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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.be.com!news1.crl.com!nntp.crl.com!usenet From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: *BSD Unification? Date: Thu, 03 Apr 1997 07:40:16 -0800 Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Lines: 52 Message-ID: <3343CF60.1CFBAE39@FreeBSD.org> References: <860029226.1885@dejanews.com> <5hvj0g$gvj@panix2.panix.com> <5i0e9j$1qc$1@daily.bbnplanet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-STABLE i386) To: David Todd <dtodd@bbn.com> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38352 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:5728 comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc:45 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2932 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:1211 David Todd wrote: > Everytime I go the the bookstore, I see half a dozen Linux books with a > distribution, one FreeBSD book, and nothing from anyone else. This annoys me, > because I know people have asked. That's sort of a different discussion, though related in part to this one. You won't see the books appear until the # of users reaches a certain level, that being something which is just going to take more time and can't be rushed by any means I'm aware of. Yes, even if *all* the BSDs were unified today, we'd still have the Linux juggernaut to contend with, our year's worth of delay with USL/Novell, etc - we'd still be waiting for the damn books to appear because nobody in the respective core teams has time to take 4 months out to write a book (if not more like 6 or 8) and the user community doesn't start generating them for you until you hit a certain critical mass which we haven't reached yet (and even if we were twice as large would probably only just now be reaching). > So now it's not "appropriate to discuss in public". > > Yeah, that'll help. > > Maybe it is time to look at Linux... Perhaps Thor needs a little coaching in better public presentation, but I think his fundamental point was valid (if perhaps not for the reasons you think). The reason it's not a *practical* subject to discuss in public (appropriate was, IMHO, the wrong word to use) is the fact that it never gets us anywhere, and we've had plenty of experience with the topic. We get 4 or 5 impassioned pleas for reason, written by various naieve yet sincere folk, 50 messages asking what our friggin' problem is and why we don't just unify *right now*, another 40 or so smug I-told-you-so messages from other OS camps, using the opportunity to trot out their usual theories about how this all means that *BSD is dead dead dead, I just don't see the point of going through that Yet Again! If this were a problem capable of being solved by 10,000 people shouting "Hit the ball! Hit it now, no NOW you moron!" then I'd have greater faith in the merits of public discussion. As it is, despite at least 3 long, agonizing bouts of debate in the past, both on USENET and in the mailing lists, the 3 groups are no closer to being merged today than they ever were and if the frequent discussion has accomplished anything at all, it's to make all parties concerned sick of the very topic. If anything ever happens WRT a *BSD merger, I think it will be the result of a lot more behind-the-scenes negotiation than anything else. Once the camera lights come on, people start posturing and it all goes to hell quickly. In private, cameras turned off, we've generally accomplished a lot more. -- - Jordan Hubbard FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.