Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 12:02:01 -0500 From: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfgiffun@bachue.usc.unal.edu.co> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD and memetics Message-ID: <3720A787.F28644B8@bachue.usc.unal.edu.co> References: <51207.924838293@zippy.cdrom.com>
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In another attempt to confuse you all:
As some people already said, the free software "market" isn't ruled by the
same laws the commercial software is. Unless someone shows me a URL in the
FreeBSD handbook that says otherwise, the objective behind free software
development is not to make profit, so I am not really worried about those
comments about "who has a bigger market share".
OS/2 was always better than Windows, and they lost: one more case where the
fittest doesn't survive, so what? free software is different, FreeBSD will
survive because it doesn't depend on revenue.
It is also clear, when we speak about commercial vs. free software, that
Darwin's theory of "the survival of the fittest" has long ago been
revaluated: only species that cooperate will survive, and it's also very
common, in this context, that the weakest survive. What would be your
reaction if you find a restaurant cooks sick animals because "they were the
weakest so they deserve to die first" ?... the predator always attacks the
fittest victim.
Linux is tied by the GPL: they are *forced* to cooperate. We can take a
look at the sources of everything they develop and do it better. Since
ideas are not copyrighted, the GPL is difficult to enforce in practice: I
am not a lawyer but there is no real reason why one can't just "read" the
Linux code and reimplement it commercially, it would probably be against
the US constitution not to be able to express freely because other people
had the same idea first.
I might be the first one to voice this but, I don't have anything personal
against Microsoft. *If* they had good products, *if* they added real value
I would be a happy costumer. Of course, most of us have sufficient
experience to know they don't. Even hotmail knows that NT can't compete
with FreeBSD: the real competitor is Linux.
Linux might work better as a workstation today, but we use the same
windowing system, and their source code is available, so I don't see a real
reason to say the workstation market will better served by Linux than by
FreeBSD. The greatest limitation I see in FreeBSD, is the low capacity to
respond that we currently have, let's admit it; our mail lists, developers,
supporters, etc. simply don't have the capacity to handle all the users
that Linux has today. We are growing very fast, but if we had, let say, 5
times more users, the amount of noise in the lists would make the system
unmanageable. If someone thinks that we can handle 5 times more users,
please explain why there are so many open PRs, and uncommitted ports.
What I do see, is that if we wanted to play the traditional marketing game,
if having more users is important for FreeBSD, we have to attack Linux! In
fact competing against Linux directly would be good for Linux, because they
may end up improving their quality, and will also harm Microsoft because
having two choices will take them out of the scene (in theory). But once
again, is it important to have more users? How can we handle them when we
get them? More books might help, but I am basicly expeculating here...Also
take into account that once we have more users, it will be increasingly
difficult to do big changes on the OS, some people depend on FreeBSD's
stability, and on maintaining the old features and general compatibility.
Even now, this is already an issue
It's just IMHO, but I think the speed of FreeBSD's growth is fine: if we
try a faster rate we might drown. I also think Linux will have problems;
what we have to work on is covering the deficiencies that they have, so
that we are still an option when they sink.
Pedro.
Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > This is misguided. It is that which does not reproduce which whithers
> > and dies because the resources are consumed by stronger competitors in
> > the ecosystem. Memes must replicate or be overwhelmed and die.
>
> This is a very limited viewpoint, to say the least, as it presumes
> that Linux is somehow "poaching" from FreeBSD's potential mindshare.
> Nothing could be further from the truth, as both the realities of this
> market and our growth patterns over the last 3 years indicate.
>
> First off, as I've said before, when any MIS manager makes an OS
> decision which is not FreeBSD (or *BSD), he's going to take one of the
> following options:
>
> 1. NT
> 2. Solaris/AIX/some other commercial Unix
> 3. Linux
>
> (we'll discount OS/2 and Novell as effective players right now).
>
> If he choses option #1, he's almost certainly lost to us since even if
> things utterly fails to work, he has a very big target (Microsoft) to
> pin the blame one and, to modify an old saying somewhat, "nobody ever
> got fired for buying Microsoft." It's also a decision which is
> usually difficult to back away from for various political reasons in
> the workplace. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm simply saying
> that it's been rare in my experience.
