*BSD News Article 28809


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!news.kei.com!eff!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!newshub.nosc.mil!nosc!pegasus!freebsd!richard
From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Subject: Re: WP for Linux, BSD?  (binary compatibility)
References: <1994Mar9.082547.1022@news.csuohio.edu> <hastyCMFH9r.BvD@netcom.com> <1994Mar11.204055.24136@pegasus.com> <hmyNYgS.dysonj@delphi.com>
Organization: Pegasus Information Systems
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 1994 17:11:22 GMT
Message-ID: <CnA7rG.2tM@pegasus.com>
Lines: 15

>>Can a vendor expect today's binaries to remain compatible with future
>>releases of these OSes?
> 
>At least in FreeBSD, we are maintaining compatibility with previous versions,
>and I think that NetBSD is also maintaining compatibility.  Even
>IF we go to ELF or COFF as an alternate format, a.out *MAGIC is
>here to stay.  Of course sometimes there can be problems with
>shared libs, etc, and in that case there is probably a better chance
>with the FreeBSD/NetBSD scheme of future compatibility because of
>the run-time linking.  [...]

Which spawns another question; what about binary compatibility between
FreeBSD and NetBSD?  What are the prospects?