Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 20:49:59 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: toor@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, shawn@cpl.net, chuckr@glue.umd.edu, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3.0 -release ? Message-ID: <199712072049.NAA29755@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199712062357.SAA07293@dyson.iquest.net> from "John S. Dyson" at Dec 6, 97 06:57:08 pm
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> > > Why should the FreeBSD people make the port collection work with other > > > OS's? > > > > To get their tools to be cross-platform, and therefore be able > > to leverage work on other platforms which use the tools. > > When we have more than 1 or 2 platforms, then it will be *start* being > important. My opinions are not "PC", so if you are easily politically > offended, please cease reading here. Cross-platform (ie: cross-BSD/Linux), *not* cross-architecture. I didn't say "cross-architecture". That's a problem for those systems which run on other architectures. > > There is not sufficient coordination between the various BSD's to > > ensure that something distributed via installer may be installed > > on FreeBSD. That's what FreeBSD gets out of it. > > I see the problem with our cooperation being similar to the Microsoft > scheme of adopt, modify incompatibly and subsume. Let's not waste > our time. There is a severe amount of NIH abounding in other projects. Not sufficient for them to disdain the ports collection, it seems, however. I would like to see the OpenBSD and NetBSD folks contributing ports. Already, they consume the ports collection, and their contribution is in making the tools run on their platform, and not much beyond that. This is what I'd like to see change. > > It's win-win. > > Sadly, nope, not right now. ??? If FreeBSD people aren't doing the work to make the ports cross-platform, but OpenBSD and NetBSD folks are, I don't see what loss-instead-of-win they take. If FreeBSD people don't have to do all the work in the creation of ports, I don't see what loss-instead-of-win FreeBSD takes. The difference is in allocating some FreeBSD porting effort into cooperation in exchange for OpenBSD/NetBSD allocating some ports support effort into porting. There is no net loss for FreeBSD, and there will be a net win in sales volume for WC, and for BSD in general for third party developers who will see BSD as being more monolithic and therefore more worthy of a port. > > It also means that other people can add ports -- which offloads the > > work to non-FreeBSD people for some ports. > > It won't work that way. It will be more like our technology with > modifications will be adopted, and we will be left out in the cold. How is that possible with the WC CDROM centralized control having a definite FreeBSD bias? The only ways you will get "technology with modifications" is: 1) The modifications are valid (in which case, why is FreeBSD remaining gratuitiously incompatible in your scenario?). 2) The modifications are gratuitous (in which case the WC CDROM and Satoshi-based editorial policy will be to not include them, and they are a non-issue). > Let's continue forward, and let other groups cooperate with us. We > are much less likely to change our standards (due to inertia), and > there is safety for them in that fact. And there is danger for us in the same place. Look at gnu binutils non-support for a.out. > > Again, it's win-win. > > I think that there are some assumptions here. It is a good idea to > learn from history, and let's not make things more complicated than > they already are. The history that I'd pick as most analogous in this case would be the history of XFree86... Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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