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Date:      Wed, 5 Aug 1998 14:07:03 -0400
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        Konrad Heuer <kheuer@gwdu60.gwdg.de>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Extended / Replaced Utilities
Message-ID:  <v04011719b1ee4a334bbd@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980805085749.3708A-100000@gwdu60.gwdg.de>

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At 9:14 AM +0200 8/5/98, Konrad Heuer wrote:
> Now I observe that for example 2.2.6-RELEASE comes with a drastically
> (to my mind) changed ftp client. I read in the release notes the
> 2.2.7-RELEASE has an ls command with many new options. Excuse me - but
> now I seem to be irritated. Where does FreeBSD go? Will it leave the
> traditional BSD line which seems to be strong argument for using FreeBSD?
>
> I'm interested in other people's opinion here. May be advocacy is not
> the best newsgroup to discuss it but there seems to be some relationship.

The Advocacy mailing list is meant as a place to discuss "what ways can
we promote FreeBSD to new audiences".  It is not meant in the usenet
(newsgroup-naming) sense of "Let's put all the flame-wars here!".

Adding features to 'ls' may make freebsd more useful to some people.
As long as new features do not *break* the options that you are used
to using, I don't see too much of a problem with it.  I don't know
what the old ftp client was like, but I do like the ftp client that I
found with freebsd.  As a relative newcomer to freebsd, that was one
of the things where I thought "hey, that's cool" when I saw it.  So
the change you found so "drastic" is one of the things that promoted
freebsd to *me*, as one sample individual.

If you're determined to say that no unix command should be allowed to
have any new options over time, then I would expect that you won't be
able to advocate freebsd to anyone except the people who were using
BSD ten years ago.  To me, any operating system which will not evolve
over time is bound to be a dead operating system.

So, if you're asking the question "how do we promote freebsd to more
users?", then the topic of new features is a good one.  If you're just
looking for a flame-fest between people who don't want any change vs
people who are maybe too eager to change too much too fast, then this
will be a very pointless exercise.

---
Garance Alistair Drosehn           =   gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer          or  drosih@rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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