Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 12:54:51 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> To: Paul Robinson <wigstah@akitanet.co.uk>, Jay Nelson <noslenj@swbell.net> Cc: Eric Wayte <ewayte@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What result would *you* like from the merger? Message-ID: <v0422080eb4f3d5cc904a@[195.238.1.121]> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003141156080.53999-100000@jake.akitanet.co.uk> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0003141156080.53999-100000@jake.akitanet.co.uk>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
At 12:17 PM +0000 2000/3/14, Paul Robinson wrote:
> I can argue with you as to whether 'Linux hasn't made it', because as much
> as it hurts to say it, it has. There are certainly more Linux boxes out
> there then there are FreeBSD boxes, but that's a marketing issue.
Not that much more.
> What I would say though is that if nobody uses an OS, nobody will develop
> for it (seen any announcements from Sun on their Plan 9 efforts
> recently?), and this can stifle things. As a market share, FreeBSD is
> a lot smaller than Linux, which is a big factor when the marketing guys
> are helping with the resourcing....
FreeBSD isn't that much smaller than Linux. It's just been a lot
quieter so far.
The estimates that Jordan mentioned at the NLFUG meeting are that
there are about 10 million Linux users worldwide (which he quoted
from some Linux source), but that there are about two million FreeBSD
users world-wide.
And this doesn't count the number of customers that use
ftp.{cdrom|freesoftware}.com, Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, etc... or that
have embedded FreeBSD products such as the IBM/Whistle
InterJet/InterJet II, GnatBox, Stallion ePipe, NetWolves FoxBox, and
this doesn't *begin* to count the number of people who are using
embedded BSD (non-FreeBSD) products such as the Ascend Pipeline
series of Ethernet/ISDN routers or other products using the BSDI
Embedded Systems Technology (see
<http://www.bsdi.com/products/eBSD/>).
--
These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
======================================================================
Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV
Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124
Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49 || B-1140 Brussels
http://www.skynet.be || Belgium
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?v0422080eb4f3d5cc904a>