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SubjectRe: FENRIS (nwfs) 1.4.2 Source Code Available,
On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, Jeff Merkey wrote:

>Word of Advice -- these file system changes hurt Linux in the market because
>they delayed the commercial Linux vendors from getting key services up and
>running when customers needed them.

How do they hurt Linux in the market? Linux is free. If in the
next 12 months not a single new person or company at all starts
using linux, Linux will still go on, and still be developed just
as much as it is today. Thus "the market" and Linux's success
are completely 100% totally different issues.

Eric Raymond has 3 wonderful papers which discuss the issues of
the free source code movement.

>In the future, we should not make such sweeping changes wuthout
>making certain there is still a method to support the old
>interfaces as well.

If such backwards compatibility is ever kept between major kernel
versions, I STRONGLY hope that the old features are removable via
CONFIG options at compile time, and are also marked as
(DEPRECATED - will disappear soon) so as not to hamper progress.

Tough luck to proprietary commercial systems that cannot keep up
with the wonderful moving target of the bleeding edge which is
Linux.

It is difficult for commercial companies, but only because they
don't want to play ball the same way that we do.

The Raymond documents really say it best though IMHO.

Take care!
TTYL


--
Mike A. Harris Linux advocate GNU advocate
Computer Consultant Open Source advocate

Tea, Earl Grey, Hot...


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