Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 19:35:43 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>, FreeBSD-chat <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Good News! FreeBSD monopoly! (Was: Good News! Commercial Backing For FreeBSD) Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990912192050.04abebc0@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909130430300.11258-100000@s8-37-26.student. washington.edu>
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At 04:58 AM 9/13/99 +0000, Jason C. Wells wrote: >I thought you all might like to hear this. Some of you have pissed an >moaned for the last year about how FreeBSD needs a Red Hat like company to >keep us relevant. For those of you who have voiced this concern this news >is a boon. > >FreeBSD now has a commercial backer. Like Red Hat this company recently >went public and is a strong supporter of open source. They even run the >world busiest FTP server. > >The name of the company is Walnut Creek CDROM! I am sure all of those >people who formerly castigated FreeBSD for not doing enough to attract a >commercial backer will be appeased. Walnut Creek is more than just a "commercial backer" of FreeBSD. It is the owner of the trademark "FreeBSD," which means that -- in theory -- it can prevent anyone else from publishing a distribution of FreeBSD that can say that it's FreeBSD on the label." It employs several of the key developers, thereby possessing considerable leverage over them and the project. It hosts the project's Web site and the "FreeBSD Mall" Web site (the only source of FreeBSD-related products mentioned on the project's Web site.) It is the only distributor of FreeBSD CD-ROMs mentioned on the FreeBSD Web site or in its literature, even though there are others. It's as if Red Hat owned the name "Linux," employed Linus Torvalds and controlled his salary, benefits and bonuses, and could preclude anyone else from doing a OS distribution with "Linux" in the name. In short, Walnut Creek has the ability to monopolize sales of CD-ROMs bearing the name "FreeBSD." There's only one company that's unaffiliated with Walnut Creek that currently ships FreeBSD as a separate product: Cheap Bytes. And WC could shut them down at any time by asserting its ownership of the trademark. They could even sue Cheap Bytes for mistakenly printing, on every CD-ROM, that FreeBSD is a trademark of FreeBSD, Inc. when it is not. >Brett isn't raising good points. Brett is raising Brett's points. The fact that they provoke such a strong response from you suggests that they may be good points indeed. >Nearly all of Brett's messages hail the impending doom of FreeBSD. Not so. I've pointed out, however, that FreeBSD is losing market share and is being crowded out of its niche by Linux. >Brett, being an effective writer, Thank you! >demands the attention of others to bring perspective >to the discussion. People like Jordan end up spending time answering >Brett's criticisms regardless of their merit. Actually, I've tried to communicate with Jordan offline. He responded to my last private e-mail by quoting half of it in a PUBLIC response posted to this list, and did not respond to the rest. >Procmail filters are not the answer. Sure, they protect one from Brett's >lambaste. They don't save FreeBSD from him. FreeBSD is in no danger from me. It MIGHT, however, be endangered by inaction, an overly complacent attitude, or the factors mentioned above which preclude alternative distributions. >I say that Brett's discussion here does FreeBSD harm. I say that it has revealed some nagging problems which are doing FreeBSD harm. You're blaming the messenger. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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