Re: tlug: The Myth of Open Source Security

[Christopher Sekiya <wileyc@example.com>]

On Fri, Jun 30, 2000 at 02:09:43PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> how many sun4c users are out there and what are they doing with their
> machines that requires tier 1 support?

There are a _lot_ of sun4c machines out there.  A neat thing about linux
used to be that one could take hardware that would crawl under solaris and
squeeze several more years of use from it.

Now, it's a lucky thing to be able to get the kernel to run, let alone run well.

> 2. the people supplying the money want things done their way

Direct versus indirect control.  It's one thing to be influencing the
development of a standard, quite another to be influencing the amount of code
rot in a code base.

> I don't understand why aging Sparc hardware deserves higher priority than
> it is getting.

Huh?  Oh.  Looks like I'm less lucid than usual.

The original rant had two major causes:

* the knee-jerk desire to install linux on any machine slightly more advanced
  than a toaster,
* the flat statement from the sparc linux maintainer that, because his employer
  has deemed the sun4c to be unworthy of support, he can't be bothered to QA
  code against regression for the sun4c.

Should old hardware have higher priority?  Should old hardware have any
priority?  Depends on one's point of view.  Obviously, the focus of the sparc
linux port development is to do whiz-bang things on new hardware.

Personally?  Although I have a fairly large stable of sparc boxen, not one of
them runs linux.  I grew tired of the constant regression in the kernel.  Can't
fight city hall.

I hope that this message wasn't complete gibberish.  I'll be quiet now,

-- Chris
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