making freebsd known to the world

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
> * Ted Mittelstaedt [2005-03-31 01:45 -0800]
>>  > but why is FreeBSD never
>>  > listed on websites of third party applications like firefox?
>>  > In this directory I can't find a FreeBSD package for example.
>>  >
> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0.1/contrib/
>>  >
>> 
>>  Have you ever built firefox?  It requires about 28 ports or so that
>>  are not in the base FreeBSD install, at least for version 4.11, and
>>  that is for the native version of it.  And many of these are GPL
>>  so you are just adding trouble for BSD users who need a system they
>>  can use as a base for a commercial product - the last thing they
>>  want to discover is their app linked into some GPL library.
>> 
>>  If the Linux distributors want to bloat their base systems for every
>>  3rd party application that comes along that is fine.
> 
> 
> I think you misunderstood. Noone is asking to add firefox (or
> any other
> third-party application) to the base system. I think the OP is asking
> the FreeBSD community to put some pressure on third-party vendors to
> make freebsd-packages available on their websites. This way the
> word "FreeBSD"
> would be mentioned and hopefully noticed.
> 

I should have been more clear.  I knew what the OP was suggesting,
it is impractical though because you can't just compile firefox
then package it up, then install the package and be done with it.
Along with that package you would have to install a number of other
packages.  On other systems like Linux you don't have to install these
since they are already part of the base Linux system.

Ted