Recently, during FISL 6.0 (Fórum Internacional de Software Livre), in Brazil, Marshall Kirk McKusick was probably the main atraction for BSD community. Gentle and kind, he wore the I BSDCon Brazil shirt and talked about Unix history, open source model of development, BSD license, Beastie, Matt Dillon and others BSDs. Indeed, he still revealed unusual Linus Torvalds confesion, the kernel Linux creator.

According to McKusick, one of the FreeBSD creators, Linus said: "I wouldn't have to create Linux if there wasn't any lawsuit against BSD in the early 90`s. It wouldn't be necesary".

Kirk, as he prefers to be called, remembered Berkeley and its daily routine. He also talked about Bill Joy, the VI creator and the owner of Sun Microsystems:

- Everything that he does I am able to do. The difference is that it would take one year to him. To me, about ten- said Kirk laughing about it.

Kirk revelead another curious episode:

- When Bill went to create Sun, he invited me to work with him. Absolutely conviced that Sun wouldn't last, I refused the invitation- said McKusick, concluding: "Ok, I wouldn't complain to be a multi-millionaire today".

Kirk McKusick presented "Building and Running an open-Source Community: The FreeBSD Project". He told that the FreeBSD Project has more than 6 thousand developers throughout the world and has, also, an organized and democratic structure.

Other topics like Beastie retirement, the motivations that lead the FreeBSD creation, the documentation relevance, Unix and BSD Certifcation are placed on the excl usive interview Kirk conceded to MyFreeBSD.

"We did not know that we were making history. But we did it and I don't think we would have what we've got now without Berkeley development model", said McKusick, talking about Internet as we know today.

Source:

Luiz Gustavo Ramos
www.OpenIT.com.br