Re: Fwd: Unified BSD?

2012-12-04 Thread John Marino

On 12/4/2012 07:14, Aleksej Saushev wrote:

Martinmartin.kelly4...@gmail.com  writes:


I can see how you could misunderstand what i said.

My point was about that each of the BSD's use pkgsrc in a different way and
the releases from FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or DflyBSD don't all rely on the
exact same packages for every release (i.e. NetBSD 6 and FreeBSD 9 do not
use the same version of GNOME-2 desktop; poor example), and that generally
per BSD release they generally blob the binaries that are compatible for
that release together.


No, pkgsrc is one for everyone, unless someone maintains his own branch.
As far as I know, only DragonFly and SmartOS do, though nothing serious
stops them from using original distribution. Thus NetBSD 6 and FreeBSD 9 use
the same version of GNOME, provided that they use supported pkgsrc branch.



DragonFly has a git mirror mirror of the pkgsrc cvs repository, but its 
contents are identical to what is in cvs.  I would not classify this as 
maintaining its own branch.  We use the same distribution as NetBSD.


Just clarifying this statement to avoid misinformation.
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Re: Fwd: Unified BSD?

2012-12-04 Thread Martin
Sorry forget that last message.

GNOME was a bad example, but you did in essence you clarify my point. That
FreeBSD or whichever one you talk about may or may not be using a different
pkgsrc branch.

I didn't call any components standardized, i said even if you *were* to
standardize certain components for all BSDs (related to package management/
source) you still would have to get around the fact that each of them may
use a different pkgsrc branch.

Otherwise you wouldn't have the current differences in software
compatibility where FreeBSD has what (28000 packages?) and NetBSD has
(15000?)

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 1:54 AM, Martin martin.kelly4...@gmail.com wrote:

 I understand that, what your not getting is that i am talking about the
 release schedule of the individual BSD distros not the release schedule of
 pkgsrc.


 On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 7:02 PM, John Marino net...@marino.st wrote:

 On 12/4/2012 07:14, Aleksej Saushev wrote:

 Martinmartin.kelly4000@gmail.**com martin.kelly4...@gmail.com
  writes:

  I can see how you could misunderstand what i said.

 My point was about that each of the BSD's use pkgsrc in a different way
 and
 the releases from FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or DflyBSD don't all rely on
 the
 exact same packages for every release (i.e. NetBSD 6 and FreeBSD 9 do
 not
 use the same version of GNOME-2 desktop; poor example), and that
 generally
 per BSD release they generally blob the binaries that are compatible for
 that release together.


 No, pkgsrc is one for everyone, unless someone maintains his own branch.
 As far as I know, only DragonFly and SmartOS do, though nothing serious
 stops them from using original distribution. Thus NetBSD 6 and FreeBSD 9
 use
 the same version of GNOME, provided that they use supported pkgsrc
 branch.



 DragonFly has a git mirror mirror of the pkgsrc cvs repository, but its
 contents are identical to what is in cvs.  I would not classify this as
 maintaining its own branch.  We use the same distribution as NetBSD.

 Just clarifying this statement to avoid misinformation.



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Re: Fwd: Unified BSD?

2012-12-04 Thread John Marino

On 12/4/2012 16:07, Martin wrote:

Sorry forget that last message.

GNOME was a bad example, but you did in essence you clarify my point.
That FreeBSD or whichever one you talk about may or may not be using a
different pkgsrc branch.

I didn't call any components standardized, i said even if you _*were*_
to standardize certain components for all BSDs (related to package
management/ source) you still would have to get around the fact that
each of them may use a different pkgsrc branch.

Otherwise you wouldn't have the current differences in software
compatibility where FreeBSD has what (28000 packages?) and NetBSD has
(15000?)



The package count of the two systems is basically affected by lifespan 
(ports existed first) and manpower, so don't read into this.


Ports has about 24000 unique packages, pkgsrc has around 10,800 unique 
packages (about 2000 are duplicated with multiple python, ruby, php 
combinations).


The user has the option to stay on the branch suggested at the time of 
the release, or can migrate as he/she wants.  In the case of DragonFly, 
it was catching up with fixing broken packages for a long time, so 
migrating to newest quarterly is generally recommended.


I would say pkgsrc serves to standardize the systems that use it.  I 
could install pkgsrc on OpenIndiana as an example and use the same 
software on that platform.


John
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Re: Fwd: Unified BSD?

2012-12-04 Thread Martin
Don't get me wrong, i am not criticising pkgsrc or intentionally trying get
people offside.

