Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:36:02 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jbryant@tfs.net Cc: dennis@etinc.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commercial vendors registry Message-ID: <199704142136.OAA19436@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199704140313.WAA07958@argus> from "Jim Bryant" at Apr 13, 97 10:13:31 pm
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> Case in point... Lin[s]ux... Ten-Twenty different versions, bad > networking, even worse VM... Vendors love it!! Why? Hmmmm... > > Maybe it's because people have gone out and and said to h*ll with all > this bs counting the number of angels one can paint on the head of a > pin [read that as philosophical bs discussions] and wrote books for > Lin[s]ux, made it available at the local store on CD-ROM, plastered > the magazines for it, invented magazines for it, and got the attention > of the vendors enough that they develop for it... I would write a book for FreeBSD, but... o It takes ~2000 hours to write a decent book. This is one man year. FreeBSD can't maintain stable interfaces for one man year, so my book would be outdated. Linux can mantain stable interfaces because they have to walk a terrifically fine line between all their various distributions. o I would have to voice my honest opinions about some very idiotic things which never change, even though they have been pointed at time and again and the statement made "hey, look here at this idiotic thing". o The FreeBSD market is self limiting because the number of FreeBSD enthusiasts who can simultaneously participate is also inherently limited. That means I'd have to charge a lot, or I'd have to convince an awful lot of the available people to buy the book. Neither prosepect seens very fruitful. The "roll a CDROM distribution" is problematic. First, there is "brand loyalty" for Walnut Creek, which supported FreeBSD back when it desperately needed the support, and it would be incredibly difficult to overcome this in my own mind, let alone attempt to sell the idea to others. The several places which have tried have been effectively flamed to death in the newgroups, with "Walnut Creek is the official distribution, and I don't even want to try to help you with your problem otherwise". The magazine issues are slowly being addressed. FreeBSD does not have the critical mass for it, or hasn't, and the current effort underway is hedging this by covering all of the free systems instead of just FreeBSD, in the hopes that that will be a sufficiently broad base that they can succeed where the likes of Linux Journal succeeded. The vendor attention and magazine/press attention that Linux has is missing from FreeBSD (all freely available BSD's) because there is no single mouthpiece, like Linus. He is a Schnelling point, a common reference for Linux, and without a Bill Jolitz or similar "old father", *BSD appears strangley amorpohrous and intractable to journalists who really *would* like to be able to get a hold of something, a spokesperson who can speak on behalf of the project, and who can drive that stake into the ground, two years in the future, and tell them "here's how we are going to go about getting there". There is no drama or story on the order of Steve Jobs and Allpe, Steve Jobs and NeXT, Bill Gates and Microsoft, Linus and Linux, etc., etc.. > Who here has seen "The Life of Brian"? This topic sounds like a > meeting of the People's Front of Judea [officials]! But you keep > talking like this, you may as well be the the Crack Suicide Squad of > the Judean People's Front!!! The point is, get up off your @sses and > get commercial support, stop talking about it! All's ya gotta do"... is a big problem. Instead of talking about what needs to be done for this, *how* would you go about doing it? One thing that has made me a vastly unpopular thorn is that I am willing to tell people, in no uncertain terms, how I would do something, and I end up stepping on architectural toes in the process... "shutup, you aren't the architect!" ...or more accurately, "shut up, you aren't the boss of me!". Other people are in this same boat, even core team members. At least if you say how you think you could approach the problem, then for better or worse, you have some skin in the game (even if you end up being despised for it, at least you're not a hippocrite -- even if it makes you a member-elect of the suicide squad). > Do you think Bill Gates got where he is today by debating for three > years on whether or not to take action? No, Bill got where he was because he was lucky, and then after he was lucky, he wasn't stupid, and then after he wasn't stupid, he kept the control, and now he can look half a year down the road without having to answer to a board of directors he doesn't control, and in so doing appear to be a visionary stud to all the idiots looking one quarter down the road. > Or for that matter, the same for the lamers using Lin[s]ux!!!! The "lamers using Linux" have A Piece Of The True Cross... they have the GPL, for better or worse, and have a religion built around it. and they have a pope (Linux) and a college of cardinals (each the equivalent of a BSD core team leader with a license from the Pope to make final and binding theological judgements, subject only to the will of the Pope). You can't reasonably compare a Kuwait-style limited sufferage government to the Divine Right of Kings without delving into an abstraction of what you are comparing from how you are performing the comparison. People with A Piece Of The True Cross are in it for The Paradise To Come, and the motivations behind the groups are not similar. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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