From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Feb 28 14:25:17 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id OAA20829 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:25:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from covina.lightside.com (covina.lightside.com [198.81.209.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA20821 for ; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:25:14 -0800 (PST) Received: by covina.lightside.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #6) id m0truIz-0009YvC; Wed, 28 Feb 96 14:25 PST Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:25:05 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: Terry Lambert , "Amancio Hasty Jr." , root@dihelix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Quake's out, where's that Linux ELF emulation? In-Reply-To: <3781.825544043@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > The situation is not aided by the fact that the BSD camp emulates > > the Linux ABI sufficiently well that companies are of the opinion > > that they can save themselves a porting effort. > > That depends on whether or not you view the UNIX market as one capable > of sustaining native versions of all the major players anymore. No > good winning a battle if it costs you the war. Well, certainly being able to run the Linux version is better than no version at all, right? Also, if our Linux ABI is reasonably efficient (as it seems to be), then would there be any significant further gain to make a "native" port? For many applications, it seems unlikely. After all, we're just patching Linux system calls through to our kernel, it's not as if we actually have to go user their crummy KERNEL (although we do have to use their shared libraries...). Anyway, I agree with Jordan on this, better to work on the ELF support in FreeBSD then tell vendors, "Oh by the way, the Linux version of your program works GREAT on FreeBSD, why don't you advertise it as FreeBSD-compatible too (and maybe think about doing a native port for your next version)?" :-) ---Jake