So aside from the obvious differences and limitations (i.e. manpower,
design of each BSD system) What is stopping per say DragonflyBSD or any
other BSD from using packages from FreeBSD or vice versa through pkgsrc?

Or is it simply that some choose not to provide back to pkgsrc?

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 2:15 AM, John Marino net...@marino.st wrote:

 On 12/4/2012 16:07, Martin wrote:

 Sorry forget that last message.

 GNOME was a bad example, but you did in essence you clarify my point.
 That FreeBSD or whichever one you talk about may or may not be using a
 different pkgsrc branch.

 I didn't call any components standardized, i said even if you _*were*_

 to standardize certain components for all BSDs (related to package
 management/ source) you still would have to get around the fact that
 each of them may use a different pkgsrc branch.

 Otherwise you wouldn't have the current differences in software
 compatibility where FreeBSD has what (28000 packages?) and NetBSD has
 (15000?)


 The package count of the two systems is basically affected by lifespan
 (ports existed first) and manpower, so don't read into this.

 Ports has about 24000 unique packages, pkgsrc has around 10,800 unique
 packages (about 2000 are duplicated with multiple python, ruby, php
 combinations).

 The user has the option to stay on the branch suggested at the time of the
 release, or can migrate as he/she wants.  In the case of DragonFly, it was
 catching up with fixing broken packages for a long time, so migrating to
 newest quarterly is generally recommended.

 I would say pkgsrc serves to standardize the systems that use it.  I could
 install pkgsrc on OpenIndiana as an example and use the same software on
 that platform.

 John

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Re: Fwd: Unified BSD?

2012-12-04 Thread John Marino

On 12/4/2012 16:42, Martin wrote:

Don't get me wrong, i am not criticising pkgsrc or intentionally trying
get people offside.

So aside from the obvious differences and limitations (i.e. manpower,
design of each BSD system) What is stopping per say DragonflyBSD or any
other BSD from using packages from FreeBSD or vice versa through pkgsrc?

Or is it simply that some choose not to provide back to pkgsrc?



Recent work by myself has proven that it is feasible for DragonFly to 
use FreeBSD ports collection with an specialized overlay.  So there's 
nothing technically stopping that from happening.


Pkgsrc has a goal to be universal, so theoretically all platforms will 
benefit from contributing because the committer is ideally conscious 
that multiple platforms use it while FreeBSD ports committers only 
concern themselves with making the port work on FreeBSD.


While pkgsrc supports FreeBSD and OpenBSD, in practice it seems most 
users of those systems tend to stick with FreeBSD Ports Collection and 
OpenBSD package system.  You can speculate why that is.  It takes a ton 
of work to keep a platform current on pkgsrc (which is why I used the 
words theoretically and ideally) so somebody from those systems has 
to do that work, which means they have to consider that work worthwhile. 
 I don't see activity to that effect.


Pkgsrc would be happy to have parties from FreeBSD and OpenBSD improve 
the quality of the packages in the repository, I am quite sure of that. 
 Somebody just needs to donate that energy.


John
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-16 Thread Alfred Perlstein

On 11/13/12 2:45 AM, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:

On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:


Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest BSD 
variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create a 
Unified BSD?


You'd end up creating a fifth.

At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
userland, an eighth.


And Free/Net derived kernel.  (at least for unix services: vfs, inet, 
process)


-is
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-16 Thread Tomas Bodzar
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Hub- FreeBSD free...@hub.org wrote:

 Actually, according to what we are tracking at http://bsdstats.org, there are 
 currently *8*:

 PC-BSD
 FreeBSD
 PYC-BSD (aka Rus-BSD)
 DesktopBSD
 OpenBSD
 NetBSD
 DragonflyBSD
 MidnightBSD


Tracking something like DesktopBSD which doesn't exist for quite a
long time make statistics not much useful. MidnightBSD seems to be
same case as last activy on mailing list last year in May, forums
doesn't working at all so we are still on 4 core BSDs
(Open/Net/Free/Dfly).


 On 2012-11-16, at 12:30 AM, Alfred Perlstein bri...@mu.org wrote:

 On 11/13/12 2:45 AM, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
 On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com 
 wrote:

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four 
 largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each 
 and create a Unified BSD?

 You'd end up creating a fifth.
 At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
 Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
 is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
 userland, an eighth.

 And Free/Net derived kernel.  (at least for unix services: vfs, inet, 
 process)

  -is
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-16 Thread Johnny Billquist

On 2012-11-16 12:48, Tomas Bodzar wrote:

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Hub- FreeBSD free...@hub.org wrote:


Actually, according to what we are tracking at http://bsdstats.org, there are 
currently *8*:

PC-BSD
FreeBSD
PYC-BSD (aka Rus-BSD)
DesktopBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD
DragonflyBSD
MidnightBSD



Tracking something like DesktopBSD which doesn't exist for quite a
long time make statistics not much useful. MidnightBSD seems to be
same case as last activy on mailing list last year in May, forums
doesn't working at all so we are still on 4 core BSDs
(Open/Net/Free/Dfly).


