Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 10:25:47 +0100 (CET) From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: (Christian Weisgerber) <naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linus on IRC Message-ID: <XFMail.990213102547.asmodai@wxs.nl> In-Reply-To: <7a2i48$md2$1@mips.rhein-neckar.de>
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On 13-Feb-99 Christian Weisgerber wrote: > Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> wrote: > >> Mayhaps, but most Linux users and Linux coders view only their OS as the >> One True Way, and they don't see how hopelessly broken/hacked at some >> places it realy is. > > Substitute any arbitrary operating system in place of "Linux" above and > the statement still rings true. *nod* True as well... >> Also, there's so much about the development process of some Linux >> programming efforts that causes alot of patching before it's even >> suitable for cross platform development > > Nothing new or remarkable there. People usually develop on their > preferred platform and dependencies and assumptions creep in. When I > started with Unix, which incidentally wasn't that long ago, most free > software on the net simply assumed you were running a BSD-ish system. > (Which Linux 0.99 with GNU userland fulfilled quite nicely.) Getting > things to run on a System-V-system, even a supposedly unifying-all-SVR4 > Solaris 2.1, took extra work. Aye, but let me elaborate, I have been compiling sources from the Linux world for a while now, and they have this tendency to fix code for one platform and thus breaking it in a multitude of other ways. What I thus observed so far from *BSD initiated projects is that most of those coders think about stability in the source first and then expand on the features. Then again, where this works, there's always some projects where it is the opposite. > Like it or not, Linux is the Unix market leader. And it shapes people's > expectations. At one UUG-RN meeting I brandished the OpenBSD 2.4 CD-ROM. > One chap was curious enough to install it. "I was quite disappointed, it > doesn't even come with bash!" (Actually, it does come with a i386 > *package* for bash.) Heh, sorry, can't feel sorry, Korn shell addict myself... >> Funniest thing happened the other day, someone asked me if FreeBSD was >> released under the GPL. > > I hope you didn't scorn him but rather explained a few things. A great > many people equate Open Source with the GPL. They don't know any better, > they've never been told. Yeah, I told him that we had this great other license which was less restrictive than the GPL. People react funny to that =) >> Most of 'em have no sense of the history if 'nix anyways... > > Sure. Linux lures more people into the Unix world than anything else > before. At the rate of growth it has enjoyed for the last couple of > years, most of its user base are bleeding newbies at any point in time. > It's a natural development. And those that don't have a university > background are unlikely to have had any prior Unix exposure or any > awareness that Linux even *is* a Unix. Which is bad and sad. Most of them think Linux is some sort of advanced MS-DOS. And thus we get all these great things like PATH containing a . mails from root@whatever.com, systems open and wide connected to the Internet. I'm not saying it's bad to be a newbie, but to be clueless is the greatest danger, and with the lemminglike craze that came over Linux, that's what we are seeing now. Sure Linux did great things for a kernel designed by Andy Tanenbaum. But to view him as the True God of Programming like most Linuxers do is absurd. If one talks with kernel programmers on the Linux front it appears that one would have to rewrite the complete kernel to allow for better modularity. > Linux isn't the enemy. Linux isn't technically bad. Modern Linux > distributions make for perfectly fine Unices. Most of the Linux bashing > I observe from BSD people has no better basis than a splitting of the > world into "us" and "them", and rising hate at the realization that > "they" enjoy greater popularity. Mayhaps, I view it more as a fact of technologically adept and people with a sense of quality. Sure, I know of a large number of excellent Linux programmers who exactly follow this, but (it could be blamed on their development model) there simply isn't no-one who tries to maintain sanity in that crazy lot. > I suggest less fanaticism and more rationality. And folks, please let's > drop the unwarranted ad hominem attacks. Lately, with the rising anti- > Microsoft sentiments, people paint Bill Gates as some kind of devil. > This is absurd. Mr. Gates is simply a very successful business man. > Whether due to great ability or sheer luck I can't tell and I don't > particularly care about. Now similar mud slinging appears in the BSD > community directed against Linus Torvalds. When it comes to fanaticism, Linux users win. I find more rationality in the posts I've read from *BSD users. Then again, it might be that same clueless newbie base giving it a bad name. Bill Gates is en entirely different matter. For an Operating System he had marketing advertise as the One True OS for workstation and Server he has failed horribly time and again in my eyes. And I have worked with AIX, *BSD, Linux, NT Server and Workstation and Novell NetWare. The Unices and alike and NetWare win it time and again. I merely addressed Linus Torvalds for being ignorant and hypocrite. For being the `headmeister' for the Linux community and someone embracing GPL fully, he is ignorant of the unwritten rule, give credit where due as well as seeing into the long term future. --- Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven join #FreeBSD on Undernet asmodai(at)wxs.nl This is my Truth, tell me your's... Network/Security Specialist <http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai>; *BSD: Powered by Knowledge & Know-how <http://www.freebsd.org>; To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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