*BSD News Article 33014


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From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 4.4-lite?
Date: 16 Jul 1994 18:04:01 GMT
Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman  Montana
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <3097eh$m2h@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
References: <2vgvc7$3tg@spruce.cic.net> <301rrc$cmv@masala.cc.uh.edu> <Csxxqo.DsM@newsserver.aggregate.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.90.192.29

In article <Csxxqo.DsM@newsserver.aggregate.com>,
Rob Healey <rhealey@sirius.aggregate.com> wrote:
>	Since NetBSD has already beaten FreeBSD to SPARC, m68k, MIPS and I
>	think VAX I would say that the FreeBSD core would probably make
>	better use of their time by concentrating on the x86 OS they
>	know inside and out.

Hmm, that's an interesting way of putting it.  

Person A: "By the way, did you know that you got beat."
FreeBSD : "Hmm, I didn't know I was in a match."

We made the decision a long time ago to concentrate our work on making
the reference port stable BEFORE any other platform development goes on.
However, the USL/BSDI lawsuit caused us to move in the 4.4 direction
rather than doing multi-platform support (a good thing IMHO), and when
the 386 platform is sufficiently stable and featureful for the
developers (never possibly), we will look at doing other ports.

>	The non-x86 architecture people have pretty much made their choice
>	and thrown their lot in with NetBSD, I doubt they are going to throw
>	6+ months of hard work out the window and start over with FreeBSD as
>	that makes no sense.

Unless the port is to a completely different platfrom.  The move to 4.4
has placed both groups on level ground for the most part, so getting
another BRAND-NEW (PPC, ALPHA, etc..) platform going is going to take
the same amount of work for both folks.

>	I find it odd that people don't see the obvious, i.e. the REASON
>	NetBSD is not releasing like FreeBSD is because it is supporting 6+
>	different architectures with different endianness and such.

Then don't release it on the same platform for everyone.  NetBSD and FreeBSD
started at the same time.  NetBSD made a couple quick releases and then
went underground 'release-wise.'  There have been 'stable' snapshots of
the code for different platforms that could have become releases at
many different times in the last year+, but the developers chose to
add more features, fix-bugs, etc. rather than spending the time to make
a release.

Saying that it couldn't happen because of 6+ platforms is plain wrong. 
Heck, there could have been a couple release in the middle there when
there weren't more than 2 platforms supported.



Nate

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