I find it rather meaningless as a tracking tool for BSD in general. 
There is no way something like 2BSD would ever appear there, no matter 
how many systems were installed.


And I also do happen to consider OS-X to be a BSD system. :-)

Johnny





On 2012-11-16, at 12:30 AM, Alfred Perlstein bri...@mu.org wrote:


On 11/13/12 2:45 AM, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:

On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:


Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest BSD 
variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create a 
Unified BSD?


You'd end up creating a fifth.

At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list


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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-16 Thread Hub- FreeBSD

On 2012-11-16, at 5:52 AM, Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se wrote:

 On 2012-11-16 12:48, Tomas Bodzar wrote:
 On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Hub- FreeBSD free...@hub.org wrote:
 
 Actually, according to what we are tracking at http://bsdstats.org, there 
 are currently *8*:
 
 PC-BSD
 FreeBSD
 PYC-BSD (aka Rus-BSD)
 DesktopBSD
 OpenBSD
 NetBSD
 DragonflyBSD
 MidnightBSD
 
 
 Tracking something like DesktopBSD which doesn't exist for quite a
 long time make statistics not much useful. MidnightBSD seems to be
 same case as last activy on mailing list last year in May, forums
 doesn't working at all so we are still on 4 core BSDs
 (Open/Net/Free/Dfly).
 
 I find it rather meaningless as a tracking tool for BSD in general. There is 
 no way something like 2BSD would ever appear there, no matter how many 
 systems were installed.
 
 And I also do happen to consider OS-X to be a BSD system. :-)

I agree on that point, which is why I run it for my desktops … but until you 
mention it, I'd never thought of even trying to get the script to run … have to 
play with that this weekend and see how out of the box it works, if it does …


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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-16 Thread Hub- FreeBSD

On 2012-11-16, at 6:42 AM, Erich Dollansky 
erichfreebsdl...@alogreentechnologies.com wrote:

 Hi,
 
 On Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:52:48 +0100
 Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se wrote:
 
 On 2012-11-16 12:48, Tomas Bodzar wrote:
 On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Hub- FreeBSD free...@hub.org
 wrote:
 
 Actually, according to what we are tracking at
 http://bsdstats.org, there are currently *8*:
 
 PC-BSD
 FreeBSD
 PYC-BSD (aka Rus-BSD)
 DesktopBSD
 OpenBSD
 NetBSD
 DragonflyBSD
 MidnightBSD
 
 
 Tracking something like DesktopBSD which doesn't exist for quite a
 long time make statistics not much useful. MidnightBSD seems to be
 same case as last activy on mailing list last year in May, forums
 doesn't working at all so we are still on 4 core BSDs
 (Open/Net/Free/Dfly).
 
 I find it rather meaningless as a tracking tool for BSD in general. 
 There is no way something like 2BSD would ever appear there, no
 matter how many systems were installed.
 
 the number of FreeBSD installations for Indonesia seem also very, very
 low. We would have 20% of the installation base then.

Its a purely opt-in system, excepf for PC-BSD, which has theirs as an opt-out 
when you install the OS … that is why its numbers are so much higher then 
everyone else …

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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-15 Thread Anthony ''Ishpeck'' Tedjamulia
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 01:27:44PM +0100, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
 b) Besides - I question the notion of unchanging == dead. 

Amen!

Sometimes, you just don't need to be twiddling in the code for 
your software to work.
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-14 Thread Magnus Eriksson
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012, at 14:18, Martin wrote:
 My point is about the possibility of creating a new BSD project (with
 separate developers) that aims for 100% compatibility with at least
 FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and maybe DragonflyBSD.

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012, at 22:43, matthew sporleder wrote:
 If you are interested in generating linux-like buzz advocate
 hardware manufacturers and industry types to fund (with money)
 development of drivers.

Not a developer, but here's something I've been thinking about: Are
there perhaps some *parts* of the major BSDs (kernel interfaces, file
formats) that could benefit from being unified / standardized?  Maybe at
least a subset of syscalls and libraries that could be agreed on and
declared stable forever so that simple binaries can run?  That is
something that's already being done for Linux compatibility - except for
the bit about stability.  But why should I have to keep Linux binaries
around for handling weird archive formats?

