Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:59:21 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby), hasty@rah.star-gate.com, root@dihelix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Quake's out, where's that Linux ELF emulation? Message-ID: <4632.825559161@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:03:41 MST." <199602290003.RAA09335@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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> One could also argue that it's better to have "FreeBSD" than "Linux" > on the outside of the box on store shelves. Again, you make the tacit assumption that ISVs are willing and able to support multiple UN*X platforms for their products. Such is simply no longer true, and it's more a question of saving what little we have left at this point. Hell, it was exactly this divisive kind of "well we don't like it if it doesn't smell like us" thinking that led to the current crisis in the UNIX applications market. UNIX didn't fail to capture the desktop by pure caprice, a number of its staunchest supporters were among the busiest in helping to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Everybody had their own favorite tree and did their best to ignore the very existance of a forest. Feh! Sorry, while I'd love to see FreeBSD be such a hit that little "FreeBSD Ready!" stickers started appearing on machines from the likes of Dell and Compaq, I'm too much of a realist to expect that I actually will. Likewise, I don't see UNIX coming back from the dead and catapulting shrink-wrapped FreeBSD software into places like Egghead. I just don't. Heck, I don't even see it doing that with Linux yet (if ever), and that market is easily 3-4 times our size. The old maxium of "together we stand, divided we fall" never seems to have caught on in the UNIX world, and that's a damn shame. I would personally be *happy* to see in inter-OS common ABI established, with Linux as both the starting and ending point if need be (they're the bigger gorilla, and that grants certain privileges). How long can it possibly take the UNIX market to otherwise wake up and smell the friggin' coffee? We (the UNIX commuity at large) screwed up by playing 3 stooges when we should have been designing interoperability standards, and we sent most of our ISV friends packing by presenting them with a support picture that had all the professional grace and elegance of an english football riot. Picture, if you will, a UNIX consultant talking to the product manager for Foobolix at Foonetics, Inc: "You say you want to support this product on ``UNIX''? Ah... OK, go get ahold of some Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, SCO and OSF/1 machines (plus maybe a SunOS partition for the hold-outs), hire at least 3 engineers and prepare to spend 3-6 months at it. Oh yeah, you'll also need to keep the machines around more or less indefinitely for ongoing support." [a strangling noise is heard over the phone] "Hello? Are you OK? Yes, I do admit that this is 6 times the effort for a market perhaps 1/100th the size of Windows.. No, it doesn't make any sense, I agree. Excuse me? No, I'm afraid that the free UNIX market isn't in much better shape. There are at least 3 different variants for the Intel architecture alone, and each has its own distinct ABI." [mumble mumble gritch sigh] "Yes, in their father's footsteps as it were. Those that have fathers, yes. You're quite astute, sir. Perhaps we should move on to discuss the NT version of your product?" Any similarity to real-life conversations I've had is purely coincidental. Jordan
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