
Announcing the NetBSD Port Tier System - protomyth
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-announce/2011/03/30/msg000126.html
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zdw
Many major network system vendors rely on NetBSD as part of their devices
(Force 10 and Cradlepoint being the ones that come to mind) - I'm wondering
how this will affect them.

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dazzawazza
I'm sure these major system vendors can push money in to development efforts
to get what they want. To be honest that seems more than fair to me.

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jacques_chester
Do we have any NetBSD folk who could shed some light? Is it purely an economic
decision?

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mscarborough
I'm not a NetBSD person (though I did work for a NetBSD-dependent company for
a while)...

This seems like a smart, pragmatic decision: create a system where modern
hardware can be prioritized more, while creating a system where extremely
legacy hardware is not hampering kernel and ports decisions. Not to mention
the development and testing effort involved in supporting them all.

That said, anyone who values the support of those systems can put some effort
in: "In no way does this mean that NetBSD is abandoning support for old
hardware. Support for ports such as vax, mac68k and pmax is still more than
welcome. However, users of such ports are asked to take a more active role in
development, maintenance and feedback for the platforms they know and love."

