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To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/staroffice - Imported sources 
Cc: ggm@connect.com.au (George Michaelson), msmith@freefall.freebsd.org,
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In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:50:42 +0930."
		<199704110220.LAA08535@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> 
References: <199704110220.LAA08535@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>  
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 20:41:16 -0600
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
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In message <199704110220.LAA08535@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Michael Smith writes: 
: Because StarDivision are a small company, and a group of their
: employees have gone out on a limb and done the Linux port at obviously
: considerable personal credibility risk.  Demanding another port of
: them would be unlikely to enthuse them at all, especially when we
: emulate the Linux ABI so well.

ParcPlace hit this when they did the Linux OI port.  It was a big pain
in the butt and may have negatively impacted some later sales of the
product.  It was good press, but they didn't know how turn that into
revenue.

The politics of the situation may have changed, but when I was the
first to do it a long time ago, it cost me a lot of political
capital.  I never did earn enough new capital to get the FreeBSD
version released.

Warner

P.S.  Yes, I am sure that we were first in the Linux marketplace.
Metrolink was the first commercial vendor and had us beat by only a
few weeks.