From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Feb 1 19:24:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [192.109.197.137]) by builder.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 022684036 for ; Tue, 1 Feb 2000 19:24:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) id NAA57556; Wed, 2 Feb 2000 13:53:35 +1030 (CST) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 13:53:34 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Scott Parsons Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: School Project Message-ID: <20000202135333.T55303@freebie.lemis.com> References: <000801bf6d41$3c6de4c0$010ffea9@gandalf> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: <000801bf6d41$3c6de4c0$010ffea9@gandalf> WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] On Tuesday, 1 February 2000 at 21:49:13 -0800, Scott Parsons wrote: > Hello, > > I'm doing a project on FreeBSD with other classmates for a college > presentation. So this is all your own work, right, and what you're doing now is research? > My part in the project, aside from the design, are the pro's and > con's. I guess it's easy enough to find all the pro's; however, > con's are not so easy. > > Could you please just make a few point form examples of the drawbacks? > In areas such as: > > Marketing - I figure that if it is free, and the source is available > then there isn't much of a market. But I know that Yahoo and I think > Hotmail are using FreeBSD. There has got to be a drawback > somewhere. I suppose that depends on what you mean by "market". > Compatibility- Can FreeBSD use any off the shelf application? You can find details of this (and a lot more useful stuff) at http://www.FreeBSD.org/. > Source Code- if a company has to reveal their changes, won't their > competition just use it? Why should they, when they can get FreeBSD for free? Writing source code is only part of the job. Maintaining it is the big issue, and that's even more difficult if you import source from elsewhere. The FreeBSD project imports lots of code, and it's usually a little traumatic, at least for the person who does the import and sometimes also for those who run -CURRENT. > Therefore, what's the point in trying to alter it for your > advantage? It works better. > I can't think of anything else, the only reason why I sound negative > is because I'm trying to find the downfalls of FreeBSD. I already > know the great sides to the OS. Note that the answer to these questions would be exactly the same if you changed "FreeBSD" to "NetBSD", "OpenBSD" or "Linux". Take a look at http://www.opensource.org/, which will give you a lot more background. > PS I am using the devil pics for the project, if that is a problem > just tell me. Well, it's a daemon, not a devil, and it belongs to Kirk McKusick (mckusick@mckusick.com). You should ask for permission; I don't think he'll say no. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message