Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 11:52:13 -0800 From: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, steve@news.cioe.com Subject: Re: Freewin95 - just fyi Message-ID: <199702151952.LAA04265@lightside.com>
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Steve writes: > > It looked really good until I read the part of about him losing his > > head of something or other before coding had begun due to a > > personality dispute... > > It still looks good. I'm solidly behind the concept of getting more > Free OSs out there. Their project might not get anywhere, but then again > it might produce some usable code. > > I thought the gnu people were working on a UNIX varient also? Anyone know > the status on that? > > -Steve I think it's a waste of effort. Instead of writing something from scratch (which may never happen, because of the sheer effort involved), why not build on top of what is already there? I strongly believe they should take FreeBSD or Linux as a base, and build on top of WINE, an existing Windows emulator that already supports 16-bit and 32-bit programs. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with WINE, it simply needs to support more API's. If the Freedows people actually want to get something that works by 1998, they should start from existing code rather than the foolish task of building a new OS from scratch! There is so much enthusiasm in the free software community, but it always bothers me when people go off and duplicate existing effort for no good reason! As for GNU, yes they have been working on HURD, which is a microkernel based on Mach. They had been working on it before Linux was invented, but it took them until recently to get even a 0.1 alpha release. So it seems pointless in the face of the Free UNIX's that already exist, except for two reasons. First, the project has gone on for so long that they want to finish it. Second, Stallman is bothered by the success of Linux, and the fact that people call it Linux, not "GNU/Linux", and neglect mentioning that if it weren't for GNU, Linux wouldn't be where it is today. -- Jake
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