Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 11:05:45 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: James Howard <howardjp@wam.umd.edu>, jgrosch@MooseRiver.com Cc: jmutter@netwalk.com, "Viren R. Shah" <viren@rstcorp.com>, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: PCWeek article by Anne Chen -- Comments Message-ID: <4.2.0.37.19990505105712.00b51a20@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.95q.990505112149.15848A-100000@poirot.umd.edu> References: <19990505081901.B24172@ontario.mooseriver.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Reframing what *FreeBSD* does is not what matters. What matters is what happens when the customer calls the application vendor's tech support line. If he or she is told that FreeBSD is not a directly and officially supported platform, or even has trouble getting through to the one guy in tech support who happened to try the product on FreeBSD, that's it. FreeBSD is out. IT managers are paid to be bullheaded and ultra-conservative in this regard. No Windows product vendor supported their code under Win-OS/2; we can't expect very many Linux product vendors to support their code under Linux emulation. And the vendor's technical support staff will fight such a thing, since it requires them to know a lot about a platform for which they will get few calls (a vicious cycle). And their Linux support staff will likely be imbued with the Linux "doctrine" and be uninterested in FreeBSD. You've got to get a native port AND a FreeBSD-knowledgeable support staff at the application vendor's site that pushes FreeBSD's cause. This means NUMBERS, and this in turn means evangelism. --Brett Glass At 11:23 AM 5/5/99 -0400, James Howard wrote: >I've been using FreeBSD for years and have no objection to running Linux >programs in emulation mode. However, I have seen this by IT people >before. Maybe it would be more advantagous to rephrase it as "Native >Linux Binary" support or something similar just to catch those in IT who >aren't bright enough to understand what that means. > >Jamie To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4.2.0.37.19990505105712.00b51a20>