[ This document lists cases where NetBSD or parts of it were used in other places with or without giving proper credit or feeding changed back in the sense of the open source spirit ] 1995???? After some personal differences between Theo DeRaadt and the NetBSD core group, a copy of NetBSD is renamed to OpenBSD 1.0. ???????? The FreeBSD/alpha port is started by using a NetBSD/alpha kernel. ???????? IBM builds some NC based on NetBSD 1.3x (named NSM V2R1), but neither makes this fact public. The port was done by Wolfgang Solfrank, who didn't get around to feed back the changes that include an improved MFS and a multithreaded kernel. Aparently more than 20.000 machines were sold. Here's some URLs: http://www-1.ibm.com/servlet/support/manager?rt=0&rs=0&org=as400&doc=42A981CC86BE333986256850006A7ECA http://www-1.ibm.com/servlet/support/manager?rt=0&rs=0&org=psg&doc=5FED77FD1EBCF312852569280064430C http://www.pc.ibm.com/fr/tarif42.pdf http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/pubs/pdfs/redbooks/sg245844.pdf (pages 372, 594, 629, 691) 19990217 Revision 1.63 of OpenBSD's bsd.ports.mk is committed, message: "oops: left out .endif in a cut/paste". Makes one wonder where things were cut from in the previous commit - probably NetBSD, as FreeBSD didn't have anything similar. 200002?? OpenBSD announces work on SMP the day NetBSD initially commits IPI code required for SMP. The branch did not contain any modifications, esp. after a flamewar^Wdebate on daily.daemonnews.org. In an Dec 2000 interview, Theo admits that no work on SMP is done, see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/11/1455210&mode=nocomment 20000322 OpenBSD takes ahc driver that was ported from FreeBSD to NetBSD with a commit message of "this represents 2 months of work". Looking at that code, it's a snapshot that fvdl made available for testing about a week before it was checked in - including several bugs. No credit either for the original FreeBSD driver nor for the work done on NetBSD to adjust to a non-CAM based system. 20000411 Soon after the FreeBSD/BSDi merger was announced and that Apple announced they would track FreeBSD for changes to their Darwin OS, a FreeBSD-PPC list is created to offer Apple further assistence on the PPC platform. Where that support really comes from is said in http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=282418+0+archive/2000/freebsd-hackers/20000402.freebsd-hackers: > From: Mike Smith > To: Robert Withrow > Subject: Re: FreeBSD on PowerPC? > > > I gather that BSDI has a powerPC port, but I'd rather use the > > FreeBSD codebase rather than theirs, for a number of reasons. > > Perhaps if just select portions of there code were used it > > would be OK. > > I think you mean NetBSD, and it's traditional for us to pick up their > work - you might even say that it's their job. 8) 20000424 The NetBSD usermgmt suite is imported into OpenBSD. NetBSD's at least mentioned in the commit message this time, still others did the work for them - again. The 4-clause license requesting attribution on the code is not followed in any known place. 200012 OpenBSD 2.8 is announced with support for G3 and G4 PowerMacs as big new feature. Digging in the OpenBSD AnonCVS archives show that the support was indeed taken from NetBSD. Again. 20010606 OpenBSD takes the new "wi" driver, and admits "all is from netbsd of course" in the commit message http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/source-changes/0106/msg00318.html 20020408 OpenBSD grabs NetBSD's esa(4) driver, and removes traces that the driver was ported from NetBSD. Commit message: "tweak". (see rev. 1.2 of src/share/man/man4/esa.4 from OpenBSD) http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/misc/obsd-tweak1.png http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/misc/obsd-tweak2.png 20020602 Stoned Elipot commits revision 1.29 of src/sys/dev/pci/pucdata.c and aparently gets private mail from Theo Deraadt thanking him, leading to rev. 1.22 of the same file in OpenBSD with only the private email address of the NetBSD developer, and no mention of NetBSD at all. http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/pci/pucdata.c 20020614 We're happy to see the NetBSD rc.d framework being used on FreeBSD now too. :) 20041202 OpenBSD now has SMP and in-kernel PPPoE thanks to NetBSD. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/10/28/openbsd_3_6.html http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20041130200439 20050119 The company GeNUA, producer of firewalls from Germany, was abandoning BSDi and looking at alternatives. In an interview in the german magazine "freeX" they describe how they choose OpenBSD. NetBSD was not chosen as the developer group was considered too closed and to rarely pick up inspirations from outside, which makes it hard to integrade it into release planing: "Problematisch ist es dagegen fuer GeNUA, dass die NetBSD-Entwicklung von einer sehr geschlossenen Gruppe betrieben wird, die externen Anregungen nur selten aufgreift. So ist es schwierig, zukuenftig benoetigte Features sicher in die Release-Planung einzubringen. Aus diesem Grund konnte GeNUA nicht auf NetBSD als Basis fuer die weitere Entwicklung von GeNUGate setzen" (FreeX 1/2005, Seite 8) Contacting the chief of GeNUA Magnus Harlander how this impression came and whom they talked to, I got the answer that this was the response that they got from several OpenBSD developers they had asked, which aparently tried to report several NetBSD kernel bugs. So: a) GeNUA never contacted NetBSD directly (in contrast to what the article makes one think) b) OpenBSD developers aparently never made it clear they were talking for someone else when they communicated with NetBSD c) Given personal experience and history of relation between NetBSD and OpenBSD, I'd be surprised if the contact was made in a constructive matter. (I have no further details here, so just a guess)