From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 24 16:52:30 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from nisser.com (c0039.upc-c.chello.nl [212.187.0.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D43C337B404 for ; Wed, 24 Jan 2001 16:52:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from nisser.com (roelof [10.0.0.2]) by nisser.com (8.9.3/8.9.2) with ESMTP id BAA13859; Thu, 25 Jan 2001 01:52:05 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from roelof@nisser.com) Message-ID: <3A6F78B5.70AE5FB4@nisser.com> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 01:52:05 +0100 From: Roelof Osinga Organization: Nisser - Nr. 1 in Veiligheid X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim McMillen Cc: Mike Meyer , "Albert D. Cahalan" , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OT: non-Unix history (Was: FreeBSD vs linux) References: <14957.31196.939559.889627@guru.mired.org> <14959.23870.728403.859934@guru.mired.org> <3A6F61DC.39E9CF0D@nisser.com> <01012419080209.24525@tim.elnsng1.mi.home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Tim McMillen wrote: > > Ok, sorry this is way off topic to -questions, and I like to avoid > that, but since the discussion is already here... > I suppose beyond this we should cc -chat and drop -questions. Yeah, actually we should. Then again, it's not a perfect world. > Many did. But empirically many vendors either gave up support for Unix > altogether or only supported a few Unix types because it was simply too > expensive to provide support for them all. > Do you think anyone really develops for Windows because of it's > technical superiority? Of course not. They develop for windows > because of its ubiquity. They can write the program once, learn on > ... Nice argument. Does not explain the initial take off of either DOS or Windows, though. Far from it, actually. What it says is, basically, see: Windows is popular so they write for it! Sure, but how did it become popular in the first place? Marketing, most likely. > ... > Unfortunately I don't think this is possible, but who knows. If even > major opensource OS's that try to do The Right Thing (tm) can't agree > on a single API due to technical issues and differences of opinion, > then how could commercial vendors do it also? It it is indeed marketing, then it is a moot point. Maybe we'll know - to bring it back to its origins - when KDE and Gnome merge. One should also look at what SM's doing. Started with the pen? or whatever extension in a 3.11 beta. They've got an API explosion. Sure, they call *all* Windows but are they still? Truly? Remember when they said there could be only one? [heck, nice line for a movie title :)] Well, there ain't. You can't run NT5/2K/Whatever on a pocket thingum. Nor can you run what's its name on a server. Sure. The API's sorta look alike... But just give it time ;). [I got that T-shirt :] Roelof PS it's still sorta to do with a question about FreeBSD('s marketing position; look at the bright side). -- Home is where the (@) http://eboa.com/ is. Nisser home -- http://www.Nisser.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message