*BSD News Article 33488


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From: mhw@cs.brown.edu (Mark Weaver)
Subject: Re: Usefulness of BSD/Linux Source Knowledge (was BSD vs. LINUX)
Message-ID: <1994Jul31.044558.12981@cs.brown.edu>
Summary: How to compete with the free OSes
Sender: news@cs.brown.edu
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
References: <30jqp1$ees@grex.cyberspace.org> <1994Jul24.185248.5906@escape.widomaker.com> <michaelv.775258838@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> <1994Jul28.025818.6937@escape.widomaker.com>
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 04:45:58 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <1994Jul28.025818.6937@escape.widomaker.com>,
Shannon Hendrix <shendrix@escape.widomaker.com> wrote:
>: I would say "not".  In fact, most everyone who has been with Sun for
>: awhile only went to Solaris 2 after clawing and scratching, and being
>: forced to by lack of new hardware support in their older BSD SunOS.
>
>I agree that it seems forced.  But I still think it is going to happen.
>Sun and a lot of other vendors seem hell-bent to change to SysV.  That
>and Motif.

This is the vendors' way of competing with the free OSes.  By
creating a generation of programs that are written to work with
SysV and Motif, they are giving the market a strong reason to buy
commercial OSes.  The painful move to Solaris was a necessary and
calculated move on Sun's part.

NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux should not be fighting against each
other.  They're all remarkable accomplishments, and all have their
characteristic advantages and disadvantages.  Many say that the
enemy is Microsoft, and this is true.  But I also say the enemy
are the vendors that try to sell for big bucks what we all enjoy
for free.

The users of all three systems know that we get stability, performance,
and support that generally exceeds what the vendors give the poor
clueless suckers.  This gives us common ground.

I've spent a fair amount of time reading this thread, and it honestly
makes me very sad.  It says something about human nature to watch
people with such a common bond spend their time quibbling over such
small points.  This is an example of why there will always be war.

	Mark
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Email: Mark_Weaver@brown.edu           | Brown University
PGP Key: finger mhw@cs.brown.edu       | Dept of Computer Science
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Email: Mark_Weaver@brown.edu           | Brown University
PGP Key: finger mhw@cs.brown.edu       | Dept of Computer Science