From owner-freebsd-advocacy Mon Mar 22 21: 8:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from peloton.physics.montana.edu (peloton.physics.montana.edu [153.90.192.177]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CFF231558F for ; Mon, 22 Mar 1999 21:08:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Received: from localhost (brett@localhost) by peloton.physics.montana.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id WAA05612; Mon, 22 Mar 1999 22:07:05 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu) Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 22:07:05 -0700 (MST) From: Brett Taylor To: Brett Glass Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD emulation for linux In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.32.19990322194937.03ee4600@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi, On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Brett Glass wrote: > I'm beginning to think it's not worth even trying to talk sense to you > folks regarding PR, much less contribute time or code. You've suggested the following things that I remember recently: - that the Linux emulator has been bad for FreeBSD This is contrary to every person I've hooked on FreeBSD. They appreciate the fact that its stable AND that they can run the preponderance of Linux apps that are available. - that the ports tree should support every version of FreeBSD I asked if you'd even approached Satoshi or Mike Smith about your idea, since they are working on the new package system. You haven't answered that yet. Do you have anything in mind other than this vague, if not noble, idea, like how possibly to implement it? Do you _really_ understand how the current ports system works? That's step one. Talking to Mike and/or Satoshi is step 2. And not just "I'd like to have X happen," wo/ any idea how to implement it. - that a FreeBSD emulator should be created for Linux in the hopes that this would make people write directly for FreeBSD You are the _only_ one I've heard support this. Not one person to my recall has suggested this is a workable idea other than you. Sure it'd be nice if every app was built to run natively on FreeBSD, but it's not reality nor is that likely to change just because an emulator exists. Companies will say "sure there's this FreeBSD emulator for Linux, but they have roughly 1/6th the number of installations _and_ can emulate Linux. Let's just write for Linux." Linux people will certainly not drop writing for the Linux API just because there's suddenly a FreeBSD emulator and if you really believe that ... The problem Brett is that all of the things you have suggested/proposed have _no_ backing from anyone but you (for whatever reasons), I believe because they sound mostly like ideas wo/ any real plan on how to do it. I'd love to see a ports mechanism that supports all the FreeBSD versions (at least back to 2.2.8), but I doubt it'll ever happen. There just aren't people to work on it. You keep saying you'll write code but I'm not even convinced you have a clear idea of how you even want to start this ports project you suggested. Even if you couldn't do this, you could, in a relatively easy manner (at least compared to this nebulous porting mechanism) try to just maintain a tree of ports that are up-to-date for 2.2.8. You'd never be able to do it alone, but I'm sure if you asked nicely and had some, say 10, people who were really dedicated it could be done w/ a lot of work. As it is I haven't even seen you attempt to fix or maintain one port. I suggested doing libgtop. You refused that because "it's GPL." I got news for you - people want to run Gnome (go see -questions or -ports for an idea of how many people are trying to get them to compile) and Gnome needs glibtop. If it's still such a personal affront to you to maintain/fix a port that is GPL'ed go find a port that you use that has: MAINTAINER= ports@freebsd.org that isn't GPL'ed and maintain it. As I told you before, there are lots, 145 in my tree (wo/ any of the foreign language ports), of ports which need maintainers. Maintaining a single port would be a great way for you to get a good introductory knowledge of how the ports system works and how you might be able to implement your idea. Heck Bill Fenner sends out a "homeless ports that need help" list once a week. Pick one from the list and fix it. Often times it just needs to have the distfile updated. But again, you haven't even done that. Since you've been posting regularly to -advocacy, the only thing I've seen from you is grandiose ideas and no clear idea how to implement them or even willingness to do any work as simple as it may be (such as maintaining a port or fixing it so it will work for 2.2.8). Jordan hit it on the head when he said you just seem to shoot from the hip, seeing what you hit. Brett Taylor *********************************************************** Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu * brett@daemonnews.org * * http://www.daemonnews.org/ * *********************************************************** To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message