From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 4 22:32:11 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: chat@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE05E16A47E for ; Mon, 4 Dec 2006 22:32:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from reed@reedmedia.net) Received: from ca.pugetsoundtechnology.com (ca.pugetsoundtechnology.com [38.99.2.247]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AE01943CE9 for ; Mon, 4 Dec 2006 22:27:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from reed@reedmedia.net) Received: from pool-71-123-204-253.dllstx.fios.verizon.net ([71.123.204.253] helo=reedmedia.net) by ca.pugetsoundtechnology.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.54) id 1GrMHr-0002VL-9s; Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:27:47 -0800 Received: from reed@reedmedia.net by reedmedia.net with local (mailout 0.17) id 25566-1165271268; Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:27:51 -0600 Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 16:27:48 -0600 (CST) From: "Jeremy C. Reed" To: Josh Paetzel In-Reply-To: <200612041443.15154.josh@tcbug.org> Message-ID: References: <200612041443.15154.josh@tcbug.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Venting my frustration with FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:32:12 -0000 ... > pc98, ppc, sparc64, sun4v, and xbox. I know this is a volunteer > project, I know you really can't keep people from tinkering with what > they want to tinker with, but xbox? It seems to me to be a waste of > resources to concentrate on anything besides i386/AMD64.....there's > plent of market share to be captured right there. I look at that > list and see a future for AMD64. (Yes, I wouldn't be at all > surprised if sparc went away) ARM isn't going away, but is FreeBSD > really concerned with the embedded market? > > FreeBSD does not have the support or the financial backing to be all > things to all people. It can't compete across the board with linux, > so why try? Even if FBSD got to the point where it was as flexible You mention its a volunteer project above. I'd assume that some developers who volunteer their time to esoteric features or rarely used platforms also volunteer some time on features / bug fixes that are also widely used. But if they weren't allowed to do their "tinkering" they may never have volunteered on anything in the first place. Does anyone have any examples of this? Or thoughts about this? That's just my thought. I also volunteer to do open source related work which has involved tons of "tinkering". For example, I built and maintained an entire *Linux* distribution using the *NetBSD* "pkgsrc" for a few years (including Linux kernel, glibc, util-linux, etc via pkgsrc). But this work encouraged me to fix or improve many things not related to my custom distro.