Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 05:48:33 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Message-ID: <200011300548.WAA05850@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20001129121021.049b31b0@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Nov 29, 2000 12:14:10 PM
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> >Or SAMBA, which we also shipped on the box? > > > >These were tactical, not strategic; shipping source for these > >wouldn't matter, since they don't contain any intellectual > >property that matters to anyone. Let people demand the code > >if they want: we include a web page with links to the source > >to everything they could demand, right on the box. > > It doesn't seem to me that this would avoid the problems > you mentioned earlier. GPLed code is still infectious. Only if you link against it. When was the last time you linked against "grep"? > >If you think these things would need to be exposed, then > >you've missed the concept of "embedded system": all InterJet > >administration was and is intended to be performed via a > >limited set of externalized interfaces, predominantly the > >web UI. > > I understand embedded systems very well -- that's one of the > things I do. However, as we all know, selection is a much > less powerful paradigm than specification, and fixing a > box or using it to its full potential often requires the > power of a command line. What's more, the strategic UI code > almost certainly calls on such utilities to do its work and > therefore depends upon them. People who needed access to a command line, and could actually use one, were such access granted, were not in our target market. There is a Ricoh photocopier and a Ricoh document capture device, both based on FreeBSD. I rather seriously doubt that they ship the code in such a state that you could get a command line, period. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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