Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 17:37:08 +0100 (CET) From: Adam Szilveszter <sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Cheryl Offholter <COffholter@MDM.net>, freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ports Software Collection Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.991110171249.12430A-100000@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> In-Reply-To: <19991110105711.45268@mojave.sitaranetworks.com>
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On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Wednesday, 10 November 1999 at 9:39:14 -0600, Cheryl Offholter wrote: > > Is it correct to assume that the FREEBSD PORTS SOFTWARE COLLECTION is also > > completely compliant in addition to the operating system? Please advise. > > Sorry, I don't understand the question. What do you mean by > "compliant"? I think the post referred to Y2K compliance... however I do not think we can answer this one. The ports collection is merely a convenient way to add third-party software to your installation. Therefore the guys doing the porting focus on making these to compile, install and work in a nice way but certainly they are in no way authors of these pieces of software. It is only the original author who can give info on this. Some other (personal) thoughts: Although I am aware of the special importance of the Y2K question, esp for business users, but I do not think an Open-Source project can or should give any definitive answers to questions like these. The only good answer is posted on the Web: we believe it is Y2K compliant and if it is not then you will surely notice it and we will fix it as we have other bugs in the past. The same can be said IMHO for almost any traditional (ie free) UNIX software that is still being developed today. There is high chance their users will not notice anything at the beginning of next year, I would even say this chance is far higher than with users of any version of Windows and software that runs on it because there is a higher level of tradition and expertise (in the case of the BSDs this means several decades) involved among those writing, testing and also using such software. But giving any *enforceable* and *legal* guarantees that can make you liable to suits for damages are simply not applicable for an OpenSource and freely distributed product. It is for commercial companies to make who do not let you check that what they say is true (by hiding the source) and/or charge high prices for their products. We say that that we believe it is safe to use these products and if you do not believe this, you are free to check the source code and make/propose changes. But these last paragraphas are only my personal thoughts, anybody feel free to correct/contradict/flame/maybe praise:-) me... P.S.:The only reason why I will not run my PC on turn of 1999/2000 will be that there will probably be millions of people trying to make sure that everything still works and this roughly at the same time which may result in heavy power surges which is not good for my computer's health... Cheers: Szilveszter ADAM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Adam Szilveszter * JATE Szeged * email: sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu * * Homepage : none * alternate email: cc@flanker.itl.net.ua * * Finger sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu for PGP key. * * I prefer using the door instead of Windows(tm)... * To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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