Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 02:54:17 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Miguel Gilly <mgilly@bonsai-studio.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD as Webserver (long) Message-ID: <19990709025417.37827@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <199907081506.PAA09942@luna.pingnet.ch>; from Miguel Gilly on Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 05:01:37PM %2B0000 References: <199907081506.PAA09942@luna.pingnet.ch>
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Miguel, thanks for so much well considered input and suggestions. Before everyone leaps up shouting "NO!" I'd like to challenge you to rethink part of it, because with a little shift in orientation it might be taken more seriously. See what you think. On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 05:01:37PM +0000, Miguel Gilly wrote: > 3. Web based configuration for FreeBSD > > To attract more non Unix folks (I had to push myself quite a bit to accept > the challenge of Unix, but I finally saw no alternative to a Unix-based > webserver), a GUI based configuration would be a great thing. This is also > a part where I would be willing and able to contribute. I'm sure such tools would be welcomed, should someone make them available. But you will find considerable resistance to providing a soft GUI option if the _reason_ for it is to attract people without unix skills and/or to let them take on admin responsibilities with too few skills. I have been dabbling with Mac OS X Server, and watched the Rhapsody discussions among Mac people about GUI versus CLI with interest. You would have seen it all too, I'm sure. There was a strong push for disabling the CLI by those who claimed everything could be done with a mouse and that that method would allow someone with little or no networking knowledge to take full responsibility for a server. I've heard of intelligent mice but this goes a little too far IMO :-) Even the Macintosh people were divided, and many of them frustrated the others by being incapable of imagining that a GUI couldn't do everything for them. Some of them cannot conceive of the volume and complexity of knowledge required to run a server properly when they have all of the options that a Unix platform makes available to mere humans. Both sides of that debate were extreme, nobody really listened or offered any slack to the other side, and it got nowhere. Now we have Mac OS X Server, which is basically a BSD UNIX, and all these poor bastards clicking frantically on dialog boxes hunting for missing options that would be just a few keystrokes away if they knew how. Then look at FreeBSD. We're at the opposite end of the spectrum. From its roots FreeBSD has always been a high performance system for high performance geeks by high performance geeks, and it just so happens to do other jobs (like web hosting) well at the same time. Now some people are starting to use FreeBSD as their first Unix, but honestly, we don't have the resources to support them as well as the others do. It is not the nature of FreeBSD that we actively attract those who need very basic hand-holding, though they are quite welcome if they turn up of their own volition knowing what they're in for. For a perspective on the current starting point requirements (my view), see http://www.welearn.com.au/freebsd/slow/ready.html Some people have suggested that those who are going to be busy learning how to use the basic tools and so on should play with Linux for a while first, where they can find a lot of other beginners to learn and experiment with and people with free time to handhold them. When they are ready for prime time, they can switch over to FreeBSD. That view seems rather extreme but it has been well argued. The few (human, voluntary) resources we have are concentrated in areas like development, the most essential documentation, and FreeBSD-specific support. We have more volunteers hoping to make their mark on improvements to FreeBSD in a business context than we have volunteers wanting to teach the fundamental generic skills that most have acquired elsewhere a long time ago. This contrasts sharply with Linux, for example. Is that a bad thing? Yes or no, it has made FreeBSD the system it is today. As someone who came to FreeBSD with few skills and had trouble finding out what to learn and how, I have sympathy with what you are saying. As someone who spends far too much time with Macintosh "technical" people and web designers, what you are saying makes me a little nervous. I hope you can use my comments to help tailor your arguments to be well received, because what you're talking about is a large cultural shift. > A webdesigner is very soon at a point where he considers to buy his > own webserver to have full control over his projects and colocates it > at an ISP. The cost of taking control is having the prerequisite skills. > Now, especially smaller companies don't have always a Unix savvy team > member, so they are tempted to go with one of those popular gadget > operating systems, And justifiably so. You can do a lot with a MacOS web server, and what it _allows_ you to do is only a tiny part of what you can do with something like FreeBSD. In order for busy mouse pushers to achieve what they do with Macintoshes without shooting themselves in the foot, choices are restricted. The philosophy encourages anyone to have a go. A huge amount of development resources go into achieving that aim. FreeBSD is the opposite. It lays on the ammunition and even provides maps with irridescent slippery arrows pointing to the magnetised foot as target. People who have the depth of knowledge and experience to take full control and responsibility can do so without interference from little infantilising pictures demanding that a certain step be taken next. > as they fear the complexity of Unix and expect > high support costs. The complexity and the costs you speak of are real. Some things don't cost money, but their costs are just as great. FreeBSD allows much freedom and doesn't cost money, but it's far from free. From a Macintosh user's perspective, you have to either be prepared to take on what could seem an enormous learning burden, or employ someone to do much of the work for you, and often both. The amount of learning required to set up and run a powerful system like FreeBSD and use all that it has to offer, would exceed the amount of learning they have invested in their primary activity. That's why Macintoshes are so popular, and so different. When you say things like > It would allow Mac users (most webdesigner are) to stay in their > enviroment (Mac Browser) when they access the Unix server, which > gives them a familiar feel and builds up trust to the new system. > This convinces more than any feature list, I guess. you're likely to get a few people nervous... maybe unnecessarily. Would that trust be false trust? It depends on the person and the context. If you're talking about "most web designers" they are less than enfatuated with the technical side, and without a change of aspirations I can't see them coping with a FreeBSD box alone, whatever GUI interfaces were provided. Try reading through something like 'man find' and imagining how you'd put all of that into a dialog box that anyone could use. Sometimes feeling nervous is a good thing, protecting us from dangers that are real or causing us to pull up and take necessary precautions. If we weren't instinctively afraid of snakes, heights, etc there'd be a lot less of us. Oh, maybe that'd be a good thing too :-) You can't make it simple without drastically reducing functionality, or safe without making it as limited as any beginner's Macintosh application. For what you're thinking of that might be OK, especially if there was a commandline person hanging around to do the hard stuff. But where you're going to have trouble is in convincing your typical FreeBSD developer type to spend volunteer hours producing something which has the effect of making FreeBSD do LESS, not more. That's a really hard one to sell around here. > Offering this above mentioned functionality in a free OS would make it a > real no brainer which system to choose, and in a lively and fast growing > market like the Internet, it would help FreeBSD to gain widespread > popularity in the webserver space, which can be considered as prestigious. > > Though the desktop/workstation segment is also interesting, I think this > could be addressed with another specialized package of FreeBSD. Again, a web > based GUI administration as found in certain webservers would help a lot to > break the ice between mainstream users and Unix. HTML is quickly edited and > makes it a really flexible and future proof choice for configurating FreeBSD > (also remotely over any SSL capable browser). I agree with you to a large extent, but you have to be very careful how you propose these things if you want people whose orientation is 180 degrees to your own to really understand what you're saying and run with it. You have to understand their needs and concerns before they will hear yours clearly. > PS: A less controversial and more business friendly mascot wouldn't hurt to > promote FreeBSD (go ahead, hit me ;-) ) [raises barbed tail] Thwack! :-) -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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