new in 2005-7-9 glibc: no more LinuxThreads

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 21:34 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Hi
> 
> >VDR is one that I use. I have messed around with FC4 for a while but it
> >looks like after all these years with Redhat I will be moving to ubuntu
> >(debian).
> >
> >Tony
> >  
> >
> Fedora might be the first to lose LinuxThreads but Ubuntu, Debian et all 
> is going to follow soon.  When the change has happened upstream, its 
> just a matter of time. Same goes for GCC 4 , GRUB, udev, LVM, SELinux, 
> <insert your favorite/infamous> change here.

This of course is two of the strengths of open source.

Microsoft is effectively force to continue to support older technologies
(and the applications that use them) because the entire business model
is based on the sale of newer versions.  If they split the OS into two
versions, one that receives only security updates to allow older
applications to run, while a newer version drops support for old
technologies many of their users would cease to upgrade to the newer
versions.  For many Office 97 and Windows 98 are more than adequate for
their needs.

Open source on the other hand can far more easily drop support for
technologies in newer versions because it can also offer support for
these older technologies in supported older versions.  And it doesn't
really harm a business model based that isn't reliant on sales of
software (which is kinda hard to do when the software is free).

In summary, the two strengths are:

An ability to drop support for older technologies in current software.
An ability to maintain support for older technologies in supported
software without threatening their bottom line (or maybe even enhancing
it).


Rodd

-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"