Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 08:51:50 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Targeting the server: Not such a good idea? Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19991008083634.044de740@localhost>
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Yesterday, I was speaking over dinner with a fellow who does MIS for the government of a large and populous state. I talked to him about my deployment of Berkeley UNIX at client sites, and happened to mention that, currently, FreeBSD is being targeted primarily if not exclusively at the server market. He made some interesting points about what happens when one attempts to position an operating system as being exclusively for use on a server. I asked him if I could paraphrase his remarks online, and he agreed. Here's what he said, based on my scribblings. "Targeting the server only is a death wish. Novell tried, and they're being beaten bloody by NT. Banyan tried -- they even used UNIX -- and never became popular in the first place even though they were years ahead of everyone. Microsoft even failed with LAN Manager. FreeBSD will fail at this too; everyone will go to Linux whether it's better or not. "The trouble is that no one wants to have separate training, separate software, separate configuration, or separate experts for the server. Companies are tired of paying a CNE 'guru' big bucks to fix NetWare and then keeping a whole separate staff around to support DOS and Windows. And they want their workstations to act like servers: fast, efficient, and rock solid. They don't want to see these traits limited to the server! The operating system that everybody wants will run on everything, maybe with a few tweaks for what it's doing, and will be reliable, fast, and secure everywhere. And if you know how to fix the desktop machine, you will be able to work on the server too. NT would have taken over the world by now if it weren't so insecure. It took over my organization just because Microsoft *promised* that it would run on both the server and the desktop. The OS graveyard is littered with the bones of OSes that wanted to be server-only. If FreeBSD is going to make itself look like it's only for servers, the same thing will happen to it." Comments? --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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