Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:16:18 -0400 From: Mitch Collinsworth <mkc@Graphics.Cornell.EDU> To: "T. William Wells" <bill@twwells.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Question about the mascot Message-ID: <199908131516.AA025387378@broccoli.graphics.cornell.edu> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Aug 1999 23:14:59 EDT." <E11F7o3-0007A4-00@twwells.com>
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>> >There just aren't enough people who'll shy away from the little >> >devil to make the creation of a whole 'nother set of material >> >worth the effort. >> >> Are you stating this as a fact, based on market research you can >> reference? Or as an assumption based on opinion? > >Elementary logic: > >1) Though I've been involved in the computer business for nearly >30 years, I haven't observed anyone who might have bought an >operating system who'd also have rejected one because of a >devilish mascot. This doesn't prove that such people don't exist; >it does put a stringent upper bound on their numbers. This "stringent upper bound" suggests that you have observed a significant fraction of all potential OS buyers. I don't know you but I find that difficult to believe without any current market research. The market of buyers is expanding at a fast enough rate to make 30 years in the industry rather meaningless in terms of measuring the market _today_. My head is still spinning after observing how fast M$ took over the desktops in this dept. Two years ago they were 100% unix. Today there are three left[1] and two of those are grad students overdue to graduate and leave. The 3rd is mine. What I'm suggesting is that you've grossly underestimated the present size of the OS marketplace based on historical observation of a market significantly smaller than exists today. >2) The burden of proof is always on the person who asserts "there >exists". I wasn't asking you to prove your claim, only asking if you were claiming it as a proven fact or as your personal opinion. It appears to be the latter. That's fine, but please don't assert opinion as a proven fact. -Mitch [1] Just a FYI to try to add some context to this. The discussion above was regarding "desktops". We also have a number of backroom "servers" that do all the things home users now expect from their ISP: DNS, mail, web, ftp, news, dhcp, etc, plus large amounts of file storage, tape backups, etc, etc. We are currently in the process of upgrading most of these aging unix systems and replacing them with FreeBSD. This puts me in the position of being able to promote FreeBSD to a significant number of people (grad students) who have M$ on their current desktop, but in a year or two will have the opportunity to influence software decisions in a number of different schools and businesses. If they observe that FreeBSD works well in the backroom here and M$ is less than pleasant where they move to next, they may just speak up about it! But if when they walk through the machine room (which they happen to do frequently, as it unfortunately doubles as a short-cut to our video editing lab) and all they see is a row of non-descript PC hardware with no hint of what OS they're running, they may never know it's "FreeBSD inside". Opportunity lost. I took the time to explain all this because I've sensed that through the course of this discussion most of the participants have appeared to be considering choice of OS as merely a personal, what's-on-my- desktop issue. I would like everyone to realize that the computing world doesn't end at the desktop. There are lots of businesses that do a whole lot more with computers than just desktops, and in my view FreeBSD can be an excellent choice for many of those back-room systems. It's certainly my first choice. But because the "cute little devil" can lead to misunderstandings, I feel the current stickers are best left out of sight. It's no longer as simple as claiming "freedom of speech" when you're making decisions with a computer that isn't yours. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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