From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Mar 19 9:36:15 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mail.HiWAAY.net (fly.HiWAAY.net [208.147.154.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D38414D81 for ; Fri, 19 Mar 1999 09:36:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sprice@hiwaay.net) Received: from localhost (sprice@localhost) by mail.HiWAAY.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with SMTP id LAA04269; Fri, 19 Mar 1999 11:35:48 -0600 (CST) Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 11:35:48 -0600 (CST) From: Steve Price To: Brett Glass Cc: Zippy , advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Netscape browser In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990319090556.00b604d0@localhost> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Brett Glass wrote: # >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. But you probably wouldn't release it under the GPL and if it isn't GPL'd many in the Linux community won't use it. Are you suggesting the company support FreeBSD emulation or that the Linux community to support it? If the former, then why would the company do that when we already support FreeBSD emulation for them and having their product run on FreeBSD comes at our expense not their's? If the latter, then why would anyone in the Linux community want to support emulation when they already have native support? Your FreeBSDulator idea will be great thing to have but only after we have turned the tables and FreeBSD has a bigger userbase than Linux. When this happens the Linux community can write the emulator themselves so that they can keep their beloved OS. # >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