Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 10:00:32 -0600 From: dubois@primate.wisc.edu (Paul DuBois) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: The curtain is going down on 2.1-stable in 5 days! Message-ID: <199611081600.KAA17338@night.primate.wisc.edu> In-Reply-To: <10472.847447745@time.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Nov 8, 1996 02:09:05 -0800 References: <10472.847447745@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard writes: > In case of problems encountered which cannot be attributed to pilot > error, please contact me as soon as possible. Let's test the heck out > of this and make 2.1.6 the kind of release that we'd be pleased to > recommend for commercial use for some time to come! What does it mean to recommend it "for commercial use"? I ask because it seems the FreeBSD project has somewhat conflicting goals. Let me illustrate using the yes-I-know-it's-a-sore-point illustration of IDE CD drives. I would expect that "for commericial use" means suitable for people to *use*, not hack on. That means when someone buys a CD-ROM set and then points out on one of the mailing lists that the installation fails to find his drive, it's not legitimate for the developers to respond (as they frequently do): 1) "Oh yeah!?! Why don't YOU fix the driver, then!" or 2) "Get a SCSI CD drive." These are not reasonable responses if the goal is for FreeBSD to be a system for *use*. A user wants to install FreeBSD and use it, not mess around hacking it, or working on development for it. Or having to ditch the kind of CD that increasingly is being shipped in today's systems. I understand that most of the developers have SCSI devices. I also understand that it's probably a bore to work on making IDE drivers work properly, especially given what an abominate the IDE standard apparently is. Still, letting this long-standing problem continue to go unresolved really doesn't help the goal of positioning an OS for commercial use. Note that I'm not complaining here (even though I have an IDE CD that the install has problems with). I'm simply commenting on what seems to be a contradictory goals: developer's paradise vs. user's system. I hope the point is clear enough and that no flame war will ensue. -- Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu Home page: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/people/dubois Software: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/software
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