>
> If he chooses option #2, it's likely that he's accepted the gospel of
> Unix into his heart (which is good) but also chose the commercial
> alternative for reasons of applications base or support, neither of
> which we can compete with in any reasonable way (and it does no good
> saying that we *should* be able to, that's the situation we still have
> to live with *right now*).
>
> If he chooses option #3, that's the easiest "upsell" possible for us
> since he's clearly accepted both Unix and the open source idea into
> his heart and can deal with all the support and commercial application
> shortcomings of that platform. If we can get him to give FreeBSD a
> taste test, we stand a very good chance of "making a sale", at least a
> far better chance than with options 1 or 2, and every customer which
> Linux attracts away from options 1 and 2 is a customer which is that
> much closer (far closer) to us.
>
> Second, with regard to "poaching", this market is expanding rather
> explosively at the moment and even the most conservative estimates
> place FreeBSD's growth at between 30-40% a year. That's a damn fine
> growth rate and I find it hard to believe that Linux is "hurting" us
> more than it's helping us (see above) given numbers like these. I
> talk to a lot of customers in the field, probably more than most
> anyone on this list does, and it's a very rare experience where I hear
> a customer say that they switched from FreeBSD to Linux or chose Linux
> over FreeBSD based on an evaluation of technical merit. We're just
> not competing in the same market space nor COULD we realistically
> compete there since it has nothing to do with PR, it has to do with
> our respective feature sets or lack thereof.
>
> Linux is currently the darling of the desktop set and that has nothing
> to do with what I may or may not have said about FreeBSD and the
> desktop, it has to do with our weak audio, PCCARD and general
> multimedia support. These are all things which I've gone far out of
> my way to try and drum up enthusiasm for and we just don't have the
> resources to match Linux here. I'm sure Brett will say this all stems
> from my attitude towards the desktop, or something, but that's a
> supposition which complete ignores history and the fact that I've been
> issuing calls for volunteers for YEARS in these areas, sponsored an X
> Desktop Theme contest which failed due to utter lack of interest, and
> have been practically crying for someone to own the Audio and/or
> PCCARD development for FreeBSD, all long before I ever uttered word
> one about our strategy for the desktop vs the server.
>
> Our slogan used to be "turning PCs into workstations", for god's sake,
> and I did my very best to deliver on that slogan but the resources to
> back up the slogan just weren't there. I can't write an audio
> subsystem by myself, nor can I support all the laptops in existence,
> and so I evolved the attitude I have today out of sheer necessity. I
> learned the hard way that you can write all the impassioned diatribes
> you like about how winning the desktop is just a matter of attracting
> enough users through better PR which will all lead back full-circle to
> a good desktop presence and lots of multimedia bells and whistles, but
> impassioned diatribes do not make it so and they don't win you back
> the several year's worth of advantage your competitors have gained on
> the desktop in the meantime.
>
> Like it or not, FreeBSD has simply evolved in a different direction
> and even minor course corrections won't be brought about through
> "impassioned advocacy" on the chat list, they'll be brought about by
> the one component that's been missing from the VERY BEGINNING here:
> The technical features which make FreeBSD on the desktop an attractive
> proposition when stacked against its competition.
>
> Claiming that the FreeBSD community would just be unreceptive to your
> efforts is also mere sophistry and a fine justification for not doing
> any of the necessary work while still retaining your rock-thrower's
> permit and it's nothing more than that. Sadly, a lot of people still
> haven't learned from what should have been 6 years' worth of hard-won
> experience by now and still think that simply shaking your fist at the
> sea will result in tangible progress. It doesn't. If you want to see
> FreeBSD be more popular or be a better solution to your problem set of
> choice, don't even bother making weak excuses about how this Just
> Isn't Wanted or the Evil Jordan will certainly impede your efforts
> through his meglomaniacal tendencies because at the end of the day,
> that's all they are - weak excuses.
>
> - Jordan
>
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