Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 05:43:51 -0400 From: Stuart Krivis <ipswitch@apk.net> To: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSDulator on Linux? Message-ID: <20000906054351.A26101@kleenex.apk.net>
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The big problem with porting an app to another platform will always be support. Tech support is horribly expensive. So, let's say that Brett Glass sits down for a marathon coding session and produces the FreeBSDulator. It enables a Linux machine to run apps compiled for FreeBSD. Which version of FreeBSD? Brett will be chasing a moving target, so he'll be expending a lot of effort keeping it current. Which Linux distribution will it run on? All of them? Just RedHat? Linux is a moving target too, so things will have to be updated fairly often. Now we've got our FreeBSDulator, and it runs happily on Distro X (RedHat for this example). How do we convince RedHat to include it? Why should they want to? What benefit will they see from it? How are you going to convince RedHat to take on the additional support costs involved in something as complex as the FreeBSD- ulator? Why should they? A far better way of doing things is to insure that JoeBob Software's LinuxWriter installs and runs perfectly on FreeBSD. JoeBob has never even heard of FreeBSD before. He only knows RedHat. Now, suddenly, somebody with a Daemon on their shirt comes up to him and shows him LinuxWriter running on this FreeBSD thing. Look, it even has a nifty install wrapper that makes the install completely painless. What's more, Brett Glass is providing a lot of support for new installs. JoeBob won't be getting calls, the script points the user to Brett first. I suspect that this will be far more effective than a FreeBSDulator. Convince the developer that FreeBSD is a better "Linux" for them. Substitute "more profitable" for all values of "better." :-) Stuart To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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