Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 12:44:19 -0800 From: Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> To: Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Mainframe support Message-ID: <200403291244.19599.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> In-Reply-To: <20040329203016.GA4496@panix.com> References: <200403290441.i2T4fscK023387@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> <200403291028.01102.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> <20040329203016.GA4496@panix.com>
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On Monday 29 March 2004 12:30 pm, Adam Turoff wrote: > So while IBM's VM per se may only be interesting to the Fortune 500, > virtualization is gaining traction, especially at the low end of the > spectrum. ISPs for example have been offering accounts on virtual > machines for a few years now. I wouldn't be surprised to see shops > that used to buy vanilla boxes in groups of 4 to soon start buying > boxes one one by one, adding a few GB of RAM and at least 1 TB of > disk, and partitioning them on demand. I don't know if this is the same thing or not, but the John Company (www.johncompanies.com) seems to be already doing this with FreeBSD. > That's one way to look at it. But how is this different from free > software running on proprietary hardware (e.g. a PowerBook or an > iMac)? It's not just the hardware, it's the fact you have to buy propriety software to run the free software. It would be like a NetBSD that required Aqua and Carbon to run on the Mac. Imagine an IBM advert saying "Free yourselves from software domination with Free Software Linux running on our Z-series mainframes! (required proprietary host OS sold separately...)" This was just one problem I saw, and not necessarily the one at the top of the list. But considering the antipathy towards proprietary software in the Linux community, I thought it strange. Somehow I can't imagine a MVS/Debian distribution :-) David
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