Re: [Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>] Re: Debian & BSD concerns
On Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 03:59:37PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> > > So when you finally triumph and FreeBSD starts to get popular and propietary
> > > drivers distributed for it, will you drop it like a dead cat and find a
> > > new OS, never being truely faithful to the systems that have given so
> > > much to you?
> >
> > Why do you insist on assuming that one can use a FreeBSD kernel or a
> > Linux kernel, but not use both? That's rather shortsighted.
>
> Gee, I don't recall saying that at all. Let's see, I commented on your
> insistent belief that since Linux is under fire, directly due to it's
> popularity, you wish to promote a new OS and try to save the free software
> community from Linux's eminent doom. Am I getting all this correct?
No, you're getting it all wrong.
Linux is under attack, yes. There are a number of things we can and
should do about that, and we will as we can. The only way that a BSD
kernel affects this at all is by helping to make Debian more portable and
universal an OS and by helping to some degree to take the focus off of
Linux in particular within Debian's circle.
Yes I would like to see Debian support alternate kernels with the same OS
because it's good to do it, it helps us not be focused on Linux so much,
and it's cool hack value.
> Use FreeBSD all you want, hell propose we support it in Debian, and see
> how thin our resources get, how huge our distribution get's, how many
> mirrors drop our site, and how many people leave in frustration of the
> growing development costs on their time and energy.
In that case, we should drop hurd too and just support Linux since hurd
isn't exactly useful yet. We should probably stop trying to support
machines that aren't used by massive segments of the population to safe
space.
At some point we hope hurd can be pretty much a drop-in kernel. We know
BSD kernel can be.
> I have nothing against FreeBSD, I like it and have told you this already,
> so your argument to me is irrelevant. Here it is really simply:
>
> I DON'T WANT DEBIAN DYING OF OVERBLOATEDNESS!
>
> Now back to our regularly scheduled Debian distribution...
Based on the logic in your argument, anything other than i386 Linux we
shouldn't be trying to support because it bloats the distribution to a
large degree and spreads our development efforts out.
--
"Do you think she's the sincere type? ... Yeah, I was afraid of that."
-- Richie Ryan, Highlander: The Series
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