From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Mar 3 14:34:57 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from peach.ocn.ne.jp (peach.ocn.ne.jp [210.145.254.87]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A03314FBC; Wed, 3 Mar 1999 14:34:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dcs@newsguy.com) Received: from newsguy.com by peach.ocn.ne.jp (8.9.1a/OCN) id HAA01900; Thu, 4 Mar 1999 07:34:17 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <36DDAD74.33EF597A@newsguy.com> Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 06:45:24 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: pt-BR,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Louis Bertrand Cc: Jim Mock , eT , FreeBSD Chat , FreeBSD Advocacy Subject: Re: what's in a name? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Louis Bertrand wrote: > > > Eh? How does Linux sound more user-friendly? > > > > 1) Because it's associated with a real person's name, whose hype as a > philantropic boy-genius from Finland catches the attention of non-techies > (may it's that Mozart thing...). I'm not running Linus down -- he is > articulate and media-savvy and has a lot to do with the success of Linux. > > But if you changed the name of FreeBSD to Jordan, you'd get in > trouble with Nike. > > 2) Because a name is one of the hardest things to remember about a person > -- it's an arbitrary choice by parents, and not tied back to a physical > characteristic. Hence you try to make the name representative and > associated with mnemonic clues (Linux -> Linus) A big no-no in marketing > is using initials (IBM is big > enough to get away with it -- a freenix OS isn't). Try explaining BSD to a > non-techie, then quiz him/her the next day. If they even remember the > name, you'll get DBS, BBS, BSB... Hence you use something that evokes a > warm fuzzy response and you're more likely to be remembered. Media scribes > are like the rest of us: over-worked and underpaid. You need to catch > their attention. Well, since FreeBSD is not changing it's name, I think we won't know the answer until Mr. Lambert finally releases TerryBSD. ;-) -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "FreeBSD is Yoda, Linux is Luke Skywalker." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message