Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:31:54 -0500 (EST) From: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> To: W Gerald Hicks <jhix@mindspring.com> Cc: giffunip@asme.org, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD Merger Announcement Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003100422060.690-100000@sasami.jurai.net> In-Reply-To: <20000309235232L.jhix@mindspring.com>
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On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, W Gerald Hicks wrote: > From: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <giffunip@asme.org> > [snip] > > Some years ago this was unthinkable, today we are very near; I hope we > > don't lose this opportunity because of our selfishness. Sure, deciding > > what goes in a unified BSD system is a difficult task, especially when > > people have worked for decades on certain projects, but we have much to > > gain in this effort. So many brilliant hackers together, surely it would > > be the envy of any organization ! > > Wise words. I agree wholeheartedly. While I think we can all dream about a 'Unified BSD' the reality is that its not really necessary. Giving people enough room to do the things they want is important and I think the 3 projects provide this room quite nicely. I think that userland interface compatibility is an atainable and desirable goal that benefits all equally. Its important that FreeBSD not present the appearance of 'strongarming' OpenBSD and NetBSD into 'compliance'. Application portability will help all projects equally and will ultimately allow users of all 3 systems to stand and be counted as one when it comes time for a commercial software vendor to port their software. Another area of mutual benefit is the ports system and while each OS uses different tools and implementations in their build/install/package system the patches and other meta-information is likely to be sharable. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a unified ports tree? Again, its important that we don't try and force a FreeBSD view of the world on NetBSD and OpenBSD; they should be free to use their own tools and local policies for building and installing. If we had users/developers from all 3 projects working on maintaining the ports/pkgsrc/foo tree we'd probably be in a better position to keep it up to date. Maybe its time to split the ports tree off into its own project? I know the last time such a thing was discussed the other projects rejected the idea fearing that they would lack representation in something that was essentially FreeBSD centric. What are the solutions to this problem? -- | Matthew N. Dodd | '78 Datsun 280Z | '75 Volvo 164E | FreeBSD/NetBSD | | winter@jurai.net | 2 x '84 Volvo 245DL | ix86,sparc,pmax | | http://www.jurai.net/~winter | This Space For Rent | ISO8802.5 4ever | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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