Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:00:40 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, perryh@pluto.rain.com Subject: Re: Policy for removing working code Message-ID: <201009130800.o8D80ee2099956@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <4c88993e.MgMUYIGSfJIxECy9%perryh@pluto.rain.com>
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perryh@pluto.rain.com wrote: > [...] > Beyond that, I suspect > that dropping an HBA or three would have been far less burdensome > on users of the hardware in question than dropping ISDN is on its > users. One can always replace a no-longer-supported HBA with a > supported one, or (worst case) replace the whole box. In contrast, > someone located beyond DSL range may have no other viable option > than ISDN. It is a common misconception that ISDN is only used by people who can't get DSL or other connectivity. I can only guess that ISDN is very uncommon in the USA, but it isn't in other parts of the world. In Germany (and possible other countries), ISDN is still very popular. I have ISDN at home (in addition to DSL at 18 Mbps); it costs almost the same as a "normal" telephone line while providing many useful features. Many (most?) companies here do have ISDN, including the one I work for. We use FreeBSD's I4B stack to implement an answering machine and fax services. This is the reason why we still have to run FreeBSD 6.x on one machine, but when 6.x runs EOL we will have to make a decision (which might end up putting a different OS on that machine, depending on the choices at that time). At home I used ISDN as a fall-back when the DSL line didn't work for some reason. I lost that feature about two years ago when I updated beyond 6.x. Fortunately DSL outages are very rare at my provider, so the decision wasn't difficult in this particular case. Don't get me wrong -- I understand very well why the I4B code had to be removed from FreeBSD. It was an unfortunate, but necessary decision. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd "If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the last time you needed one?" -- Tom Cargil, C++ Journal
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