IMHO what has helped Linux is the existence of commercial distributions with support - Red Hat, SUSE, etc. The only attempts to do this for BSD have been undercapitalized and/or half-hearted.
But I find the general premise of the discussion to be - how to say this politely? - stupid. Things that interest me are relevant, things that don't presumably are not, until they are. - Michael (FreeBSD since 2.2.2) On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Sam George <[email protected]> wrote: > On 7/17/2011 05:10, Jerry wrote: >> >> While I usually consider Slashdot nothing more than a bunch of >> juveniles ranting against Microsoft; however, I did find this rather >> interesting post this morning. >> >> "Lennart Poettering: BSD Isn't Relevant Anymore" >> >> >> <http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/0020243/Lennart-Poettering-BSD-Isnt-Relevant-Anymore> >> >> Interestingly enough, a great deal of it is true. It might be >> interesting to know how others feel about it. Obviously, asking that >> question on this forum is like playing against a stacked deck; however, >> it still might prove interesting. > > Having come to BSD from Linux less than a month ago, I find it interesting > that the very thing, which Mr. Pottering is encouraging in Linux > development, is what has lead me to search for other options besides Linux. > Of late Linux has been loosing the 'plays well with others award'. First > they cut the .AppleDouble support from the appletalk drivers, then they > refused to let the ReiserFS code into the kernel, and I suppose their lack > of implementing ZFS is possibly same motivation (given that they _do_ have > the man power to port the code). > > If they feel that they are an end-all and be-all and don't need to support > "legacy" systems, obscure hardware, or other ways of doing things, well, > I'll find another way. This thing is about Freedom, if they cut that from > their development plan, then it's time to say farewell. > > Pottering seems to have forgotten, or perhaps he is too young to remember? > Linux was a 'toy OS'. And if it's too big a burden to support 'toy OS'es > then Pottering is no different from the people who worked at the big > companies twenty years ago. > > Getting back to the message I'm replying to, I disagree with mr pottering's > basis statements: "If Debian was my project I'd try to focus on making (or > keeping) it _professionally relevant_" -- I'll translate this as: If it > ain't business and making money, drop it. "...we want to make sure Linux > enters the mainstream all across the board." -- This sounds like desktop > systems to me, but there is much more to the world than the shrinking market > share of the desktop. UNIX was born in the research world as a pet project > to have fun -- written after hours. BSD continued that journey toward > freedom recoding the parts of UNIX that had been stripped out by > unscrupulous business dealings. Hopefully Linux won't turn out to be an > evolutionary miss-step, but... > > If Kerningham and Richie were focused on staying 'professionally relevant' > UNIX would never have /existed/, and as its decedents, neither would have > BSD or Linux. Is BSD relevant? Looks like it's /essential/ given the > context of the question. > > Live Free. > > Sam George > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]" > _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]"
