Oops, sorry, wrong mailing list name.

Greg

----- Forwarded message from Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> -----

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 10:36:23 +0930
To: dev_webmaster@sgi.com
Cc: FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, advocacy@NetBSD.org,
        advocacy@OpenBSD.org

I can't find any feedback addresses on your web site, so I'm asking
you to forward this to Tom Mead:

I've just read part of this article, in which you state:

  Another model is the cooperative model, in which a diverse community
  of cooperative developers work together, even if separated by
  thousands of miles, to build an operating system.  BSD UNIX [from
  the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at Berkeley] is an
  example of this model. BSD was an early Open Source project and it
  worked very well. But then it went from being a university effort to
  a commercial one.  Commercial vendors splintered it into
  proprietary, competitive efforts supported by different companies
  fielding expensive development teams, and we got another example of
  the remarkably inefficient system software world we've ruefully come
  to inhabit.

I am completely at a loss to understand what you mean with this
statement.  Personal opinions are one thing, but this is just so far
from the truth that I can't understand what you mean with it.  Can you
name one commercial vendor who did this?  

It's possible, I suppose, that you're thinking of Sun Microsystems in
the 80s, but that's rather inaccurate: the development wasn't Open
Source (it relied on AT&T's UNIX licence, which cost big money).  On
the other hand, there are currently three healthy Open Source BSD
projects which do very well without commercial interests.  I can't
believe you haven't heard of them, but if you haven't, you should
check out http://www.FreeBSD.org/, http://www.NetBSD.org/ and
http://www.OpenBSD.org/.

The dangers you describe in this article appear to apply more to the
way that Linux is going.  We don't have to look further than SGI to
see which Open Source project is attracting commercial attention.

I'd appreciate it if you would clarify and correct what you mean in
this paragraph.

Greg Lehey
----- End forwarded message -----

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