Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: FreeBSD/Linux
Author: William Crim Posted: 5/17/1999; 9:04:38 PM Topic: FreeBSD/Linux Msg #: 6384 (In response to 6292) Prev/Next: 6383 / 6385
Linux is Unix-Like, BSD *IS* Unix. :-)Linux evolved into Unix compatibility. BSD evolved from the original Unix codebase.
Perhaps the most important part...
Linux is GPL(GNU General Public License) which means it will always be free. If you ever want to release your code(by selling or posting to a ftp or website), you must make the code availible too.
BSD is under the BSD license. This means that you have to put a copyright notice in your program, and then you can do whatever you want with it. Even sell it. NeXTStep is BSD code on a Mach microkernel(as is Darwin). The BSD license doesn't make any restriction on distribution like the GPL does. I could take the OpenBSD codebase right now and use it in my Commercial OS.
This difference in License is why often time things like Firewalls, etc are in BSD. Because the company can keep their code secret, they often choose BSD.
Other the license issues, most other differences are really just splitting hairs. Most of the Unix programs you can find for Linux, will also compile and run on BSD(Perl, Apache, X-Win, GNOME, GIMP, Netscape, etc etc)
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