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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!netnews.nwnet.net!symiserver2.symantec.com!usenet From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: TCP latency Date: 20 Jul 1996 09:06:49 GMT Organization: Symantec Corporation Lines: 60 Message-ID: <4sq7j9$86a@symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <4paedl$4bm@engnews2.eng.sun.com> <4s8rtp$jsh@fido.asd.sgi.com> <4sej3e$155@dworkin.wustl.edu> <4seo88$fqd@fido.asd.sgi.com> <4sesh4$2ls@dworkin.wustl.edu> <31EE28D3.41C67EA6@star-gate.com> Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.6.34.1 X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.networking:45895 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:24061 In <31EE28D3.41C67EA6@star-gate.com>, "Amancio Hasty Jr." <hasty@star-gate.com> writes: [some deleted] >be able to level the playing field. Another area that Unix at least >on the PC area could possibly have a significant impact is if there >was a good emulation layer to run Windows 95. You see people have [more deleted] I don't agree with this strategy at all, and here is why: I have run OS/2 since v2.0 and as we all know for a while there IBM was pushing OS/2 as a better windoze than windoze. The problem is that your not going to attract users to FreeBSD by saying that it can run Windoze programs. It didn't work for the OS/2 crowd and it ain't going to work for us. It also doesen't seem to work for the Mac crowd either, at least according to the sales of those "windows emulator cards for Macs" What is going to happen instead is that lazy ISV's will simply have no incentive to port their apps to FreeBSD, they will just beg-off users by saying that if the users want to run their apps to run them under emulation. Worse than that is that it will pull valuable developer time into a project that is going to contribute nothing. If IBM had not put Windows support into OS/2 the market would have been smaller in the beginning, but it would have not given all those ISV's that had half-assed OS/2 plans reasons to muddy the market. For example, for years WordPerfect was making noise about supporting OS/2 and even did a few ports to it. They never fully committed to it, as a result a lot of people _didn't_ buy DeScribe wordprocessor, but just kept waiting for Wordperfect to get into gear. If wordperfect had not had the option of telling customers to run their Windows port under OS/2, then they might have decided to stop playing around, and left the OS/2 market alone. That would have given people like DeScribe more room in the market. Here is another way of looking at it. Lets say your a software publisher and you see the Windows market is very competitive for your product. You are small, so you have a choice, you can develop for FreeBSD where there is maybe only one other direct competitor, or you can develop for Windoze where there are 20. Now lets say someone goes and puts Windoze emulation into FreeBSD. Now, your competing against 21 other vendors, the 20 windoze ones and the one other FreeBSD one. At this point it may make sense to hang it all and go develop for the Mac! ;-) Put Windows emulation into FreeBSD and all your going to attract is a bunch of stinking flies, attempting to push off crappy BSD ports of their products, expecting the users to buy them just because of their names. Then, the users buy and start demanding the bugs be removed, making the flies do some work, and later when the flies do nothing to correct problems the users stop buying so the flies fly away bitching to everyone who will listen on how terrible the FreeBSD platform is.