Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 14:17:06 -0500 From: Brian Adkins <brian@lojic.com> To: Donald Wilde <dwilde1@thuntek.net> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Support (was Re: Netscape browser ) Message-ID: <4.1.19990323140144.0150c0c0@mailbox.iwaynet.net> In-Reply-To: <36F7DF67.FBBB9AA8@thuntek.net> References: <4.2.0.32.19990322181857.03eb8d90@localhost> <4.1.19990322230145.00f92480@mailbox.iwaynet.net> <4.1.19990323101745.01513a50@mailbox.iwaynet.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
At 11:37 AM 3/23/99 -0700, Donald Wilde wrote: >Brian Adkins wrote: >> It seems to me that if the type of people who have the skill and motivation >> to improve the operating system are attracted to it, and gain a sense of >> corporate "ownership" from investing blood, sweat and tears into it, then > >Yes, and the best people will be attracted to the 'technically best' >platform which FreeBSD (IMHO and others') most definitely is. > >> the general user base will continue to follow. Some might offer the >> argument of Betamax vs. VHS, but I don't think the commercial analogies >> always apply well here. > >No, they really don't. What does Joe Linux' choice have to do with mine? >FreeBSD will remain free as long as people care to keep it up, and >there's no sign that that support is going to go away. I personally am >not concerned, for example, that I can't get Oracle 8 on my FreeBSD. I >know that I can run Oracle 7 if I need to, and that has most of the >commercial app base. I also know that I can (and do) run PostgreSQL, >which is arguably as good and some ways better, besides being BSD >licensed. > >The VHS vs. Beta would apply if we had a 'bottom line' and payroll to >worry about. We don't, therefore we can make our choice on the basis of >merit. Betamax _is_ better, but it's gone because Sony couldn't justify >supporting it. We have no such problem. As you said, the rules of the >game are totally different, and _we_ are Bill Gates' worst nightmare, >even if he doesn't know it yet. EXACTLY! There is no "bottom line" here, it's a volunteer effort and volunteers will work on the platform they *want* to - it's very different than the OS/2 scenario. There is much more synergy between the free OS's than there ever was, or will be, between commercial OS's - I think that's continually being overlooked here. And another thing, what's the big deal about providing a native port? If companies are smart they isolate their platform dependent code into very small portions and the administrative overhead of supporting several open source operating systems is diddly squat. I had to port a medium size app (80,000 LOC) that ran on BSDI, AIX, HPUX, Solaris, and others to Windows NT If it's not *that* difficult to write serious code that runs on Windows NT and UNIX (and I've done it), surely it can't be that difficult for a company to maintain a Linux & FreeBSD. Man, you've got fork() on both of them - count your blessings :) Maybe a better thing to do than providing a FreeBSD emulator on Linux is to put together a killer support team (this may already exist) for helping companies expedite porting their apps to FreeBSD - maybe a special mailing list for ISV's who are porting (call it Gold Support or something :), really good "How to port your <other os> app to FreeBSD" document, use of the "Works With/Designed For FreeBSD" marketing stuff etc. Just a thought. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4.1.19990323140144.0150c0c0>