[ On Saturday, May 13, 1900 at 15:08:52 (CDT), Michael Sokolov wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: rfc: new libgcc build mechanism
>
> System V and Pure BSD are just like the USA and USSR during the Cold War. We,
> the Pure BSD camp, will never have anything from Missed'em-five. That's why we
> are *pure* BSD. Being SysVile-free is what we are by definition.
Hold on a minute there.... I think you forgot some of the history, such
as that of PWB Unix, etc.
First you say BSD is "Pure UNIX" because:
[[....]] it is an incremental improvement on V7 and 32V, has 100% of
Ritchie and Thompson's original UNIX code in it just like V7 and
32V, is 100% faithful to pure UNIX in ideology and all design
decisions, and requires a UNIX source license (pure UNIX does not
exist in binary-only form, never did, and never will).
I would agree with everything there except the bit about the licensing
crap. I don't imagine even Ritchie or Thompson wanted that kind of
licensing, though I do know that they have a great deal of respect for
the intellectual property they created and for who owns it.
However if you do include the licensing crap then what you've said about
SysV is completely bogus. SysV is an incremental improvement on V7 and
32V, has 100% of Ritchie and Thompson's original Unix code in it just
like V7 and 32V (plus some more, of course), is 100% faithful to pure
Unix in ideology and all design decisions (you can argue there 'til
you're blue in the face but those who made the decisions will swear left
right and centre that they made those decisions faithfully to the
original design), and requires a ``UNIX System'' source license (if you
want the source ;-).
(note that dmr et al didn't call it "UNIX", they called it "Unix" -- it
was AT&T lawyers who wrote the rules on how their trademark "UNIX" must
be used!)
I'm also fairly certain that most, if not all, of the developers of the
modern-day BSD derrivatives would argue that they too are 100% faithful
to pure Unix in ideology and all design decisions are 100% faithful to
pure Unix, and that though they'd like to have 100% of Ritchie and
Thompson's original Unix code, they too respect the intellectual
property rights of a giant corporation with deeper pockets than they
have (even collectively! ;-).
Finally note that you have to be DAMN careful what you're talking about
in terms of "unix" history -- there's a BIG difference between the
history of some kernel features and some user-land features. User-land
code has been shared back and forth between every player and there's no
way any sane person would ever try to make an argument about system
philosophy based on what bits of user-land code happen to be in any
given distribution of a Unix/UNIX-like system. There's stronger basis
for such an argument if you look at kernel internals, but of course if
you go that way then BSD Unix is at least 50% impure, by legal
definition! ;-)
Even in "user-land" there are some major differences in points of view
and philosophy. For example I don't think any of the original Unix
authors (and particularly not Pike) have *ever* written even a line of
code that uses "curses", whereas that library is a major central part of
the BSD "philosophy"! ;-)
So, in the end I'd have to say that being BSD is simply the state of
being 100% free of all original Unix code!
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
