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Date:      Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:48:18 -0700
From:      Don Wilde <dwilde1@ibm.net>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        freebsd-core@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: blessing
Message-ID:  <353FE152.AE3A0E0B@ibm.net>
References:  <1836.893362704@time.cdrom.com>

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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> I think the silence isn't for lack of approval, it's more a general
> feeling of "go ahead!  Just do it already!" :-)

Okay, I will. :-P :-)
> Perhaps we've been made overly cynical by the literally hundreds of
> volunteers who've come forward over the last few months with various
> enthusiastic plans for doing this and that, only to vanish utterly and
> without a trace shortly thereafter, but I have to say that core is
> more reserved these days about jumping up too quickly about anything.
> They wait and see first if the latest mayfly volunteer is more than
> just a short-lived spark in the night or seems to have what it takes
> to not only come up with good ideas, but to pursue them all the way to
> their conclusions.  Even getting almost 75% of the way to completing a
> good idea isn't really enough, unfortunately, and so we try to work
> most seriously with that final 0.1% of the volunteer community which


I know. The percentage of newbies who join -advocacy is very large. I've
been spending time talking to them because almost all of us were newbies
once, full of great ideas. Of course, you guys, well, we know the first
words out of your daemonish little mouths were "cd /; rm -r *", right?
Anyway, some of those guys will drop away, and some will continue, and
that's how an aggregate community grows (Sorry guys, I studied sociology
in school, not C. My mistake, soon to be rectified!). I don't blame you
for being either cynical or reserved. -core is supposed to be -hacking,
and all of this promotional stuff is just a sideshow. Actually, it's
amazing how much actually does get done, how many ports get added, and
how much better the docs become. Gee, even the mouse install's getting
better! All this with no corporate scratch! I think you guys should sit
back and reflect what a beautiful thing/project/organization you have
created, and realize what a powerhouse it is, even with the high noise
level on some of the mailing lists.

> actually does have The Right Stuff, so to speak.  If you're part of
> that 0.1%, let's go on to the next organizational phase. :)
> 
Okay, the first thing I'd like to do is to return this discussion to
-advocacy. I need enthusiastic people and they need leadership. 

Second, I need you all to think of who you (-core) can talk to in the
original Berkeley movement and what they can do for us. MKMcK and Tim
O'Reilly come to mind, and Bob Metcalfe is still very visible but a bit
peeved that nobody did anything about the bandwidth problem he stuck his
neck out about. The Yahoo guys and Netscape/Mozilla guys would be great
sponsors, they have visibility and money. And finally, Intel is still an
engineer-driven company. I think we can gather our courage, refine a
pitch, and get their help. It's to their enormous benefit, anyway.
Finally, we're getting good response from a number of the columnists at
InfoWorld. Once this becomes an official FreeBSD.org project, they'll
listen closely and maybe twitch a few strings in our favor. Ditto Dr.
Dobbs and Web Techniques.

We need to fix a site relatively quickly, because a lot of future
promotion is going to hinge on it. I'd really like to get a Berkeley
campus location if that's at all possible, since few public auditoriums
will have a T1 handy. 8-)))

> We do FreeBSD and thus have no time for sex, but maybe we can win on
> religious controversy. :-)

Actually, I hope we stay well away from anybody-bashing. Microsoft and
Bill Gates will fall when people demand open source and free usage
licenses with their software. That's our job, our evangelism if you
will. As far as lack of sex because of software, I can't counter that
one because I'm currently in the same boat :\
 
> > run with this! All we have to do is make it easy for the media to latch
> > onto it by creating a packaged event with visual interest and
> > prepackaged press handouts and stuff like that. If we take the high road
> 
> "All we have to do" he said.  Doncha just love him, folks?  He makes
> our previous failures at doing this sound so easy. :-) :-)

I think the failure was due to being way ahead of the understanding of
the general public, not any lack of smarts on your part. You _couldn't_
get the momentum of history moving in the right direction. It was too
premature, people just wrote you off as unrealistic geeks. Then, too,
FreeBSD's come a long way in the last 3 years.

As to why I think THIS effort will succeed where your previous efforts
failed, I think there are four key trends moving in our favor: 
1) Microsoft is sucking up money and delivering lies and crap, more now
than ever
2) Free software in general is news, especially after Netscape's
defection
3) The media are starting to educate themselves on the Internet and
networking because it's here now and big money surrounds it.
4) Joe Public is more hungry than ever for Roman Circuses and
little-guy-beats-big-monster entertainment.

--> Don



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