On 06/12/00 23:27:53 +0100 James Sutherland <jas88@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
+-----
| On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
|
| > > very good.
| > > but there's another side....
| > > too many people think linux=redhat or even worse than redhat is
| "better > > linux".
| > > there are a lot commercial software "for redhat" not "for linux", i
| even > > found device drivers supplied as .rpm with kernel modules - of
| course for > > redhat.
| > >
| > > it breaks the freedom of choice and....it could make redhat "another
| > > microsoft"
| >
| > I dont know about where you live.. But here it's linux=mandrake.
|
| Well, I'm fairly agnostic here - I'm running one Red Hat box, one
| Mandrake, and the guy round the corner is running Debian and OpenBSD...
|
| IMO, there is one crucial difference preventing this sort of problem, and
| Mandrake exemplify it: anyone can take and existing distro and
| add/remove/change things to end up with a competitor, without losing
| compatibility. Red Hat can never have proprietary control over Linux
+--->8
Sadly, not true. Using Mandrake RPMs on an RH system was a crapshoot even
before 7.0; and several now-incompatible RPM-based distros started out as
RH offshoots.
We're *already* balkanizing the way Unix did. Mind you, this isn't always
bad --- there is a lot of cross-fertilization, very much unlike the
commercial Unixes. In many ways, the Linux distribution front is an
example of "co-opetition" at its best. But it's annoying when you find a
package for a different Linux distribution which resists being repackaged
for your distribution (or vice versa), generally because different
distributions have different versions of the base software (kernel and/or
libc).
--
brandon s. allbery os/2,linux,solaris,perl allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator kthkrb,heimdal,gnome,rt,cyrus allbery@ece.cmu.edu
carnegie mellon / electrical and computer engineering kf8nh
We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
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