From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sun Dec 10 17:39:40 1995
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To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
cc: julian@freefall.freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FBSD support inc. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 10 Dec 1995 12:35:40 EST."
             <199512101735.MAA28497@etinc.com> 
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 17:38:23 -0800
Message-ID: <10986.818645903@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
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>I think that a product is either commercial or its not commercial, and
>unless you can guarantee that some set of features works and will
>continue to work, you will have difficulty having much impact. The
>bridge from non-commercial to commerc l involves a lot more than just
>getting a bunch of people together with a dial-up or ISDN connection.

Absolutely.  In fact, the times that David and I have talked about
this (like I said, it's not a new idea) we've sort of come to the
mutual conclusion that a *lot* of tightening up would have to occur
before we'd be at all comfortable with the idea of sticking our legal
necks out on trying to support it commercially.  BSDI may appear to
move with excessive caution when it comes to adding new features, and
they take a good deal of heat for that sometimes, but I'm well aware
as to why they do so - they simply can't afford to take the chances we do
with all those support contracts to fulfil.

There's also the question of divided effort, yes.  What happens when
all the top-notch developers are lured away with the promise of
salaries and banished to work on a somewhat lower-tech version of
FreeBSD?  The image of a kid stuck inside to do his school work,
pressing his nose sadly against the window as he watches the other
kids play outside in the snow somehow comes to mind.. :-)

Basically it's one of those double-edged swords, like merging with
NetBSD.  A lot of really enticing benefits on the surface but a host
of sticky problems to solve underneath.

					Jordan