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Date:      Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:15:03 -0500
From:      "G. Adam Stanislav" <zen@buddhist.com>
To:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Applications
Message-ID:  <3.0.6.32.19990416161503.0092d260@mail.bfm.org>
In-Reply-To: <19990415231413.A47332@ontario.mooseriver.com>
References:  <199904160601.XAA88836@rah.star-gate.com> <19990415224102.A47059@ontario.mooseriver.com> <199904160601.XAA88836@rah.star-gate.com>

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At 23:14 15-04-1999 -0700, Josef Grosch wrote:
>I think the problem is a lot of FreeBSD people want to be kernel hackers and
>don't want to get their hands dirty with double-entry bookkeeping,
>warehouse, order-entry, or assent management systems. There is just not a
>lot of glory in the hacker world for these kinds of programs.

Hmmm... I have been writing applications for a long time (started
programming in 1965). One of the first things I did when I got FreeBSD late
last year was to write some tools. I mentioned that at one of the
mailgroups, and received a lot of yawns in return.

Indeed, any time I mention in any FreeBSD list that I wrote some program, I
get a lot of negative replies, assuring me no one will ever need them and
non-sense like that.

Then I discovered freshmeat.net and announced my programs there. I received
thousands of visitors from there, mostly Linuxites. I always get instant
feedback from them. For example, version 2.0 of my Graphic Counter Language
had some FreeBSD-specific code which made it impossible to compile under
Linux. I received email from a Linux user who pointed out where exactly the
problem was, and offered to test my software to make sure it compiles and
runs under Linux.

I have since made two or three submissions to the ports collection. I
received an automated reply with a number assigned to them. That was last I
heard of them (this was about a month ago). The idea behind one of these
port submissions was that it was a library needed to a number of i18n tools
I have developed since. These tools all need the library. But I cannot
release them to the ports collection (although I find it silly to call them
"ports" since I developed them on and for FreeBSD), I cannot release them
because the library is still not in the ports collection, and they need the
library.

Meanwhile, I announced them all on freshmeat.net. They always get announced
the next day, and my site is swamped by people downloading them. They use
them, too, judging from the email I keep getting.

So, it is rather ironic: I have developed tools for FreeBSD and am unable
to submit them, while they are already being used by Linuxites all over the
world.

Adam
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