Nick Rout wrote:
You were there. :-) I got half way through the history of it when we ran out of time last December.On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:31:55 +1300 Michael JasonSmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 23:08 +1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/There was reportedly a BSD-userland Debian mentioned sometime around 1999.
Anyone know anything about it?
I took from Wes's question that he was looking for BSD userland on the linux kernel? (what you have pointed to is the converse, but no less interesting for it)
BTW what happened to our proposed talk on licensing, or did i miss that meeting?
Licensing is one of those "easy to say, harder to do" sort of areas.
Basically, as I'd asked for some clarificaion on it, and got _some_ willingness to contribute to the panel required for a big subject (Andrew Turner would speak on BSD, Jim Cheetham on Creative Commons), I realised I had to mostly do it myself.
It was fun researching - mostly learning about Unix, BSD, AT&T etc. - and my 'Debian School' licensing slide was a cramped que-card, so I could recall all the various names and dates involved while speaking. So it will not make sense to everyone as yet:
http://www.infohelp.co.nz/dslicens.html
As you can see, there's a lot to it. I apologise that the panel members' slots for giving detail got lost in all the rigmarole.
It sort of felt like a disaster, with projection not resolved beforehand - d'oh! But enough people stuck around and got the first half of the story by 11pm. Feedback was positive.
Aftermath:
I was home with an injury this summer. I got Michael King's great "History of New Zealand" for Xmas, and have read half of that too. It taught me something (a lot) about writing style. Simple, full, direct communication. A recommended work.
Thanks Michael, for sparking my muse.
Something triggered a return to that slide. It's faulty, done too quickly, in ways. So I'm sorting it out, by writing. Much more research, fuller scope. The result is here:
http://www.infohelp.co.nz/dslicenstxt.html
It's unfinished - not even a tenth done - but what's there is the (economic) wrapper to what Michael Kerrisk presented on Monday night. Consequently, it answers a lot of the questions he raised. There's a Gnu Free Documentation License attached, to get it out and about. Please note the draft status, and attach that date if you want a quote.
I have no priorities ahead of completing it now, so progress will come (maybe after a short break).
To (really) summarise what it will fully document and argue:
Of */Unix's 40-year lifespan (conceived as Multics in 1965 - Happy Birthday), there are two halves. The first is dominated, from our point of view, by BSD (Public Domain + attribution). The second, latterly, by Linux. A turning point happened in the middle, responding to AT&T's restructuring (from network hardware phone services, to patent licensing) that allowed them to start selling Unix. BSD were stuffed (comparatively), and taken to court. They were prevented from going to release version 5, and we got System V instead. Richard Stallman fixed the situation, by "licensing freedom", and here we are today.
I will speak to this thesis outline tonight, if people want me to.
Have to go now.
Cheers,
Rik
-- Michael JasonSmith http://www.ldots.org/
-- Richard Tindall, InfoHelp Services, Canterbury Technology Ltd.
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