On 7/17/2011 05:10, Jerry wrote:
While I usually consider Slashdot nothing more than a bunch of
juveniles ranting against Microsoft; however, I did find this rather
interesting post this morning.
"Lennart Poettering: BSD Isn't Relevant Anymore"
<http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/0020243/Lennart-Poettering-BSD-Isnt-Relevant-Anymore>
Interestingly enough, a great deal of it is true. It might be
interesting to know how others feel about it. Obviously, asking that
question on this forum is like playing against a stacked deck; however,
it still might prove interesting.
Having come to BSD from Linux less than a month ago, I find it
interesting that the very thing, which Mr. Pottering is encouraging in
Linux development, is what has lead me to search for other options
besides Linux. Of late Linux has been loosing the 'plays well with
others award'. First they cut the .AppleDouble support from the
appletalk drivers, then they refused to let the ReiserFS code into the
kernel, and I suppose their lack of implementing ZFS is possibly same
motivation (given that they _do_ have the man power to port the code).
If they feel that they are an end-all and be-all and don't need to
support "legacy" systems, obscure hardware, or other ways of doing
things, well, I'll find another way. This thing is about Freedom, if
they cut that from their development plan, then it's time to say farewell.
Pottering seems to have forgotten, or perhaps he is too young to
remember? Linux was a 'toy OS'. And if it's too big a burden to support
'toy OS'es then Pottering is no different from the people who worked at
the big companies twenty years ago.
Getting back to the message I'm replying to, I disagree with mr
pottering's basis statements: "If Debian was my project I'd try to focus
on making (or keeping) it _professionally relevant_" -- I'll translate
this as: If it ain't business and making money, drop it. "...we want to
make sure Linux enters the mainstream all across the board." -- This
sounds like desktop systems to me, but there is much more to the world
than the shrinking market share of the desktop. UNIX was born in the
research world as a pet project to have fun -- written after hours. BSD
continued that journey toward freedom recoding the parts of UNIX that
had been stripped out by unscrupulous business dealings. Hopefully
Linux won't turn out to be an evolutionary miss-step, but...
If Kerningham and Richie were focused on staying 'professionally
relevant' UNIX would never have /existed/, and as its decedents, neither
would have BSD or Linux. Is BSD relevant? Looks like it's /essential/
given the context of the question.
Live Free.
Sam George
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