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Date:      Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:58:33 -0700
From:      Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>
To:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: What can FreeBSD learn from Mac OS X?
Message-ID:  <p05111b13b9949ffee2a5@[192.168.254.205]>
In-Reply-To: <3D6EDF31.45216C70@mindspring.com>
References:  <p05111b0eb9944f21ee6f@[192.168.254.205]> <3D6EDF31.45216C70@mindspring.com>

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Thanks to Terry Lambert for his comments and for bringing in Geoffrey
Moore's material.  Interesting!

TL>The point about this, though, is that product lifecycle maintenance is
TL>an un-sexy job, ...
TL>This is actually a significant amount of work, until you have a base
TL>distribution which tolerates updates gladly.

Understood.  That's why I spoke of business cases, rather then volunteers.
BTW, I had another thought after writing my notes.  There's no real reason
that the dotdot providers would have to track _every_ FreeBSD release.  If
the train only left the station every six months, that might still be OK
with some passengers...

>But donation of the code is what is required; if it's not a part of
>the standard FreeBSD, the terms and conditions on the use of the
>trademark means that you have to ship an unadulterated (un_augmented_)
>"Disc #1", which means that your support costs go through the roof ...

Although I haven't examined the relevant licenses, I suspect that some
sort of "support service" could be sold, based on (but not including)
the base FreeBSD releases.  For example, the customer might buy 4.7.1
and get BSDMall's 4.7 distribution plus a subscription to a series of
binary patches.  So, the provider of the support service wouldn't be
distributing modified distributions, just modifications which the user
could add.  I realize that this is a slippery distinction, but many
FSB's seem to need some of these, from time to time (:-).

Also, I could argue that the folks buying such a support service might
be constitutionally inclined to read the directions, but then, I could
easily be wrong...

-r
-- 
email: rdm@cfcl.com; phone: +1 650-873-7841
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