Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 10:45:52 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Advocacy how-to? Message-ID: <20000504104551.A2231@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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The point I, at least, was trying to make on the recent IRC thread was that rude behaviour by FreeBSD users (whether on an officially supported medium or not) will turn off potential users and there should be some effort made to control it. That seemed to be the concern of many people. Dissociating oneself from IRC on the web page is fine. But rude behaviour doesn't happen on IRC alone. As many people pointed out, the problem is not unique to FreeBSD. Nobody said it was. But I do think what is unique to FreeBSD is the attitude that "we can't control it so it's not our problem." There's a linux advocacy-howto which I cited earlier, and the section on "canons of conduct" is particularly good reading; this document is frequently cited on slashdot, lwn and elsewhere. http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Advocacy-6.html Sure, not everyone is going to follow it, but at least there is an effort to educate people, and there is a place to point them to when they act inappropriately. The OpenBSD FAQ also has a small bit on how not to advocate: "It's also worth mentioning one of the most important ways you should not try to "help" The OpenBSD project: do not waste your time engaging in operating system flame wars on Usenet newsgroups. It does not help the project to find new users and can cause substantial harm to important relationships that developers have with other developers." http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq1.html Is there any such document for FreeBSD? Does anyone agree that there should be? I certainly think it's important, given the reputation for arrogance which the project had and still has even today. It may even be possible to modify the linux document to FreeBSD's needs, with the author's permission. I'm willing to do this if anyone thinks it's useful. Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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