I think matthew is basically right; but if there was only one single
target to develop for, with a big fat sign on it saying simply BSD,
I'd bet that arguing for getting things written - graphics drivers or
userland tools for managing ones RAID setup, or whatever would end up
being feasible - would be easier.

In my daydreams (slightly less unrealistic than the mail that started
the discussion) I'm sending an email to a developer that says Hey, you
can get four done in one shot, and it's also a standard.  And did I
mention that Apple and the Minix project have been using lots of code
from the BSD projects?  Want to bet they'll adopt this too?.

Yeah, I need to get out more, but you get the point.


Magnus
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Ignatios Souvatzis
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
 On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest 
  BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and 
  create a Unified BSD?
 
 
 You'd end up creating a fifth.

At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
userland, an eighth. 

-is
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Joar Jegleim
I just can't resist the urge to point to this comic strip, which an
other FreeBSD users posted regarding : hey let's create a FreeBSD
desktop, like Ubuntu did with Unity
http://xkcd.com/927/

-- 
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Homepage: http://cosmicb.no
Linkedin: http://no.linkedin.com/in/joarjegleim
fb: http://www.facebook.com/joar.jegleim
AKA: CosmicB @Freenode

--

On 12 November 2012 21:37, Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi!

 First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive junior
 sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the bigger
 picture and the good of the cause.

 Now over to the reason for my post.

 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
 days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
 the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
 community have decided to split their resources into several different
 projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
 competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
 create a Unified BSD?

 Kind Regards,
 Robin Bjorklin
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Lars Engels
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 11:45:11AM +0100, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
  On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:
  
   Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four 
   largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each 
   and create a Unified BSD?
  
  
  You'd end up creating a fifth.
 
 At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
 Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
 is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
 userland, an eighth. 
 

MirBSD / MirOS is dead:

http://www.freshbsd.org/search?project=mirbsd

Last commit:  2011-08-29 23:00:00


pgplE2yH2ohT0.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Ignatios Souvatzis
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 01:04:27PM +0100, Lars Engels wrote:

 MirBSD / MirOS is dead:
 
 http://www.freshbsd.org/search?project=mirbsd
 
 Last commit:  2011-08-29 23:00:00

I'm no Mir* co-worker, so take this with a grain of salt. But on
general principles:

a) I question the date itself - that's the last commit to whatever
freshbsd.org watches, not necessarily the last thing the developers 
did.

(In fact, I've heard from Thorsten at FrosCon that he does definitely
not consider his project abandoned.)

b) Besides - I question the notion of unchanging == dead. In
fact, as somebody who *uses* software, and who administeres computers
for others who want to *use* the software, I consider changing
software - e.g. the fortnightly changes of Firefox-Current's user
interface - a nuisance. (That's why Mozilla has their extended
support release, currently 10.0.9.) People want to use software for
some work, not spend half of their time rewriting configuration
files or relearn key bidings or menu entry positions.

(Now, nobody being there who looks at bug reports etc... thats
something different. But you only see changes through this activity
if there really *are* bugs.)

-is
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Jakub Lach
mksh is certainly not, and I use it daily 
on FreeBSD and really like it. 

The same I could say about openntpd
from OpenBSD. 

Isn't it like it should be then?



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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Johnny Billquist

On 2012-11-13 11:45, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:

On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:


Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest BSD 
variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create a 
Unified BSD?



You'd end up creating a fifth.


At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
userland, an eighth.


And what about 2BSD, BSD 3 and BSD 4 with all their releases?
(And I assume that there was probably something that in retrospect would 
have been called 1BSD as well...)


Johnny

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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Martin
No offense Ignatios Souvatzis but your reference to Minix being a 7th BSD
distro is like saying FreeBSD (or any of the other major BSDs) is another
Linux because of its inter-compatibility for certain user-land components
and various shared code. Minix has a minimal amount of NetBSD code and most
of it being userland tools and package management. The actual core of Minix
is totally different to NetBSD; MINIX is a microkernel and NetBSD is a
monolithic kernel being a major difference. Mac OS X i can understand but
again the core of OSX is based of Mach 3, FreeBSD and OPENSTEP, with a lot
of modified code (more like BSD's 2nd or 3rd cousin).
Although with that i suppose it depends on how you are defining what
classifies as a BSD distribution. If your going of whether they have used
any source from BSD then your going to be hard-pressed to classify one that
isn't BSD. However, i was assuming you were going of the core of the system
(i.e. how much source if any is used in kernel space).

