Purchased Binaries

[Doug Hardie]

On 4 March 2011, at 14:45, Charlie Kester wrote:

> On Fri 04 Mar 2011 at 13:24:32 PST Doug Hardie wrote:
>> I have a client who has purchased some software. I don't know anything
>> much about it yet other than it claims to run on Debian and CentOS. I
>> suspect its binaries. I will have access to things like the developer,
>> name etc. on Monday. However, thats when he needs to know if I can make
>> it run on FreeBSD.
> 
> Are you bidding against a Linux guy for this job?

No.  I have the job.

> 
> That doesn't sound like a reasonable demand.  Does he want your final
> answer on Monday, or do you think you can buy some time for further
> investigation

He is under the gun and needs to get this working last week.....

> if you tell him about FreeBSD's support for the Linux ABI,
> etc.?

He is pretty much non-technical and will go with any solution I believe will work.

> 
> Maybe bring in a FreeBSD laptop and do a demo where you install some
> Linux binary from the web and show him that it runs?  (Be sure to
> practice the demo beforehand!)  I still wouldn't give him an ironclad
> guarantee that the software he bought will run too, but perhaps the demo
> will raise his confidence level enough to give you a chance to find out.

Pretty much I will have the real software on Monday and will need to get it up and going very quickly.  I want to use FreeBSD because all the other parts of what he needs I already have running on various FreeBSD servers.  Also, I very much like the FreeBSD approach (like to pf) of don't break things that previously worked without workarounds so that production systems are not killed.

> 
>