Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 10:50:07 -0700 From: Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org> To: Doug Hass <dhass@imagestream.com> Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org>, Jim Bryant <kc5vdj@yahoo.com>, MurrayTaylor <taylorm@bytecraft.au.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FYI Message-ID: <200110171750.f9HHo7s01640@mass.dis.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 17 Oct 2001 12:19:34 CDT." <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011017120835.4443B-100000@ims1.imagestream.com>
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> It's not a generalization at all. Honestly, compared to the market
> traction that Linux, VxWorks, Solaris and others have, FreeBSD is
> definitely without legs. The WAN card and RAS card markets are good
> examples of where the attitude toward "BSD-licensed code or bust" has
> resulted in FreeBSD being largely left out of the party.
The point I was trying to make here is that there *is* no such attitude.
> Three of the
> largest manufacturers in these segments (SBS, Cyclades, and Ariel) all
> support Linux and NT, but do not have BSD support.
... yet Linux has a far more entrenched and outspoken "GPLed code or
bust" attitude than this mythical "BSD-licensed code or bust" attitude
that you allude to.
> It's too bad we can't find a way to include more companies and
> solutions instead of continuing to find ways to EXCLUDE them...
We do try; before I left BSDi this was one of my goals. We certainly
don't try to exclude them, just the opposite; we've provided support for
companies developing in-house drivers. We have a module architecture
that makes writing, maintaining and deploying binary-only drivers a snap.
> If anyone has an interest in adding support for the SBS WAN cards to
> FreeBSD, feel free to contact me. I'll be glad to help.
Just package your driver with your cards, or stick it on your support
site. The whole point being that you don't *have* to get your code into
the tree; you can maintain it successfully without either a) introducing
overhead for us handling your module, or b) introducing latency for you
trying to push a new version through our release process.
I get the impression you haven't quite gotten the idea here yet; you
don't *need* to be in the base distribution, and in many cases it's
better not to be simply because it involves less work for everyone.
Regards,
Mike
--
... every activity meets with opposition, everyone who acts has his
rivals and unfortunately opponents also. But not because people want
to be opponents, rather because the tasks and relationships force
people to take different points of view. [Dr. Fritz Todt]
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