Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 20:31:33 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD and memetics Message-ID: <51207.924838293@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 22 Apr 1999 15:10:34 MDT." <4.2.0.32.19990422144951.00c60f00@localhost>
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> This is misguided. It is that which does not reproduce which whithers > and dies because the resources are consumed by stronger competitors in > the ecosystem. Memes must replicate or be overwhelmed and die. This is a very limited viewpoint, to say the least, as it presumes that Linux is somehow "poaching" from FreeBSD's potential mindshare. Nothing could be further from the truth, as both the realities of this market and our growth patterns over the last 3 years indicate. First off, as I've said before, when any MIS manager makes an OS decision which is not FreeBSD (or *BSD), he's going to take one of the following options: 1. NT 2. Solaris/AIX/some other commercial Unix 3. Linux (we'll discount OS/2 and Novell as effective players right now). If he choses option #1, he's almost certainly lost to us since even if things utterly fails to work, he has a very big target (Microsoft) to pin the blame one and, to modify an old saying somewhat, "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft." It's also a decision which is usually difficult to back away from for various political reasons in the workplace. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm simply saying that it's been rare in my experience. If he chooses option #2, it's likely that he's accepted the gospel of Unix into his heart (which is good) but also chose the commercial alternative for reasons of applications base or support, neither of which we can compete with in any reasonable way (and it does no good saying that we *should* be able to, that's the situation we still have to live with *right now*). If he chooses option #3, that's the easiest "upsell" possible for us since he's clearly accepted both Unix and the open source idea into his heart and can deal with all the support and commercial application shortcomings of that platform. If we can get him to give FreeBSD a taste test, we stand a very good chance of "making a sale", at least a far better chance than with options 1 or 2, and every customer which Linux attracts away from options 1 and 2 is a customer which is that much closer (far closer) to us. Second, with regard to "poaching", this market is expanding rather explosively at the moment and even the most conservative estimates place FreeBSD's growth at between 30-40% a year. That's a damn fine growth rate and I find it hard to believe that Linux is "hurting" us more than it's helping us (see above) given numbers like these. I talk to a lot of customers in the field, probably more than most anyone on this list does, and it's a very rare experience where I hear a customer say that they switched from FreeBSD to Linux or chose Linux over FreeBSD based on an evaluation of technical merit. We're just not competing in the same market space nor COULD we realistically compete there since it has nothing to do with PR, it has to do with our respective feature sets or lack thereof. Linux is currently the darling of the desktop set and that has nothing to do with what I may or may not have said about FreeBSD and the desktop, it has to do with our weak audio, PCCARD and general multimedia support. These are all things which I've gone far out of my way to try and drum up enthusiasm for and we just don't have the resources to match Linux here. I'm sure Brett will say this all stems from my attitude towards the desktop, or something, but that's a supposition which complete ignores history and the fact that I've been issuing calls for volunteers for YEARS in these areas, sponsored an X Desktop Theme contest which failed due to utter lack of interest, and have been practically crying for someone to own the Audio and/or PCCARD development for FreeBSD, all long before I ever uttered word one about our strategy for the desktop vs the server. Our slogan used to be "turning PCs into workstations", for god's sake, and I did my very best to deliver on that slogan but the resources to back up the slogan just weren't there. I can't write an audio subsystem by myself, nor can I support all the laptops in existence, and so I evolved the attitude I have today out of sheer necessity. I learned the hard way that you can write all the impassioned diatribes you like about how winning the desktop is just a matter of attracting enough users through better PR which will all lead back full-circle to a good desktop presence and lots of multimedia bells and whistles, but impassioned diatribes do not make it so and they don't win you back the several year's worth of advantage your competitors have gained on the desktop in the meantime. Like it or not, FreeBSD has simply evolved in a different direction and even minor course corrections won't be brought about through "impassioned advocacy" on the chat list, they'll be brought about by the one component that's been missing from the VERY BEGINNING here: The technical features which make FreeBSD on the desktop an attractive proposition when stacked against its competition. Claiming that the FreeBSD community would just be unreceptive to your efforts is also mere sophistry and a fine justification for not doing any of the necessary work while still retaining your rock-thrower's permit and it's nothing more than that. Sadly, a lot of people still haven't learned from what should have been 6 years' worth of hard-won experience by now and still think that simply shaking your fist at the sea will result in tangible progress. It doesn't. If you want to see FreeBSD be more popular or be a better solution to your problem set of choice, don't even bother making weak excuses about how this Just Isn't Wanted or the Evil Jordan will certainly impede your efforts through his meglomaniacal tendencies because at the end of the day, that's all they are - weak excuses. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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