Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 01:37:25 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: Radu-Cristian FOTESCU <rfotescu@idsrom.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What to tell to Linux-centric people?! Message-ID: <379C8EC5.76C7638D@newsguy.com> References: <C1F3617BDC52D21185E40000214C247C154058@id-bucharest.idsrom.com>
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Radu-Cristian FOTESCU wrote: > > Now, when I see that FreeBSD community is made by such _proud_ people as you > are [and remember: I was trying to became a FreeBSD advocate, even if I'm > coming from Linux! so we weren't in any "religious" war!], I may change my > mind. Maybe FreeBSD is not the best choice. Maybe other Unix-like Oses > [primarily, Linux, I don't know which distribution, but let's say Linux for > now] should take from FreeBSD all the good stuff andf that's all! I hate > GPL, but due to the fact that it also exist a LGPL for the libraries, > writing code from scratch and *dynamically* linking them with gnu libs make > easy to keep private your sources, hence developping commercial apps for > Linux. Why losing so much time for persuading people to switch to FreeBSD if > the FreeBSD community doesn't want this? Let them enjoy this marvelous OS > just for themelves, in the club... Hey, this is NOT Linux. Linux is a kernel, FreeBSD is an operating system. You *CAN'T* throw everything in. First, because much of this "everything" is *others* people software. We *do* throw in some things from other projects, such as the compiler, the dns server, the mailer. But we also *take care* of it. We have it in our cvs source tree, we make revisions to it, we take problem reports (and often ask the originator to forward to the apropriate party, true enough), we patch it, and add things to it sometimes. But we *cannot* do that to every piece of software in the planet. It's impossible, and it's not productive. So, please, if you think there is a great program out there, FIRST OF ALL, remember it's *OUT THERE*. The *best* way to deal with it is make a PORT out of it. And here are the reasons: * Ports take much, much less space, and so we can pack much, much more ports. * Ports are optionally installed, so people who don't care about it[1] don't need to install it. * Ports are much more up to date than it would be possible if it was in the OS[2]. [1] Such as the great number of users who install FreeBSD in a monitor-less, mouse-less computer going into a rack, only to be accessed by telnet (ssh, etc) or serial console. [2] It's easier to update a port than import the source into the CVS tree, and we don't need to deal with the hassle of bugs coming in newer versions. Also, ports MAINTAINERS are much more numerous than committers, and we couldn't have it any other way[3] and keep the quality. [3] Don't give me that crap about we being more closed. We are talking about *everything*. Whatever you think of Linux openness, that is not the true of all software coming in a Linux distro, which is what colorls is all about. As a matter of fact, some of it is *closed source*. The reason people are getting mad at you is that you have been told from the beginning that what linuxapps or whatever does is the equivalent they *at last* implemented of our Ports, and still inferior to boot, but you just DON'T F*CKING LISTEN. Next time a friend of yours say "FreeBSD doesn't come with colorls/bash", answer that if they can't select what software they want installed at installation time, or if they can't change the shell they want to use, or create an alias for the ls command, they have no business using Unix in first place. Not even Linux. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "Is it true that you're a millionaire's son who never worked a day in your life?" "Yeah, I guess so." "Lemme tell you, son, you ain't missed a thing." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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