Which brings be back to what i was talking about in an earlier post. If you
want to make a unified BSD, it would be easier to create a new BSD which
at the core (i.e. memory management, IPC, I/O, etc...) is based of per-say
NetBSD, i only chose NetBSD because it has what i believe is cleaner code
than the others, and is structured in a way that would make it easier to
modify and move components.
Sure it wouldn't be true to the roots of an actual unified BSD that is
based of 4.4BSD lite and has a mesh core of OpenBSD, FreeBSD  NetBSD, but
my point isn't about 4.4BSD lite or creating a true unified BSD down to
the core (where all BSD developers work on one project).
My point is about the possibility of creating a new BSD project (with
separate developers) that aims for 100% compatibility with at least
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and maybe DragonflyBSD.

Your suggestion i would think is possible, but only by being realistic
about it. Using an already stable kernel and then modifying it where
necessary to make it compatible.

lol, that's just my 2-cents about it.

Hell the idea is more possible with the BSDs than it is with Linux. I
wouldn't even consider trying to create a unified Linux. Linux is such a
jumbled mess, that i wouldn't want to go anywhere near a project trying to
un-jumble it with a 10ft pole, as it would take about as long to un-jumble
it as it would to finish the same idea on BSD. I like Linux but if your
talking about a project/s being unified, BSD is leaps and bounds ahead of
Linux. So while Linux is doing better in terms of popularity, BSD has a far
greater potential for more than Linux, just because each project has made
such a strong base foundation and is so well organized. :D

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Ignatios Souvatzis ignat...@cs.uni-bonn.de
 wrote:

 On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
  On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
   Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four
 largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each
 and create a Unified BSD?
 
 
  You'd end up creating a fifth.

 At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
 Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
 is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
 userland, an eighth.

 -is

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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread ill...@gmail.com
On 13 November 2012 07:04, Lars Engels lars.eng...@0x20.net wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 11:45:11AM +0100, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
 On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
  On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com 
  wrote:
 
   Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four 
   largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of 
   each and create a Unified BSD?
 
 
  You'd end up creating a fifth.

 At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
 Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
 is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
 userland, an eighth.


 MirBSD / MirOS is dead:

 http://www.freshbsd.org/search?project=mirbsd

 Last commit:  2011-08-29 23:00:00

Latest looks like 20120911 via http://www.mirbsd.org/MirOS/current/

Also, mksh (I use this on gentoo)  jupp (a fork of joe: I still use the ol
jstar for word processing) are both regularly worked upon.

In any case (getting back to the Original Troll), the various BSD
projects regularly borrow code from each other, so I hardly see the
point.

-- 
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Johan Beisser
On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 2:45 AM, Ignatios Souvatzis
ignat...@cs.uni-bonn.de wrote:

 At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
 Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
 is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
 userland, an eighth.

OS X has benefitted greatly from FreeBSD, Apple hiring former FreeBSD
core team members. And indirectly from OpenBSD as well, with modern
versions of OS X, 10.7+, have pf.

Cross pollination is a huge benefit to the BSD community.
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Julian H. Stacey
Hi,
Reference:
 From: Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se 
 Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:34:56 +0100 
 Message-id:   50a23e70.8010...@update.uu.se 

Johnny Billquist wrote:
 On 2012-11-13 11:45, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
  On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:
  On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com 
  wrote:
 
  Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four 
  largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each 
  and create a Unified BSD?
 
 
  You'd end up creating a fifth.
 
  At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
  Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
  is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
  userland, an eighth.
 
 And what about 2BSD, BSD 3 and BSD 4 with all their releases?
 (And I assume that there was probably something that in retrospect would 
 have been called 1BSD as well...)
 
   Johnny

No they were sequential from same team, not later parallel forks.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Jeremy C. Reed
On Tue, 13 Nov 2012, Julian H. Stacey wrote:

 Johnny Billquist wrote:

  And what about 2BSD, BSD 3 and BSD 4 with all their releases?
  (And I assume that there was probably something that in retrospect would 
  have been called 1BSD as well...)

 No they were sequential from same team, not later parallel forks.

1BSD is not an operating system. 2BSD wasn't an operating system until 
2.8BSD which was after 3BSD.  I'd suggest that 2.x and 4.x are different 
forks; they had some different developers, lots of different code, but 
also lots of shared code.

echo uggc://errqzrqvn.arg/obbxf/ofq-uvfgbel/ | \
 tr noqruvxzabcefgl abdehikmnoprsty

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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread matthew sporleder
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Robin  Björklin
robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi!

 First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive junior
 sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the bigger
 picture and the good of the cause.

 Now over to the reason for my post.

 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
 days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
 the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
 community have decided to split their resources into several different
 projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
 competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create
 a Unified BSD?

 Kind Regards,
 Robin Bjorklin


Model yourself after Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino who was involved in Net,
Open, and Free BSD.

