Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!oleane!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!newshub.csu.net!newshub.sdsu.edu!saturn!larryr From: larryr@saturn.sdsu.edu (Larry Riedel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Getting off the stick [was Re: TCP latency] Date: 21 Jul 1996 10:31:33 GMT Organization: San Diego State University Lines: 34 Message-ID: <4st0u5$a0k@hole.sdsu.edu> References: <4paedl$4bm@engnews2.eng.sun.com> <4s8rtp$jsh@fido.asd.sgi.com> <yfgn30us5xb.fsf@time.cdrom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: saturn.sdsu.edu Jordan K. Hubbard (jkh@time.cdrom.com) wrote: > I used to feel good about the BSD community because the people in it > seemed to be less interested in whether or not the number of people > who used their software was more than some other OS, and relatively > [elided - I think this paragraph captures the essence of the posting > fairly well] > > I think that this posting manages to miss the point in just about > every significant way. This isn't about counting heads for its own > sake, or trying to make UN*X something it's "not" - this is about [...] It made "the" points I wanted to make, which are (1) I don't believe there is any need to think there is a "war" against any other OS to be "won in the kernel" or anywhere else, or any need to "hold our own against Microsoft", or any "18 wheeler" "bearing down," because what the organizations with money and/or large user bases do is not a critical concern since they have not historically been purveyors of the technology which eventually gained widespread acceptance, so (2) I think the focus should be on developing software for the needs of the technically astute, rather than typical end users, who are not in a position to evaluate the technical merits of new developments (unless they have something like a magic benchmark which they run to decide system L is better than system F even though they have no idea what are the underlying reasons the developers of system F chose to write the software in such a way that it failed to perform as well on that particular benchmark), and (3) I don't think there is any need to worry about making FreeBSD easy to install or use for the novice, because it is not, in my opinion, the forte of BSD, and it doesn't need to be. Sorry if those points were not "the point," but this is the kind of "getting off the stick" and "paradigm shifting" I would like to see. Larry