[ On Thu, March 20, 1997 at 00:17:05 (-0500), Ken Hornstein wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: DEC uses NetBSD 
>
> Simply put, we need users to survive.  One thing that attracts user membership
> is the existance of precompiled binaries.  It's a big pain in the ass to
> compile stuff for your system, and I'm speaking from the point of a former
> system administrator who used to do that all the time, AND from the point of
> a programmer who occasionally installs stuff into our depot tree at work.

I'm personally loathe not to compile things for myself, though I do
understand the tedium, esp. for those who don't have a system
administrator to do these things for them.  I've come to trust official
NetBSD binaries as much as I would any commercial vendor, even given the
spectre of the recent compromise of FreeBSD's server.  Ideally though I
don't run any commercial software, and I build my operating systems from
source too.  Of course I do this as a paid service for those who can't
do it for themselves too, so perhaps I'm in a special situation.

Even though I cannot hope to read every line of code I run on my
system(s) nor expect to catch any nasty back doors or such even if I did
read every line, I'm still not willing to run binaries I've not built
directly from sources I've archived in my own CVS repository.

I have indeed installed complete FreeBSD binary-only systems, including
extra packages, though only for non-critical systems such as personal
workstations, and of course having a CD-ROM and the ability to do quick
re-installs is a mitigating factor for such systems....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>