Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 12:23:07 +0200 From: Phil Regnauld <regnauld@ftf.net> To: Brett Glass <g@ns.int.ftf.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: My proposals for the future [Long] Message-ID: <19990908122307.51720@ns.int.ftf.net> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19990907215517.047c9880@localhost>; from Brett Glass on Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 02:17:30AM -0600 References: <7838.936165770@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19990907215517.047c9880@localhost>
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Brett Glass writes: > Rod Taylor writes: > > >I'm mildly interested in what you consider these [problems with the > >promotion of FreeBSD] to be. > > I've elaborated on some of these in earlier messages. To cover them with > a rather broad brush, they include: > > 1. An exponentially growing gap between the sizes of the BSD and Linux > user bases, coupled with slowly declining market share; Pointers, numbers, explanation ? > 2. A lack of the sort of aggressive, contagious advocacy that continues > to fuel the spread of Linux; Aggressive, contagious (viral?) being the sort of things we're trying to avoid. > 3. A lack of the sort of venture capital and well-financed commercial > promotion now being expended on Linux; Linux kernel != FreeBSD. Wanna start "RedHat FreeBSD" ? Be my guest! This is simplistic generalization: it's technology the "venture capital and fell-financed commercial promotion" is pushing, not an OS. Well-financed does not mean run-on-empty $4.5 billion potential market capitalization. > 4. A lack of interest on the part of large application developers (due > primarily to item 1 above); Shortcut conclusion. > 5. An "elitist" attitude which discourages even very talented > potential contributors to the code base; > 6. A shortage of contributors to handle known problems in the code > base (due to items 1 and 5 above); and Maybe -- that's probably the only thing people will agree to discuss based on the flawed/missing argumentation above. > 7. A failure to recognize the value of a large and growing user base. It is large, it is growing. > They are problems. There is no long-term benefit to falling behind > Linux, either technically or in market share. There is no long-term benefit of being Icarus or running head-down into the wall so obsessed we are by the color of our shoelaces. > In all of these cases, a larger user base furthers your goal. Not if your goal is a tightly-controlled project with quality over abundance. > a BETTER tool for the task. What's more, it means a larger range > of available commercial applications for your use. (Many are now > available for Linux but not for FreeBSD; they only work under > emulation, if at all.) If at all ? Like ? > The above comments seem to echo Aesop's fable of the fox and > the grapes: "I don't WANT all those users; they're no good anyway." That would be La Fontaine, but then again, I might get my classics wrong. There are several versions, and they don't all have the same moral. > Linus Torvalds does not seem to have become any less productive in his > improvements or refinements to the Linux kernel since Linux grabbed the > spotlight, so there's no reason to fear that FreeBSD will have > such problems. Are you kidding ? Look at the code / review+integration ratio of his lately, compared to people like Cox. > As for having "one FreeBSD" -- there's no reason why there can't be > more than one distribution. (In fact, there are now. There are > Cheap Bytes and PicoBSD as well as Walnut Creek's multiple FreeBSD > packages.) They're not distributions, and we already went over this. They're different packagings of the same distribution/OS. Only PicoBSD can qualify, and then again it's a derived product, not a distribution (unless you consider FreeBSD to be just a kernel + init). > However, it's likely that distributions of FreeBSD will have > lots more in common than the many distributions of Linux, which is a good > thing. ... for the first 6 months, yes. I mean, NetBSD stemmed from 386/FreeBSD... My oh my, how compatible we've become. > FreeBSD needs a strongly marketed, strongly evangelized, heavily supported > distribution that surpasses anything now available in the Linux world technically > and can catch up with Linux's growth curve. My turn to tell you, "get real": you call yourself realistic ? You think it's even *reasonable* to think we can catch up with Linux ? Sorry to sound like this, but this soufflé isn't going up. > by some folks who know of my previous work (most of which has been done under > contract; you'd recognize some of the clients' names) Great -- who ? Don't mention them if you can't name them -- who cares about "the dog ate my