From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Mar 19 8:12:30 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7038C15706 for ; Fri, 19 Mar 1999 08:12:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: (from brett@localhost) by lariat.lariat.org (8.8.8/8.8.6) id JAA25269; Fri, 19 Mar 1999 09:11:57 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <4.1.19990319090556.00b604d0@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 09:10:02 -0700 To: Zippy From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: Netscape browser Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: References: <4.1.19990319082724.03f70100@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 10:59 AM 3/19/99 -0500, Zippy wrote: >Doubt this would work. The reason the present system works (Linux >emulation under FreeBSD) is because it's in FreeBSD's interest to support >the linux emulation. The reverse isn't true, unfortunately. Doesn't matter. WE'd do it, just as AT&T created Plan 9 emulation for UNIX. >Telling a >vendor to make a native port to FreeBSD because the FreeBSD folks are >maintaining an emulation package for Linux won't fly. The company would >be putting its trust in the FreeBSD community to maintain that package. >If the maintainers decided to drop the package, the company would lose its >linux market base. Wouldn't happen. It's open source, remember? They have the source; they can maintain the emulation. That's the BEST possible insurance. >Why would they do that when they can port directly to >linux and tap the market directly? Because FreeBSD, by some estimates, has 2/3 the installed base of Linux. If you could increase the potential market for the same SKU by 66%, why not do it? >Unfortunately, hype works in the real world. We need some of it. We need hype, too. But this would be an opportunity to learn from the history of OS/2 and not repeat its (perhaps fatal) mistake. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message