On Mon, 2011-01-31 at 21:51 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote: > > what happened to netbsd? as far as I can see it is still alive and > > kicking. So what is the problem? > > Alive, yes. Kicking, not really. They had a big problem not too > long > ago where the organizations working with NetBSD were doing proprietary > forks without channelling those changes back and essentially stalling > the development almost entirely. This mail was from one of the > founders of NetBSD btw. > > http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
this mail has nothing whatsoever to do with license or contributing back or anything. The key part of the mail is these two paragraphs: <quote> Unfortunately, we made some mistakes here. As we've seen over the years, one of the great successes of Linux was that it had a strong leader, who set goals and directions, and was able to get people to do what he wanted -- or find someone else to do it. This latter part is also a key element; there was no sense that anyone else "owned" a piece of Linux (although de facto "ownership" has happened in some parts); if you didn't produce, Linus would use someone else's code. If you wanted people to use your stuff, you had to keep moving. NetBSD did not have this. Partly due to lack of people, and partly due to a more corporate mentality, projects were often "locked". One person would say they were working on a project, and everyone else would be told to refer to them. Often these projects stagnated, or never progressed at all. If they did, the motivators were often very slow. As a result, many important projects have moved at a glacial pace, or never materialized at all. </unquote> and if you look at it closely, this is precisely the reason for the failure of hurd which is under the gpl! License has nothing to do with whether a project sustains or not. Methodology and leadership are all. -- regards KG http://lawgon.livejournal.com Coimbatore LUG rox http://ilugcbe.techstud.org/ _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
