Andy Ruhl wrote:

>This may be a tangent, but it's worth saying I think.
>
>The main premise that NetBSD was founded on, platform portability, is
>becoming more and more relevant as time goes on (probably to the
>contrary of what a lot of people would have thought just a few years
>ago).
>
>Now, NetBSD always was a good operating system, but it tended to lack
>features of FreeBSD. I think this is still probably true and it's a
>hurdle to certain types of people. Fine.
>
>I think it makes more sense to play the platform angle. I think the
>very existence of more FreeBSD ports (ports in the NetBSD definition)
>means that the viability of i386 (as a server anyway) is dropping by
>the day. I don't think this is any big surprise to anyone.
>
>But the question is, what is going to be the next platform du jour?
>FreeBSD sort of "hung their hats" on a single platform in order to
>concentrate on other things. Are they now fishing for a new platform
>du jour (maybe this is old news, I don't know)?
>
>If this is the case, this makes a strong case for using NetBSD since
>moving between hardware platforms is almost trivial. I'm not sure I
>would get warm and fuzzys if I needed to move from, say, i386 to amd64
>on FreeBSD. This is no problem on NetBSD.
>
>AND, call me crazy, but I might even go so far as to say that Power PC
>will be the next platform du jour in the next few years. What OS will
>support it best? I have my vote prepared already...
>
>Andy
>  
>
My point so far has been to show something like: "Hey, we're not just 
portability, ya know? We're fast too".

In terms of portability, I agree with you that a lot of new platforms 
will make their ways into the users hands.
Embedded  is the term "du jour". Stuff like Meshcube is geek fashion 
these days.

What I'd think that would be great is a multimedia enhancement project 
over NetBSD - either as part of NetBSD,
a fork, or a userland project. New gaming consoles and media players are 
the biggest growing embedded market IMO,
and open source cross-platform frameworks would rock.

I don't know enough about this subject to have a valid opinion on how to 
conquer the embedded multimedia market.
But I'd like to hear yours.


Bruno