If you are interested in generating linux-like buzz advocate
hardware manufacturers and industry types to fund (with money)
development of drivers.

Matt
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-13 Thread Johnny Billquist

On 2012-11-13 18:51, Julian H. Stacey wrote:

Hi,
Reference:

From:   Johnny Billquist b...@update.uu.se
Date:   Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:34:56 +0100
Message-id: 50a23e70.8010...@update.uu.se


Johnny Billquist wrote:

On 2012-11-13 11:45, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08:08AM +0100, Joost van de Griek wrote:

On 12 Nov 2012, at 21:37 , Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:


Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest BSD 
variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create a 
Unified BSD?



You'd end up creating a fifth.


At least a sixth, IIRC. You left out MirBSD from your distribution list.
Also, you could argue that Minix, with its NetBSD compatibility,
is a seventh and MacOS-X, with its partially (Free-/Net-)BSD compatible
userland, an eighth.


And what about 2BSD, BSD 3 and BSD 4 with all their releases?
(And I assume that there was probably something that in retrospect would
have been called 1BSD as well...)

Johnny


No they were sequential from same team, not later parallel forks.


Not so fast... 2BSD and BSD 4 are definitely parallel, almost to this 
day, I'd say... Well, BSD 4 has been sortof dead for a number of years 
now, but 2BSD is not entirely so dead yet. And things were back- and 
forwardported between the two for a while.


Johnny

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Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Robin Björklin
Hi!

First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive junior
sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the bigger
picture and the good of the cause.

Now over to the reason for my post.

As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
community have decided to split their resources into several different
projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
create a Unified BSD?

Kind Regards,
Robin Bjorklin
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RE: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Justin Mayes
Yes, your bat crap crazy :-)

All of these variants inherit from the same unified BSD 4.4 base code as far
as I know. So years ago  there were reasons that groups wanted to spilt off
and focus on specific goals. Some of these goals are mutually exclusive.
These BSD variants are not really competing with each other or Linux for
that matter. 


Justin Mayes 


-Original Message-
From: owner-m...@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-m...@openbsd.org] On Behalf Of
Robin Björklin
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 2:38 PM
To: us...@dragonflybsd.org; netbsd-us...@netbsd.org;
freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; m...@openbsd.org
Subject: Unified BSD?

Hi!

First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive junior
sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the bigger
picture and the good of the cause.

Now over to the reason for my post.

As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
community have decided to split their resources into several different
projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and create
a Unified BSD?

Kind Regards,
Robin Bjorklin



RE: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Jakub Lach
+1

Also, all projects being _open_ it's not like 
there isn't any useful cross-talk in sources, there 
is.

And all projects can focus on their precise goals.

Win-win.

Of course, if some sub-goals are common, 
collaboration is encouraged (e.g. editor suite, 
chromium, I believe some wifi drivers... etc).





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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Ville Valkonen
On 12 November 2012 22:37, Robin  Björklin robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:
 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
 days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
 the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
 community have decided to split their resources into several different
 projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
 competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

Different BSDs have different interests. Also, competitive shape is
ambiguous (competitive in speed?, portability?, security?, market
share?).

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
 create a Unified BSD?

Doesn't that apply for Linux too?
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread pete wright
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Robin  Björklin
robin.bjork...@gmail.com wrote:



 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
 create a Unified BSD?


you are not crazy for thinking this, and fortunately there is nothing
prohibiting you from doing so (or a collective group of people, or
company etc...).  One thing you will see in the BSD Unix systems is
there is quite a bit of cross pollination between projects.  The
largest example current example of this from my perspective is support
for OpenBSD's pf packet filter in FreeBSD.  This is a packet filter
built to suit the OpenBSD developers goals, but it did not restrict
FreeBSD from supporting this packet filter and hopefully both projects
benefit from this collaboration (wider code exposure of the pf code,
and wider choice of packet filters for FreeBSD users).

My opinion is that with the current state of the BSD's this is one of
its stronger suits - we have multiple projects right now building
entire operating systems to suit each of the projects stated goals and
developer wishes.  this would be opposed to gnu/linux where you are
cobbling together many disparate sources to build your distribution
(some of which will have goals that may not line up with your goals).
with this diversity we still cross pollinate ideas and methods, but
are still allowed to spend our limited resources focusing on our
projects core goals.

-pete

-- 
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www.nycbug.org
@nomadlogicLA
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Eric Furman
This is the funniest thing I've seen all day. :)

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012, at 03:37 PM, Robin  Björklin wrote:
 Hi!
 
 First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive
 junior
 sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the
 bigger
 picture and the good of the cause.
 
