Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 10:14:11 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill/Carolyn Pechter <pechter@shell.monmouth.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Device Drivers for Linux and Intel's annoucement Message-ID: <199810031414.KAA21016@shell.monmouth.com> In-Reply-To: <4.1.19981002215535.040ed100@mail.lariat.org> from "Brett Glass" at Oct 2, 98 10:01:15 pm
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> Frank and I are not the only people who perceive that FreeBSD is plagued by a > lack of investment in marketing. Walnut Creek doesn't seem willing to > make that investment. > > Now, what would you have us do? Sit back and let FreeBSD lose out to Linux? > Break away from Walnut Creek by publishing another version, thereby fragmenting > the market and, possibly, development efforts? Neither is a better alternative > than getting Walnut Creek off its duff, but the latter may be necessary if we > don't see things change soon. > > --Brett Brett's got a point. FreeBSD makes good code, has a good vendor and is a great product. I fought to get it used at Lucent over Linux and NT. FreeBSD won because I personally would stake my reputation on it. As far as the request to "write a book" for publicity. I've got a full time job and a legal department that would have to clear anything I write... and my four year old is now demanding she see dad occasionally. Six years ago I could've put 20 hours a week in on FreeBSD docs and gotten a book out after a while. I started one once. Greg beat me to it and did a great job. Realistically, I'd love to see a FreeBSD mention in Nemeth et. al. Anyone consider sending CD's to these authors (and others) to try to get in the next edition? Linux has an advantage, in that it's supporters are larger in number. Among them are a number of people who support it NOT because it's Linux or Unix -- but because it's GPL and ANTI Microsoft. We've been great at code -- but not great at evangelism because most of us have been around a while and we've seen the true coming of THE NEW COMPUTING RELIGION come and fail too many times. Linux has done very well at making itself a religion. FreeBSD isn't doing as well. We'd have to have a BSD consortium to get anywhere near the numbers they have -- or we need to do a better recruiting job at schools. I'd like to see Brett continue to be a pain in the @#$%^& because I feel we've gotten a bit complacent here with the Linux folks. I like Linux but I love FreeBSD. I'd also like to see this discussion continue calmly and rationally. This mailing list's getting like Usenet already. Calm down and let's discuss this. I tend to think that the core team's job should be to code -- we should have another group for publicity. I even liked the Linux journal's coverage of the Fry's protest of the Win98 launch by the Linux zealots. Boy did I feel that they are like my four year old. They'll keep screaming until they get their way. We do need some of that energy, though. I also would've liked to see the 3.0 come out with the full series of SCSI drivers... I've locked in my boxes at 2.2.7 for the time being until I can get a friend to CAMify the AIC and NCR 5380 drivers. (BTW -- it appears that the Trantor T160 uses an NCR53C400 varient which doesn't work on our drivers. My friend's got it up on NetBSD and I hope to have him look at it for FreeBSD.) I've got to cut this short... Got to take the four year old to soccer practice. Bill (soccer dad...) +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Bill and/or Carolyn Pechter | pechter@shell.monmouth.com | | Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in | | a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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