Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) In Defense Of Ascend...



On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Jim Howard wrote:

> At 16:44 1998/03/22 -0800, Matt Holdrege wrote:
> >Freeware unix runs freeware apps. Commercial application vendors have
> >always selected the commercial OS's.

[snip]

> The bottom line is, when I've exausted all my abilities to
> fix something, that there is someone I can call to help me.
> I can't do that with [flavor-of-the-month]BSD, 

I think that you might be surprised about how approachable the kernel
hackers of the free unices are - they do this for their own satisfaction
and tend to pride themselves on the quality of their work.

> and even if I had a commercial app running on a freeware OS,
> the tech support crew for that app could probably help 
> no more than guessing.

Rubbish.

Linux and the *BSD family are not "roll your own" unices. Linux has 
stable distributions of kernel, utilities and applications from several
of commercial and non-profit vendors, FreeBSD is even more tightly
controlled. They are not as you imply, "unknown quantities".

Anyone can mess up a Unix system by installing incompatible/buggy software
or updates. This is hardly unique to the free unices.

> I can't run a business on that, can you?

Yes, several.

Regards,
Damien Miller

| WWW: http://silicon.vitnet.com.sg
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