[flfederation]

I think every few months (years) or so, someone comes here to try to argue that BSD should jump on the GNU bandwagon.

This is NOT one of those posts. It's more accurate to say I'm fleeing, than trying to convert anybody here.

I will state where I'm coming from, but what I'm looking for is personal or historical accounts, or personal opinions. I'm on a fact-finding mission, not a crusade.

First of all, I'm posting from OpenBSD. It's nice. It's about as close to what I'm looking for right now as anything out there. OpenBSD fan, right here. I've also tried FreeBSD. I've migrated most of my equipment to BSD.

I won't deny being a Stallman fan, but I'm not here to defend him. I don't think he's coming back, you don't need to worry.

I'm most interested in the history of BSD, I've been trying to soak it up in bulk. I've read about it, I've been watching various BSD talks (Jason Dixon on GPL & BSD is Dying, Theo de Raadt on Pledge and Colin Percival on side channel attacks) along with videos about the history (USL vs. BSDi, etc.)

I think BSD got kind of a raw deal. I won't pretend to be a fan of modern Open Source, but OpenBSD was "Open" before "Open Source" was coined and before OSI was founded.

So there's open source and Open Source, and the former doesn't seem that bad.

My question comes down to this: rms and the FSF had a number of "quibbles" with BSD, which someone parodied in the song "Home to Hypocrisy". I am aware that not every BSD has exactly the same politics or goals, and I'm not asking anybody to speak for all BSDs here-- just the ones that matter to them.

What (if anything) could have free software have done differently, to help out or be fairer to BSD? I'm expecting some pithy answers, that's alright. I might get some interesting answers too. Not here to debate the Free Software side of it-- I'm sure you've heard all that before. I'll continue researching this on my own time, of course.