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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!bigtex!texsun!cronkite.Central.Sun.COM!news2me.ebay.sun.com!exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!appserv.Eng.Sun.COM!slovax.Eng.Sun.COM!lm From: lm@slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Funding 4.4BSD Development Message-ID: <l57nkaINNdcq@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 3 Jul 92 04:58:50 GMT References: <1992Jun28.204256.14620@uunet.uu.net> Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 25 NNTP-Posting-Host: slovax kolstad@uunet.uu.net (Rob Kolstad) writes: : Please do not confuse writing software with providing service. Service is : surrounded by all kinds of other features like: people who will answer : the phone and fix your problems, bug fixes which get distributed : everywhere, device drivers which work on *your* computer, that sort of : thing. Writing software is an important and good thing; providing service : is another important and good thing. Rob speaks the truth. I have said, repeatedly over the years, that sunistall could have a catagory "SunOS src", that source could be so perfectly maintained that you could "cd /usr/src; make install", have it work, and you know what? 99.99% of the customers would never install it. Customers, most of them, do not want the headache of maintaining the source on their own. They are paying for *support*, not for any nifty proprietary chunk of software. Unfortunately, the OS vendors don't realize that the .01% that would install the source, would also provide bug fixes and enhancements. It ain't a perfect world, folks, deal with it. And recognize that BSDI is a good thing, give them your support, they are who are going to keep BSD Unix alive. --- Larry McVoy (415) 336-7627 lm@sun.com