Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 20:32:31 -0600 From: "Josh Paetzel" <jpaetzel@hutchtel.net> To: "Seth" <seth@psychotic.aberrant.org>, "Jordan Hubbard" <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: "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: <007301c096f7$a181c9e0$6100000a@vladsempire.net> References: <85731.982130477@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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----- Original Message ----- 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 12:01 AM Subject: Re: Web page suggestion > 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. > Not arguing, just stating my opinion, which was asked for, IIRC. > 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 guess my point is that there are a lot of things that we could be working on. The question then becomes, what should we work on? This is a volunteer project, and everyone who helps out, whether on the doc project, on the -questions mailing list, or writing kernel code does this out of their own generosity. Keeping that in mind, I don't think that anyone is in a position to really tell a volunteer what to do. You take what you can get, and let people contribute where their strengths are. I guess I was looking deeper at the question than just, "Should we alter the webpage to make it easier for people to get to the installation instructions?" I started thinking about what direction the SS FreeBSD heading. Are we ready to try and make FreeBSD available to the masses? Do we have the support infrastructure in place? Personally, I don't know if we do. To bring up an old topic that has been kicked around for at least a year or two, and possibly longer, let's use the "graphical installer" as an example. We have talked about having a GUI installer for a long time, but that's all that it's ever been. Talk. If ease of use has become a priority, I guess I would like to know about it. That's all. Personally, I would rather not redirect effort from the current projects to "ease of use" issues. From my standpoint as a user, I don't really care if the media knows what FreeBSD is and I don't care if my 95 year old deaf and blind Grandma can't install it. I am anxious to have a 5.0-STABLE machine, though. I've got a bunch of SMP boxes here that are just crying for it. Sorry if I read more into the question than was there. Josh > 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
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