Linux vs FreeBSD

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_freegate.com>
Date: Sat Jan 16 19:32:10 1999

Even today there is much confusion.

BSD predates Linux by a significant amount of time, if it hadn't been for
AT&T there would be no Linux.

Linus Torvalds wanted UNIX on his PC, he didn't want to pay for it, he got
a copy of MINIX (part of Tannenbaum(sp?)'s operating systems fundamentals
course) and ported it to his hardware. He thought it sucked. He began
improving it, he and Tannenbaum got into many flame wars on the net, Linus
kept releasing his work in progress, other people started contributing,
eventually something usable was available, a long while later something
stable was available.

The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at Berkeley was being disbanded,
they wanted to release the Berkeley Standard Distribution (aks BSD) to the
public. AT&T sued them (and BSDI and others) on the grounds that there was
proprietary AT&T code in the release. (The first attempt was the BSD 4.3
release) The lawsuit took several years to play out, the result was that
AT&T identified all of the code they considered "theirs". After a
negotiation both sides agreed to what was the disputed code. Once settled
the remaining members of the CSRG went about re-writing the code that was
contested and replacing it in the kernel/system. The result was a "clean"
version of BSD and it was dubbed "FreeBSD" because is was "free of
encumberences" and an AT&T source license requirement. This became the
basis of 4.4BSD and it spawned FreeBSD. Both BSDI and NetBSD followed
similar routes (making their products "free of AT&T code.") and that is
sort of where we would be today, except that the FreeBSD guys are a bit
"chummy" about who can and cannot change the code in FreeBSD which
increases stability but pisses some people off. A group of those people
started "OpenBSD" which was, AFAICT, FreeBSD with no source control. (the
bazaar model of development).

Legally there is another HUGE difference between FreeBSD and Linux and it
may end up killing Linux in the end. That is of coures the GNU Public
License. Companies that build products out of machines running Linux are
bound by the GPL to give away any code they develop that they ship as _part
of Linux_. People who develop to FreeBSD are under no such restrictions. It
has been hypothesized that this will lead to a host of incompatible FreeBSD
variants, however my guess is that this won't be the case. It isn't the
main APIs of the OS that people are changing, its things like drivers and
improvements to the networking stack that people would rather keep as their
"value add" as it were.

On a related note, I'm currently in the process of creating a "full spec"
system. I tried at one point to collect documentation on my desktop PC that
was as complete as the documentation on my PDP-8/e. This was impossible due
to the fact that Intel requires a signed non-disclosure agreement before
they will describe the operation of their chips or CPUs. Fortunately, AMD
has no such problem. I'm swapping out the Intel crap for a motherboard that
has a documented chip set (MVP3) and a CPU that has a documented
architecture (K6-2). The goal is to have a system where every component is
completely described such that it would be possible, given time, for
someone to completely "know it" at the register level.

--Chuck McManis
Received on Sat Jan 16 1999 - 19:32:10 GMT