[buug] (no subject)

[Johan Beisser]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Johan Beisser (jb at caustic.org):
>
>> There's a few that are true UNIX(R), as well.
>
> And yet, nobody really cares.  As I said, the few people who did died by
> around 1992.  So did, by and large, the companies.  BSDi is long gone,
> for example.  Open Group still does some Single UNIX Specification (or
> whatever it's called, these days) certification business to this day --
> but that business has just about gone away because nobody gives a damn.

To be honest, I used BSD/OS well until 2003. Even as things were
winding down after their acquisition of Walnut Creek CDROM, and hiring
a bunch of FreeBSD core.

>> I have to disagree.
>
> About "freeware" being ill-defined?  Well, sorry, it is.
>
> I hear the term bandied about to mean all sorts of things, and users of
> the term almost invariably have no clear idea what it means, and morever
> of what _they_ mean when they say it.

Okay, I've got to concede here. You're right, but that can be said
about most technical and software terms in use by the lay-user.

>> "Open Source Software" has the vague definition of "Freeware" while
>> not really being exclusive.
>
> You are flamboyantly mistaken, here.  Open source software has a formal,
> highly useful, specific definition:  http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

It's also modern, and postdates the early use of the term. I heard
"freeware" in the early 80s, often in the term of games. Same goes
with "shareware."

Perhaps I'm just old, recalling a time before GNU Software, and having
someone distribute binary only applications for free.

> Honestly, did you not _know_ that?  It's OK if you didn't.  I'm just
> surprised.

No, I just see the two as very different. Freeware implies something
different than Open Source software to me. As I said below.

>> "Freeware" harkens back to the "Shareware" software of the 80s and
>> 90s.
>
> "Shareware" is another ill-defined term, although rather less so.  Some
> "shareware" permitted the recipient to create and send out derivative
> works, some did not.  Some had source code access, some did not.  So, it
> was a pretty highly vague conceps.  I believe the entirety of what it
> entailed was that you would have some right to redistribute (though
> sometimes with severe and even ridiculous strings attached), and the
> software held out its hand for money and/or created a legal obligation
> to pay someone.

"Shareware" implied, at least to me as a teen, that you should pay for
it. PKZip/PKunzip for DOS were an excellent example of this.

>> Freeware was the "free to use, free as in beer" software that many
>> people used.
>
> That is one thing people have been known to use the term to mean.
> There are others.  And the term as you construe it is fuzzy, because it
> says nothing about the legal right of modification, independent
> development, and distribution of derivative works.

I'm not sure you have to define those aspects for something to be
"freeware." I'm a pragmatist. "Do I have to pay the author cash for
the software itself?"

On the same note, the license itself will define the rest. I don't
want to start a license debate, but defining something as "Free to
use, modify, and distribute the modified works" doesn't exclude it
from being "Freeware." It simply gives the user more rights to do
things with the software. On the same note, that moves it from the
amateur "freeware" label to "Open Source/Free Software."

>> I really disagree. "Freeware" is "Free as in beer."
>
> Again, you are confused.  You have misread what I said.  I said that
> "freeware" as the term is usually construed is one pole of an axis
> on which acquisition cost is denoted.

Yes... I think we fell in to agreement, somewhere. And it might be
that I misunderstood what you said.

>> "Open Source" doesn't mean Free at all. It just means the source code
>> is available to you to tinker and modify if you'd like.
>
> You really ought to read what I _said_ before purporting to disagree
> with it.
>
> I said that the term "freeware" contemplates one point on an axis of
> acquisition cost.  I asserted that this particular axis isn't especially
> interesting.
>
> I pointed out a separate, orthogonal metric of legal rights to source
> forms, right to modify, right to redistribute modified works, right to
> use for any purpose.  That is the axis on which proprietary terms lie on
> one end, and various types of open source aka free-software terms lie on
> the other.

Gotcha. Sorry again for my misunderstand of what you wrote, and thank
you for your clarification.

>> Yes, although the history is a little more muddled than that.
>
> You don't need to tell _me_ how muddled it is.  And I was around while
> it was happening.

I can't claim I was, I simply benefited when the AT&T lawsuit was
settled. Before that, I simply used SunOS and AT&T SysV systems.

> This is obviously a newcomer to whom I was addressing.  Were you
> expecting me to hit him with the whole damned levenez.com history chart?

No, not at all. I find it overwhelming at times, I can't imagine it
for a newbie.

>> BSD really is more than just the kernel at this point....
>
> Um, BSD was always more than just the kernel.

At one point it was less than that.

>> It's Unix-Like, and that's usually enough.
>
> Yes, you seem to be strenuously in agreement, which might be fun but
> also a waste of time.  As I said, Tastes Differ[TM].

Yep. They do.

>> Striving for POSIX compliance means there's a principle of least
>> surprise when bouncing from one Unix to the next.
>
> Rough POSIX.1 has been shown useful (except of course that such things
> as the Microsoft POSIX Subsystem for Windows shows you can achieve that
> and produce something utterly useless).

I can't say I've looked at it seriously.

> Let me correct that:  Rough implementation of the Core Services
> _portion_ of POSIX.1 has been shown useful.  Remember, we don't all need
> real-time extensions, and POSIX.1c threading isn't really great.

I've not really seen POSIX threading work really well, but I can't
claim to have looked.