Re: XFree86/FreeBSD on a 360

[ucklw08 <ucklw08@ucl.ac.uk>]

Linux was written from ground up as an alternative to UNIX by Linux
Tuvalds/ing (author of a really nice OS book which incorporates the
full source code for linux) as a modular os which could be worked on
even in a mainframe environment without taking down the whole system
-- to the point of testing new device drivers in a virtual machine.
Itis a nice, small, clean, integrated piece of work.  FreeBSD, NetBSD,
etc are all ports of BSD UNIX 4.2/4.3 (thereabouts) which are really
compilations of collaborative works, possibly under question as to
the proper copyright owner -- one commercial company took on AT&T in
a court case to establish the right to market 386/BSD, BSD/386 (I can
never recall which one is commercial and which is gnu licensed) - but
as I undetstand it, their win in court only applied to BSDI Inc and
did not clearly resolve the copyright issue for everyone else.  If
you play with NetBSD, 386BSD source code that may be OK -- but if you
market it AT&T's clients (sold to Novell?  resold to SCO?) may have
a basis to come after you.  Linus owns linux outright.