Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 02:35:27 -0400 From: Mark Mayo <mark@vmunix.com> To: esr@thyrsus.com, Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Open Source Products Message-ID: <19980414023527.63292@vmunix.com> In-Reply-To: <19980414015920.30944@snark.thyrsus.com>; from Eric S. Raymond on Tue, Apr 14, 1998 at 01:59:20AM -0400 References: <199804131719.LAA21122@narnia.plutotech.com> <35326353.4E30451B@xylan.com> <19980413201541.65522@snark.thyrsus.com> <3532AD36.2968F8B6@xylan.com> <19980413215647.37918@snark.thyrsus.com> <19980414065232.07017@doriath.org> <19980414015920.30944@snark.thyrsus.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, Apr 14, 1998 at 01:59:20AM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com>: > > To play a devil's advocate and assume your part, I can imagine 2 > > possible answers (please bring more if you have them; I'm quoting > > what I heard from other people propheting BSD death): > > a) BSD won't really die, but Linux will grow so > > much noone will notice BSD or know what it is; b) Linux will > > quickly support all the hardware/be supported by software companies, > > so everyone will have to either use Microsoft OSes or Linux. > > None of the above. What I expect will happen (not `want', but `expect') > is that the BSDs will run out of development energy because the people > who would otherwise join them will decide it makes more sense to be where > the crowds (and the attention, and the money) are, over in Linuxland. While the crowds of Linuxland might attrack more developers, the money factor works in FreeBSD's favor for people doing things like embedded systems and such. The BSD license gives you a lot of commercial freedom, and I think many people will (and have) choose FreeBSD as their OS of choice for black-box solutions.. Whether or not this gets us huge media attention or not is really not important - it will get us developers that will keep the project pumping. An interesting side note: A friend of mine works at QNX. He told me that their #1 "competitor" right now is FreeBSD. Not Windows, not Linux, not PharLap - FreeBSD. Why? People can develop embedded apps on it for free, and if they fly, can easily turn the project commercial and reap the financial rewards. Of course, he also mentioned that many of their customers develop initially on FreeBSD, but then deploy on QNX since they can do the "real" embedded hardware sutff on QNX, etc, etc.. Another case study: I recently did a job interview at ConnectTech, a company that makes multi-port serial boards, and they upfront told me that many of their customers were enquiring about FreeBSD for their manufacturing control systems. ConnectTech was looking for a BSD device driver writer. They considered FreeBSD to be the up and coming player. Very positive. :-) Add that to the fact that the largest FTP (ftp.cdrom.com), HTTP (www.yahoo.com), IRC (irc.dal.net), and Movie Databases (Internet Movie Database) in the world are powered by FreeBSD and I think we've got, unquestionably, a great product.. Demanding users are choosing FreeBSD today, I don't see why they won't in the future. And yes, we do have enough developers to keep on top of the major hardware trends. > That said, you've done the best job of anyone here of raising doubt > about my pessimistic BSD-will-die scenario in my mind. That figure of > 25,000 registered users is very encouraging. Agreed. Anatoly presented the best logic. :) My spin: technical/demanding users will always exist, and they will always prefer the most technically advanced OS. This is FreeBSD's community now to a large extent, and I don't see that ever changing. Whether or not we can extend it to be more of a mainstream success like Linux is becoming is the question. I think we can, but even if we don't, I still don't consider that "death" and will continue to be happy on my BSD system. :-) > BTW, I understand I actually have code in the FreeBSD kernel. Somebody > told me you guys use a variant of the PC speaker driver I wrote for SysV way > back when. If this is still true, it's very amusing considering where I > spend most of my hacking time these days. I don't have code in the > *Linux* kernel... :-) Indeed: /* * spkr.c -- device driver for console speaker * * v1.4 by Eric S. Raymond (esr@snark.thyrsus.com) Aug 1993 * modified for FreeBSD by Andrew A. Chernov <ache@astral.msk.su> * * $Id: spkr.c,v 1.33 1998/02/20 13:46:55 bde Exp $ */ :-) Time to get back to your roots perhaps? :-) -Mark > -- > <a href="http://sagan.earthspace.net/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a> > > Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may > be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons > than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may > sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those > who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they > do so with the approval of their consciences. > -- C. S. Lewis > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Mayo mark@vmunix.com RingZero Comp. http://www.vmunix.com/mark finger mark@vmunix.com for my PGP key and GCS code ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The problem is how do you build tools that understand your programs at a deeper semantic level." - James Gosling To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980414023527.63292>