BSD Utils (Was Re: tlug: The simplest possible printer puzzle )

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Austin" == Austin Kurahone <austin@example.com> writes:[1]

    Austin> Simon Cozens wrote:

    >> Huh? See that thing over there? That's the BSD root source
    >> tree.  One really cool thing about it is that it exists. If we
    >> didn't have GNU, we'd have something else. Not really a big
    >> deal.

Uh, the gentleman has made a slight misstatement; that turns out not
to be the case.

If you look carefully at the history, you'll see that focus was always
on the kernels.  They were free and easily available, but support
daemons and apps were harder to find.

Except at GNU.  Fact is, the idea of publishing the whole BSD system
as a free software _distribution_ was inspired by the GNU Project;
without the GNU Project, it could have taken much longer for the idea
to come up (and it might never have happened if the software patents
got there first, before the movement picked up momentum).

Yes, I should be able to back that up with quotes from BSD folk; root
around on www.gnu.org, I'm sure rms has the appropriate pointers.

Believe me, it sticks in my throat (sideways with sharp points) to
defend that paranoid megalomanic claim.  But the devil himself
deserves his due credit.

Not to deny it could have happened other ways, but historically that
was the path, and it's hard to prove it _would_ have happened otherwise.

Footnotes: 
[1]  I'm having problems getting mail.  Probably the bloody
Tsukuba-dai packet-fucker.  Austin really doesn't have anything todo
with what I want to say, but doing it this way leaves the appropriate
references trail.

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