>  Companies don't move
> as fast as small, agile, free software projects - and frankly, FreeBSD was
> hardly "small" or "agile".  ;)

Eh?

I think you mean "accelerate" as in starting/stopping/changing-direction.

For linear movement (say on a huge project with lots of sequential
milestones) a large organization will generally cream a small one
-- once it has a chance to get up to speed, that is.

It is only recently with technology changes creating and destroying whole
layers of infrastructure overnight, that we have begun to see conditions
whereby large operations are perpetually at a disadvantage.

Projects like SMP are, quite frankly, one type of project that free software
is REALLY BAD at. People like to laugh at Sun for being incompetent and
taking 5 releases of Solaris to get their SMP figured out, but I have a lot
of respect for them because they _bit_the_bullet_and_did_it_ while Linux
and FreeBSD are still trying to feel good about their big-honking-lock SMP.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com