From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 12 13:57:38 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA07320 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 13:57:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ns1.yes.no (ns1.yes.no [195.119.24.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA07296 for ; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 13:57:19 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from eivind@bitbox.follo.net) Received: from bitbox.follo.net (bitbox.follo.net [194.198.43.36]) by ns1.yes.no (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id VAA02966; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 21:55:34 GMT Received: (from eivind@localhost) by bitbox.follo.net (8.8.6/8.8.6) id WAA07043; Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:55:29 +0100 (MET) To: Terry Lambert Cc: shimon@simon-shapiro.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, capriotti@geocities.com, tom@sdf.com Subject: Re: X based Free installation References: <199801082125.OAA14363@usr06.primenet.com> From: Eivind Eklund Date: 12 Jan 1998 22:55:28 +0100 In-Reply-To: Terry Lambert's message of Thu, 8 Jan 1998 21:25:08 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <86hg79z7an.fsf@bitbox.follo.net> Lines: 35 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.52/XEmacs 20.2 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert writes: > > Last, but not least. Cost/benefit considerations. Being that FreeBSD is > > installed once in a blue moon on a system and being that there is no > > market/financial incentive to make that boring but critical task look > > pretty, why spend the effort? > > There is a market advantage. I think the Linux Advocacy has proven > several times over that any market advantage should be taken, where > it can be. There is advantage to a larger installed base that goes > beyond the financial incentives (which free software lacks). The > larger number of coders contributing to Linux than FreeBSD is *not* > attributable solely to the philosophical and organizational differences > between the camps. Sure. But there is a spiral here - more coders contributing -> more users -> more coders contributing. There is only one organizational problem with FreeBSD that I see clearly today: Responsibility too often boils down to a group of people, instead of one person. I think each submission/contact to FreeBSD should boil down to the responsibility of _one_ person. I previously posted to chat advocating a mentor program which basically boiled down to this (people that wanted to contribute could mail committers and get a single contact person, who then were responsible for their submissions). I got almost no response. Does this mean that I'm the only person that belive this would be useful? Eivind, who notice that this is almost no work to organize, and still think it is _just_ what FreeBSD needs. p.S. Sorry for the off-topic post, but it didn't work mailing this to -chat :-(