Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 03:54:27 +0100 From: Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Instead of freebsd.com, why not... Message-ID: <847918814.20050212035427@wanadoo.fr> In-Reply-To: <ACFBC590-7C9F-11D9-B134-000D933E3CEC@shire.net> References: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1050211122632.99069G-100000@fledge.watson.org> <1108126229.4084.43.camel@localhost.localdomain> <2fd864e05021106537bdcff09@mail.gmail.com> <1108146951.31338.10.camel@hatter.wonderland.dn> <1935025570.20050211232605@wanadoo.fr> <420D5AC3.3000202@daleco.biz> <1165567623.20050212033457@wanadoo.fr> <ACFBC590-7C9F-11D9-B134-000D933E3CEC@shire.net>
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Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC writes: > This is also ridiculous. No CEO or CIO is going to give a RAT's ASS > about what is said in a mailing list about a particular product. Probably. But the problem is that there is nothing else with FreeBSD. If you want support, you post to a mailing list, and hope that someone answers you without abusing you or flying off the handle. You cannot call a toll number and have a cool-headed professional walk through your issue and solve the problem. You post to a list or a newsgroup and you pray. And as often as not, you get yelled at for daring to question the perfection of the OS rather than get a solution to your problem. Sorry, but that's no way to promote an OS. And yes, executives will see it, because there are no alternatives. And they will find out about it, because they'll ask their subordinates how the OS being suggested to them is supported when something goes wrong. And what does one tell them? "Well, you post to this list, and sometimes you can get a pretty good answer in a day or two, unless you say something they don't like, then they'll killfile you." Do any people on this list work in the corporate world? Do they ever prepare presentations to management? Do they ever have to do feasibility studies and justify their suggestions for acquisitions or changes? > If so, WIndows would have been dead years ago. Actually, Windows has been slow to penetrate the server market precisely because Microsoft still has some of the angry-young-male mentality. They've learned a lot over the decades, but they are still utterly clueless compared to companies like IBM. I've seen this firsthand. > On a related note: Balmer's big mouth hasn't killed Windows > yet either. Only because Gates built the company up into a successful multinational with a lot of inertia before Balmer took the helm. But that big mouth is still a liability for the company. Fortunately for Microsoft, most of the competition is just as clueless (look at people like Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs, and Balmer almost starts to look wise). > These mailing lists are not official mouthpieces of the FreeBSD > project. Where _is_ the official mouthpiece? CIOs want to know. Whom do you call? Who commits? Who signs on the dotted line? Not knowing these things makes executives nervous, and they don't adopt products that make them nervous, even if they are free. > If the FreeBSD projects website, official announcements, etc were like > this, you'd have a case. The Web site actually looks pretty amateurish compared to the competition. It screams "shareware hobbyist" rather than "enterprise solutions center." > But we are talking about a cross section of user's in unofficial > channels. That does not mean a thing to these people. It does when that's the only thing they can see. -- Anthony
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