Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:09:52 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@hotjobs.com> To: "David O'Brien" <obrien@NUXI.com> Cc: Paolo Di Francesco <paipai@tin.it>, freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Read this... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812091259500.27793-100000@bright.fx.genx.net> In-Reply-To: <19981209094726.R18642@nuxi.com>
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On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, David O'Brien wrote: > > > http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,29695,00.html > > > Can someone tell Sun to support us? 8) > > > > Hopefully they'll see the light soon enough. > > Not unless they actually hear from *us* and others. > The Linux fanatics foam at the mouth and scream at (if not demand) > vendors to support them. Yes, however my lack of experiance is a concern to me. I do not wish to lead this argument/proposal to Sun, it may give people a bad impression of the FreeBSD community if my efforts fall through, as well an alienate myself from the FreeBSD community for causing that. I'm being conservative right now because I don't have support from core, I do however have a lot of encouragement (which i really appreciate) A few people have stepped up and helped a lot. What i'm basically saying is, unless someone from core wants to manage this project and will try to make contacts, i'd rather this remain more of a silent effort until we have something that is well... a vast improvement over what we have now. > > Has anyone that is capable of making real progress contacted Sun to ask > for a development machine? Sun offered Jordan 2-3 Ultra machines 1-1.5 > years ago to use in porting FreeBSD to the Ultra. > > Jordan turned them down, saying that FreeBSD wasn't interested [at the > time] unless Sun also gave some $$ to support maintenance of the port once > it was done. At the time there didn't seem to be any/many FreeBSD > developers interested in the Sparc. And the idea of making the Ports > Collection run on the Sparc is a very scarry thought. We have yet to see > just how well we will support the Alphas. Bad Jordan! :) It makes sense though, FreeBSD is still a project and not a commercial entity, therefore much more support from the vendor would be benificial. > Because of Jordan's/FreeBSD's response, Sun then decided to have one of > their own port FreeBSD to the Ultra. This is where Jason Evans > <jasone@canonware.com>. To quote one of Jason's emails: > > As has been alluded to in some of Jordan Hubbard's email, Sun > Microelectronics (SME, the processor division of Sun) recently > discussed paying FreeBSD core to officially support a port of FreeBSD > to SPARC. These plans fell through in some way (I wasn't part of the > discussion, so I don't know details), but SME is having me work on > the port. > > -and- > > A while back, SME approached FreeBSD core and offered monetary > compensation of some nature (I don't know the details) in exchange > for an official UltraSPARC port. FreeBSD core turned down this offer. > Once again, I don't know details, but one of the main statements made > (actually somewhat inferred) by Jordan Hubbard was that SME's offer > was not of major interest since to be of long term use to FreeBSD, > such a proposal would need to include support for a number of years > from someone internal to Sun. > > There is no reason we can't, provided someone is prepared to spear head > it, ask Sun for a simular offer. > Will someone with more courage and experiance than I please speak up about this, perhaps contact sun? I hope people understand that the only reason i shell'd out 3k for a an ultra was to aid/start the port. This isn't a trivial thing to me. -Alfred On another note i have to figure out the syscall mechanism we will be using to i can code libc asm hooks correctly. > -- > -- David (obrien@NUXI.ucdavis.edu -or- obrien@FreeBSD.org) > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-sparc" in the body of the message
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