Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 11:07:52 -0500 (EST) From: ADRIAN Filipi-Martin <adrian@ubergeeks.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD advocacy list <FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, advocacy@openbsd.org Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981129104704.388A-100000@lorax.ubergeeks.com> In-Reply-To: <19981127190855.A468@freebie.lemis.com>
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On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Greg Lehey wrote: > > The basic reason I'm pursuing the notion of userland unification > > is that I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the egos are smaller and less > > likely to be a problem outside of the kernel. It would also leave the > > respective camps free to have their own add-ons. This would be one way to > > reduce the effort spend tracking what the other groups are doing for the > > entire distribution. > > You've forgotten something that went by a day or so ago: the source > trees are structured differently, and the licenses aren't quite the > same. In these areas you'll run into an amount of stubbornness^W > reluctance to change which might surprise you. Yes, I'm aware of the differences. That is clearly significant obstacle that would need to be overcome. Like I said, I'm willing to be egos in userland are smaller. And as FreeBSD goes multi-platform, it may have to make some of the same layout changes that NetBSD and OpenBSD made anyhow. > > I could see things where 90% of userland, and 90% of the ports > > (not packages) could be lumped together on a single CD, that could be > > included in each OS's distribution. The particular flavor would provide > > it's kernel sources, system binaries and other bits that are truly kernel > > specific. > > Well, since you mention the ports, there's an idea. I know that > FreeBSD and NetBSD have a certain amount of object code compatibility; > I expect that applies to OpenBSD as well. A thing that *really* would > be worth doing would be smoothing the differences, which would > probably require some modifications on all three systems. The result, > though, would be that the ports (which Walnut Creek already ships > precompiled) would work on any of the three platforms. And if you > prefer the NetBSD dump(8) over the FreeBSD version, there'd be nothing > to stop you. > > Greg Compatability at the ports level could surely be improved, but don't you think improving compatability at the /usr level would ease improving the compatability of the ports area? Without addressing /usr, you are faced with manging several sets of patches for many ports. Unifying /usr would restrict the multiple patch problem to kernel/system API specific packages. Adrian -- [ adrian@ubergeeks.com -- Ubergeeks Consulting -- http://www.ubergeeks.com/ ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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