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From: Ray Auchterlounie <rda@kythera.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 18:42:03 +0100
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <199604161742.SAA02177@kythera.demon.co.uk>
References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <jdd.829261293@cdf.toronto.edu> <yfglok14n5r.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <316ECE94.61162F47@dark.mountain.stronghold> <4kntvi$hmm@agate.berkeley.edu>
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Sam E. Trenholme <set@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
[...]
>It is my hope that Caldera, with their desktop environment, and the porting
>of applications to this environment (such as Word Perfect, Mathematica, and
>WABI), will help increase the popularity of Linux. However, you can see
>the resistance to this in the Linux newsgroups-- the gripes that Caldera
>is not as flexible to set up as Slackware, the gripes about the fact that
>Caldera is not supporting Word Perfect/WABI on non-Caldera Linux systems.
>This resistance is a contradiction. People want Linux to catch on, but
>do not want it to make the necessary changes needed to make Linux catch on.
Locking applications into one Linux distribution is NOT a _necessary_
change though - and it is IMO a highly undesirable one.
By doing this the commercial Linux vendors are starting to do the same
as the other commercial unix vendors. Instead of looking for
compatibility and interoperability they are trying to lock users into
their one-true-linux.
It's not difficult, for example, to envisage some applications only
being available for Linux-FT-Posix-Certified and others only for
Caldera. The different distributions may not always run on the same
hardware. There's not much difference between:
"Product X available for unix" (requires Sparc running Solaris)
"Product Y available for unix" (IBM AIX or HP-UX only)
and
"Product X for Linux" (Caldera version bar only)
"Product Y for Linux" (FT-posix release foo required)
If this happens we've gone full circle back to a maze of different
unixes all based on Linux but all subtly different/incompatible and
all claiming to be the "standard".
The opportunity will then be well and truly missed. :(
ray
--
Ray Auchterlounie Research Student (still) at:
<rda@kythera.demon.co.uk> Signal Processing Group
<rda@eng.cam.ac.uk> Cambridge University Engineering Dept.
"Don't ask me about my thesis (TM)"