Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 21:47:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Pat Lynch <lynch@rush.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, jgrosch@MooseRiver.com, jmutter@netwalk.com, "Viren R. Shah" <viren@rstcorp.com>, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: PCWeek article by Anne Chen -- Comments Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905052132560.995-100000@bytor.rush.net> In-Reply-To: <37794.925940364@zippy.cdrom.com>
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I've taken the side of the "grassroots" evangelism that seems to work very
well. I'm steering students who are complaining about thier RedHat
installations towards FreeBSD , one even said, "I like Salckware better
than Redhat, Redhat just screwed my machine up", and I said "If you like
Slackware and are familiar with it, try FreeBSD, its more stable, and its
probably what you are looking for."
The student now loves FreeBSD, I have other students willing to work on a
common driver model (bus spacing) for FreeBSD/NetBSD (one professor here
is a NetBSD fanatic, it was easy to get students credits for this one)
I feel that for us to get overactive about Marketing that it would be a
downfall, we had this discussion on #unix today. I would rather be
informative than make a buzzword out of "FreeBSD", and I take every chance
to let people know about FreeBSD.
I'm even prepared to come early to Monterey to help with the terminal room
setup because I know its an important part of FreeBSD getting some
exposure. We have more users now than we've ever had, so how can you say
that our marketing strategy is failing miserably? (Brett?)
Some of us are more fanatic about FreeBSD than you think, but fanatic in a
different way, we don;t beat people over the head with it. We wear it, we
use it, we speak about it, we are proud of it. The people ask, and we
explain it. It works.
I personally applaud Jordan, we've met on a couple of occasions, one very
recently, and we've talked a bit on IRC.
Brett, I'm not saying your ideas are all wrong, but insulting people is
not the way to get people to listen to you. Your eposts on memes were very
good, and when you present things that way, you make alot of sense. In
fact, even though I don't particularly like what you say half the time, I
have respect for your beliefs, doesn;t mean I agree with them all the
time.
Anyway I'm tired and repeating myself. I think credit should be given
where credit is due. You also have to understand that FreeBSD has done
well with calm marketing rather than rabid supporters beating people over
the head with a penguin. You can't stand the linux people so much, and you
hate Stallman's ideas, yet you are willing to resort to the same methods
they use to market themselves.
anyway, good night, I have to finish reading my mail. -Pat
___________________________________________________________________________
Pat Lynch lynch@rush.net
Systems Administrator Rush Networking
"Wow, everyone looks different in Real Life (tm)"-
Nathan Dorfman meeting people at FUNY
"Suicide is painless, switching to NT isn't."-
Unknown
___________________________________________________________________________
On Wed, 5 May 1999, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > Doing a better job would take a great deal of time and effort. If I could
> > arrange, somehow, to generate enough of an income stream from it, I'd do
> > it.
>
> Sorry, that's a cop-out attitude and it's like saying "I'd like to
> learn to climb, but I lack the funds to ascend Everest." You don't
> have to go for the #1 difficulty challenge right away and, in fact,
> it's almost always foolhardy to try and start hammering in the big end
> of the wedge. Pick something small and start from there, as many fine
> efforts have been started. You think the folks who created
> freebsdzine, daemonnews, the freebsd diary, freebsdrocks and many
> other fine (and effective) advocacy sites got paid money for it? You
> think it takes a personal fortune in the bank to write an effective
> magazine article? If you think either of those things then there are
> a number of people on this list who will jump to be the first to
> correct the misconception.
>
> And I don't want to hear anything about how these things would be nice
> but "they don't address the bigger picture" - you address the bigger
> picture by addressing many smaller pictures until you've gained the
> experience and the momentum necessary to tackle the big one.
>
> There are so few people who are both highly vocal AND who are leading
> by example, however, that I don't see critical mass as being anywhere
> close and it's not a leadership problem so much as a dysfunctional
> workforce problem. A lot of people *complain* about how bad advocacy
> is but very few actual do anything concrete about it, or even worse
> (Brett) they somehow come to the conclusion that bashing the few folks
> who *are* doing some kind of advocacy (and I'm not flying to Japan for
> 3 days at the end of this month for my *health*, to cite one example)
> is somehow a productive and winning strategy. That's like saying
> "we're grossly outnumbered, the enemy is attacking in human waves and
> we're down to 2 guys and a sergeant. Quick, somebody shoot the
> sergeant!" If that's not screwy, self-defeating behavior in action, I
> don't know what is.
>
> - Jordan
>
>
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