Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 11:58:11 -0500 From: "Mike Avery" <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Jordan the Confused (Was: Jordan The Evil!) Message-ID: <199904191711.MAA26036@hostigos.otherwhen.com> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.32.19990419093753.0454e490@localhost> References: <19990418080429.A37740@holly.dyndns.org>
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On 19 Apr 99, at 9:41, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 08:04 AM 4/18/99 -0500, Chris Costello wrote:
> >I don't particularly like your irrational, extremist ways of
> >convincing people, or expressing yourself.
> What I've been saying is not only rational but borne out
> by history and by the way things are actually unfolding.
>
> Labels such as "extremist" are only an attempt to brand
> the messenger.
> But rather than engage in meta-discussion, it's more important
> to face the issues at hand. The world isn't waiting for FreeBSD,
> folks; it's passing it by.
I wish I could say Brett were wrong. As a product reviewer for
InfoWorld (1) I deal with a lot of vendors (2). And when they tell
me they have a cross platform product covering NT, NetWare, and
Unix, I ALWAYS ask, "which flavors of Unix - do you do any of the
free Unices?". NO ONE has told me they support FreeBSD. When
pressed on the matter, and I always ask, the usual response is,
"what's that?"
They see a lot of progress being made by Linux, and talk about how
Linux is very popular with ISP's. My own sampling suggests that
FreeBSD is even more popular among ISP's, but I don't have hard
figures (3). The vendors just haven't heard of FreeBSD.
While I've been using FreeBSD for about 4 years, I'm a FreeBSD
newbie. My ISP installed it for me, and it's just been sitting in the
corner doing it's thing - flawlessly - ever since. In 4 years, I've had
to replace the CPU fan and the power supply (it's fan died too). A
133mhz 5x86 with 16 megs of ram has been my link to the internet.
And more (it's also my SendMail host and my web server). I'm sold....
very sold.
I've started looking at FreeBSD and the mailing lists more more
because I need to upgrade to a more current system and realize I
need to learn more.
My biggest disappointment is the level of flaming here. Is Brett
really the anti-FreeBSD? Or are we trying real hard to throw out the
baby with the bath water?
Brett is one of the very few mainstream writers who acknowledges
that FreeBSD exists, much less praises it. Trust me, he has other
things he can write about. And trust me again, his editors would
probably be happier if he covered something more "commercially
viable".(4) He is going out on a limb to provide the coverage he has.
And his return, from what I can see, has been pretty bad.
All in all, I think we need to stop, take a deep breath, and look at
things they way they are, not the way we want them to be. If the
growth of FreeBSD is where we want it, then we don't need to
consider other ways of getting the word out. If it isn't where we
want it, then we need to think about the effectiveness of how we are
getting the word out, and other ways to get the word out.
If you compare OS's to religous movements (5), religous movements
rarely rely on a single way of getting converts. Even churches work
hard and in varied ways to get visitors through the door, and to keep
them in the fold after that. Advertisements, special programs,
personal testimony, booths at fairs, billboards, television programs,
courting the news media for coverage all have their place. And none
of them are enough by themselves. If we want to grow, are we doing
enough? As a newbie, I don't know, I just want to raise the question.
Despite being a FreeBSD newbie, I have to say I think both sides of
the issue have sounded irrational at times. Since Brett is a
professional writer, his anger is surprising. I suspect he's been
aroused - how many times can you be called names, and have your
points ignored before you become strident and irrational? The worst
part of flaming is it tends to cause the discussion to drop to the level
of the flamer..... and then intelligent discourse is gone. Brett has the
disadvantage that he's being attacked on all sides. And it DOES
seem that he is being attacked.
One recurring topic regards the dissection of press releases. Brett
reads them and asks, "is this what you meant to say", and that is a
very valid question.
How do you feel when someone asks you how to put a server
together, and you carefully evaluate their needs and suggest several
100baseT NICs. And later discover they went with a single
ARCNet(6) NIC instead? And are complaining about the
performance? And complaining about you since you spec'ed out the
machine? They ignored your advice, and then complained about the
results of ignoring your advice.
Brett makes a portion of his living writing and editing. When he
suggests that a press release doesn't communicate what it should,
instead of calling him names, it might be wise to pause and consider
the matter carefully.
What are we trying to communicate? Did the press release
communicate what we wanted, or was it open to misunderstanding?
It's easy to put words together in ways that are open to
misunderstanding - even professional wordslingers do it.
So, can we all cool it and address the issues, and not the
personalities?
Mike
(1) While Brett and I work for the same publication, he's a staffer
and I'm a stringer or a freelancer. I don't know Brett and have
never met him - I don't even know where he is based, but I think he's
about 1,500 miles from my home office. I'm not writing this out of
any sort of loyalty to Brett or the magazine we write for.
Also, if you don't like the magazine, that's cool. If you feel you
need to vent about it, please feel free to email me directly, as I
don't think it's a valid topic for this list.
(2) Yes, I have reviewed FreeBSD based products in the past. And
want to do so in the future. Drop me a note if you have a commercial,
enterprise class, product you would like to see covered. I can't
promise anything other than I'll talk to you about it as stringers don't
decide what gets covered, although they can make suggestions to the
editors.
(3) If you have hard figures regarding FreeBSD use by ISP's, I'd
love to see them. Please send me a pointer, or a copy.
(4) I don't know what life is like at other magazines, but at
InfoWorld, the writers have *NO* contact with the marketing people.
I've *NEVER* been told to tone it down, or to say something nice
about these guys because they are a big advertiser. One time I
commented that an advertiser had a brain dead user interface. They
ran it, and went to bat for me when the advertiser was quite upset.
Despite this, the editors do have some idea of what the readers are
interested in. And the evidence suggests that it isn't FreeBSD,
despite it's virtues. So, it doesn't get ink often. From my
perspective, Brett is going out on a limb. And even if we don't agree
with him (I don't know enough to judge), we probably shouldn't shoot
the messenger.
(5) Probably not a hopelessly bad comparison, when you get down to
it. Extremists in religion or OS advocacy both seem to have lost
touch with reality all too often.
(6) A good friend was one of the designers of ARCNet. To him, I'll
apologize in advance for the scurrilous characterization of his brain
child as slow. Seriously, there are some places where I'd still
suggest ARCNet - if I thought I had a chance in hell of getting the
idea accepted.
======================================================================
Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com
(409)-842-2942 (work)
ICQ: 16241692
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