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From: michael@memra.com (Michael Dillon)
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: 17 Apr 1996 01:48:59 -0700
Organization: Memra Software Inc. - Internet consulting - http://www.memra.com
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <4l2b9r$6rl@sidhe.memra.com>
References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <yfglok14n5r.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <NELSON.96Apr12112334@ns.crynwr.com> <4kmvaa$pdr@dyson.iquest.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sidhe.memra.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21665 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:664 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3290 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3123 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17594 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46089
In article <4kmvaa$pdr@dyson.iquest.net>,
John S. Dyson <root@dyson.iquest.net> wrote:
>In article <NELSON.96Apr12112334@ns.crynwr.com>,
>Russell Nelson <nelson@ns.crynwr.com> wrote:
>>That's because they weren't working cooperatively. What, pray tell,
>>Jordan, prevents you from improving the flaws that you see in Linux,
>>to the point where it is as good as FreeBSD or NetBSD or OpenBSD or
>>386BSD?
>>
>I don't understand that statement. I am trying to guess what it means.
>FreeBSD is quite a bit ahead in certain areas, and there is much more
>to do to keep ahead in some areas, and to catch up in others. The
>notion of the "one-true" OS sure sounds like Mickysofts' goal. Is that
>Linux's also? (BTW, I am NOT anti-Microsoft as much as I am simply afraid
>of them.)
>
>An analogy of the above statement might be "why aren't all of the
>football teams just working together as opposed to fighting against
>each other." Part of it is the sport of it :-).
I really like this analogy. But there is still one thing missing here,
namely the league. It would be nice if there was some subset of both the
*BSD and Linux communities that operated kind of like a standards
organization to set out some of the rules of the competition. Things like...
1) All OSes will support both FFS and ext2fs for both data and root/boot
2) All OSes will support a.out and ELF binaries. The ELF binary
format will be modified slightly to include "OS of origin" and
"architecture of origin" to facilitate that support.
3) All OSes will support XYZ install packages (not invented yet)
(I'm thinking of something like RPM or the Debian dpkg which are
glorified tar/cpio archives with version info, dependencies
and other stuff like maybe an after-install config script)
4) All OSes will support the /etc/config directory for all application
configuration files with symlinks to the traditional locations.
Why can't we do more of that kind of thing while continuing to compete
at the kernel level?
>There is a significant advantage to diversity, and I doubt that Linux
>would not be as good as it is without real competition. (Likewise
>FreeBSD, etc...)
Agreed.
--
Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com