Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:40:40 +0000 (UTC)
From:      jb <jb.1234abcd@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Warning - FreeBSD (*BSD) entanglement  in Linux ecosystem
Message-ID:  <loom.20120820T190156-579@post.gmane.org>
References:  <loom.20120820T160406-258@post.gmane.org> <20120820112150.7992db5c@scorpio>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Jerry <jerry <at> seibercom.net> writes:

> 
> > However, the influence of their employer
> > is so big that these products are forced upon the wider UNIX
> > community and at some point it will be "assimilate or die".
> ...
> Personally, I embrace progress. Even if there are ten failures in a
> row, that one success can be an life changing idea that can alter the
> course of an entire industry.

Well, this is not about progress, not even about the pace of it.
It is about an ecosystem, in which a professional company tries to dominate it
by "my way, or high way" approach (you know it when you follow development of
Fedora, their test system distro). Because of the nature of that ecosystem
called free and open source software, what is implemented has great impact on
it by way of sharing and like-mindedness.
What bothers me (and few other people, even inside Red Hat/Fedora) is them
speaking from both sides of their mouth. On one side they call themselves 
UNIX-like, on the other they violate many principles of UNIX philosophy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
This is not a religion (to some it may be), but "a set of cultural norms and
philosophical approaches to developing software based on the experience of
leading developers of the Unix operating system" - they are relevant beyond
any doubt.
Let me mention few of them, like modularity and composition, that are violated
by software like systemd, GNOME, etc.
They also want to build a monolithic OS based on violation of these
principles.
The end effect is, they consciously want to screw up Linux and non-Linux (UNIX,
*BSD, etc) ecosystems that opt not to follow them (read some additional
comments that appeared in the meantime in the comments section of Distrowatch).
This is a bad thing for all UNIX or UNIX-like ecosystems, performed under
the noble flag of "progress" to neutralize and fight opposition.
jb





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?loom.20120820T190156-579>