Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 02:15:09 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Joseph Scott <joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: No port of Opera? (Was: ((FreeBSD : Linux) :: (OS/2 : Windows))) Message-ID: <20000708021509.B1136@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007071219290.19763-100000@pebkac.owp.csus.edu>; from joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu on Fri, Jul 07, 2000 at 12:37:08PM -0700 References: <4.3.2.7.2.20000707095841.047c6ee0@localhost> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007071219290.19763-100000@pebkac.owp.csus.edu>
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Joseph Scott said on Jul 7, 2000 at 12:37:08: > > I know that you response is that we should be pushing a BSD > compatibility layer for other OS's. I think this is a neat idea, and > would certainly be neat to see, with the idea that it would help spread > the use of BSD. Unfortunately I do not have the skills needed to code > such a beast. I believe that most people who do (and have the time) are > more interested in working on BSD directly. There's something rather obviously wrong with the BSD-compatibility- for-linux argument, especially combined with your (Brett's) ideas that linux guys will want to screw BSD at the first opportunity. If that is the case (and even if not, actually), you may write a perfect FreeBSD compatibility layer, but how are you going to get the big linux distributions to include it? And if they don't, how does it help anyone or persuade biggies to write for FreeBSD instead of linux? On a related note I saw this interesting article (didn't preserve the link, it may be there on lwn.net or someplace) on how the big linux distributors aren't themselves using a lot of the software they give their public. For instance, they generally ship sendmail as the default (or only) mailer, and wu-ftpd with its hole-of-the-month as default ftp program; but most of them use qmail for email and proftpd for ftp. (Not that proftpd has a much better security record.) There were plenty of other examples, and it focussed especially on the tendency of enabling lots of dangerous and exploitable services by default; the article was worth reading and I hope lots of people at redhat read it. I notice something similar about FreeBSD, though not quite so bad: it ships with sendmail as the only MTA (in 3.x, anyway -- I still haven't looked at 4.x, but hope to do so soon), but the freebsd.org mailserver itself uses postfix. Isn't that a bit inconsistent? Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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