"Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com> said:
[...]
> Incidentally, the cost is the same. A CDROM for Solaris is
> essentially the same cost as a CDROM for Linux. Once you start
> distributing an operating system and supporting the distributors,
> a "free" operating system is no longer free.
You must pay per-installation fees for SunOS. And SunOS is long dead,
unless you are talking about Solaris.
[...]
> Now, our legal department has defined the criteria we must meet to
> use Linux. They presume that we will provide a "current distribution"
> of Linux to every end-user. They also defined that, since drivers
> may be deemed to modify the operating system, we have to provide
> driver source-code to the customer if they request it. Application
> code continues to be proprietary.
OK, "current distribution" means 2.2.x kernel today, and was 2.0 sometime
back. It will be 2.4 in a few months time, and perhaps 2.6 in a year and a
half. You are supposed to distribute the machine and source to drivers &c
_when shipped_, I'd assume. Check the code, test it to breaking *and keep
it*. Ship that to customers, and either offer upgrades to 2.4 if needed for
some reason, or stay put.
The problems you see are exactly the problems all other driver developers
are seeing, and they aren't screaming... and it was pointed out thet the
exact same (if not worse) situation exists with your "unchanging" SunOS and
every other OS out there. Unless your SunOS _is_ SunOS, then it won't
change anymore. Obviously.
> Changing the kernel interface to drivers is counter productive.
> In fact it makes the usual field installation impossible. The usual
> installation would automatically and transparently compile the
> interface modules, using the new Operating System. This is no longer
> possible because the compilation will fail.
Then do as Red Hat does: They ship a 2.2 kernel plus selected patches, you
can do that indefinitely. AFAIK, there are still 1.2.13 installations out
there...
[...]
> It is, of course, possible to fragment Linux. A company could be
> started, called StableLinux that distributes only Linux n.n.n and
> performs bug-fixes and maintenance on that version only. This is
> not helpful to the greater Linux community. Instead, we need to
> minimize the changes that affect the interfaces to world-wide
> applications. Just as POSIX attempted to stabilize the API so that
> one could write "portable" code, the interface to hardware that
> hasn't even been invented yet has to be stable.
Great! Then there is money to be made there. So why don't you start
StableLinux, Inc., go for an IPO and retire to the Bahamas?
-- Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl Casilla 9G, Viņa del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616- 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/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 15 2000 - 21:00:15 EST