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To: joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu
cc: molter@logic.it, adrian@obiwan.psinet.net.au, vas@vas.tomsk.su,
        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: To UNIX or not to UNIX ;-). Was: PPP problems. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 15 Jun 1997 19:21:13 EDT."
             <199706152321.TAA14966@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu> 
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:05:24 -0700
Message-ID: <8841.866419524@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> * Goals (roughly by importance)
> [ some points, many of which have been covered in previous discussion ]

This is all well and good, and we've been here before several times
over the years, but who is going to do the work?  Who is going to
write all this nifty GUI stuff which takes over the job done by all of
Windows' nifty GUI stuff for installing and configuring the system?

You? :-)

Seriously, we've come to this stage not once but several times, and if
we've proven anything by the exercise it's that everyone knows just
what UNIX needs to succeed, but when it comes down to "OK, so who will
champion this?  Who will code up a cohesive framework for others to
follow?" those with the biggest ideas all retreat back into their
corners mumbling things about lacking either time or skill.

What stops FreeBSD from being the next NeXTStep is not a crisis of
ideas, it's a crisis of coders.  Somebody needs to *build* the better
mousetrap before people will come - simply describing the mousetrap to
your audience and telling everyone how good it would be/is going to be
someday is the same mistake that Apple made.  What made NeXT popular
is that they understood the need for outright deeds, not words! :)

					Jordan