From owner-freebsd-advocacy Mon Mar 22 16:55:10 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9B44E1523F for ; Mon, 22 Mar 1999 16:55:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA44318; Mon, 22 Mar 1999 16:54:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Brett Glass Cc: "Jasper O'Malley" , advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD emulation for linux (was: Re: blah blah blah) In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 22 Mar 1999 16:15:28 MST." <4.2.0.32.19990322160933.00aaf6c0@localhost> Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 16:54:08 -0800 Message-ID: <44316.922150448@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > The reason why it ultimately stopped working so well was that Microsoft > moved the API out from under them. At which point they should have fixed it, regardless of the degree of technical difficulty involved. I wouldn't just say that off-handedly about anyone, but I find it hard to believe that IBM, with all of its incredible resources and arsenal of software patents (for convenient cross-licensing purposes), couldn't have kept up with the football as Microsoft attempted to kick it around the field. > Well, quite frankly, Jordan, your lack of support for it could well > poison the effort. I have pointed out that it's technically difficult to do something like this given the differences between the FreeBSD and Linux APIs. This is no more than correct. I have pointed out that it would need buy-in by the major Linux distros before this could be the kind of out-of-box solution ISVs would want it to be before targeting the Linux platforms with FreeBSD native binaries, and such buy-in isn't trivially contemplated. This is no more than correct. I have pointed out, just now, that I simply don't see the kind of talent it would require being available. Motivation is great and technical abilities are great, but they need to be enbodied in the same person before you get movement here. You've also suggested that the Linux emulation team would be the ideal candidates when I happen to know that everyone on the Linux emulation team is busy up to their eyeballs and very definitely *not* even motivated in this direction (and if Soren subscribed to advocacy, you'd have been flamed to toast by now for even proposing him in absentia). This is no more than silly. If pointing out glaring flaws in a proposal truly counts as "poisoning" it then I would submit that it also constitutes a mercy killing. Many of your suggestions would be far motivational, in fact, if you just took the time to actually do some of the "devil's advocacy" yourself before committing them to paper (so to speak) and then having everyone else shoot noisily at the more obvious holes in them. Even advocacy can sometimes stand a little bit of the old vigorous scientific inquiry process (before publication) when it starts getting into specifics, as you've been wont to do lately, and just shooting ideas from the hip and seeing what they hit afterwards doesn't quite cut it when you're getting into the area of suggestions which are actually technical in nature. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message