*BSD News Article 61050


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!hookup!newsfeed.direct.ca!imci2!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!news.va.pubnix.com!not-for-mail
From: lidl@va.pubnix.com (Kurt J. Lidl)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: BSDI vs FreeBSD
Date: 9 Feb 1996 00:55:53 -0500
Organization: Pubnix Access Systems (Virginia)
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <4fenl9$e51@catapult.va.pubnix.com>
References: <AFj4X5nCg4@qsar.chem.msu.su> <4f86tp$5ki@atlas.uniserve.com> <4fb955$1jp@catapult.va.pubnix.com> <4fe77a$270@ionews.io.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: catapult.va.pubnix.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:13526 comp.unix.bsd.misc:494

Brian Tao <taob@ionews.io.org> wrote:
>Kurt J. Lidl <lidl@va.pubnix.com> wrote:
>>You're comparing the feature list of their 2.0 system (released
>>for just about a year) with the latest version of FreeBSD.  How
>>about a fair comparision next time?
>
>    The comparison may be invalid *now*,

Yes, and we're talking about *now*.

>but it does demonstrate that in general, FreeBSD (and NetBSD and
>Linux) enjoy the benefits of much more rapid code development than
>their commercial counterparts.  FreeBSD had most, if not all, of
>the additional driver support new to BSD/OS 2.1 over six months ago.

Feh.

I've been beta-testing the FDDI driver support and NCR driver support
under BSD/OS 2.0 for close to 9 months.  If you have BSDi support,
and you know what you are doing, you can generally have the bleeding
edge hardware support when you need it.

The difference is, of course, when it breaks under BSD/OS, I can
go to BSDi and have them fix it, without waiting for them to "get
around to it", as it's their *JOB* to support what they sell.
That's what support contracts are *for*.  What BSDi charges for a
support contract on a yearly basis doesn't even come close to paying
for the vacation time of a good programmer, let alone their salary
the other 49 weeks of the year, and the cost of the equipment they
would need to do development on.  I'd have to be insane to use
FreeBSD or Linux and never know *IF* I was going to get a bug fix
for a problem that I ran into.

-Kurt
-- 
/* Kurt J. Lidl (lidl@va.pubnix.com) UUCP: <Earth>!uunet!lidl */
/*   Don't confuse my opinions with my employer's opinions!   */