Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 23:56:46 -0400 From: "Francisco Reyes" <reyesf@newsguy.com> To: "freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Garance A Drosihn" <drosih@rpi.edu> Subject: Re: Suggestion for new list Message-ID: <199809020356.UAA21587@newsguy.com>
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On Tue, 1 Sep 1998 16:26:16 -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote: >Francisco said: >>> The way I suggest it would be to have a handfull of handpicked >>> people have access to the list (i.e. Dough White, Greg Lehey, >>> Jordan....) and to only allow questions from reviewers/editors/ >>> article writers. >>> >>> Thoughts? comments? > >On the other hand, in some sense that >results in a "false review" of freebsd. They would be reviewing >"freebsd with special access to top-notch help", while other users >would read the reviews and then have to settle for "freebsd with >generic help". Which will put us at the same level as most companies. I think it is fair. :-) On a more serious note.... This is fairly common practice to offer the press special services. Nowhere is this more notieable than when you go to a trade conference. There are all kind of activities/info which is only available to the press >It also seems to me that the people *you* are selecting to be the >"handful of handpicked people" might be better used elsewhere, For starters the names I mentioned were examples. Secondly there is a catch 22 in picking people who are not as good as those I mentioned. What good is to have this special service for reporters and then have them get worse replies than if they had posted to questions directly. Notice I mentioned that for anyone already helping users in the questions list this would not amount to much. It is not like we have press members coming everyday to evaluate FreeBSD. >as on programming projects... Given that the freebsd project is >something of a cooperative-volunteer effort, it always seems a bit >weird to me when one person "volunteers" someone else for some duty. Nobody can "volunteer" someone else. One can mention someone else's name as a "good candidate", but it is 100% up to that person to do it or not. >I'm sure that if *you* want to volunteer to be a front-line contact >for press-people, then you would be making a valuable contribution >to the freebsd project... I asked Jordan to put me on the press alias. This will not do as much good as if someone more familiar with FreeBSD joined. Intent is never a replacement for ability. >Personally, I think this gets back to an issue which has been >mentioned before, in that the FreeBSD project needs some sort >of support organizations. Some business which makes it's living >by providing support to other companies (ISP's, whatever) which >are using freebsd. A lot more easier said than done. The best people to do such things would be the people who, as you put it, are better serving the project by working on FreeBSD. That leaves people who are less familiar with FreeBSD running such enterprise. Companies are not very forgiving of paying for bad support Also setting up a support organizations is not easy. You need people who are both technically able and that have good communication skills. Then you have the method of communication factor. Online support already exists so a company would likely prefer to pay for voice support. Once you talk about voice support there is the issue of calls/support person and waiting time........ I could go on and on about all the problems about setting up such organization.... Every time I have thought about the idea I thought that online support is probably the best way to get such endeavor going. I am really not sure how willing would a company be these days to pay for online support when they can get it for free. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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