[ale] free bsd vs. linux

[Dylan Northrup]

A long time ago, (16.03.03), in a galaxy far, far away, Chris Fowler wrote:

:=One question has to be asked.  *BSD has been around since Linux 0.1.  
:=Why did it not take off like Linux?  Plus the BSD license allows a more
:=liberal use of the software that does not match RMS's views.  It would
:=seem that *BSD in those aspects should be a better target for people
:=wishing to make money off stuff they get for free.

[Historical ramblings that are somewhat close to the facts that can be
ignored if you're note interested]

Back in the day there was a project called 386BSD.  There was a single
maintainer of 386BSD.  There came a time when he stopped responding to patch
submissions and/or stopped releasing new versions of 386BSD.  This was
around the time of Linux 0.1 (+/- a year).  A group of patch contributors
got together and created the kernel of what would be the FreeBSD team (kinda
like Apache took over from NCSA).  Around the FreeBSD 1.0 time UCal (aka
Berkeley) decided they were going to assert their copyright on the BSD
source.  The FreeBSD team had to take time to re-write the "tainted" code.
This took quite a bit of time and allowed the Linux kernel to gain quite a
bit of popularity in the geeky circles and gain a head start on the FreeBSD
team.

Again, the above is mostly correct.  Any additions, hard dates and more
details welcome :-)

-- 
Dylan Northrup <*> docx at io.com <*> http://www.io.com/~docx/
"Harder to work, harder to strive, hard to be glad to be alive, but it's 
 really worth it if you give it a try." -- Cowboy Mouth, 'Easy'

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