Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 21:07:55 -0700 From: Brian Behlendorf <brian@hyperreal.org> To: Joey Garcia <bear@pacificnet.net>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Simple End-User FreeBSD Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980422210755.00b25140@hyperreal.org> In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980422202643.006aa1b8@pacificnet.net>
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At 08:26 PM 4/22/98 -0700, Joey Garcia wrote: >Although, some of you may suggest that Linux isn't the enemy...some may >suggest that Bill Gates and Windows NT is the enemy. I guess that's more >of a philosophical debate. I don't know. To me, Linux is more of a closer >enemy. They're the other Free Unix-like OS that hat a much bigger following. I am going against my better instincts by posting this, the last thing I need to do is get into a freebsd/linux/windows debate, but this is how I see it: Competition is necessary for evolution to take place - be it in biology, or just about any other endeavor, and that includes software development. For a long time, there was no competitor to Sendmail; and in fact there was a period of time where no major development work took place on Sendmail because it was the default everyone used; meanwhile the environments got more complex, the requirements for security got more intense, and competitors like qmail, smail, and now vmailer started popping up, and now finally Allman is doing active development again. Heck, progress on SMTP was even delayed because no one cared to advance the state of the art of internet messaging software, until Microsoft and Netscape started getting interested in it. FreeBSD needs Linux, and Linux needs FreeBSD. Each needs the other to keep it on its toes, to keep pushing the envelope, to not be satisfied with "good enough". Through compatibility libraries and a convergence of binary standards, we won't have to worry about fragmenting the applications side of things; with enough momentum I predict most major *nix applications will run on both, not just one or the other. So in that model, Linux and FreeBSD get to compete on really what they should compete on, like performance, reliability, flexibility, and the like. Brian --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- "Optimism is a strategy for making brian@apache.org a better future." - Noam Chomsky brian@hyperreal.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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