From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Aug 29 22:58:43 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D5BC737B400 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:58:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cfcl.com (cpe-24-221-172-174.ca.sprintbbd.net [24.221.172.174]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1227A43E6A for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:58:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rdm@cfcl.com) Received: from [192.168.254.205] (cerberus [192.168.254.205]) by cfcl.com (8.11.6/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g7U5wWa92725 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:58:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rdm@cfcl.com) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3D6EDF31.45216C70@mindspring.com> References: <3D6EDF31.45216C70@mindspring.com> X-Mailer: Eudora for Macintosh! Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:58:33 -0700 To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org From: Rich Morin Subject: Re: What can FreeBSD learn from Mac OS X? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Thanks to Terry Lambert for his comments and for bringing in Geoffrey Moore's material. Interesting! TL>The point about this, though, is that product lifecycle maintenance is TL>an un-sexy job, ... TL>This is actually a significant amount of work, until you have a base TL>distribution which tolerates updates gladly. Understood. That's why I spoke of business cases, rather then volunteers. BTW, I had another thought after writing my notes. There's no real reason that the dotdot providers would have to track _every_ FreeBSD release. If the train only left the station every six months, that might still be OK with some passengers... >But donation of the code is what is required; if it's not a part of >the standard FreeBSD, the terms and conditions on the use of the >trademark means that you have to ship an unadulterated (un_augmented_) >"Disc #1", which means that your support costs go through the roof ... Although I haven't examined the relevant licenses, I suspect that some sort of "support service" could be sold, based on (but not including) the base FreeBSD releases. For example, the customer might buy 4.7.1 and get BSDMall's 4.7 distribution plus a subscription to a series of binary patches. So, the provider of the support service wouldn't be distributing modified distributions, just modifications which the user could add. I realize that this is a slippery distinction, but many FSB's seem to need some of these, from time to time (:-). Also, I could argue that the folks buying such a support service might be constitutionally inclined to read the directions, but then, I could easily be wrong... -r -- email: rdm@cfcl.com; phone: +1 650-873-7841 http://www.cfcl.com/rdm - my home page, resume, etc. http://www.cfcl.com/Meta - The FreeBSD Browser, Meta Project, etc. http://www.ptf.com/dossier - Prime Time Freeware's DOSSIER series http://www.ptf.com/tdc - Prime Time Freeware's Darwin Collection To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message