Re: tlug: Linux heir apparent?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:

    Scott> On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Jonathan Byrne - 3Web wrote:
    >> On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Scott Stone wrote:
    >> 
    >> >I have a strange question - who's the 'heir apparent' to
    >> Linus?  ie, he

I don't think it much matters, although  I'm sure there will be
something like a "succession war" when he goes.  And he will,
eventually.

But somebody (maybe DaveM?) will emerge and the circus will go on,
sorta like the Grateful Dead ;-)

    >> I've often wondered that myself, although I use the "steps in
    >> front of a truck tomorrow" scenario.  I bet more than a few IT
    >> managers ask the same question, and get a little better answer
    >> when they look at FreeBSD, which has a formalized body guiding
    >> its direction, rather than one unincorporated person.

    Scott> it's a formalized group of people who spend more time
    Scott> arguing than they do accomplishing things.  Look how much
    Scott> farther ahead Linux is - FreeBSD has just now started
    Scott> entertaining the idea of ELF binaries and non-x86 ports..

But NetBSD already has many of those things, as does OpenBSD.  But
that also goes to prove that *BSD isn't a monolithic object, with a
single (group of) leader(s).  Note that OpenBSD has been security-
audited, although I don't know if that was by an independent
organization.

I went chasing around the net to see what was going on.  One thing I
was struck by was how closed-in the BSD folks seem to be.  Linux
information tells you _what_ Linux is (SMP, Alpha port, loadable
modules, POSIX.1, etc), *BSD tells you it's BSD.  Well, gee, thanks.
Shall I read the source code now, or will you give me an executive
summary?

Also, the *BSD people are at pains to avoid flames, an admirable
sentiment, of course.  But more admirable is to do comparisons without
flames (obviously, it's going to favor Linux since people who really
want features Linux doesn't provide---yeah, there are some---will not
be working on this page):

    http://www.falconweb.com/~linuxrx/WS_Linux/OS_comparison.html

Putting the reader comments on the same page wasn't too cool IMHO---it
provides an obvious place for abusing MS....

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