On 08-Feb-99 Jerry Lynn Kreps wrote:
(Ted Harding) wrote:
The alternative, as Alex says and as has been forcefully said in other places, is "UNIX Wars" all over again. This is what marginalised UNIX for many major software ISVs; the ones that stayed in were mainly those that
Linux has avoided the "Unix Wars" by ignoring those that would rekindle the flames. Personally, I like the independence the Linux allows. Can you imagine if the Qt toolkit was declared the standard and Xwindows programs written without it were shunned? Confine yourself to KDE for the next 10-15 years? Why? Let freedom ring, let inovation flourish. There will be enought "standardization" by virtue of the number of packages sold, but each should allow some place in their distro for wiggle room so improvements can burst out. Jerry
This is also a point of view for which I have strong sympathy. If the only issue were "what would the community of Linux users, breathing the free air, like", I think the answer would be along Jerry's lines. But the current flowering of interest in Linux in the "real software" world (quotation marks deliberate ... ) -- while, at present, the Open Source software for similar purposes continues to lag (and, in the case of Windows compatibility which many of us genuinely need to achieve, continues to be almost lacking except in commercial packages) -- points to a need for a *standard* Linux that any ISV can debelop for and know what the target is. As I pointed out earlier: compare FreeBSD. FreeBSD is what is on the FreeBSD ftp site. There are not 15 versions of it out there, incompatible at a basic level. If you develop for FreeBSD you *know* what it's going to be running on (to within shifts between versions, but that doesn't seem to throw up many problems). Agreed this is a dilemma. Best wishes, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Date: 09-Feb-99 Time: 01:16:11 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>