Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 16:50:00 -0800 From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> To: Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD in good standing in netcraft survey Message-ID: <20001103165000.F5112@fw.wintelcom.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011031633001.61476-100000@roble.com>; from marquis@roble.com on Fri, Nov 03, 2000 at 04:33:37PM -0800 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011031633001.61476-100000@roble.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
* Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com> [001103 16:34] wrote: > > It seems unlikely we'll ever see FreeBSD's hard working developer > community spending a lot of time on things like backwards compatibility, > interoperability, and ease of management. This is too bad because > these issues handicap FreeBSD vis-a-vis the Microsoft's and Sun's > out there. I think it's a bad long term strategy but only time > will tell for sure. > I'm sorry, but this is completely incorrect. We do support backwards compatibility to even before we were "FreeBSD" We interoperate just fine. Ease of management is somewhat lacking, but admintool for Solaris isn't exactly a god-send either. What you were talking about but missed in your summary is that we don't have a very good upgrade path between releases and releases are abandoneded a _bit_ prematurely. However let's put some of the blame on the userbase because... If anyone was willing to spend as much as they did on Solaris equipment, software licensing and support we'd probably still have people actively developing on FreeBSD 2.2.8. If several people approached BSDi with offers of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to support our legacy and to form a good binary upgrade system, they would have a hard time saying no to such a contract. But the fact of the matter is that few companies are making such investments and when they have it's been done completely in-house with little contribution back to the community. With FreeBSD you get a LOT more than you pay for, but unfortunetly that doesn't and can't include each and every thing on everyone's personal or company wish list. You want binary upgrades options? Talk to BSDi, or one of the numerous other quality FreeBSD supporting companies about contracting it for your company, it will pay off in the long run a lot more than just ranting about what you see as short-comings. thanks, -- -Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org] "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20001103165000.F5112>