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Date:      Wed, 03 Jun 1998 21:38:42 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
To:        "Frank Pawlak" <fpawlak@execpc.com>
Cc:        freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Unix Review --NT suckup rag 
Message-ID:  <19926.896935122@time.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 04 Jun 1998 02:39:31 -0000." <980604023931.ZM14138@darkstar.connect.com> 

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> IMHO, another badly written article used to slam us and praise Linux.  Calls
> the FreeBSD project "the last gasp of a fine research project that is now
> over".  Makes a big issue about FreeBSD not having commercial support, and th
at
> the FreeBSD books are little more than bound man pages.

Well, it's always good to listen to the dissenting opinions.
Sometimes they even have a point, like that last one about too many
man pages in our single book.  I totally agree, I slammed the man
pages when they first went in and if I had more to do with determining
just what the content of that book was, I'd have never bloated it out
to 1700 pages just by adding in a lot of man pages.  That was a move
made for purely marketing reasons and any shots to the jaw we get over
it are probably deserved.  Unfortunately, I also didn't have 500 pages
of my own to contribute which would have made the book a far better
product and so I really couldn't do much more than grumble about the
man pages.  Seeing as how I had nothing _constructive_ to offer the
book, I had to pretty much just shut my mouth and like it if I didn't
want someone coming back with "if you want a better book then write
the one you've been promising to write for over 2 years, you choad!" :-)

And as far as commercial support is concerned, I agree with that too
and that's really probably come down most to just us here at Walnut
Creek CDROM dropping the ball.  We have the infrastructure, we have
the funds and we could get the personnel if we just pulled our thumbs
out and decided to go for it, but the tech-support canyon before which
we stand is also a very deep one, and I suppose we can be forgiven for
showing a little reticence to jump.

In any case, we have two important points to work on as a result of
this criticism: Better books and thumb removal on the part of those
who should now be putting a commercial support organization into
place.  As far as being a "last gasp" is concerned, well, we all know
that's so manifestly untrue that we don't even need to get upset at
such a laughably transparent attempt to get our goat. :)

- Jordan

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