The future of NetBSD

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Pedro Martelletto wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 06:50:00PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> Even at the kernel level?  Look at device drivers and vendors as one
>> example ... companies like adaptec have to write *one* device driver, for,
>> what, 50+ distributions of linux ... for us, they need to write one for
>> FreeBSD, one for NetBSD, one for OpenBSD, and *now* one for DragonflyBSD
>> ... if we had *at least* a common API for that sort of stuff, it might be
>> asier to get support at the vendor level, no?
>
> Vendors should release documentation, not write drivers.

  In a perfect world, they all would ... this is not a perfect world, it is 
one dominated by Linux or Microsoft ... I use Adaptec drivers on 3 of my 
servers, because, in 4.x, they were rock solid ... in 6.x, they have a 
problem ... I'd like to be able to go out and upgrade those servers to a 
vendor that provides "documentation", but its a cost I can't afford at 
this time ... so, should I then switch to Linux because they do welcome 
'vendor written drivers'?  Rhetorical question, since I do not consider 
switching to Linux an option ... instead, I'm trying to do something to 
help *BSD advocates promote *BSD to those vendors (see 
http://www.bsdstats.org) by showing them that we aren't just a 'hobbiest 
operating system' ... what my point is, though, is if we aren't willing to 
accept 'vendor written drivers', then it is *we* that are limiting our 
growth but limiting what hardware we can run stably on ...