 Now over to the reason for my post.
 
 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
 days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is
 why
 the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
 community have decided to split their resources into several different
 projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
 competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?
 
 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four
 largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
 create a Unified BSD?
 
 Kind Regards,
 Robin Bjorklin
 
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Brett Glass
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the Linux 
world is unified. It isn't.


The big difference between Linux and the BSDs is that it alienates 
itself from the BSDs and many other projects by using a viral, 
business-hostile license. The BSDs can draw on one another's work 
because there are no licensing barriers between them.


--Brett Glass

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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Greg 'groggy' Lehey
On Monday, 12 November 2012 at 21:37:41 +0100, Robin  Björklin wrote:

 First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive
 junior sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and
 see the bigger picture and the good of the cause.

It shows :-)

 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux
 these days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm
 wondering is why the BSD community which from what I can gather
 isn't as big as the Linux community have decided to split their
 resources into several different projects/forks/distributions. To me
 it seems *BSD would be in a more competitive shape if all developers
 would get in under one roof?

There's 20 years of history to explain that.  Where should I begin?
Should I begin?

- The initial split was between Bill Jolitz and the rest of the world.
  This was partially personality driven, partially goal driven.  Bill
  soon faded out, leaving just the NetBSD project.

- Next came the split between NetBSD and FreeBSD.  That was mainly
  goal driven, but there was also a fair amount of personality
  involved.

- Then came the Unix wars, where ATT sued BSDI (a commercial variant
  that no longer exists) over perceived copyright infringement.  The
  free BSDs weren't really directly involved, but the suit would have
  been just as relevant, and people were worried.

  This was the time that Linux was in the ascendancy.  Users had the
  choice of a free GPL system or one which might land them in
  trouble.  Most chose the safe option.

- Then OpenBSD split from NetBSD.  Mainly personality driven AFAICT.
  This doesn't imply any criticism of the founder of the new project.

  Round about this time I wrote a paper on the subject, which I
  presented in various conferences.  You can find numerous versions at
  http://www.lemis.com/grog/Papers/, including Why BSD is better than
  Linux, presented at the Linux.conf.au in Brisbane.

- Then DragonflyBSD split from FreeBSD.  Mainly personality driven
  AFAICT.  Again, this doesn't imply any criticism of the founder of
  the new project.

And that's where we are.  We have 4 different BSD kernels which
regularly borrow from each other.  Some projects, such as PCBSD, take
these kernels and package them differently.

Looking across the fence, I see that there is no distribution of Linux
with a completely standard kernel (I think), and lots of different
distributions with significantly different interfaces.  On the whole,
I'd say that BSD is more uniform than Linux.

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four
 largest BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of
 each and create a Unified BSD?

Maybe not, but there are many reasons it won't happen.  One is the
structure of the individual projects, and another is that the current
system works well.  If you only have one kernel, you don't have people
implementing different solutions for a problem, so you don't find out
which is better.

Greg
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Johan Beisser
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey g...@freebsd.org wrote:

 - Then DragonflyBSD split from FreeBSD.  Mainly personality driven
   AFAICT.  Again, this doesn't imply any criticism of the founder of
   the new project.

There were some very valid technical reasons at the time as well, IMHO.
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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Martin
The reason was actually intellectual property based between ATT and the
proprietary BSD/386 if your talking BSD4.4. That was the core reason for
why FreeBSD and NetBSD started.
So really it isn't that crazy, more highly unlikely that your going to get
the core developers of each project to abandon years of work to start again
on a unified BSD.

It is a cool thought, one i have thought about.

Which is why i reckon your far more likely to get support for a new BSD
system that takes the foundation of one of the existing BSD's and create a
project that aims for compatibility between the major BSD players.

At least then its not like restarting.

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 8:36 AM, Justin Mayes jma...@careered.com wrote:

 Yes, your bat crap crazy :-)

 All of these variants inherit from the same unified BSD 4.4 base code as
 far
 as I know. So years ago  there were reasons that groups wanted to spilt off
 and focus on specific goals. Some of these goals are mutually exclusive.
 These BSD variants are not really competing with each other or Linux for
 that matter.


 Justin Mayes


 -Original Message-
 From: owner-m...@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-m...@openbsd.org] On Behalf Of
 Robin Björklin
 Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 2:38 PM
 To: us...@dragonflybsd.org; netbsd-us...@netbsd.org;
 freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; m...@openbsd.org
 Subject: Unified BSD?

 Hi!

 First and foremost I'd like to present myself, I'm a young and naive junior
 sys admin that think people should be able to compromise and see the bigger
 picture and the good of the cause.

