Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 13 Feb 2001 22:01:17 -0800
From:      Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
To:        Seth <seth@psychotic.aberrant.org>
Cc:        Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net>, Andrew Kenneth Milton <akm@mail.theinternet.com.au>, Kent Stewart <kstewart@urx.com>, mij@osdn.com, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Web page suggestion 
Message-ID:  <85731.982130477@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
In-Reply-To: Message from Seth <seth@psychotic.aberrant.org>  of "Tue, 13 Feb 2001 23:04:28 EST." <20010213230428.A70865@psychotic.aberrant.org> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hmmmm.

I think some people here are arguing from such false premises that
it'd be truly impossible to "win" either side of the debate in
FreeBSD's favor.

Sure, there are people who come to FreeBSD with highly unrealistic
expectations which are then shattered, causing grief both to them and
to the people they dump on.  There are also developers with limited
time and journalists doing press evaluations who can't spend all day
learning how to install FreeBSD.  These are valid data points on both
sides of the "easy of use, ease of installation" argument and since
you can't please both sides, the best you can do is please yourself.

I obviously can't speak for what pleases all of you, but some of the
things which please me are those which represent the very best
examples of their art.  A virtual memory subsystem is an intricate and
non-trivial piece of technology which is best evaluated on its
performance and elegance of design, even though that might not be
immediately comprehensible at a glance.  A web page which serves as
the general public "portal" for FreeBSD, on the other hand, should be
evaluated on ease of comprehension and sheer usefulness for the
greatest percentage of its viewing public.  It would obviously be
foolish to judge one objective by the standards of the other, yet I
see that kind of thing all the time.

We need to simply do the best job we can in *every* category and
assume that any problems which might arise as a consequence of doing
too good a job can and will be dealt with when the time comes.  If we
do a bad job at something, it's still a bad job no matter what the
justification and we'll never know just how much better we would have
done had it been done properly.

- Jordan


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?85731.982130477>