From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 21 12:02:52 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA13970 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:02:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA13960 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:02:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA13722; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:47:18 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199611211947.MAA13722@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: WordPerfect 7.0 for FreeBSD :-) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 12:47:18 -0700 (MST) Cc: cfortin@ec.camitel.com, FREEBSD-HACKERS@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <16543.848564228@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 21, 96 00:17:08 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Second, what you should tell Coral to do is send us a copy of the > Linux version and we'll try to certify it for use under FreeBSD. I > don't think that Coral should be pushed to do a FreeBSD version until > we have a better idea of the size of our market since pushing them to > do a port and then seeing it sell badly would be worse than no port at > all. It would only screw us for a second chance. > > I would be happy if vendors with Linux versions of their products > would give us a chance at certifying it under the emulator and, > if it works, listing it as supported under FreeBSD as well (we > will also have to improve our Linux library support, but that > would be a natural side-effect of the certification process also). More important, FreeBSD'ers who buy Linux products to run on FreeBSD should make it clear to the people that are selling the products that they intend to run them on FreeBSD. The only real "certification process" that has any meaning is the port validation the manufacturer does following a port prior to release; anything you do short of that will not gain you someone to talk to when you call their support department with a problem. Notifying them of your intent to use the product under FreeBSD should encourage them to run certification by informing them there is a market, and possibly even encourage them to do a native port. If each FreeBSD sale counts as a false Linux sale, then FreeBSD will be proportionately less desirable a port in the ratio (k1 + n) : (k2 - n). Since k1 was enough for a Linux port, making sure the numbers reflect reality will only help FreeBSD, not hurt Linux. A marketing decision is only as good as the information you give it. I suspect that there are enough FreeBSD users of Linux Mathematica (a heavily discussed topic at various times) to make it worthwhile to have a native port. I'm sure this is true for some of the software running under IBCS2 as well (Informix or one of the other databases, especially). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.