DTrace Becomes Usable on FreeBSD

daria42 writes "A project to port Sun Microsystems' Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) tool to FreeBSD appears to have achieved some initial success. DTrace was open sourced last year and is one of the coolest features in Solaris 10."

I think the GPL weenies are jealous

[Dopeskills]

Sorry, but DTrace is a really great feature regardless of what your political OSS views are. Porting it to BSD only makes it that much cooler.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[mwvdlee]

Linux already uses BSD code, so why wouldn't they want to use some more?

I develop under both GPL and BSD licenses, based on the particular piece of code. If I think the code has strategic value (typically a library or framework), I'll develop under BSD so I can use it in any of my closed-source software too. Software which only has utilitarian value is typically released under GPL.

GPL is of good use to a lot of projects, but IMHO it's a terrible license for frameworks and libraries. The LGPL does improve the situation for libraries somewhat, but it's won't work for all situations. That's why many "standard" libraries use more open licenses than (L)GPL; if you're not allowed to use the canonical library in all situations, it's not a useable standard.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[QuietLagoon]

As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code

Isn't it up to each individual developer to decide what license to use for their original code? Isn't that what choice is all about? If I choose not to use one license or another for my code, why should you care? It is, after all, my code.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[Eivind Eklund]

So, let me get this right, in your world you get ZERO value from utilization of code, and you get ZERO value from having people contribute changes back, ALL your value is from "not getting ripped off"?

That's one hell of an emotional world.

I'm glad I don't live in that world, and can be a FreeBSD developer instead ;)

Eivind, who recognize that when people develop things based on his code, he's got a chance of getting things back, and when they choose another codebase because his is GPL-licensed, he has ZERO chance of getting anything back.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[foreverdisillusioned]

In a word, yes. You just need to replace "ClosedBSD" with "OS X."

Fortunately, Apple was kind enough to open source Darwin, but it didn't need to, and it choose not to open source the Aqua UI and the Finder shell. I could be mistaken, but I don't think they would have been able to do this had Darwin been based on GPL'ed software.

A better example of the GPL's strength would be the Linksys WRT54G router. I've got one myself and it does all kinds of awesome things it wasn't able to do out of the box (hell, you can even run an OpenVPN server on it), all because Linksys was forced to release their source code under the GPL.

That said, the BSDs are great projects (as are public domain projects like SQLite) and I wouldn't want to see them disappear. I believe that the core focus of the OSS community should be on GPL'ed software (because "embrace and extend" does in fact happen), but there's definitely an argument and a place for BSD-style licenses.

Maybe you should wipe your mouth after vomiting

[gd23ka]

Last week I had a major problem trying to get Linux nfs4 clients to mount from Solaris 10 servers. Even though on the Linux client the domain uid mapping superficially worked (I saw the correct user/groups displayed) the NFSv4 Server Kernel Module was still using LINUX uid/gid combinations supplied by the linux client to go to the filesystem driver with to ask for permission.

You, sir, obviously don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

Here's my script, btw

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -Cs

#define ACCESS4_READ 1
#define ACCESS4_LOOKUP 2
#define ACCESS4_MODIFY 4
#define ACCESS4_EXTEND 8
#define ACCESS4_DELETE 16
#define ACCESS4_EXECUTE 32

fbt:nfssrv:rfs4_op_access:entry {
        requested_access = ((struct ACCESS4args *) arg0)->access;
        cs = (struct compound_state *) arg3;
        cr = (struct cred *) cs->cr;
        printf ("uid = %d gid = %d\n", cr->cr_uid, cr->cr_gid);
        printf ("ACCESS4_READ = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_READ ? "yes" : "no");
        printf ("ACCESS4_LOOKUP = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_LOOKUP ? "yes" : "no");
        printf ("ACCESS4_MODIFY = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_MODIFY ? "yes" : "no");
        printf ("ACCESS4_EXTEND = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_EXTEND ? "yes" : "no");
        printf ("ACCESS4_DELETE = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_DELETE ? "yes" : "no");
        printf ("ACCESS4_EXECUTE = %s\n", requested_access & ACCESS4_EXECUTE ? "yes" : "no");
}

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[SillyNickName4me]

From a strategy point of view it just made BSD's that much more competitive with Solaris and Sun offers.

Now, last time I checked, Sun regards Redhat as one of its main competitors for 'enterprise unix' systems. So, since you are saying is that due to dtrace, FreeBSD became more competitive with Solaris, doesn't that mean it became that much more competitive with at least Redhat Linux?

