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Date:      Wed, 8 Sep 1999 14:33:46 -0700
From:      "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>
To:        "Phil Regnauld" <regnauld@ftf.net>
Cc:        "Brett Glass" <brett@lariat.org>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: FreeBSD market share statistics
Message-ID:  <000101befa41$d50f23b0$021d85d1@youwant.to>
In-Reply-To: <19990908231358.49363@ns.int.ftf.net>

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> 	Hmmm maybe.  I agree about "scarce programming resources",
> but still,
> 	that isn't the case of every software company, no ?
> 	(programmer vs. potential income considered)
>
> 	Of course the "leader" OS will carry the product -- just as we're
> 	seeing products disappear in the UNIX world and reappear NT-only.

	It also depends upon how much work is necessary to make and maintain a
FreeBSD build.

	Something very close to the OS that requires heavy skill to port, like a
development suite or debugger, is almost always going to be considered in
relative numbers (is this the best use of my very limited resources). A
purer application that requires less effort to port (or effort by less
highly-skilled programmers) may get more consideration in absolute numbers
(will this sell and make money).

	As long as FreeBSD supports everything important that the product needs,
most UNIX applications can be ported in less than a week. Of course, this
also means that when a new release of the product comes out, a new build has
to be made and packaged. So there are some ongoing costs to adding a
platform.

	But I think Brett is right that if the FreeBSD world wants native
applications, the best way to get it to do everything possible to increase
market share. Now if only I knew how to do that, ...

	I've also noticed that now that FreeBSD supports 'poll', 'nanosleep' and so
on, it's become much easier to port code to it. These kinds of efforts will
also result in more native applications, IMO. For example, the only build
differences between the Linux and FreeBSD versions of ConferenceRoom is a
quirk about the way time zone names are stored, different pthread stack
options, and something about the 'strsep' function. That is it for an
application that's over 180,000 lines of code.

	DS



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