Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:24:00 -0500 From: Drew Derbyshire <software@kew.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: State of the union, 1999. Message-ID: <36996ED0.CA25B959@kew.com> References: <49859.915950870@zippy.cdrom.com>
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Note 1: With the headers I am giving this, replies will auto-move to chat,
since it's not really a "current" issue.
Note 2: The following mentions Jordan by name, which may imply I'm dumping on
him personally. This is utterly wrong, the point if anything is that one
person can't do the evangelism for an entire organization.
<soapbox>
With the release of FreeBSD 3.0, FreeBSD utterly blew the _official_
evangelism end of it. There was this great new product with wonderful
features in it (CAM, SMP, and all the rest), and ... I didn't see squat about
it in the trade papers.
Someone at the online end of either CMP publications or IDG (I forget which)
was actively looking for an official FreeBSD mouthpiece the week after 3.0
came out, and they couldn't find anyone. Nada. Jordan was in Holland and no
other names were available. Nor, it appears, were phone numbers that got
answered publicly associated with the release. I tried feeding the reporter
some names, but nothing ever became of it, and I couldn't talk to him directly
(not being on the project myself).
On a local professional note, I'm trying to get my day job to look at FreeBSD
for their next OS migration. I've got low hopes, because quite frankly, it
seems only the people who have seen me in my FreeBSD rugby shirt even know the
name.
I don't think too many would mind if Linux wiped FreeBSD from the face of the
earth on pure technical merits, but would be a real pity if FreeBSD died
because no one answered the phone. If you (those who can officially speak
for FreeBSD) want it to succeed, _everytime_ someone mentions Linux you need
to see if that comment should have said Linux and FreeBSD. Just "sometimes"
won't be enough to win the image war.
</soapbox>
"Jordan K. Hubbard" wrote:
> Linux has succeeded largely because of a large grass-roots support and
> evangelism network which allows it to reach such people and
> communicate the message to them. If FreeBSD's own users want to see
> FreeBSD doing better against whomever they most perceive as its
> competition, and 1998 was certainly a year where I heard a lot of
> complaining about this, then they're going to simply have to get off
> their collective duffs and put in more of this kind of work. When was
> the last time a bunch of FreeBSD users got together to hand out
> FreeBSD literature at a Microsoft product launch, for example, or held
> an install-a-thon at a local computer show?
--
Drew Derbyshire UUPC/extended e-mail: software@kew.com
Telephone: 617-279-9812
"Send lawyers, guns, and money . . ." - Warren Zevon
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