Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 21:42:55 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jan B. Koum " <jkb@best.com> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Advocates, speak up! (re: just something to say) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980703213823.8899B-100000@shell6.ba.best.com> In-Reply-To: <199807040359.VAA02226@softweyr.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Here is my list of companies which would appeal to suit wearing droids. Lets add to it and make it biger: www.yahoo.com www.hotmail.com www.ebay.com www.best.com www.whistle.com www.pluris.com www.linkexchange.com If you have a 4 cpu PPro SMP machine with 1Gig of RAM sittig on the T3 serving a lot of traffic it won't make it on the list. We need companies which actually make money.. and A LOT of money (Yahoo, best, etc) from using FreeBSD. -- Yan Jan Koum jkb@best.com | "Turn up the lights; I don't want www.FreeBSD.org -- The Power to Serve | to go home in the dark." ---------------------------------------+----------------------------------- ICMP: What happens when you hack into a military network and they catch you. On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Wes Peters wrote: >My hidden microphone recorded Jan B. Koum (jkb@best.com) saying: > >% >% Hi all, >% >% I just wanted to say something here since this list has been quite >% lately. Basically, many of you already know this, but anyway. >% Whenever I have to convince someone who is not very technical why >% they should use FreeBSD, I usually try not to bore them with how great our >% vm is, or why is it better to have centralized and hence better controlled >% code. I usually tell people something like this: >% "Look, here is an example: yahoo. Their stock is skyrocketing and >% they are doing excellent. Yes, they are using FreeBSD. They have in house >% support for it, but still, they must know what they are doing - their >% whole operation is FreeBSD based. Another example is Hotmail. Even though >% they got bought by MS, they are still using FreeBSD on the front end to >% run their servers since NT couldn't' handle the load. Want another >% example? Take a look at Best Internet -- they jut filed for IPO". >% Something in the lines of the above paragraph usually gets a >% message through to the suits that to have successful company you don't >% need NT or Solaris. You just need to have people with a clue. But that is >% another subject. > >Frank Pawlak called me yesterday to chat about what is happening, and >what isn't, in FreeBSD-Advocacy. As we talked, we decided success >stories like the above are *exactly* what we need to convince business >people (i.e. "suits") that FreeBSD is a suitable choice for *their* >business. > >Managers may not be the smartest people in the world -- if they were, >they'd be kernel VM developers -- but they are extremely risk averse. >In other words, they don't want to stick their necks out. In order >for them to say yes to using FreeBSD, they want to see two things: > >1) A business case. How will using FreeBSD improve their bottom line, > versus say NT or Linux on a server, or Linux, VxWorks, QNX, LynxOS, > etc. in an embedded system? > >2) A success story (or 20). They want to make sure they're NOT breaking > new ground; that is "risk taking," which is severely punished in most > (US, at least) companies. > >Frank and I agreed that an outline for a prototypical success story would >be helpful to this group, and an EXAMPLE success story would be even more >helpful. Since I volunteered to write one a while ago, he *encouraged* >me to get on with it. ;^) > >I'll be doing that this weekend, as long as my life doesn't intrude. >(See below). > >Please, folks, if you have any contributions to make in this discussion, >hop in now. Take the initiative like Frank did - find another Advocate, >or someone who should be an Advocate, call him or her on the phone, send >direct email. > >% Anyway, happy 4th to those who celebrate (I don't, I just enjoy >% the day off) and lets make some noise on this list. > >*I* spent the afternoon riding a steam train with my family, including my >two-year-old daughter, who walked up and down the train several times going "choo >choo choo." She charmed the other passengers nearly as much as she charmed >me; they would make whistle sounds "woo woo" as we passed. We also got to >meet Karl Malone, of the Utah Jazz NBA (pro basketball) team; he had rented >the caboose for a family outing. > >We learned a bit of American history, too: the rail route for this train, >through Provo Canyon in north-central Utah, was first surveyed by the US Army >Corps of Engineers as a possible route for the transcontinental railroad in >1839, by a young engineering officer named Jefferson Davis. Mr. Davis was >later the first (and only) president of the Confederate States of America, >near whose capitol I was born, as was my father and older brother. > >Happy Birthday, America! > >-- > "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" > >Wes Peters Softweyr LLC >http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.96.980703213823.8899B-100000>