Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 10 Sep 1999 09:27:30 +0200 (CEST) | From | Peter Hanecak <> | Subject | Re: Shortening the Development Cycle... [maybe OffTopic, flame-bait?] |
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On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Robert Dinse wrote:
> It would limit participation in development to those that can afford the > latest and greatest hardware, significantly reducing the pool of coders, and > as a result increase the length of the development cycle. > > It would result in code that would only run on the latest and greatest, > and many things would be incorporated into the code that does not work on the > majority of platforms but hasn't been tested, until the freeze, then you would > have this giant mess to clean up, that at that point may not even be possible > to clean up, lengthening the development cycle. > > One of the things that initially drew me towards Linux was the relatively > large number of hardware platforms supported. Of all the things I hate about > Windows, the fact that it runs essentially only on one platform is high on the > list. > > I have to admit that I am disturbed by the influence that M$ thinking > seems to be having on Linux as of late, new interfaces that look like M$'s > interface, not only in the OS itself, but in the installation programs and > interfaces shipped with the commercial distributions, and now the attitude that > yea, just like M$, we're now going to force you to throw out your hardware and > applications every year else you can't enjoy the latest wiz-bang gadgets. > > Such a move I'm afraid would result in a good deal of elitism amoungst > those that can afford to participate, resulting in an OS that appeals to a > snooty few who can afford the hardware to run it, and not one that appeals to a > diverse userbase like that which presently exists.
while i'm not kernel hacker, i agree with you because of same attitude toward more platforms and older hardware (and M$).
while it is of course broader issue i think old/other/... HW is as important as new one: while there are many HW-cutting-edge people (like gamers, various experimentators, ...) there are also many people with older HW just because such HW is able to handle their problems/tasks/...
at the end i say one thing: i will happily wait one year longer for features which wont force me to upgrade HW than get new kernel quickly and realize i can't use it (like new "stable" 2.2 tree - don't take it as personal attack on devlopers - i'm happy i did not deploy it on our production servers yet).
sincerely
peter hanecak
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