On December 18, Michael J. Miller Jr. wrote:
> Look, I love free software. but where's your MP support?  Your UltraSparc
> support?  Why did your serial driver suck until recently?  Do I need 
> to go on?

  Shit happens...Commercial OSs aren't a panacea; they have problems
too.  Remember bringing xy451-controlled disks online after bootup
under SunOS 4.1.1?  Instant kernel panic.  Anybody else ever fight
with "panic: swtch()"?  Time and time again?

  Just because it's commercial doesn't make it better...it usually
only makes it more expensive, more difficult to get source, and much
slower to integrate new technologies.

> The ego stroking gets a wee bit thick around here at times.  If you
> don't think sun puts heavy duty technical thought into their products
> then you're sorely mistaken.  I've meet a number of people that work for
> the company, and they are generally very bright.  You don't survive
> in the commercial market place if you aren't.  Sun is number one in the
> Unix world for a reason.

  Well...I'm by no means an OS expert...and even I have fixed so many
bugs in SunOS I've lost count.  Some of them were found buried in code
that looked like it'd been written by a five-year-old pounding
aimlessly on an unattended keyboard.

  Survival in the commercial marketplace has nothing to do with
product quality.  If it did, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt back
in the Windows 3.0 days and we'd all be living much happier lives.

> At least some part of sun is showing an interest in investing in 

  That they'll drop like a bad habit if it threatens their
MarketWare.  Look...I'm not going to get into a flame war with
you...I'll just point out that you're on very shaky ground here, and
hope that you have the good sense to just back off.

> free software.  Grow up and learn not to bite the hand that feeds 
> you.  Geez.

  Not sure what you're suggesting here...if you're talking about Sun
funding the FreeBSD/Ultra port, well, I'd suggest you look at which
list you're on.

> If you think I've had a bad week, you're probably right.  If you 
> think I wouldn't say this if I hadn't... You're probably wrong.  :-)

  You're not the only one.


                          -Dave McGuire
                           mcguire@neurotica.com