"Shawn Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> While I wish that there were better options than GNU userland in terms
> of functionality, the reality is that the majority of the open source
> world has chosen the GNU toolset, for better or worse, as their
> toolset of choice.
There is of course a better choice: foster the UNIX tools instead of merely
leaving them alone for more than 10 years.
> Wasting precious resources on attempting to reinvent the GNU wheel,
> all in the name of (mostly) pride and arrogance, isn't going to win
> any battles.
I am not sure what you are talking about: GNU tools in many cases reinvent the
wheel - even if you are talking about free implementations (star is 4 years
older than GNU tar and smake is 5 years older than GNU make, I am sure there
are a lot more similar examples).
But even switching to a "GNU userland" is not the solution for an unattended
UNIX userland. Switching to software that is maintained by other people still
only works for a short period of time if you do not like to spend the time for
dealing with upstream enhancements/fixes.
And last but not least: a few years ago, there was a discussion on c.u.s about
"slow Solaris sort(1)" and it turned out that GNU sort did not support to sort
e.g Japanese text..... After GNU sort was enhanced, it was much slower than
GNU sort and the GNU sort maintainer (Paul Eggert) asked Sun to put sort under
an OSS license. You seee, other people are interested in UNIX tools!
Finally (you have been warned already), I need to explain how OSS works with
respect to integrating new features:
If Sun publishes a new developer version ov ON_NV, nobody expects that the
people who did cause the changes in this release aproach me and help me to
integrate their changes into a e.g. new SchilliX release. They just publish
the source code and make it available for me to take.
If I take some free code (from where ever), e.g. even from unmaintained parts
of ON_NV. If I then fix bugs and add new features, people are waiting for since
some time and if I than just publish my fixed/enhanced sources, these sources
are available to be taken by interested people even from inside Sun. These
people may integrate my fixes and enhancements into the official Sun source,
but they cannot expect that I will spend my time on this integration as I
cannot expect that Sun people integrate their changes into my projects (like
e.g. SchilliX). They may ask me for help, but I will not stalk behind them.
Things may be a bit different in case that the people who do the work may also
decide on integration and get write access to the official Sun Source....
This is (at least curently) not the case and for this reason, Sun needs to hold
enough people to be able to integrate available fixes/changes or people from
the OpenSolaris community may lose interest.
In any case: you don't get an evolving OS for free!
You either need to collaborate with the people who do the work or you need to
do the work yourself.
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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