Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 01:52:05 +0100 From: Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> To: Tim McMillen <timcm@umich.edu> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OT: non-Unix history (Was: FreeBSD vs linux) Message-ID: <3A6F78B5.70AE5FB4@nisser.com> References: <14957.31196.939559.889627@guru.mired.org> <14959.23870.728403.859934@guru.mired.org> <3A6F61DC.39E9CF0D@nisser.com> <01012419080209.24525@tim.elnsng1.mi.home.com>
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Tim McMillen wrote:
>
> Ok, sorry this is way off topic to -questions, and I like to avoid
> that, but since the discussion is already here...
> I suppose beyond this we should cc -chat and drop -questions.
Yeah, actually we should. Then again, it's not a perfect world.
> Many did. But empirically many vendors either gave up support for Unix
> altogether or only supported a few Unix types because it was simply too
> expensive to provide support for them all.
> Do you think anyone really develops for Windows because of it's
> technical superiority? Of course not. They develop for windows
> because of its ubiquity. They can write the program once, learn on
> ...
Nice argument. Does not explain the initial take off of either DOS
or Windows, though. Far from it, actually.
What it says is, basically, see: Windows is popular so they write
for it! Sure, but how did it become popular in the first place?
Marketing, most likely.
> ...
> Unfortunately I don't think this is possible, but who knows. If even
> major opensource OS's that try to do The Right Thing (tm) can't agree
> on a single API due to technical issues and differences of opinion,
> then how could commercial vendors do it also?
It it is indeed marketing, then it is a moot point. Maybe we'll know
- to bring it back to its origins <g> - when KDE and Gnome merge.
One should also look at what SM's doing. Started with the pen? or
whatever extension in a 3.11 beta. They've got an API explosion.
Sure, they call *all* Windows but are they still? Truly? Remember
when they said there could be only one? [heck, nice line for
a movie title :)] Well, there ain't.
You can't run NT5/2K/Whatever on a pocket thingum. Nor can you run
what's its name on a server. Sure. The API's sorta look alike...
But just give it time ;). [I got that T-shirt :]
Roelof
PS it's still sorta to do with a question about FreeBSD('s marketing
position; look at the bright side).
--
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