Linux?

you mean they buy the FSF so that they alter the GPL?
You don't need to tell me that copyright legislation is broken, I'm not talking about copyright laws. I'm talking about the Linux kernel and the GPL.

Well if you ask RMS he'll tell you that Google stole Linux, because they are not contributing their kernel patches back to the main line. They don't have to because they're not selling their version on the open market, just using it on their machines in their data centers. That's what GPL v3 is supposed to prevent, but Linus won't change the kernel source from GPL v2, much to RMS's deep consternation and anguishment...

What you are talking about is AGPL not GPL v3.

Spoken like a true license attorney...

Well, I work at a small company which is developing webapps so we really have to care about licenses and this means I have to be sure I'm not GPLing our app by accident. Open source licenses are the easiest to understand - read a commercial license from Mickey (thanks for this name hamei) or Adobe - this can be painful. I recently understood MS Remote Desktop licensing - now I feel so smart

Sure, not for everyone, but basically everyone except a few server admins and basement-dwellers -- assuming the OS even has the necessary device drivers for their own hardware. If the goal of the BSD developers is to make the best server operating system (FreeBSD seems to be promoting this niche), then they haven't been succeeding in developing much support in the computing field over the last 20 years. If instead their goal is to build a general purpose Unix OS, then they've also been unable to do that sufficiently, since their hardware support is often lacking. This is my point -- that the BSD's have not really succeeded as a general "Unix." They fell far behind the rest of the industry, and instead of pursuing the necessary changes to build a modern system, they just grew more conservative and focused on the server niche.

The commercial Unixes like IRIX, Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX were all much more general purpose than the BSD's are these days. They came with all the necessary drivers for utilizing their video cards and other hardware, and the CDE desktop was the industry standard. The BSD's have no standard desktop, or even a preferable one. They lack hardware support for any real desktop use, so in some ways they are even behind commercial Unix systems of the 1990's (which is sad to think about).

They're coming to take me away ha ha to the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats ...