Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 11:25:56 -0700 () From: Rick Hamell <hamellr@dsinw.com> To: MICHAEL_HEITMEIER@HP-Germany-om12.om.hp.com Cc: hamellr@hpc1.com, FreeBSD-Newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: basic info on freebsd needed... Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.3.95.990803110238.-183329C-100000@akane> In-Reply-To: <H0000d7d05c9ee09@MHS>
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> In my perception (reading tons of mails and posts) it's mostly an attitude > problem: the people who develop FreeBSD are technical wizards and gods and > what ever else. Agreed. The people at Microsoft are marketing wizards, > right? They produce something the masses want: colourful, clickable > programmes and never mind what's under the hood. And, the Gods produce what they want. A stable, fast server OS. > As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle: there has to be room for > users to grow. The innards of the OS and programmes should be available to > people who feel inclined to fiddle, hack, improve etc. At the same time, > the innards should not be pushed in the users face as is the case with > FreeBSD. Of course, everybody has a choice: FREEbsd in another sense: I > don't have to put myself through the ordeal, I can just shell out K$ for > NT. Never mind if that solves the users problem, that's not the point. The > point is one of direction: while everybody seems to agree that FreeBSD is > the most stable OS that money can buy (pardon the pun) where is it headed? But most people just don't get it. FreeBSD is essentially a hobby OS. Jordan, David, Terry, Rod and all the other core team members contributed to the project in their spare time. Sure they may make money supporting and installing FreeBSD systems or even programming in it... but it's still a hobby. Few people on the core team (seem to me) to really care if FreeBSD is ever used by any one else other then themselves. They continue supporting it because it does what they want it to do, and if it dosen't they'll write that feature in. So since they're all hard-core Unix types making a hobby, why should they spend their time making FreeBSD user friendly when they have no intrest in doing so? They would prefer optimizing the kernal code, adding SMP support, smoothing out the ports collection, etc, etc, etc, because.... that is FUN to them! In the same vein, I do my hobbies the way *I* want to... because that's how they're the most fun for me. If I'm told how to do something, or even worse, it's demanded that I do it a certain way that is not fun... I'll stop doing it. > To return to the last post: Does anybody really even consider 'tackling > the desktop OS market'? Sorry to come back to MS again but their strength > is obviously not so much on the technical side but in their single minded > drive to capture market share and make a ton of money. This is only > possible if MANY people use their products which in turn means they have > to be simple to use. User friendliness therefore is not a 'nice to have' > but critical to their strategy. The Linux camp has. As far as anybody in the FreeBSD is really concerned, (again from what I've seen,) they can have it. In fact, few people really even see it as a race in the first place. > So, where does that leave FreeBSD? I don't know if there even is an > explicitly stated direction, let alone what it is. What I know for sure is > that the more time it takes and the more complex the system is to set up > and use the less appeal it has for an average computer user. The server > niche FreeBSD has will be around for a few years but if it does not come > out of the corner and moves to the desktop then it will become a curiosity > just like the bloke down the street who manages to squeeze 1% more horse > power out of his engine and in the end also just drives from A to B. The server niche FreeBSD has will always be around, until Microsoft (or another company) can make a GUI server OS as stable and capable as itself. There are just too many people out there who still need reliability over pretty looking monitor screens. Sure the 'market' as you put it may shrink, but since it's merely a hobby... why should they really care? > Yes I enjoy the ease of use of Windows and yes I also enjoy the stability > of FreeBSD and the freedom it gives me to configure things. Now can I have > both please? Yes, but it'll take people like you to get off their asses, stop complaining and making FreeBSD into what THEY want it to be. Complaining and bitching gets nowhere, even less so when they don't even contribute to the project itself. If you want to change it, learn to program, start committing to the tree, run the bleeding edge software, recompile Linux software into native FreeBSD ports. Make user-friendly configuration scripts that have all kinds of pretty pictures and play Tetris while you're installing, write documentation that holds a users hands while they install FreeBSD and shows all the ins and outs involved and the consequences of every action they can take. After all.... Microsoft has thousands of junior and contract programmers doing just that.... Rick -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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