free-software

"NetBSD is currently 0.1, with lots of patches applied. … It, like 386BSD, is intended to be used for research.Some could look at NetBSD as simply an interim release of 386BSD. We look it as more, and therefore have named it differently. The new name and version number reflect two of our goals for NetBSD: an escape from the political wars surrounding what we consider a wonderful operating system, and the rapid development of a stable release which we would consider of "production quality." …We intend to integrate free, positive changes from whatever sources will provide them, providing that they are well thought-out and increase the usability of the system. This includes integrating changes from 386BSD 0.2 when it appears, as well as from , and perhaps even going back to in order to re-integrate support for other architectures ….Above all, we hope to create a stable and accessible system, and to be responsive to the needs and desires of NetBSD users, because it is for and because of them that NetBSD exists."

"The demands of keeping a full-time job meant that Jolitz could not devote the time needed to keep up with the flood of incoming bug fixes and enhancements to 386/BSD [sic]. So, within a few months of the release of 386/BSD, a group of avid 386/BSD users formed the NetBSD group to pool their collective resources to help maintain and later enhance the system. Their releases became known as the NetBSD distribution. The NetBSD group chose to emphasize the support of as many platforms as possible and continued the research style development done by the CSRG. Until 1998, their distribution was done solely over the Net; no distribution media was available. Their group continues to target primarily the hardcore technical users."

"The Unix operating system was invented in the early 1970s at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. In the late ’70s, Unix zealots from Bell Labs visited the Berkeley campus, and a new, richer version of Unix was developed. Along with hot tubs, leftist politics, and the free speech movement, Berkeley is known for its Unix implementation.A schism developed between advocates of the small, compact AT&T Unix and the more elaborate Berkeley implementation. Despite conferences, standards, and promises, no consensus has appeared, and the world is left with two competing Unix operating systems.Of course, our lab used Berkeley Unix, as do all right-thinking folks. East Coast people were said to be biased towards AT&T Unix, but then, they hadn’t discovered hot tubs either."

"With the commercialization of Unix, the researchers at Bell Laboratories were no longer able to act as a clearing-house for the ongoing Unix research. As the research community continued to modify the Unix system, it found that it needed an organization that could produce research releases. Because of its early involvement in Unix and its history of releasing Unix-based tools, Berkeley quickly stepped into the role previously provided by the Labs."

"The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we are definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost "mission" is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software[,] and one that we enthusiastically support."

"The FreeBSD project is organized in much the same way as the CSRG. The entire FreeBSD project, including all the source code, documentation, bug reports, mailing-list archives, and even administrative data, is maintained in a publicly readable source-code-control system. Anyone may view the source code and existing bug reports, track progress on fixing bugs, and post bug reports. Anyone may join and participate in the numerous FreeBSD mailing lists. There are three groups of people that directly work on FreeBSD: developers, committers, and the core team.There are 5000 to 6000 developers, each of whom works on some part of the system[,] such as maintaining the FreeBSD kernel, continuing development of the 1000 core FreeBSD utilities, writing FreeBSD documentation, and updating other open-source software in the FreeBSD ports collection. Developers are able to access the source-code repository, but they are not permitted to change it. Instead, they must work with a committer or file a problem report to get their changes added to the system.There are currently 300 to 400 committers. Like the developers, most of them specialize in some part of the system. Unlike the developers, they are permitted to make changes to those parts of the source-code repository in which they have been authorized to work. All nontrivial changes should be reviewed by one or more other committers before being checked into the source tree. Most committers are doing work of their own as well as reviewing and committing the work of several developers.The core team is composed of nine people who are elected every 2 years. The candidates for the core team come from the committers and the committers elect the core team. The core team acts as the final gatekeepers of the source code. They monitor what is being committed and resolve conflicts if two or more committers cannot agree on how to solve a particular problem. The core team also approves the advancement of developers to committers and (in rare circumstances) temporarily or permanently evicts someone from the committer group. The usual reason for departure from the committer group is inactivity (making no changes to the system for more than a year)."

"Lots of work is going on to make FreeBSD more friendly on the desktop. Within the year, we expect to have, or be near, parity with Linux."

"There was never any consideration of using the GPL. We liked the BSD license specifically because it's flexible, simple and short. It's easy for both engineers and lawyers to read and it achieves our ends, which is to limit our liability but still make the code available to as many people as possible and for any purpose. The GPL is not something we really considered to be a license so much as a political manifesto …."

"The FreeBSD group was formed a few months after the NetBSD group with a charter to support just the PC architecture and to go after a larger and less technically advanced group of users, much as Linux had done. They built elaborate installation scripts and began shipping their system on a low cost . The combination of ease of installation and heavy promotion on the Net and at major trade shows such as led to a fast, large growth curve."

