[1041] in RedHat Linux List
Re: your mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doug Ridgway)
Fri Oct 25 22:48:44 1996
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 19:46:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug Ridgway <ridgway@routh.UCSD.EDU>
To: Erik Troan <ewt@redhat.com>
Cc: redhat-list@redhat.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.93.961025205439.5344A-100000@redhat.com>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Erik Troan wrote:
> I do understand. HJ's choices are the standard in the Linux world.
> Netscape was doing broken things in their code. It's straightforward to
> write apps that work with all 5.x libc's and we tested commercial software
> that's supported under Linux to make sure it worked with Red Hat 4.0.
> Netscape is not supported under Linux -- it's not ever legal to use it
> commercially unless you buy it from Caldera.
I don't think that the design and implementation of an efficient
multithreaded garbage collecting VM which is required to work
on dozens of platforms is straightforward. In fact, to me it sounds
pretty hard. Harder still would be to keep it working while minor
platforms keep tinkering with the underlying system calls.
As for support -- I seem to recall that Linux Navigator got moved into
the unsupported directory around the time that people started using newer
libc's. I don't know whether or not it's connected, but personally I have
my suspicions. As for legalities, I'm not commercial. At school I use
UCSD's site license and at home it's personal use. I think a fair number
of Red Hat customers fall into similar allowed categories. With Microsoft
pushing IE as free, it's hard to imagine Netscape trying to enforce their
license on Navigator.
Is Netscape important? It is to me -- it's the reason I moved to Linux in
the first place (Nextstep doesn't have it). It is to Bill Machrone -- his
PC Week column had lack of Netscape as a mark against Linux. They're
going to publish a correction next week: you might wish to drop him a
note (bill_machrone@zd.com) explaining why the correction doesn't apply
to Red Hat 4.0.
And it's *not* HJ's choice -- if he had made the choice, the configuration
script wouldn't bother asking. There's obviously need for both -- a
Workstation vs. Server issue if you will. The choice Red Hat makes is
(presumably) based on a calculation of who their market is, and what their
customers want. It's a question of who you are targeting. I'm just
dismayed that putative performance issues for the server customers won
over breaking a mission critical app for virtually every workstation
customer.
doug.
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