[OT] mobile rising

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, November 09, 2017 23:42:37 codephantom via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 at 11:47:32 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
>
> wrote:
> > Oh, I'm all for using FreeBSD, but most of the arguments for
> > using FreeBSD over Windows apply to Linux. And if you can't get
> > someone to switch from Windows to Linux, you're not going to
> > get them to switch to FreeBSD. FreeBSD and Linux are definitely
> > different, but the differences are small when compared with
> > Windows.
>
> Except, that Linux/GNU is basically a clone of a clone.
>
> BSD is...just BSD..from which all the clones are made ;-)
>
> More importantly, is the GPL vs BSD licence thing.
>
> If you examine GPL code, and think..mmm..that looks good, I might
> use it in my app....then you're in trouble is you distribute that
> app without also distributing your code.
>
> BSD gives you 'genuine freedom' to use the code as you see fit -
> just don't try claiming that you wrote it, or you'll be in
> trouble.
>
> There is also the 'distribution' thing...FreeBSD is a single,
> managed, complete distrbution. Linux is just a kernel. It's
> combined with various GNU stuff to make up a distribution, and
> most distrubtions make their own little changes here and there,
> and you never really know what's going on. With FreeBSD there is
> only the FreeBSD distribution.
>
> So there maybe similiarities between FreeBSD and Linux/GNU, but
> their differences are really significant and warrant attention.
>
> Oddly enough, whatever draws me to FreeBSD, also draws me to D -
> I'm still not sure what it is...but the word 'freedom' keeps
> coming to mind. I cannot say that for Linux as much. I cannot say
> that for golang. They offer freedom, and at the same time setup
> out to restrict it.

I don't disagree that there are differences between FreeBSD and Linux, but
my point is that for most folks, the differences are small enough that it's
not all that different from trying to convince someone to use one Linux
distro or another - especially if you're trying to convince a Windows user,
since Windows is so drastically different from both. In most cases, whether
you run FreeBSD or Linux really comes down to preference. For the most part,
they both serve people's needs very well and on the surface aren't very
different.

I definitely prefer the BSD license to the GPL as well as how the BSDs
typically go about designing things, but if you don't care about the
licensing situation, whether it even matters to you which you're using
starts getting down to some pretty specific stuff that would seem fairly
esoteric to a lot of folks (especially non-geeks). It's even the case that
most software that runs on one runs on the other - including the desktop
environments - so while the differences definitely matter, they tend to be
pretty small from the end user's point of view. Plenty of us do get picky
about details, which would lead us to one or the other, depending on our
preferences, but there are way more similarities than differences - to the
point that to many folks, the differences seem pretty superficial.

- Jonathan M Davis