 Now over to the reason for my post.

 As all of you probably know there's a lot of buzz around Gnu/Linux these
 days and I'm pretty sure you couldn't care less. What I'm wondering is why
 the BSD community which from what I can gather isn't as big as the Linux
 community have decided to split their resources into several different
 projects/forks/distributions. To me it seems *BSD would be in a more
 competitive shape if all developers would get in under one roof?

 Am I bat crap crazy for thinking it could be good to merge the four largest
 BSD variants out there, take the best bits and pieces out of each and
 create
 a Unified BSD?

 Kind Regards,
 Robin Bjorklin


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Re: Unified BSD?

2012-11-12 Thread Julian H. Stacey
 - Then came the Unix wars, where ATT sued BSDI (a commercial variant
   that no longer exists) over perceived copyright infringement.  The
   free BSDs weren't really directly involved, but the suit would have
   been just as relevant, and people were worried.
 
   This was the time that Linux was in the ascendancy.  Users had the
   choice of a free GPL system or one which might land them in
   trouble.  Most chose the safe option.

I know the view from Germany as to why Linux was taken up so readily,
most people read about it later,  repeat relayed wisdom, but I was
here  know:

( BTW though I'm British but in Germany, Germany is far
more signifcant in this regard than eg UK of GB, eg Linux mag.
has 3 times the circulation in Germany as UK,  whenever
I'm in UK I never see Linux mags in book shops etc ( of
course no BSD) just MS, whereas here in Munich there's some
choice of Linux mags, even in food supermarket (Tengelmann)
I recall.

Most newbies were clueless or didnt give a toss about FSF v BSD
licensing then (or now), or some firm called ATT across the pond
breathing hot air.  (Only us BSD people cared, not many of us).

Old Unix hands like me were earning good money fully employed doing
consultancy, (plenty of work then). Although I thought I maybe
should help spread BSD,  considered knocking out batches of 30/40+
floppies per mail order, it was Very unattractive, labour intensive
formatting, dd'ing, checking for media errors, at a very low pay
rate compare with mich higher paid  more interesting consultancy.

Plus also if one did that under German tax law (I checked with my
Steuer Berater = accountant I recall) it would be subject to Gewerbe
Steuer,  not just for the trivial amount earned on floppies shipped,
but could imperil imposing the extra tax on the Whole of consultancy
income, Very Expensive mistake to risk that. So I didn't  others
didnt; most other consultant friends here were also happy earning
at commercial rates,  didn't want to touch floppy reproduction.

BUT ... meanwhile there was a whole new load of students on low or
no income,  no tax issues to worry about,  young student mode
enthusiasm  time to evangalise their new free software ... Linux
... so one saw adverts for stack of floppies in eg CT Magazine
(http://www.heise.de/ct/  others.

 then CDs came on the scene, even easier for the students to push
out  again I wondered whether I should push out some BSD CDs, 
again colleagues were too busy to reduce their consultancy
income by doing grunt disk jockey work producing  mailing CDROMs
at cheap prices.  Again I was scared of German Gewerbe Steuer ...

So I decided to just do software bundling (safe consultancy work)
 let a commercial firm do manufacture, bulk distrib, German language
correspondence,  German gewerbe Steuer issues etc - Ughh)

So I mastered a combination Live + Install FreeBSD CDROM years
before freebsd.org did theirs,  approached german Linux Mag  Heise
(I think)  (English language, German based) BSD Mag (whatever, the
one from Rosa Riebl) to see if anyone would bundle it stuck to front
page of magazines (to really shift a lot  have BSD make a big
impact in the OS scene.

I didnt get anywhere with that, but I got further with Dr Dobbs USA
mag,  negotiations were going OK, then they decided it would be
too expensive to glue a CD on each cover,  they just wanted to
feature my CD in their library of CDs for sale ... at which point
I lost interest cos:
- It would fail to impact the market if not sent in bulk 1 per mag.
(I'd have accepted very low payment for that, as it
would have helped push BSD significantly)
- If not on Mag. cover  just in library for sale per individual order,
  I was scared of low sales,  not worth the bother to polish the
  master  maintain it maybe through new releases for low income.

Actually, I still see a market opportunity for someone:
  For BSD (or Linux) shipped on memory sticks.  But I wont touch
  that, especially not in Germany with this tax system,  having
  to deal with thousands of customers at low profit per unit, plus
  a lot of german correspondence (German grammar not nice IMO) ...
  but its still a market BSD or Linux students could exploit (if
  not already ... I havent read CT mag  ads. lately to know if it's
  being done).

Cheers,
Julian
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Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
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