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Ports System As A Strategy Against .NET?
proclus writes: "The FreeBSD ports system has been ported to Mac OSX, GNU/Linux, LinuxPPC, and OpenBSD. Check out this descriptive paper and roll your own ports-based distribution."
Besides an some informative description of the mechanics of the port system, the paper lays out the case for ports (free and readily available) as a good antidote for .Net and other subscription-based systems.
All the more power to them, however the community should focus on creating, and making things better, not trying to pick fights
...hasn't anyone ever thought that there are Windows programmers who develop things on their own, post them at sites like Tucows, and are actually happy with using Windows.
Hallowe'en Documents.
"Linux is like Communism"
"The GPL will steal all of your hard-earned IP."
"The GPL is like Pac-man."
"We're going to support FreeBSD but not Linux because the license is better...for developers. Really."
Who's the one picking a fight here?
Oh, I know there are people perfectly happy with using and developing on Windows. I don't wish to deny them that choice. The problem is, Microsoft wishes to deny me the choice to use anything else, by making sure Microsoft "standards" are more prevalent than any other "standards", real or perceived, and ensuring you can only take advantage of MS "standards" on MS platforms. Individual actions alone may not be "smoking guns," but the sum of their actions and behaviour towards any potential competitors and developers leads me to believe they wish to deny me and millions of others a choice we don't begrudge their customers.
That is wrong. I don't mind them innovating. I do mind them assimilating and trying to make sure the only way is the Microsoft way. I'm a consumer too, and I demand a choice of software and available tools, even if MS wishes to deny me one.
Call it paranoia, but that's the view from here.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Every time Dr. Evil announces that he is working on a new weapon, you folks always assume it is
going to be some orbiting death-ray, a volcano machine, or a bomb that will blow the earth into
little bits. You are always jumping to conclusions...
Maybe this time Dr. Evil is making a weapon that will fight crime and make our streets safe. Or
one that only works against crooked lawyers and politicians. But I repeat myself. Did you even
consider the possibility that Dr. Evil might be trying to be helpful this time? No, you didn't.
Frankly, if I were Dr. Evil, I would be pretty upset with this constant stereotyping. Maybe that
is the cause of his inner anger that causes him to do these things. You are to blame, not him...
A dingo ate my sig...
is the world where the user operates the distribution building tools, and we now have all of the components at hand, which are required to make this world real.
It's instances like this which will push MS over Unix in the end. " we now have all of the components at hand, which are required to make this world real. " For business that have been using MS based products for years, many have made money using Windows so why would they want to switch when people keep up with the name calling and finger pointing? (re: GPL arguments vs. MS and vice versa)For a company so evil, at least they're extending a hand, but according to some this is viewed as MS looking to stir up troubles in the open source community. Maybe so, but how is this comment any different from stirring up the same type of bias "What possible significance could
All the more power to them, however the community should focus on creating, and making things better, not trying to pick fights. I used FreeBSD at home and Open for my server, and have a laptop with W2K that hasn't been used in eons, and each serve their own purpose, bottom line. Comments and write ups so biased to little to sway my vote of confidence in any OS just because someone claims it to be so much better. No sirs I'll be the judge of that as will most others, so why waste time beating a dead horse. It's these same comments used against the open source community.
Everyone wants to jump in on the action, and post why they're better, and oh by the way here are 30,000 more free programs. Yes 30,000 more free programs, 30,000 more comments, and now the whole concept is lost isn't it. Meanwhile MS stands out because they focus. So please focus on making things better not worse with such biasedness
Want Root?
Ports: suck source and dependent source down across the net, configure for your system, build, install.
Apt-get for Debian: suck binaries down across the net, resolve dependencies, install
All other distros: trying to catch up.
Ports is even a step more fine grained than apt-get, simply because it works with source, and incompatibilities are nearly impossible (the package will refuse to build instead).
On second thought there is one way one might consider that this competes with
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Hello. Could one of you PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE explain to me what this is and how it goes against Microsoft's .NET? Thank you.
If you get a chance, could you explain:
-how does it make it easier for systems to communicate with each other? (soap stuff)
-how does this make it easier for people working in multiple langauges to integrate their stuff? (you know, people in vb inheriting classes from c++, people in delphi using source written in c#, etc)
-how does this make it easier to write ASP applications that don't care what browser you're using? (webforms)
Major thanks in advance
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Ports depends on someone figuring out how to compile various packages on new systems - no centralized point of authority (or, more importantly, blame). Furthermore, there's no equivalent of a device-independent language for writing new applications.
Are the moderators on crack today or is this your troll account that you then mod up from your normal account when you have mod points?
Don't be ridiculous. The centralized point of authority for the BSD ports system is the BSD ports team. In exactly the same way as the Debian developers (and bug-tracking system) are your first port of call for problems with Debian-packaged software. Of course you can't really sue them if something terrible happens, but you can't sue Microsoft either - check out your EULA.
As for there being no device-independent language for use with the ports system, what do you think Java is? Or, for that matter - Perl and the Bourne Shell, which are almost universal throughout the Unix world? Sure, Perl is interpreted (although it doesn't have to be) but even as an interepreted language it shifts very quickly. Don't forget things like the GTK+/Perl bindings too, so don't argue you can't write user-friendly GUI apps with it - you can.
What would be an interesting project though is a JIT compiler for Perl - it has everything going for it otherwise as another, Open Source alternative to C#, including huge ease of use advantages.
If you haven't tried the ports system, I highly recommend you do so. They're a VERY convenient way to install new software.
I KNOW I'm right. And if I'm not, I'm STILL right...