Questionable statement in article

[Joel Dahl]

Mon 2004-08-09 klockan 14.07 skrev Ceri Davies:
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 01:40:28PM +0200, Devon H. O'Dell wrote:
> 
> > Okay, this is getting really ridiculous, and the statement is false. It
> > would be rather simple to figure out which syscalls FreeBSD was unable
> > to translate and thereby make a certain piece of software fail to run on
> > FreeBSD. For instance, there are certain socket options in Linux that
> > are not avaialble on FreeBSD and cannot be emulated. Software that makes
> > use of these options will _not_ run on FreeBSD.
> 
> Firstly, I'll note that the article is talking about BSD, not FreeBSD.
> 
> > A more accurate statement would be:
> > 
> > FreeBSD_Compilable_Code + FreeBSD_Binaries + FreeBSD_Emulatable(Linux) >
> > Binaries(Linux)
> > 
> > You can't blindly make this statement, however, without first proving
> > the following:
> > 
> > Binaries(Linux) - FreeBSD_Emulatable(Linux) < FreeBSD_Compilable_code +
> > FreeBSD_Binaries.
> > 
> > Now, once you factor in the SVR4 compatibility and others, this
> > statement gets exceedingly difficult to make. When somebody wants to
> > audit the amount of binaries that will run on FreeBSD and get a number,
> > let me know.
> 
> Since SVR4 gets bundled on the right hand side of the equation above,
> along with BSDI, IBCS2, Interactive Unix, SCO Unix, SCO Xenix, and
> Solaris (this selection just from the i386 NetBSD port and excluding
> other free BSDs), the statement becomes slightly easier to make, I
> think.
> 
> > Also, it's interesting to note that OpenBSD will do the same -- it has
> > Linux syscall translation as well -- it will also run FreeBSD binaries.
> > Does this mean that OpenBSD has a conceviably larger amount of binaries
> > that will run on it than FreeBSD?
> 
> Well, yes.
> 
> Ceri

Whoops, my intention was not to cause any hard feelings with my original
question about the statement. I'm just trying to make our docs correct.
:)

As I see it, the statement can't be confirmed as true OR false, and
should therefore be removed, if someone with commit privileges agree. To
remove the "As a result, more software is available for BSD than for
Linux." -part would be perfectly sufficient. :)

-- 
regards,
Joel Dahl