From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Apr 17 01:18:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA18793 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 17 Apr 1997 01:18:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from superior.mooseriver.com (ppp010-sm2.sirius.com [205.134.231.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA18788 for ; Thu, 17 Apr 1997 01:18:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jgrosch@localhost) by superior.mooseriver.com (8.8.5/8.7.3) id BAA09215; Thu, 17 Apr 1997 01:18:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Josef Grosch Message-Id: <199704170818.BAA09215@superior.mooseriver.com> Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970417013405.00ba9290@sentex.net> from Mike Tancsa at "Apr 17, 97 01:34:05 am" To: mike@sentex.net (Mike Tancsa) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 01:18:10 -0700 (PDT) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com Reply-To: jgrosch@sirius.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >At 09:14 PM 4/16/97 -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >>> i'll add another few items to my list from last night... >>> >>> 1). chop the price in half to $19.95. >> [ DELETED ] >some market segments would be more prone to this than others. A lot of our >really big corp customers who look to expand their net presence ask us for >recommendations. When we tell them about FreeBSD they look at us funny >when we tell them its free... Typically, their response is "You mean I am >going to trust my million dollar a week business to some free software ? No >way! Whats the number for SUN again ?" I suppose however, if we told them >FreeBSD was in fact $2000, plus another $1000 a year for fixes, they would >probably seriously consider it. However, our smaller business customers >are quite open to it. To them, what matters is that it works, is >reasonably priced, and is secure. For them, shaving $20 off the price is >not an issue. > > > ---Mike I must agree with Mike. I did a contract for a Fortune 100 company in Chicago last year who were a died-in-the-wool IBM Mainframe shop. If you were to cut these guys they would bleed "Big Blue". One of the things I did for them was help them connect to the Internet. I suggested they use FreeBSD to handle their DNS needs. They predictably reacted in horror to the idea of using "shareware". They were less that pleased when I pointed out that their brand new, spiffy HP K210 that was purchased to handle DNS was running the previous release of the "shareware" BIND that FreeBSD used. It is this attitude that has made IBM and Microslime the Goliaths that they are. Big, over-bearing and generally intimidating the populace. Just waiting for some nice Jewish boy to come along and bean them one. Josef "Have another Bagel" Grosch -- Josef Grosch | Another day closer to a | FreeBSD 2.2.1 jgrosch@sirius.com | Micro$oft free world | UNIX for the masses