Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 10:29:33 -0500 From: Brian Adkins <brian@lojic.com> To: Donald Wilde <dwilde1@thuntek.net> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Support (was Re: Netscape browser ) Message-ID: <4.1.19990323101745.01513a50@mailbox.iwaynet.net> In-Reply-To: <36F7AD75.1EE288FA@thuntek.net> References: <4.2.0.32.19990322181857.03eb8d90@localhost> <4.1.19990322230145.00f92480@mailbox.iwaynet.net>
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At 08:04 AM 3/23/99 -0700, Donald Wilde wrote: >> At 06:58 PM 3/22/99 -0700, Brett Taylor wrote: >> >... >> >Chris Coleman and I, with others, started Daemon News. >[snip] >> When I was evaluating FreeBSD (just last week), one of the things that >> *really* impressed me was the response time on answers to my newbie >> questions. I was stuck on something at 4:00 am. EST and I fired off a >> question to freebsd-questions and got several responses that solved the >> problem in less than an hour! I've had technical support contracts from >> IBM when I worked on mainframes and from Microsoft and I've *never* had >> such timely support. In fact, even though my company was paying something >> like $16,000 per year to Microsoft for support, I inevitably solved the >> problem through much pain before Microsoft would get back to me with >> someone that had any degree of clue. > >Can we use this as a 'testimonial' quote, Brian? Sure! >> Maybe I should ask a fundamental question. What is the goal of the >> advocacy group specifically, and the FreeBSD organization in general? Is >> it to attract as many ISV's as possible? Is it to run on the widest >> variety of hardware? If it is, then I totally misread the philosophy of >> this group and probably picked the wrong OS ;) >> >FreeBSD is specifically optimized for i86 hardware. There are two ports >in development for others, but we leave portability to our NetBSD >_friends_. We are looking for ISV's to port, of course, and we are >looking for hardware suppliers, _of_course_, but the primary job of all >of us is to get the word out about one of the greatest gifts mankind has >ever given itself. Raising visibility is a major effort, and very few >get any compensation beyond gratification (and a better OS) from adding >to the user base. It seems to me that if the type of people who have the skill and motivation to improve the operating system are attracted to it, and gain a sense of corporate "ownership" from investing blood, sweat and tears into it, then the general user base will continue to follow. Some might offer the argument of Betamax vs. VHS, but I don't think the commercial analogies always apply well here. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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