With the GPL you at least get some improvemnts back if your contribution is of value and nobody can close its acess.

What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Ah, I see, you were just looking for a reason to do some 'GPL advocacy'.. Let me make some small suggestion: Advocacy like this is just annoying the hell out of people, and makes you look like a fanatic idiot.

Not to mention that the fud you are spreading is just that, fud. Nobody can close access to existing BSD licenced code EVER, got that? (and yes, people can derive from a BSD licenced work, and keep their source changes private while distributing the binaries. If people want to do that with GPLed code, they cannot distribute, or have to obtain an alternative licence from the authors, see the Trolltech business model)

As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own.

Now, the modern BSD licence only contains 2 clauses, is really easy to read, and yet you fail to understand it. You think anyone should take your advice?

You can NOT take a BSD licenced work and claim it as your own, that is basicly the one and only thing that licence prevents you from doing. All you can do which you cannot do with the GPL is keep changes to the source private while distributing the binary result. You may believe that is bad, and you are entitled to your own beliefs there. I happen to believe otherwise, and with me, there seem thousands of people who believe otherwise, but again, that is a matter of opinion, and not a matter of fact.

It means every change is visible to you,

No, it does not. It only guarantees that if you get back a binary of some derived program, that you also have a right on getting the source with the changes. You have no right to see anyones changes if they decide to not distribute the result but use it for their own internal work for example.

and that you are free to incorporate the changes other people have made to your product back into it, or into other projects you are working on.

Not if you are for example called Trolltech (qt), Sun (OpenOffice) or anyone else who deals with dual licencing, but generally that is the idea of the GPL indeed. It is a good argument for it, despite it not always working out.

This encourages collaboration, and thus helps the advancement of software engineering.

The fact that all TCP/IP (ip4) implementations are mostly compatible, that most of the basic protocols used on it are compatible between vendors and such are pretty much because there is good and for any purpose usable BSD code around to implement those things, which was either used directly or used as a reference implementation to test against.

This single tiny detail makes that there is actually some choice instead of having ended up with a proprietary network owned by either aol, microsoft, ibm or some other big entity.

I leave it to your imagination what this means for software development.

I will give you one more suggestion, learn to appreciate someone elses work, esp. when that work is pretty good and they actually insist on publishing that work such that everyone can use it. If you just feel that instead of appreciating such things, you must use the occation to spread lies and fud then I call you a moron.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[DrSkwid]

hmm, did you reply to the wrong post ?

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[trip23]

That makes no sense at all. Of course you can license your code to others under the GPL and still use it in your own proprietary products. You're not limited by the terms under which you license your code to others. That's like accusing Microsoft of hypocrisy for mass-duplicating their own software while also pressing piracy charges.

The point is that if others contributed to your GPL'ed code, you have to get their permission to use the code in a closed-source environment. With a BSD license you don't have to worry about this. With the GPL it's hard to change the license, if there are a lot of contributors. Just take a look at the discussion about the Linux Kernel und GPL 3.0. Getting the consent of all copyright-holders in order to upgrade to 3.0 would be a nightmare.

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[SillyNickName4me]

Fortunately, Apple was kind enough to open source Darwin, but it didn't need to,

Not only that, they also contribute code back to FreeBSD, which they also don't have to. It is directly to their advantage to do this however (if it gets accepted it means it gets maintained without Apple having to pay developers to do so). Now, Apple isn't exactly alone in this either, considering things like FreeBSD's netgraph and jails just to name some other things contributed by conpanies who could also have decided to keep those things to themselves.

and it choose not to open source the Aqua UI and the Finder shell. I could be mistaken, but I don't think they would have been able to do this had Darwin been based on GPL'ed software.

You are wrong.

Those are applications runniong on top of the core system, and they can be kept closed source just as much as you can have a closed source application for the GPLed Linux, and it is legal to create a CD that distributes both.

For that matter, there exist closed source X implementations and desktops that run on Linux as well, giving you a near equivalent (as in, a gui 'engine' and a desktop environment, not judging that they are of eqivalent quality)

Re:NOT Open Source (was: GPL)

[MichaelSmith]

why the BSD license usually is MORE efficient for getting changes back

As far as I am aware, the BSD license was not designed with this goal in mind. The GPL was designed with the goal of keeping the source code available to the developer community.

Whether this goal is achieved is debatable, but I think the GPL (or licenses similar to it) deliver the best chance of keeping systems open as we move into a heavily DRM'd world.