Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 16:43:10 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sorry, I just couldn't let this go by... Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990901152642.047b0250@localhost> In-Reply-To: <804.936177954@localhost>
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At 02:25 AM 9/1/99 -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: >1. Anyone looking at that first counter will be quickly struck by how, > well, essentially lame it is - especially as it has one of the more > unusual definitions of "BSD Family" I've ever seen. The definition of "BSD Family" follows from the results returned by queso, the program used to do the survey. They could have used nmap, but nmap soaks up much more bandwidth. > I also don't > see how they calculate their own stats since if you look at the numbers > they've posted, on 01/99 the "BSD Family" had 150961 entries and on > 04/99 they had 186385 entries. This is a decline? In market share. Look at the numbers. > Even so, their > on stats engine also claims that its ability to "recognise" BSD > OSes by whatever odd heuristic it uses has gone down between 1/99 > and 4/99, making the numbers even less credible. The heuristic wasn't that odd. It's just that it was catching systems with BSD-based TCP/IP stacks -- OS/2 systems, for example. Fortunately, there are so few OS/2 systems on the Net as to make this a minor problem. >2. Elvis is, according to the National Enquirer, still alive and > employed as a night manager at the EZ-Rest Truck Stop and Live > Snake Show just 27 miles outside of Tempke, Arizona. Does this > make it so? Probably not. Straw man argument. > Is the notoriously well clued-in > Gartner Group's (NOT) claim that Linux is the only non-Microsoft OS > to gain marketshare any more credible? Yes. They're paid big bucks and are in a fiercely competitive market where customers demand accuracy. >Again, I seriously doubt > it and the numbers just don't support them. We ARE gaining market > share No. The installed base appears to be growing, slowly. But an increase in numbers does not necessarily indicate an increase in market share. Even David G., whose projections of FreeBSD's growth seem to me to be overly optimistic, admits that the gap between Linux and FreeBSD is growing. On April 15th of this year, he wrote: >FreeBSD has in the past and continues >to grow at nearly the _exact_ same exponential growth curve that Linux has; >we're just about 2 years behind them and considering that they actually started >two years before FreeBSD was formed, this should come as no surprise. It's >definately not an even playing field and Linux clearly has a time advantage. I disagree with David's contention that FreeBSD is growing at "the same exponential growth rate that Linux has," but let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this is the case. If the growth factor for both is g, then each will have g times the installed base than it did the year before. Now, it doesn't take a mathematician to realize that, in David's model, the GAP between the sizes of the user bases also grows by a factor of g every year. In fact, the larger g is, the more Linux pulls ahead. Simple math. What's more, if you assume that the total number of users of ALL OSes is increasing at a uniform rate, FreeBSD's market share MUST decline relative to that of Linux. Why? Because, having fewer users, its market share is impacted more by the user bases of other OSes. And this is using David's assumptions and figures, which are not based on scientifically sampled data and are likely to be overoptimistic. The large and exponentially growing gap between FreeBSD and Linux is a serious problem. >This "rebuttal" to David's comments makes me doubt your own >credibility even more, if such is possible, and I am frankly both >worried and curious that you could even be talking about "advocating >FreeBSD" effectively when all you ever seem to do in public is slam >it. No, Jordan, I do not "slam" FreeBSD or BSD UNIX in general, and you should not attempt to discredit me by making this false claim. I do carefully critique the way in which BSD UNIX in general is being marketed, promoted, and evangelized. > This is an example of the kind of "boosterism" you want us all to >get behind? Boy, with "positive role-models" like you, who needs >enemies? Advocacy is more than just being a "booster" or shouting "Rah! Rah!" on the sidelines. It also involves identifying problems and solving them. It seems as if some of the members of this list would rather shoot the messenger than deal with FreeBSD's problems in the area of marketing and evangelism. Recognition of the problem -- which even according to David's numbers is growing exponentially -- is necessary before right action can be taken. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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