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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!reason.cdrom.com!usenet From: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: 15 Apr 1996 09:25:25 -0700 Organization: The FreeBSD Project Lines: 128 Sender: jkh@time.cdrom.com Message-ID: <yfgd959fo96.fsf@time.cdrom.com> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <jdd.829261293@cdf.toronto.edu> <yfglok14n5r.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <31702487.420C2193@lambert.org> <yfg3f67giw7.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <31718ED3.555EB900@lambert.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com In-reply-to: Terry Lambert's message of Sun, 14 Apr 1996 16:48:35 -0700 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21286 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:568 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3162 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2974 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17244 comp.os.linux.advocacy:45259 In article <31718ED3.555EB900@lambert.org> Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> writes: [How to let developers generate Motif binaries] The easiest approach would be to establish a link server, where you package up objects and local libaries, send them off to someone with a license, and recieve linked images back. You I'm sure glad I haven't had breakfast yet, that's all I can say. What an unbelievably byzantine suggestion! Even assuming that a _usable_ infrastructure for this could be set up, what about the adverse impact that this would have on the compile-edit-test cycle? For a final production binary I could almost see being willing to go through such a process, but for the development "hmmm, move this widget a little more to the right" stages, it'd be utter horror and a turn-off of the first magnitude. Since I doubt we'd be getting a copy of UIM/X free with this either, you're also talking a lot of hand-coded interfaces or a project-before-the-project where a UI builder is written. Sorry, but this whole Motif scenario just won't cut it. It'd be like demanding that your runners all run in leg irons and pass a piano instead of a baton. I wrote a Sun shared library, which my employer deemed a competing product and prevented me from releasing under my non-competition agreement... but Jeffrey Hsu's work that helped me do that became OK, OK, so you've done MORE than just theorize. For the record, I also never said that your contributions where dedicated solely to the theoretical, simply that THESE suggestions were far more to that side of the line than most. I do *NOT* know that. I *design* before I code. The *one* And your resulting product therefore has no bugs? A (cough) impressive achievement! ] control panel application for X, hence it's an education problem and ] will STAY an education problem until someone implements it. FVWM has one. FVWM is the MWM replacement you must use to avoid royalty problems with use of Motif. Two birds with one stone. FVWM is not a control panel app in the same way that Win95's is (and that WAS the basis of my comparison). There are no global font selectors or background wallpaper editors or color scheme selectors or any of those things. FVWM is a *window manager*, not a session manager. If you'd ever used MAPI... you wouldn't be trying to sell it as a "must have" checkbox line item. I never did! I simply said that Windows had all of these various standards for which UNIX had no clear counterparts. I stand by that assertion, but I don't necessarily say that we have to implement the same braindead standards, simply that ours would do well to be so damn ubiquitous. So what are you planning on charging them, now that the credit balance on their souls is dangerously low? Nothing - my best advice would be that they simply file for spiritual bankruptcy at this point. :-) is eating Novell. Because it's a lost cause, and there is no room in the market for anyone but Microsoft, so we all might as well atttend their developer conferences and let them tell us what software the deign beneath their dignity to write. Sorry, but Fuedal lordship went out in the middle ages, and I'll be damned if I'll play serf or grant Microsoft ownership of the table. And if you'd really studied your Feudal history you'd see that people picked their battles carefully if they wished to continue to hold sway over certain areas of the landscape. You'd accomplish nothing by running 300 naked Picts against a line of massed archers, for example, though you might do better training them in insurrectional warfare and sending small groups into the cities during the day to worry and harass the enemy, forcing him to garrison valuable troops in static positions. There's very little to be gained by taking on Microsoft in the areas in which it's strongest, though perhaps a considerable amount to be won by going for their achilles heels. The drubbing they've taken in the networking arena is an object lesson. Those who attempted to field competing desktop standards were crushed, while those that ran around the side with a whole new paradigm that Bill was too busy or blind to see have made a mint. Don't try and convince me to charge into the cannons here just because you don't like the idea of losing this *particular* battle! I think if I were a Microsoft empoyee, and I saw something stupid happening, I'd be *obligated* to yell "Hey! Something stupid is happening! Come see the stupidity inherent in the system!". You'd only be branded a trouble-maker and booted out. Now if you yelled "Hey! I have a stupid idea! Come see the stupidity inherent in my idea!" they'd make you management. Novell has always operated via shotgun -- at least under Ray Noorda -- shoot a lot of bullets in a direction, and market the one that hits the target. That must be why they've been forced to sell so many of his experiments off at a loss.. :-) Is this the same advice you gave Stallman? 8-). I learned not to give advice to Stallman years ago.. :-) This is short term thinking at its worst. And utterly endemic to this industry. Don Quixote I'm not, sorry. In any case I agree with Mary. Opportunity exists, even if the free (or even the commercial) UNIX implementations refuse to recognize it as such. I'm not unconvinced of this, I'm simply not quite in agreement with you as to where those opportunities lie. Jordan -- - Jordan Hubbard President, FreeBSD Project