From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 11 12:50:33 2005 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 A08AB16A4D1; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:50:33 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtpq3.home.nl (smtpq3.home.nl [213.51.128.198]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 183F743D54; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:50:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dodell@sitetronics.com) Received: from [213.51.128.133] (port=37416 helo=smtp2.home.nl) by smtpq3.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1CzaFk-0002NX-E3; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:50:32 +0100 Received: from cc740438-a.deven1.ov.home.nl ([82.72.18.239]:33710 helo=192.168.1.104) by smtp2.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1CzaFi-0006R9-Mj; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:50:30 +0100 From: "Devon H. O'Dell" To: Robert Watson In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Organization: SiteTronics Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:50:29 +0100 Message-Id: <1108126229.4084.43.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd.com 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: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:50:33 -0000 On Fri, 2005-02-11 at 12:41 +0000, Robert Watson wrote: > On Thu, 10 Feb 2005, Julio Capote wrote: > > > I think that the entire point of an IT deptartment, is to provide that > > "geek abstraction"; no CEO goes to www.linux.com and decides to go with > > linux for thier infastructure. They ask thier IT deptartment to make > > those decisions. On the same token, no small business owner/executive is > > going to goto www.freebsd.com and download an iso and install it on all > > thier servers based on some marketing hype. Sites like www.redhat.com > > are an exception because they are indeed a commercial entity that sells > > services/products based on Linux, Freebsd has no such entity. > > I don't know if I buy into "FreeBSD.com" or not, but I do buy into the > idea that what we need to do is provide ammunition for IT departments that > want to promote FreeBSD in their organization. I.e., white papers on > FreeBSD as an effective solution, a professional front page that they can > point at and say "Look, this is real", and material to help third party > CDROM and support vendors provide FreeBSD support to their clients. The > trick will be finding the right balance in not hiding the fact that one of > the greatest assets of FreeBSD is that it's driven by developers who are > also consumers, but provides help to people who want to sell FreeBSD as > the professional product that it is. > > An idea that's been thrown around by a number of people at various points > is to produce a set of short, professional-looking, white papers on > FreeBSD use in various environments -- FreeBSD in the computation cluster, > FreeBSD as an enterprise mail solution, FreeBSD for web clusters, FreeBSD > as the foundation for an appliance, and so on. Something that an IT > department can take to their director/etc saying "This is a recognized > solution -- it works for these people, it will work for us". > > Robert N M Watson I'm actually busy with a couple of whitepapers for some of these subject for work. I'll see if I can come up with a convincing layout and perhaps if others contribute, we can get an officially endorsed site. We do need something to show that FreeBSD is a powerful tool in commercial areas, and I agree that a site to show that is a good solution. Especially if we have backing from the kind folk from the FreeBSD core :) Kind regards, Devon H. O'Dell