thanks all. it was a curiosity question. some seem to take it personally and that was not the intention. I was curious as to why . I was installing java and it kept saying this port was outof date and that one was and when I googled the alleged out of date ports I found a newer version. If anyone was offened that was not what I was attempting to do. Nor was I trying to compare ms to freebsd in anyway or manner. I believe each has their strong points and weaknesses. I do like my freebsd box. And just like my MS boxes I would like to throw it thru the windows sometimes (no pun intended). Thanks for the info.
Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: "andi payn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "SWIT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "freebsd-questions" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 5:35 PM Subject: Re: why are theynot updated WAS Re: samba 3.0, FreeBSD 5.1 > Meanwhile, on Sat, 2003-11-01 at 12:34, SWIT wrote: > > I am just curious. But for those that continually sing unix over ms praise > > you think that matters like this would be looked after so > > unixes would be easier for the common man/woman to use. > > Do you think Microsoft always gives you new code as soon as they develop > it? Of course not. So, imagine how much more complicated it is for a > FreeBSD maintainer to give you new code as soon as some guy he's never > met working halfway around the world develops it! > > Plus, being right at the bleeding edge and being easier to use are often > contradictory desires. You want your system to work; you want all of the > ports you install to work together; you want to have proper > documentation, and a list full of people with experience using the same > software on FreeBSD who can help you. > > All of this is often more important than having version 1.50 instead of > 1.48b. Especially for the "common man/woman," who enjoys using software > more than upgrading it. > > In essence, this is similar to (part of) the reason Microsoft doesn't > give you new code right away--they want to have their QA teams go over > it, and their tech support people trained on it, and their marketing > people ready to spin the new bugs into features. (Of course they also > want to find ways to charge you for upgrades, but that's a side issue; > their service packs and hotfixes, and upgrades to IE and OE, and lots of > other things, are available at no cost.) > > Of course any system can be improved. For example, when Mandrake wrote a > simple script that scanned Freshmeat every day and emailed package > maintainers with messages like, "A new version of foo, foo-1.3.21, was > released today, at http://www.foo.org/foo/foo-newest.tgz", that > definitely improved the freshness of their contribs repository. I'm sure > there are ideas that could help FreeBSD. But I doubt there will ever be > a day when every port in the tree has the very newest version available. > > > _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"