Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 08:21:07 -0600 From: Bob Martin <bob@buckhorn.net> To: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 21st Century Unix Message-ID: <38D78553.44D3277D@buckhorn.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003171212060.44719-100000@hub.freebsd.org>
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Kris Kennaway wrote: > > This article gives an (I thought) very balanced evaluation of the > strengths and weaknesses of various UNIX brands including FreeBSD: > > http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/issue/0,4537,2457573,00.html > > Comments, anyone? > > Kris The point of the article, where BSD is concerned, is that with out channel support and 3rd party vendor support, BSD will never make it big. I'm not saying it will go away, but it will move off of the visible map. We need Oracle, Informix and Web Sphere. We need reseller channels, 24/7 support and partnerships with big hardware vendors. I'm counting on the merger for a big part of that. But we are also going to have to be a bit more militant. We need to bombard folks like Sun, Adobe and Corel with polite e-mails requesting BSD support. Every time there is a public benchmark of OS's, we need to insure that BSD is included. We need public exposure, and public scrutiny. Or we need to decide that what we really want is an operating system for hobbyists. What articles like this miss is the fact that major vendor support for Linux is the classic bait and switch. You by an Alpha with Linux. Then you discover that it can't do what you want it to do. Then you buy True64 Unix. The same thing applies to Sun and IBM. Linux is driving their hardware sales up front, and their software sales after the fact. There is an opportunity for BSD here. We need to exploit it. There was a time in the not so distant past when anyone who knew anything about power computing considered BSD the best. Novell's stewardship of USL changed that. The internet has changed that again. This article clearly states that BSD is the OS of choice for today's web servers. But today's web servers are tomorrow's communication and application servers. The commercial Unices are ready. BSD and Linux are not. Linux has the tools, but they're a long way from having the OS. We have the OS, but not the tools. We need to change that while we can. Bob -- "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein -- "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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