Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 08:51:36 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de>, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Comparing FreeBSD and other OSs Message-ID: <Pine.AUX.3.91.960307083959.3232C-100000@covina.lightside.com> In-Reply-To: <13399.826195737@time.cdrom.com>
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On Thu, 7 Mar 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > answer is "none, DOS", but in some cases people really do care. We > > should be able to help them come to a good decision--*not* necessarily > > FreeBSD. > > I agree that this should also be a goal, though we shouldn't forget > that PR is the primary purpose here. If we shine at something in > particular, we should note it without necessarily feeling obligated to > "sell" features of the other systems with the same zeal. Maybe once > the Linux people start hyping FreeBSD I'll change my tune, but not > yet.. :-) Yep, that only makes sense. The idea I'm working on for a Web page design would have a page called "Other OS's" which would show briefly the other UNIX (and I'm thinking of including non-Unix like NT, Win95, and OS/2) briefly with advantages, disadvantages, and pointers to Web pages. It would make us look a little more non-biased while we can still praise our own product in the other pages. This page would also have an emphasized message saying something like: "We want FreeBSD to be the best operating system it can be. If you decide to choose one of the other OS's (especially Linux) please fill out this brief survey to show why you made your decision." Then we can have a _brief_ fill-out form, which I can make a CGI to tabulate and automagically post the results. Chances are that all of the people who chose non-UNIX will say "Because of Windows compatibility and Microsoft Office" as major reasons, so I will probably segregate those results from the people who chose UNIX to make it more meaningful. > Again, please bear in mind that this is a sales job first and > foremost; it doesn't have to be the most comprehensive survey to hit > the planet, nor would many people even bother to read it if it were. > I'm sorry if I'm sounding more like Bill Gates and less like an > engineer here, but truly - most people, and I'm not talking about 99% > of the engineers on this list who have already stepped away from the > herd simply by subscribing to it, don't WANT to wade through reams of > comparison data and make the kind of truly informed choice that an > engineer would respect. They want to be told which is "better" so > that they can race straight through the selection process or reaffirm > that their original choice was the best one. > > As I believe Justice Renquist is credited with saying, "What most > people call thinking is simply rearranging their prejudices." Certainly that is the primary focus of the Web page layout I'm designing. I plan to have lots of cold, hard facts, but those would be available as hypertext links. So where a primary page would say "FreeBSD outperforms Linux by 3 to 1 for an Internet server!" there would be a link to the full study. This way, people can skim through literally dozens of FreeBSD advantages, and if they are particularly interested or skeptical about one, they can click on the actual survey, and so our ethical integrity is maintained. By the way, it would be nice if we had the funding to perform some USABILITY studies head-to-head with Linux, because I really believe our product is better "out of the box" than most Linux distributions out there (and I don't mean in terms of fancy TCL/Tk interface, but that the average admin can get software loaded and be productive in a reasonable amount of time, with less maintenance and upgrade concerns). We all know this is true, but it'd be nice to have some numbers (percentage satisfaction) to back it up. Perhaps this can be a survey question on my "Why did you choose another OS" page, and we can broaden the survey to include "Why did you choose FreeBSD" and we can all vote 100% satisfied.. ;-) ---Jake
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