Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 13:27:00 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@iquest.net> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: dyson@iquest.net, chris@netmonger.net, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Guess we've lost the server market too...? Message-ID: <199903041827.NAA99873@y.dyson.net> In-Reply-To: <43602.920537678@zippy.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at "Mar 4, 99 00:54:38 am"
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Jordan K. Hubbard said: > > It is time for the low-life "in your face" attitude that alot of the > > Linux crew has had for a long time. > > Completely disagree. Many of the Linux people are strident and > intolerable only because they don't know any better. We do know > better and for us it would be abandoning the high road and most of our > personal principles for some purely hypothetical short-term gain in > mind share. > The market pie is still growing, and there is a need for making one more visible. Those *stupid* Linux fairs do work. For one, I hate being around twitchy people though (they make me nervous.) A lot of them aren't twitchy, and sometimes you might be able to make progress with a few of them... > > There's an > interesting rant by a Linux advocate about how much he hates everything > you and Brett have been suggesting WRT the foaming edge of advocacy. > If you haven't read it, I suggest it. > I am not talking about "foaming edge", and that kind of comment polarizes. If you look, Linus and ESR are at that edge (and have been) also. In fact, ESR is kind of pathetic (from reports that I have read) in the PR dept. Maybe it is better to be pathetic than unknown? JKH, are you wearing a demon outfit? :-). > > Do we need better advocacy? Of course, that's a boolean constant. > Yes, and what has been happening for the last several years? Whatever has been happening in the advocacy arena, it is only the technical advantages (and some license advantages) that move FreeBSD forward. (Remember Beta and OS/2?) Those two failed due to marketing stupidity (in the case of Beta, it was early on that the fate was sealed.) > > Are we making progress with this? Yes. More than ever before, in > fact. I'm not spending this week in San Jose for my health, ya > know. > How many opportunities in the past have been lost? I see inaction for years, and only recently a little bit is being done. The San Jose Linux thing is on the *coattails* of Linux, and there should be no need for that. However, it is good that action has been taken, since the way things have been going -- there is now a need. How's about more interface with the press? How many press releases have been done over the last few years, and how often are they taken seriously? If there have done alot, then it is obviously not working well, and if there have been few done, then there needs to be more. How many phone numbers of press people does the FreeBSD PR person have? (And those phone calls would be acted upon?) It would be good if those results would be more apparent. (At least the CNN news items seem to appear for Linux.) Linux is the default alternative OS of choice, and historically, more than two predominant choices isn't a very stable state. (Microsoft isn't going away totally.) > > Remember the old "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" > quote from Vietnam? That's the kind of insane logic trap I think > this discussion's now heading in. > That analogy is fallacious... "We have to make some people aware of the inadequacies of other OSes, so they might be more open and choose FreeBSD - that doesn't have those certain problems." Also: "We have to make people (in general) aware of FreeBSD, so that they can sometimes make the FreeBSD choice by default." Both need to be done, and each of the above are being done inadequately. (Technical people sometimes utilize the second mechanism above -- but otherwise, the critical mass is in the Linux camp.) There is NO destruction here. This is a pincer movement, if done properly -- but it isn't happening in a way that it is on the map. -- John | Never try to teach a pig to sing, dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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