Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 16:31:20 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Avoiding unnecessary breakage (was Re: Removing wait union) Message-ID: <3CFD4DC8.6FF385F3@mindspring.com> References: <41485.1023227781@critter.freebsd.dk>
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Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > One of the things which makes FreeBSD competitive, is our ability > to adapt to changing circumstances. I'd like to ask "competitive with what?". This is not intended as sarcasm, it's an honest question. To my mind, FreeBSD is losing ground to Linux in a number of areas. One of these areas is in published technical references. Linux has published technical references, and FreeBSD does not. While nearly anyone can write a book that purports to be a technical reference work, actually building a useful one is very difficult. It takes on the order of one man year. As skeptical as people might be about this, Linux has in fact had a number of *good* technical references written for it, and these books are not easily dismissed as "shallow fluff": they are *real* works, with *real* depth. I would go so far as to say that the Rubini/Corbet book "Linux Devices Drivers" is *excellent*. I'm going to argue that the reason these works have been able to be written is stabilization of interfaces over time. What are the *primary* arguments people have historically used when evangelizing BSD? o "BSD is more stable" o "BSD is more mature" o "BSD has a long history" o "BSD was developed by experts with lots of experience, who learned from the past" o "BSD doesn't suffer gratuitous changes gladly" None of these look like the moral equivalent of "turn on a dime". Yet here we are, arguing that it is flexibility that makes FreeBSD competitive... and it's *not* winning the competitions that matter. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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