"This is KDE and it is all I use, personally. […] I am completely on board with this, I find myself more productive under Linux than I've ever been […]. This is an operating system made by programmers for programmers, so… How can you not want to explore this space?"

"I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.Please, just tell people to use KDE."

"I use Emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor."

"Richard Stallman, poem posted in emacs-devel on October 12, 2015"

"Personally, I feel inspired whenever I open Emacs. Like a craftsman entering his workshop, I feel a realm of possibility open before me. I feel the comfort of an environment that has evolved over time to fit me perfectly – an assortment of packages and keybindings which help me bring ideas to life day after day."

"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU Emacs would never make a good program."

"Emacs is the ground. We run around and act silly on top of it, and when we die, may our remnants grace its ongoing incrementation."

"C++ is a badly designed and ugly language. It would be a shame to use it in Emacs."

"Emacs is undoubtedly the most powerful programmer's editor in existence. It's a big, feature-laden program with a great deal of flexibility and customizability. … Emacs has an entire programming language inside it that can be used to write arbitrarily powerful editor functions."

"I'm writing this article with software called XEmacs. The program is unlike any other word processor I've ever encountered. In addition to cutting and pasting text, XEmacs can run other programs; send electronic mail; browse the World Wide Web; retrieve, edit, and send files across the Internet; and keep track of appointments. It's like a digital Swiss army knife."

"If you are a professional writer – i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed – Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish."

"This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131,000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers. As this is mostly by individuals not directly paid for development, it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity. Annualised and adjusted for growth this represents at least Euro 800 million in voluntary contribution from programmers alone each year, of which nearly half are based in Europe."

"Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is made freely available. Such firms represent in total at least 565,000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue. Contributing firms are from several non-IT (but often ICT intensive) sectors, and tend to have much higher revenues than non-contributing firms."

"Let's put it this way: if you need to ask a lawyer whether what you do is "right" or not, you are morally corrupt. Let's not go there. We don't base our morality on law."

"“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”."

"I personally believe open source is most important is in the operating system and in file formats. As long as those two things remain open source you can never have a monopoly. No company can dominate by any means except a superior product, and that puts the choice back into the hands of the public."

"Another group has started using the term “open source” to mean something close (but not identical) to “free software”. We prefer the term “free software” because, once you have heard that it refers to freedom rather than price, it calls to mind freedom. The word “open” never refers to freedom."

"Sharing the code just seems like The Right Thing to Do, it costs us rather little, but it benefits a lot of people in sometimes very significant ways. There are many university research projects, proof of concept publisher demos, and new platform test beds that have leveraged the code. Free software that people value adds wealth to the world."

"Software manuals must be free, for the same reasons that software must be free, and because the manuals are in effect part of the software. The same arguments also make sense for other kinds of works of practical use — that is to say, works that embody useful knowledge, such as educational works and reference works. Wikipedia is the best-known example. Any kind of work can be free, and the definition of free software has been extended to a definition of free cultural works applicable to any kind of works."

"My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."

"You may not like the fact that some information must be licensed, but that's how it is. Those who want information to be free as a matter of principle should create some information and make it free."

"There is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity. For innovation to continue, there needs to be value - and even open-source applications have some form of market model, which incentivises them to continue innovating."

"… there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with … nobody can ever improve the software."

"[open source software] is long-term credible … FUD tactics can not [sic] be used to combat it."

"Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence … that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects."

"The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says "no" to some of the things that people sometimes want to do. There are users who say that this is a bad thing--that the GPL "excludes" some proprietary software developers who "need to be brought into the free software community." But we are not excluding them from our community; they are choosing not to enter. Their decision to make software proprietary is a decision to stay out of our community. Being in our community means joining in cooperation with us; we cannot "bring them into our community" if they don't want to join. What we can do is offer them an inducement to join. The GNU GPL is designed to make an inducement from our existing software: "If you will make your software free, you can use this code." Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins some of the time."

"Paying isn't wrong, and being paid isn't wrong. Trampling other people's freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software."

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code."

"Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did."

"For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want."

"So the whole 'We have a list and we're not telling you' should tell you something. Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, 'nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!'?"

"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project."

"The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done."

"I bumped into him (Craig Mundie of Microsoft) in an elevator. I looked at his badge and said, "ah, you work for Microsoft." He looked back at me and said, "Oh ya, and what do you do?" And I thought it was some kind of tad dismissive, here is a guy in a suit looking at a scruffy hacker... so I gave him a thousand yard stare and said, "I am your worst nightmare!""

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

"The Many Minds Principle: the coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else."

"FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment that can result in increased profits or be more usefully spent in further innovation."