Date: Thu, 09 Sep 1999 03:37:53 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <8627.936873473@localhost> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 09 Sep 1999 03:01:58 MDT." <4.2.0.58.19990909020511.0473c730@localhost>
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> I'm not asking for an endorsement; one shouldn't need one to proceed > with the creation and marketing of an open source operating system > distribution. Anyone should be able to take the code and run with > it. I'm glad that you understand that. > This is exactly what concerns me -- and should concern others. The fact > that you are not reaffirming the stated policy of the FreeBSD project -- Oh cripes, you clearly don't understand this, however. What I said, in no uncertain terms, was that I'd try to spike the guns of any effort I felt to be of harm to the project and that's my *personal stance* on this, one which I hold entirely separate from Walnut Creek CDROM and would still hold if I resigned tomorrow and saw a predatory or otherwise harmful 3rd party attempting to do the project harm. Don't you get it? I don't need to be affiliated with Walnut Creek CDROM to diss or "spike" a bad product, and if you and your cronies were to come out with, say, "FreeBSD Ultra L33T CrackOS 10000 - A custom OS specializing in sniffing and penetration of secure networks" well then I doubt you'd get any of us over at FreeBSD central going "wow, this is good stuff, let's help them promote it!" No, what we'd we'd probably be doing is going "Aieee!! Disavow all knowledge! Write angry denouncement!" and I'd be right in there with them, going "aieee!" too. That's what I mean by spiking a product. Now if you don't do nasty, evil things to the project (though your past lack of success in "winning friends and influencing enemies" does make me particularly paranoid where that scenario is concerned) then you've got nothing to worry about, we're not going to ruffle one grey hair on your investor's balding heads. If you do us wrong, however, then we'll go after you with barbeque forks and we don't need to be employed by anyone in particular to do that as FreeBSD project members! Something else to consider is that Walnut Creek CDROM is a business which is also always free to do derived FreeBSD products of its own to make money and help keep the doors open. If you guys start doing something which competes directly with Walnut Creek CDROM's current or planned product line then don't be surprised if they make competetive moves of their own. As an employee of that company, I also may very well help them to do so, and all within the bounds of the BSD license. Just as you can. All of your engineers can hack away on some proprietary or even open-source (with some "understandable lag") solution in an effort to add value to FreeBSD and make your "pro" product more attractive and Walnut Creek CDROM can too (though it's traditionally open-sourced all of its non-DOS tools). I'm not going to give you assurances that Walnut Creek CDROM won't behave like the business that it is, sheesh, that would be nothing less than a lie anyway! - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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