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Date:      Wed, 10 Mar 1999 21:37:45 +0100
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        Victor Salaman <salaman@teknos.com>
Cc:        "'Scott Mitchell'" <rsm@acm.org>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Colin Eric Johnson <colinj@cs.unm.edu>, Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, David Kulp <dkulp@neomorphic.com>, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: compatibility list 
Message-ID:  <33209.921098265@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 10 Mar 1999 16:16:33 -0400." <608F4F76C94DD211B93100805F29063A8D85@TEKNOS> 

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In message <608F4F76C94DD211B93100805F29063A8D85@TEKNOS>, Victor Salaman writes:

>And what I said about Linux and FreeBSD, well it's true, FreeBSD is a better
>product, but does the world know about this???? I see some kid hacking away
>at school, he's using Linux, not FreeBSD. We need to do something about
>this. If the truth hurts, so be it, I'll be damned.

The truth is that I, personally, would rather have only 1% as many
users as Linux, if they were the most competent users.

This is not far from the current situation, and consequently I'm
not hell-bent on replacing Linux (or Win) every place I see it.
Most of the computers which doesn't run FreeBSD today wouldn't be
improved much if anything for their users if they did.

The current lot of ungrateful FreeBSD users (as opposed to the
users who know that silence is golden for the people who has to
listen to the alternative) have already forced me, (and others) to
abandon several mailing lists and news groups where you would
otherwise naturally expect us to lurk.  Adding a few million linux
(or Win) users would be unlikely to be an improvement in that
respect.

In all the hype about the cathedral and the bazaar, people tend to
forget that no bazaar have ever risen higher than a few stories,
and that when it catches fire it's GONE.  In contrast to this most
cathedrals stand tall in the landscape, and many have suffered
fire, war, storm and earthquakes but they still stand.

Which one you prefer is largely a matter of taste, we probably
need to have both around.

You'll find me at the cathedral if you need me.

Sometimes I stroll through the bazaar and get inspiration, but I
wouldn't want to make my living there.

Now, to return and project this to the subject at hand:

The reason PAO hasn't even been considered for integration is that
it is (too much) a bazaar style thing.  Integrating it would make
a couple of significant sections of our cathedral look very ugly,
not to mention do questionable things to the basic strength of the
structure.

>If< we do dynamic device support (And I fully expect us to, although
there are compelling arguments of simplicity against it), we will
try to do it "right".  It may not get there as fast as in the bazaar,
but it will last longer.

Summary:  No it didn't hurt.  But I spent close to one hour explaining
this to you, and somehow I doubt that more of my time will not be
wast^H^H^H^Hspent this way, rather than coding.

Conclusion:  I welcome your survey and your enthusiasm, now, find
a place to work and get going, I'll be amongst the first happy users
of such code, but I do unfortunately not have the time to do it
myself.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
phk@FreeBSD.ORG               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
FreeBSD -- It will take a long time before progress goes too far!


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