Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 12:34:58 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Bacarella <mbac@nyct.net> To: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD dead? Well, not in theory... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.10003101221280.8530-100000@bsd1.nyct.net> In-Reply-To: <200003101712.MAA12621@etinc.com>
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> >What are their alternatives? Think about how the world is waking up to > >Open Source. Think about how companies are realizing that a small group > >of paid engineers simply can't keep up with a world-wide organization of > >contributors. What would you do if you didn't feel you could keep up? > > They dont have to keep up. They just have to add some bells and whistles > and package it (ala RedHat), which is probably what BSDI plans to do. They > just want to get in on the Open Source Mania....they see RedHat drawing all > that money with no real product....... Red Hat contributes more than "bells and whistles" to Linux. They also pay many developers to work on Linux fulltime. They are certainly not Linux in it's entirety, but I see no reason to demean what they do. > >If BSD Inc. were to "buy out" FreeBSD with the sole purpose of reducing > >competition, they'd be a bunch of idiots. The volunteers that make > >FreeBSD great now would move on to something else and _that_ would soon > >become the new threat. > > They can't stop a branch from forming...the question is who will run the > branch? Or worse, if someone just forked FreeBSD right now in protest of the merge. > >I think that there is only cause for concern if the folks at BSD Inc. > >are a bunch of idiots. Thus, I'm not concerned. ;-) > BSDI is a very poorly run company and the principals are the same. They > have good engineers and terrible management. They've completely missed the > boat all along, they have been trying to compete with Microsoft instead of > Linux, which is a terrible mistake. ..I dont see any change that will make > things any different. Their new CEO is an old world guy who's been there a > long time...he's not an internet guy and not likely to do anything > spectacular. Hes been their director of marketing through their market > share freefall, so why will he do better as CEO? I think that FreeBSD has hurt them far more than Linux has. People who are in the BSD arena have probably already dismissed Linux for whatever reasons, and when their choices are FreeBSD or BSD/OS.. A BSDI represenative tried for days to convince me over the phone why I should pay for BSD/OS even though FreeBSD was free, or at least a CD order away, and FreeBSD even has source code. I asked about why we should buy a product that we don't have the source code to, and he simply said "because the (cr)hackers don't have our code." Yes. Although their marketing is terrible, competing against FreeBSD when your product is like FreeBSD, but costs more money, and does not come with source... you can't expect them to keep that up. > They've been buying full page ads for years and BSD is far from a household > word. Unfortunately, as much as I like freebsd, FreeBSD isnt the answer. > People want linux. Its a toy, and people like toys. Cram it. -MB To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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