Linux vs FreeBSD

Even today there is much confusion. BSD predates Linux by a significant amount of time, if it hadn't been for AT&T there would be no Linux. Linus Torvalds wanted UNIX on his PC, he didn't want to pay for it, he got a copy of MINIX (part of Tannenbaum(sp?)'s operating systems fundamentals course) and ported it to his hardware. He thought it sucked. He began improving it, he and Tannenbaum got into many flame wars on the net, Linus kept releasing his work in progress, other people started contributing, eventually something usable was available, a long while later something stable was available. The Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at Berkeley was being disbanded, they wanted to release the Berkeley Standard Distribution (aks BSD) to the public. AT&T sued them (and BSDI and others) on the grounds that there was proprietary AT&T code in the release. (The first attempt was the BSD 4.3 release) The lawsuit took several years to play out, the result was that AT&T identified all of the code they considered "theirs". After a negotiation both sides agreed to what was the disputed code. Once settled the remaining members of the CSRG went about re-writing the code that was contested and replacing it in the kernel/system. The result was a "clean" version of BSD and it was dubbed "FreeBSD" because is was "free of encumberences" and an AT&T source license requirement. This became the basis of 4.4BSD and it spawned FreeBSD. Both BSDI and NetBSD followed similar routes (making their products "free of AT&T code.") and that is sort of where we would be today, except that the FreeBSD guys are a bit "chummy" about who can and cannot change the code in FreeBSD which increases stability but pisses some people off. A group of those people started "OpenBSD" which was, AFAICT, FreeBSD with no source control. (the bazaar model of development). Legally there is another HUGE difference between FreeBSD and Linux and it may end up killing Linux in the end. That is of coures the GNU Public License. Companies that build products out of machines running Linux are bound by the GPL to give away any code they develop that they ship as _part of Linux_. People who develop to FreeBSD are under no such restrictions. It has been hypothesized that this will lead to a host of incompatible FreeBSD variants, however my guess is that this won't be the case. It isn't the main APIs of the OS that people are changing, its things like drivers and improvements to the networking stack that people would rather keep as their "value add" as it were. On a related note, I'm currently in the process of creating a "full spec" system. I tried at one point to collect documentation on my desktop PC that was as complete as the documentation on my PDP-8/e. This was impossible due to the fact that Intel requires a signed non-disclosure agreement before they will describe the operation of their chips or CPUs. Fortunately, AMD has no such problem. I'm swapping out the Intel crap for a motherboard that has a documented chip set (MVP3) and a CPU that has a documented architecture (K6-2). The goal is to have a system where every component is completely described such that it would be possible, given time, for someone to completely "know it" at the register level. --Chuck McManis