Re: Annoucning DragonFly BSD!

Periodicaly someone masquerades as Matt Dilllon.  Those targeted
by trolls need to work extra hard to establish credibility of
poster's address, to avoid suspicion of "troll at work" (phone
number maybe?).  Trolls of course need to work extra hard too, to
also convince us. Maybe this time the poster is the real Matthew
Dillon, but I doubt it.

Matthew Dillon <dillon_at_apollo.backplane.com> appeared to write:

>                           Announcing DragonFly BSD!
>                          http://www.dragonflybsd.org/

Doing a new kernel approach seems a plausible tech target,
the merits I'd leave to others.

>     and to completely rewrite the packaging and distribution system.

Seems unliklely/over ambitious/ divisive to me, suspicion of Troll.

- A new kernel - OK - maybe it'll cross fertilise others,
  but couldn't it run with an exisiting /usr/src ?  Free Net or Open.
- A new ports / package system - OK if the need is felt: even though
  FreeBSD ports/ was so popular it got adoped & looked at by other
  projects, that didn't stop it changing recently (file
  reduction) But couldn't it run with exisiting BSDs, presumably
  FreeBSD ?  The ports project is really a Sisyphus [sp? was Greek
  anyway, not our Latin alphabet ] effort, a dubious idea to divide
  the number of shoulders that load sits on.  There's already another
  cross platform ports project anyway (Freshports?)
- A new distribution mechanism (whatever) ? maybe - but again
  if better, that technology should be adopted & merged into other BSDs.

http://www.dragonflybsd.org/ may be a just a troll erection, it's
constructed so there's nothing real to see.  A troll site ?  No
where to click & sample code inside browser, you'd have to cvsup &
extract localy to check real code. No interest until others confirm real.

If friends who localy know / work with / meet Matthew Dillon,
announce on this list that it's really him, & that's what he's
really doing & is to be taken seriously, then it'll perhaps be worth
looking at, but then again, maybe the real Matt will return to his
desk, & announce another troll attempt.

The logo is useless (& a troll give away ?):
- Business: Yesterday I delivered an HP Network
  Scanjet 5, with NT removed & FreeBSD installed (
  http://berklix.com/scanjet )  I stuck a FreeBSD `tattoo' (from
  WC?) on the chassis just after the `5' of the product name (they
  stick fine on plastic, though text implies for human skin (not
  tried that)).  IMO the Linux & BSD logos are both rather childish,
  but clearly used for business as well as personal. but I wouldn't
  stick the dragonflybsd slavering head on a rubbish bin.
- Last night at the Munich BSD monthly gathering ( http://berklix.org/bim/ )
  this month's convenor had brought
  a Chuck daemon which stood verticaly as recognition symbol, after
  shovin feet in a big (clean) ash tray. A Penguin can also be made to stand,
  (low centre of gravity help) But what would one do with a slavering head ?
  ... Other than Bin it !

First 2 sentences of main page seem a possible Linux troll give away:
  DragonFly is an operating system and environment designed to be
  the logical continuation of the FreeBSD-4.x OS series. These
  operating systems belong in the same class as Linux in that they
  are based on UNIX ideals and APIs.

"We"
  There's a lot of mention of "We" on those few pages, & no list of who the
  list of "We" includes as founders.  A fake site maybe ?

There's too many BSD's already.  More complete BSDs aren't of
personal or business benefit.  More kernels, tools, & experiments
in ports/packaging etc could be useful though, but to be of most
benefit such work should be fully integratable, & not further split
the available BSD workforce.

My guess is the original post was a fake masquerade, (what some call a
troll), the web site is probably the same.  (Apologies to Matt if I'm
wrong, but the real Matt hopefuly appreciates us being cautious :-)

My Tel. +49.89.260233276 Timezone=GMT+01:00 (EG ID check :-)

-
Julian Stacey       Freelance Systems Engineer, Unix & Net Consultant, Munich.
  Ihr Rauchen => mein allergischer Kopfschmerz !   Schnupftabak probieren.