Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 20:40:30 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> To: kris@obsecurity.org Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, wes@softweyr.com, tedm@toybox.placo.com, ewayte@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Message-ID: <20010706204030E.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: <20010706142817.A61100@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <3B4560DD.428634F8@softweyr.com> <20010706020341B.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <20010706142817.A61100@xor.obsecurity.org>
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From: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 14:28:18 -0700 > What's likely to happen if we let it is that a number of entities will > publish verbatim copies of the "officially produced" ISO images, and > do so at production cost + some profit margin which only feeds back > into their own pockets. Well, you're making several assumptions here, some of which may or may not be true by the time 4.4 is ready to go to press: 1. That the "officially produced" ISO images aren't already done with 100% volunteer labor and hence, in the strictest sense of the word, the property of the project and not any one company who didn't actually invest in those 5 images (they may invest in some other value-add, but that's to judge an unknown quantity right now). 2. That whomever's doing the "officially produced" ISO images will, indeed, be funneling any profits back to the FreeBSD Foundation or through some other donation vehicle they work out. This has always been done on the honor system in the past, and that's a lot easier to arrange and keep going with a small company. Large companies sign contracts and have lots of lawyers around when they enter into agreements like this, on the other hand, and that's something which has traditionally mitigated against successful negotations of this nature. We'll have to see. > facilities like, say, CheapBytes could do this more cheaply than > someone like, say, DaemonNews, the latter will find it very hard to > compete without losing money unless they can feed off of some kind of > "preferred vendor" status. Entities which are more friendly to the Well, based at least on the reaction I got from the other assembled developers at USENIX, I tend to think that having a "preferred vendor" has fallen somewhat out of fashion with the project. I don't think anyone wants to get burned by the perception of having too close a tie with anyone in the future, to say nothing of the wide-spread rumor mongering about "the project dying" that starts up every time any company even remotely connected with the project has difficulties, and I think it's now encumbent on this project to demonstrate that it's bigger than any one relationship and will, at worst, merely lose some replaceable assets if one goes away. > I also don't think people should be thinking about terminating (or > even greatly weakening) the CD distribution relationship with WRS; > they're still a big potential funding resource, even if their current > FreeBSD sales channel sucks. Again, I think whether the distribution relationship is strong or weak in the future depends a lot more on WRS (or anyone else in the same position) than it depends on anything the project does now. The best the project can do is operate in the general interest and try for "optimum separation" between it and any 3rd party, where optimum is the right balance between cooperation and independence, both actual and perceived. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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