From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 7 12:24:28 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F67516A4D0 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 12:24:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A992643D48 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 12:24:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i07KMnUd010430; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:22:49 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)i07KMmKN010427; Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:22:49 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:22:48 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Marian Hettwer In-Reply-To: <3FFC241A.9000906@kernel32.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Getting attention (was Re: Where is FreeBSD going?) X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 20:24:28 -0000 On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Marian Hettwer wrote: > Somebody else mentioned writing white papers for business level. This > may be a way to push easier FreeBSD at corporate level. Means, you are > the sysadmin, going with a nice white paper to your CTO, sort of. It seems there are some very strong arguments for building network and storage appliances on FreeBSD -- not just the license, but also the maturity of the software, etc. Since the arguments are made frequently, gathering them in one place is almost certainly a good idea. It would provide mulch to be distributed at conferences, stapled to walls, handed to the boss, provided to FreeBSD redistributors and bundlers, etc. The trick is to write the bumf in a strong way, and to pick arguments carefully. One of the biggest problems FreeBSD has in the advocacy space is that the developers like to use guarded language in describing features -- we don't want to promise something that isn't there. In some places that's considered admirable, but when it comes to paper in a booth at a conference, overuse of guarded language isn't so useful :-). Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research