[1047] in RedHat Linux List
Re: your mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Donnie Barnes)
Fri Oct 25 23:23:56 1996
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
cc: Erik Troan <ewt@redhat.com>
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 25 Oct 1996 19:46:27 PDT."
<Pine.SUN.3.91.961025185628.10995G@routh>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 23:21:54 -0400
From: Donnie Barnes <djb@redhat.com>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
>> 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.
Well, none of us has seen the Netscape code, so we don't know the
specifics, but it does appear that it has a *bug* that was simply
not tickled on other platforms.
>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
Well, that supported vs unsupported business is semantic only. It
used be in an "unsupported" directory, then they tossed that directory
altogether. The READMEs have always stated it is unsupported under
Linux when you download it. They recently (for whatever reason) made
the unsupported dir appear again.
>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.
I don't think they'd enforce it, ever. That doesn't make it "legal".
>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
It was not a "mark against Linux" as I read it. His whole tone was
not really against Linux, in fact. I think he really thought we didn't
have Netscape or Java and was trying to *help* by saying it was coming
soon.
>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.
Actually I have already been in contact with Bill today about a variety
of issues including this one. I have, in fact, aprised him of this
situation already.
The simple fact is, Netscape's code isn't kosher and a libc change caused
Java support to break. There are fixes posted for it. I told Bill about
this. Also, as far as I'm concerned, Netscape works perfectly fine under
4.0 with *no* libc fixes. It's never crashed on me. I, unlike many
folks, have *security* enabled, ie Java turned *off*. I never knew there
was a "problem" until I heard about it via news.
>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.
You're completely missing the point. We don't sit around compiling
libc using options optimum for any particular configuration. We, as
do the other distributions, use HJ's default config. Why? It's the
only way to try to keep the playing field level and as *many* binaries
as possible compatible. We had no idea it would break Netscape when we
did it. We didn't make *any* choice based on any bias towards workstations
or servers (and that's silly anyway...I want my workstation to have as
high performance as I can while maintaining compatibility...I think
everyone does).
Those configuration options are there for many reasons...the biggest
of which is for hackers to play with things.
Also, we can *not* be sure that just because Netscape happens to work
with one config that it won't break other binaries.
--Donnie
--
Donnie Barnes http://www.redhat.com/~djb "Bah."
djb@redhat.com http://www.turner.com/lazarusman/
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