Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 00:17:25 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: paul@originative.co.uk (Paul Richards), Doug@gorean.org (Doug Barton), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <200003170017.RAA18542@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000312154517.04127580@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Mar 12, 2000 04:01:07 PM
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> >It's interesting to draw the analogy with Linux and UNIX. Almost > >everything that's derived from Linux is called Linux, which creates a > >large installed base of Linux systems even though they all differ in the > >details. > > Exactly. What's more, there are Linux-related companies such as LinuxCare > and VA Linux. Walnut Creek is the ONLY company which has been allowed > to start an enterprise -- FreeBSDMall.com -- which uses the FreeBSD > name. Others should be allowed to do so as well. Frankly, I find this argument unconvincing. I realize that Linux has used the unity of the idea of "Linux is not a distribution" in order to effectively "Cross the Chasm", as Geoffrey Moore of Regis McKenna, Inc., has succinctly put it. But do not forget that in his book, "Crossing the Chasm", and again in his book "Inside the Tornado", and in general, in the apparent public philosophy of Regis McKenna, Inc., and other high technology public relations and marketing firms that are not as famous as they are in Silicon Valley, there is only one "Chasm Crossing" per stregy, and each new attempt must use a strategy different from that of its competitors. The BSDI press release on the merger emphasizes brand unification, as did Jordan at the last BAFUG (Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group) meeting. I don't think brand unification will be enough to cause BSD to "Cross the Chasm" to commercial profitability between the "Early Adopters" and the "Early Majority". There are issues of brand involved here, but I don't think it's safe to claim, like BSDI, Brett, Jordan, and Paul, that brand divisiveness caused by forking caused by a trademark usage policy, is necessarily the only obstacle to a "Chasm Crossing". Certainly, people could profit greatly from another FreeBSD distribution, which disdained the current installer, and provided a replacement. I think this could be accomplished with a two CDROM set, one a FreeBSD disk image, unchanged, and another with the installer, a FreeBSD kernel, etc., all bootable, called "The Install Disk", or even with a single DVDROM -- though the mass market for that isn't there yet. And I agree that, like the RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) package format, which has been adopted by almost all Linux distributions as at least an "also ran", a new install system that could probably not get in through the commit filter otherwise, could find itself the standard for a more user-friendly FreeBSD installation tool, if, like RPM, it were allowed to compete without having to change the brand name. But this all begs the point of overall market strategy for the FreeBSD project itself, and whether the project itself even has the will or desire to "Cross the Chasm", or, as stated above, mere brand unity would even be a factor, one way or the other, as much marketing and public relations talent in the Silicon Valley claims it would not. There are a lot of fine engineers here, but there are not a lot of fine marketers, and certainly no great ones, or new PC-grade hardware would be shipping with "BSD 2000", or its moral equivalent, not "Windows 2000", and not Red Hat Linux. An attempt on the chasm will require fine marketing, and it's likely that the FreeBSD community as it currently stands will not tolerate sufficient "dumbing down" for consumerism for that to ever happen. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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