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Date:      Mon, 22 Nov 1999 18:26:58 -0700
From:      Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD at COMDEX
Message-ID:  <4.2.0.58.19991122181712.04729990@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <19991122163813.39441@mojave.sitaranetworks.com>
References:  <4.2.0.58.19991120090553.0463a200@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19991120090553.0463a200@localhost>

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At 04:38 PM 11/22/1999 -0500, Greg Lehey wrote:

>On Saturday, 20 November 1999 at 10:34:52 -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
> > FreeBSD got a small, but not insignificant, amount of attention. Red Hat
> > CEO Robert Young even mentioned it in his keynote -- a pleasant surprise.
>
>Interesting.  I wonder why.  What did he say?

He mentioned it in passing, early in the speech. See

http://play.rbn.com/?url=zd/pcweek/g2demand/webcast/comdexfall99/key_111599b.rm&proto=rtsp


> > The reps from Borland/Inprise -- whose booth was directly across from
> > Walnut Creek's -- told me that they now had a Linux command-line compiler
> > for Borland Pascal/Delphi. (This is a fantastic Pascal dialect which I'd
> > love to use for UNIX projects. The GPLed "Free Pascal" simply can't compete
> > in terms of code quality.) Unfortunately, despite the fact that recompiling
> > and relinking a command-line compiler for BSD is nearly trivial, their PR
> > people claimed that they weren't considering an implementation for FreeBSD.
> > (This sounds like a company that's ripe for a bit of advocacy; there is NO
> > reason why there should not be Delphi compilers for ALL of the BSDs.)
>
>On the other hand, this should run out of the box.  Why ask them to do
>unnecessary work?

Because it will produce non-native binaries that are dependent upon Linux
libraries and emulation. If a user does not have these installed, the
code generated by the compiler will not run. Also, APIs that access unique 
features of the FreeBSD architecture -- e.g. CAM -- won't be there.

One of the reasons I use FreeBSD is that I do not wish any of my work
to be dependent upon GPLed code. I certainly don't want to use a compiler 
that forces me into such a dependency!

--Brett Glass


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