A BSD-licensed kernel is already available

[Mikhail Ramendik]

Hello,

It's somewhat strange to read through debates on the supposed offer for
BSD-licensing the Linux kernel for $$$, for quite some time, with nobody
noticing that the operation would be totally redundant.

A Unix-like kernel, ported to many platforms, well written, well
supported, actively developed, and widely used, is already available
under this license. You can download it from http://www.netbsd.org . 

(FreeBSD and OpenBSD are ported to a less extensive list of platforms,
thus NetBSD).

Now if it lacks some driver or feature that is necessary for the
potential purchaser, the said purchaser will spend the money in a much
wiser way by contacting the developers of the Linux driver/feature, and
asking them to port that code to BSD, under the BSD license, for $$$. 

A side effect would be *huge* popularity of the project in the BSD
community. They've been losing out "the masses" to Linux due to the
latter's commercial success; and they believe (go ask them!) that the
BSD general design is actually better than the Linux one. Big commercial
support for BSD might be seen as a long-awaited revolution, at least by
them. 

This is especially interesting doe to the remark that "some other
enterprising individual will replicate similiar code". There's your
similar code under the BSD license. *All*, 100%, of a big, nice, usable
kernel!

Yours, Mikhail Ramendik
REALLY curious why BSD has not popped up in the discussion before...

P.S. I am neutral on the technical merits of BSD vs. Linux; I use Linux,
but the sole reason is better distro support.



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