From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 18 14:50:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA06250 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:50:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA06242 for ; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:50:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id OAA02985; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:48:12 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704182148.OAA02985@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:48:12 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, nate@mt.sri.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970418150347.00b0b604@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Apr 18, 97 03:03:54 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >Why can't the latest driver work in a rock solid system, or why > >can't a rock solid driver work in the latest system? A beta user > >accepts some risk, but they shouldn't have to risk everything. > > No..its more like..why can't the new features be smoothly integrated into the > existing release product without having to create an entirely new animal. That's the "rock solid driver in the latest system" case, so a system with the driver can have the latest system's features as well. If you're talking about something else, then you are running a slightly different definition of "smoothly" or "integrated"; there is no inherent reason FreeBSD has to have any code, whatsoever, in common from version to version, except to deal with legacy issues. Even then, common code isn't really required -- only common interface points that don't change. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.