From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jul 23 17:30:43 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5A5716A4DF for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:30:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@hub.org) Received: from hub.org (hub.org [200.46.204.220]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73E6F43D53 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:30:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd@hub.org) Received: from localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 650FE291B32 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:35 -0300 (ADT) Received: from hub.org ([200.46.204.220]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 05611-01 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:36 -0300 (ADT) Received: from ganymede.hub.org (blk-224-179-167.eastlink.ca [24.224.179.167]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61507291B2E for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:34 -0300 (ADT) Received: by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix, from userid 1027) id 903C15CDCF; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:35 -0300 (ADT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F74933DF1 for ; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:35 -0300 (ADT) Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:30:35 -0300 (ADT) From: User Freebsd To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20060723142832.H1799@ganymede.hub.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: What sort of market does FreeBSD provide ... ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:30:44 -0000 On various lists, there is talk about how to we make hardware vendors sit up and take more notice of us ... alot of the negative responses seem to be 'we are too small of a group', but, of course, nobody out there can really give any even *reasonable* numbers of desktops and servers deployed with FreeBSD ... What I'd love to see is a *project initiated* (or FreeBSD Foundation) FreeBSD reporting mechanism similar to: http://www.mreriksson.net/uptimes/myuptimes Something just for FreeBSD users (well, all *BSD users should be invited, as I'd hope stuff like drivers are at least *semi* cross-shareable) ... uptime not being the really big thing here, but stuff like version of FreeBSD being run, country being run in, maybe have it parse dmesg on startup and report devices in use, etc ... Come up with reports like # of hosts using fxp vs em devices, etc ... although it may be a bit more difficult, I don't know, but report on specific hardware being used ... Statistics that either Core, or the FreeBSD Foundation, can use to show vendors they are talking to about what is currently in use ... but also to show developers themselves what device drivers are actually in use, that sort of thing ... Nothing that I'd think would be 'sensitive information', but information that would be useful from either a marketing, or support, point of view ... And market / promote it ... Basically, unless I'm mistaken, right now we have *nothing* to base numbers on, except maybe the netcraft report(s)? ... but, that only includes hosts running web servers ... how many are running firewalls? desktops? mail servers? etc ... We need to show vendors we aren't some "hobbiest group", and towards that end, producing some sort of up to date #s would really help, I would think ... show them we are a market worth looking at ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email . scrappy@hub.org MSN . scrappy@hub.org Yahoo . yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ . 7615664