Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 16:26:16 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: aiarbuckle@naxs.com, reyesf@newsguy.com, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Suggestion for new list Message-ID: <v04011709b212048e02be@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <19980901180213687.AAA194@aiarbuckle.naxs.com>
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Francisco Reyes <reyesf@newsguy.com> wrote: >> How about a new list specially for the press. I think questions is >> great for general purpose, but we may get better exposure if we are >> able to help reporters/reviewers to install the software with the >> least problems possible. Andrew I. Arbuckle replied: > Is this to imply that you do not want to offer assistance to others > interested in trying FreeBSD? That's not the way I would take Francisco's proposal. He's creating a new list, in addition to things like freebsd-questions. Non-press people would still have access to all the help they currently have access too, there would just be extra help for press-related people. Francisco also 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? I have mixed feelings about this idea. I can understand that it probably would help freebsd to make sure press-people don't trip up over something simple. 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". It also seems to me that the people *you* are selecting to be the "handful of handpicked people" might be better used elsewhere, such 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. 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... 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. *That* organization would be a natural for providing support to press-people. I'm not enough of a business person to create such a company, but I think freebsd is growing to the point were such companies might profitably exist. Note that if such a company did exist, and did provide special (but free) support for press-people, then that would avoid the problem I mentioned earlier. Non-press people would still have access to the "top-notch help", if they wanted to pay a little to get that help. --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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