Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 21:26:29 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, dmorrisn <dmorrisn@u.washington.edu> Cc: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, James Love <love@cptech.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Device Drivers for Linux and Intel's annoucement Message-ID: <4.1.19981002211803.040e9870@mail.lariat.org> In-Reply-To: <19981003123016.W2176@freebie.lemis.com> References: <4.1.19981002202119.040f7c30@mail.lariat.org> <23307.907176696@time.cdrom.com> <4.1.19981002190913.040f3b60@mail.lariat.org> <36158AD6.811BD16E@u.washington.edu> <4.1.19981002202119.040f7c30@mail.lariat.org>
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At 12:30 PM 10/3/98 +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: >> No fallacy at all. It's been proven again and again that emulating another >> OS that's more popular provides the ultimate disincentive to developers. >> OS/2 is only one recent case in point. > >OK. So Linux is emulating UNIX, and is thus doomed. FreeBSD is UNIX, >and thus OK. Right? Linux is actually experiencing greater growth than commercial UNIX, so it's not emulating something that's more popular. >> Look at it from the developer's point of view. Why EVER develop a native >> FreeBSD version of any product if one can just do a Linux version? > >Good question. What reason can you think of? Since people are >working towards one interface which would work not just for FreeBSD >and Linux, but also for SCO and Solaris, it doesn't seem worth >striving for. There is such an effort. But will it really happen? We'll see. The commercial UNIX vendors are well aware that this will jeopardize their product differentiation and undermine their efforts to enlist ISVs to write for their versions exclusively. >> So, FreeBSD's name never appears on the box. > >Why not? If they have a product that runs both on Linux and on >FreeBSD (and SCO and Solaris), do you think they're not going to >mention the fact? I haven't seen one that DOES. Most recently, I was particularly disappointed to note that Corel's WordPerfect for Linux didn't mention ANYWHERE that it ran under FreeBSD. And when I called Corel to inquire, their marketing people didn't even know FreeBSD existed, much less whether their product would run on it. >> Tech support for commercial products is unavailable when they run >> under FreeBSD, while they're well supported under Linux. Linux gets >> the mindshare and FreeBSD becomes known as an unsupported also-ran. >> >> I watched this happen with OS/2. I couldn't even get support for WINDOWS >> apps running under OS/2, much less get native versions that were any >> good. > >So how does that make it different from Windows? You could get support for the application if you were running it on Windows. (You couldn't get support for Windows itself, but that's another story.) >In this comparison, you've missed the point that the problem was the >OS/2 people (little system) who didn't get on with Microsoft (big >system). I've voiced my opinion about the damage done by rabid people >in the FreeBSD camp before. The fact is, you're still fighting the >wrong fight. Linux isn't the enemy, Microslop is. I disagree. Someone who seeks to do you harm is, by definition, an enemy. Microsoft has not done any direct harm to FreeBSD; in fact, they have tacitly endorsed it by using the code for the BSD FTP, dig, and traceroute utilities. The Linux camp, on the other hand, has openly attacked FreeBSD. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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