is THIS why the 6.2 release seems stalled ?

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Jerry McAllister <msu.edu!jerrymc at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 10:59:20PM -0800, Jeff Mohler wrote:
>
> > Not all of us can program..but let me ask this question.
> > 
> > Linux is all volunteer, how did it get so far ahead?
>
> It isn't.  People in the know like FreeBSD as a server which
> is where it is mostly targeted - to the professional environment
> as apposed to being a playtop.

Linux sure isn't all volunteer*, but it is certainly ahead in
terms of available commercial applications, else why would
anyone have gone to the trouble of building FreeBSD's Linux
API support?

* Until Red Hat went to 'EL, all of their technical folks were
working full-time on free Linux.  It's now less than 100% -- some
effort goes into their payware versions -- but still considerably
more than 0% last I heard.  Then we have Novell supporting SuSE,
IBM supporting Yellow Dog, Intel and IBM supporting OSDL (which
employs Linus himself, among others), and that's probably not a
complete list of even the major commercial players.  On the BSD
side, we have Apple (Darwin); and maybe a few others although
none come to mind immediately.

So why is Linux ahead in commercial support?  I'm sure I don't
have a clue as to most of the factors, but the fact that Linux
has somehow managed to avoid schisms in its kernel development
can't help but be an advantage.