Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!umd5.umd.edu!mojo.eng.umd.edu!multiplexer.eng.umd.edu!chuckr From: chuckr@glue.umd.edu (Charles B. Robey) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: New OS's a good thing? Date: 12 Jul 1994 00:21:49 GMT Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland, College Park, MD Lines: 27 Message-ID: <2vsnmt$1co@mojo.eng.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: multiplexer.eng.umd.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1] I was wondering, amid all the new free OSes that are Unix spin offs, like Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, et. al., if all this recent embarrassment of riches is necessarily a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I think that putting OSes with source code, available to the common (not rich) man, is a spectacular move forward, pushed by talented people who were finally given tools close enough to what they wanted to make the tasks realizeable. But isn't it true that the splintering of Unix into x divisions was the start of massive incompatiblity, and at least *some* of the reason for Unix's lack of general public acceptance (outside of us techies). On one side, the more experimentation, the more alive the technology is. But, the public needs stability, in the terms of compatibility. Maybe, at some point, some fusion of ideas betweeen the major Free camps would be good, especially if that could be done without making the various camps lose their unique virtues, lose too much independence (and the freedom to experiment that implies). Is this unreasonable? Or is it already, informally, being done? -- ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 7608 Topton St. | New Carrollton, MD 20784 | I run Journey2 (Esix SVR4) and n3lxx (FreeBSD) (301) 459-2316 | ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------