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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!inquo!news.seinf.abb.se!nooft.abb.no!Norway.EU.net!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!news.thepoint.net!news1!not-for-mail From: root@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson) Subject: Re: Whats so great about FreeBSD? X-Nntp-Posting-Host: dyson.iquest.net Message-ID: <4q2g97$j2@dyson.iquest.net> Sender: news@iquest.net (News Admin) Organization: John S. Dyson's home machine References: <4pbtvj$hqq@uuneo.neosoft.com> <4q1l0j$2hm@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 02:35:19 GMT Lines: 40 In article <4q1l0j$2hm@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com>, <aks@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote: >I am afraid that BSD in general is dead. Sun dropped it as hot potato. >Digital dropped it as rotten potato. Everyboy has moved or is moving to >System V. Operating system , no matter how good (look at VMS), which lacks >application software is useless, no matter how good it is. There are NO freely redistributable versions of SVRX, just like there are no freely redistributable versions of NT. Speaking of rotten potato, have you seen the SVR3-4 source code? There is so many problems in that stuff, that I am NOT suprised that SCO kept selling their debugged SVR3 for so long. In fact, I would have done the same thing. Almost nothing is *broken* from a high level design standpoint in *BSD, but there is political value in saying that you are selling SVRX or Solaris, etc. I had to support and hand-hold customers trying to use SVRX, when FreeBSD would have easily run their applications fully loaded on machines 20-50X cheaper. But generally there is nothing *broken* from a high level design standpoint in SVRX either. Different, and sometimes inferior choices were made in the implementation of the kernel. It was really sad when the SVR4 applications would virtually stop running when the systems barely started swapping. I had to explain that their $100-500K systems weren't big enough (but had to side-step that it was because the OS was so pathetically inefficient.) There was alot left in the BSD code base, it had to be put aside for MARKETING reasons, there was almost no other rational reason for it. So, the BSD source code has finally gotten out to the public, and it (the public) is better off because of it. If a small startup wants to make a fancy routing widget -- just embed FreeBSD in it -- and you don't have ANY licensing fees to pay. Cool, isn't it? If you want to put up a www site that can perform as well as any SVRX or Solaris, you can use *BSD, and be CONFIDENT that YOU can fix the security bugs, and not be dependent on the whims of a vendor... Of course, the FreeBSD team is very quick at responding to security problems anyway. John