Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 13:33:50 -0700 From: Studded <Studded@san.rr.com> To: "Paul D. Robertson" <proberts@clark.net> Cc: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net>, "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@gsoft.com.au>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why is xtend in the base system? Message-ID: <353E542E.B3D24D08@san.rr.com> References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980422142134.15097F-100000@shell.clark.net>
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Paul D. Robertson wrote: > > On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: > > > On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Daniel O'Connor wrote: > > > Because the screen savers anyone can use, and most people have sound > > > cards in their machines.. The number of people with X-10 systems is > > > pretty small AFAIK.. Well, it is in Australia anyway :) > > > > None of my machines have sound cards... > > Ditto. > > > Trying to invoke a majority clause here is bogus IMHO > > Agreed. Actually trying to pretend that percentages don't matter is bogus. If your argument were correct everything in the ports collection would be integrated into the base OS since whether the majority of the users use a given function or not is "bogus" as a criteria for inclusion. The question is "What kind of system do we want to ship?" and that's been answered by consensus that we want to ship a system that the majority (read, "unwashed masses") of users can unpack and use, and at the same time a system that professional users can use and configure with a minimum of hassle. (Of course there are other considerations such as POSIX, etc., but I think you get the idea.) The sound card argument is particularly inappropriate since the only "sound card" stuff that comes with the system is something you must configure and compile if you want it. The xten stuff comes as binaries in the binary distribution, is compiled with every make world (unless you disable it like I did) and is not used by even a significant minority of FreeBSD users. That would include the vast majority of ISP's and WWW farms. In conclusion I know that the chances of getting xten removed from the base are very slim, but can we at least keep the discussion about the merits in the realm of rationality? Doug -- *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** *** Proud designer and maintainer of the world's largest Internet *** Relay Chat server with 5,328 simultaneous connections. *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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