RD> On Thu, Oct 01, 1998 at 08:00:25PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond
RD> wrote:
>> Peter Mutsaers <plm@xs4all.nl>:
>> > It is really a pity that the most popular free UNIX is so
>> > chaotic, and it's only becoming worse. Please don't
>> > misunderstand me: I'm not trying to pursuade anyone into
>> > FreeBSD, but I just wish that the most important free UNIX
>> > (which is Linux at the moment) would be more coherent and
>> > better organized.
>>
>> Chaos and openness are Linux's *strengths*. You have the
>> causality backwards; Linux is "the most important free Unix"
>> precisely because it does *not* follow the model you describe.
RD> IMO, a cursory examination of the history of *BSD politics,
RD> stalled development and splits reveals that one of the most
RD> harmful delusions in the *BSD world is that it is some sort of
RD> democracy.
As usual: the news only shows the bad things, not the good
things. People always know about or remember about the splits and
difficulties when the BSD's development process came in place in the
beginning of the 90s and earlier, but don't know about the fact that
FreeBSD for the past 4 or more years has not known any significant
conflicts, the process is going very smoothly and there is a steady
progress without hickups or difficult periods;
unlike Linux at the moment, where chaos is clearly getting out of
hand: if you look at how difficult it has become to make a 2.2 release
of sufficient quality, one has to become worried about how well the
current approach scales, and whether there will ever be a stable 2.2
release. It looks like integrating new functionality without
disturbing the rest is becoming unreasonably difficult. This is a
pity, since it slows down the development of the free UNIX world.
-- /\_/\ ( o.o ) Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust me, I know ) ^ ( plm@xs4all.nl | the Netherlands | what I'm doing.- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/