homework" argument. > distribution site for FreeBSD -- has a very strong grip on the > development of FreeBSD, and might do things to discourage competition > with is own sales of FreeBSD disks. Might. Maybe. Could. "With 'ifs' we could put Paris in a bottle". So ? > I've seen this particular "little green man" before -- it's called > "All's fair in love, war, and business." I don't subscribe to that > attitude, but many businesspeople do. Uhm, you're the one promoting "aggressive, contagious" advocacy, no ? > While all of this may be true, intentions can change. And -- again -- Yes, and the US might become a democracy one day. > Walnut Creek does have much more control of the development of FreeBSD > than, say, Red Hat has of the development of Linux. Yes, Terry spent a great deal of time and mailspace explaining why: it's called the GPL. > the investors are justifiably concerned about. Remember, since Jordan > works for Walnut Creek, the company can literally claim ownership of what > he does, even over his protests. We need strong assurances not just from > Jordan but from Walnut Creek as a company that this will not happen. Investors so far are mainly companies paying for contractual work (implementation of features, custom integration, etc...), and so far they're quite satisfied with BSD -- I've had trouble proving otherwise to Terry. > new material. So, I think I deserve a lot more credit than Jordan > gives me for effective networking and consciousness-raising in > journalistic circles. The work of martyrs and revolutionaries is ungratifying at best. > What's more, the idea that a problem exists is more likely to rouse > people to action than the idea that all's right with the world. > The notion that there's a problem -- or, worse yet, a looming > crisis -- is more contagious, or memetically fit, than the > idea that things are fine. Aaron Lynch, in his book "Thought > Contagion," writes: When there is documented, proven, and agreed evidence that there is a looming crisis. Solitary prophets claiming the world would come to an end (or that Mir would fall on Paris for that matter) are often wrong. This is teamwork, and this kind of insight is built on the work and efforts of other people. One might observe patterns, find correlations, and eventually deduce a common trend, but so far I've seen lots of talk and not much data. > "Thought contagions spread fastest via *proselytic* transmission.... Hey, why don't you start a BSD project with 6-people cells responsible for one part of the system, the leader of which only knows other cell leaders, and... oops, already taken. > The conviction 'My country is dangerously low on weapons' illustrates > proselytic advantage. The idea strikes fear in its hosts for both > their own and their compatriots' lives. That fear drives them to > persuade others of military weakness to build pressure for doing > something about it. Now *that's* a friendly, cooperative way to convince others to participate. I think that failed around 1989. > This principle accounts for the success of Christianity, as well as > other religions -- such as Islam -- which preach that one is in > imminent danger unless one takes action to achieve redemption > and salvation. Can you then explain the notion of Purgatory, its origins, and who it was intended for (in theory, and more essentially, who were the people who pushed for its "creation" ?) > Jordan, however, questions whether a BSD UNIX distribution could > ever catch up with Linux. In somewhat derogatory terms, he writes: [...] > Why not? Red Hat is competing with Microsoft, which recently surpassed > the market cap of GE to achieve the largest market valuation of any > company on Earth. ... which everyone with 1/4 oz. of brain matter on Wall Street will tell you is completely bogus and likely to capsize, like many other values. Hey, not to say RedHat is not successful. > Or would Walnut Creek -- and you, as an employee thereof -- shoot me > in the back? Seriously: may I have your word, and Walnut Creek's, that > you won't sabotage what I do if I manage to get these investors to > cough up some money? Why would they ? It's your own personal project. > I've made quite a few, but they all boil down to this: good code and > good memes. This is what makes a successful software product. But > code quality is less important than good memes -- as is shown by > the dominance of Windows, NT, and Linux over BeOS, OS/2, and FreeBSD. Oh cool, let's merge with NT. Hey everyone, let's stop improving the code, wear 3 piece suits, and offer shares to everyone in BrettBSD, Ltd. Ok, that was easy, but we know the line we're walking here, and this is not the world of OS/2 and BeOS. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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