Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 18:32:47 +0000 From: Joseph Scott <joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Market share and platform support Message-ID: <37D94ECF.C8310539@owp.csus.edu> References: <7196.936853710@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19990908203747.0463bd20@localhost> <7196.936853710@localhost> <4.2.0.58.19990909221237.04738870@localhost>
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Brett Glass wrote: > > >FWIW, and from this side of the pond, Brett's raised a couple of interesting > >points re: Walnut Creek and their 'control' of FreeBSD, and what would happen > >if, hypothetically, some other group were to put together a competing > >distribution, and these points have occasionally cropped up at UK User > >Group meetings. I know I'd like to know what WCs official stance on this > >is. > > So would I. What's more, things should be set up in a way that makes it > difficult for WC to renege. Making sure that the FreeBSD project is > more independent of WC, and that the project leaders are not employees > of WC but rather independent contractors (for copyright purposes, this > is important) would be good places to start. > > --Brett Glass I've been glancing at this discussion for awhile and I don't claim to really be "up" with everything that's being discussed here, but I think I might be able to bring up a good ( hopefully ) example. From what I gather part ( most? ) of Brett's concern is to what degree does WC get involved if somebody else starts doing stuff with a FreeBSD distro. I see that Jordan has already given a response as what he personally feels about this and what WC would do, since they are a business. That being that if it was something he felt was good then he would help ( so would WC ) and if he felt it was bad then he would want nothing to do with and recommend others do the same ( I imagine that if WC felt it "hurt" them then they would react also ). In the end Brett felt that wasn't concrete enough. From what I tell however this senario has already happened. Correctly if I'm wrong but isn't this basically what NetMAX is doing? They have products based on both FreeBSD and Linux. If I'm correct here let me carry this out.... So what has Jordan done since NetMAX coming out? Personally I don't really know, however I can say I've never heard anything negative from him about it. For all I know he's said good things about it and I just don't know it. So I'd say that he's probably very happy with NetMAX and what they are doing with it ( although if I'm wrong I shouldn't be putting words in his mouth :-). However the second part also gives me reason to think he's in favor of it. What has WC done since NetMAX came out? THEY SELL IT! Not only have they not fought against it, they sell it at freebsdmall.com and I get flyers for it with just about every WC product I order. I'd say that's a pretty ringing endorsement. So what do we learn now? Well, if you want to do something based on FreeBSD you can pretty much do what you want. If you want to do something based on FreeBSD the "right and good way" then you should make friends with WC and not enemies, they obviously are interested in seeing FreeBSD derived works succeed. C'mon, do you think that Linux Mandrake and Red Hat hat eachother? If they were smart ( and I think this is the case ) then they are quite happy with the relationship of Mandrake selling "Red Hat" based products/distros. Sorry this is so long, I just wanted to make sure I made my point reasonably clear. I don't really want to become part of a flame war, but I thought it may be usefull to provide a real life example of what I think Brett is describing. -- Joseph Scott joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu Office Of Water Programs - CSU Sacramento To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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