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To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
cc: pst@shockwave.com (Paul Traina), chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: sgml formatting code 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 04 Jun 1997 14:34:09 +0930."
             <199706040504.OAA11867@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> 
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 23:30:41 -0700
Message-ID: <5570.865405841@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> In the current context, pruning the system to the bone would drive 
> ISVs like ourselves to another platform.  Right now, our users are
> extremely happy with the "comfort level" that FreeBSD systems provide 
> them; it's often a significant selling point when talking them into
> accepting a unix-centric solution.
> 
> The alternative is not _currently_ palatable; I agree that we need to
> help make SoSy part of the solution.

Boys, boys, you're BOTH right, OK? :-)

FreeBSD as it currently stands is too hard to layer components onto
and upgrade - what we have with pkgs/ports is a nice _start_ but it's
still insufficient for reasons I could start enumerating now and still
not be done by morning, so a little bloat is the price we must
currently pay to have a reasonably functional FreeBSD for all.  I'm
also firmly on the side of making something functional over making it
small given that I've suffered with lousy out-of-box Solaris/AIX/HPUX
and Digital UNIX installations for more than enough years out of my
life, thank you.

That said, my ideal is to make the packaging/distribution tools so
robust that you can simply select what "kind" of FreeBSD system you
want at any time, at initial install or anytime afterwards, and have
the system carefully keep track of everything by set.  If you want to
initially install a bare-bones "embedded system" class FreeBSD, later
deciding that you wanted the full doc suite and then even later
thinking "naw, I liked it better small", you should be able to do all
of that with literally a click of a mousebutton (or a keystroke for
you serial console purists :-), all the messy details handled
transparently.

OK? :-)

					Jordan