Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 07:16:45 -0700 From: Don Wilde <dwilde1@ibm.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: blessing Message-ID: <3541F04D.474FE994@ibm.net> References: <17537.893491629@time.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>
> [Sorry for delay]
>
> > Okay, the first thing I'd like to do is to return this discussion to
> > -advocacy. I need enthusiastic people and they need leadership.
>
> Agreed. Listen to General Wilde, folks. :-)
>
Vision creates leadership. I'm just a geek like the rest of you, but I
decided that I would _do_ this thing. Thank you, Jordan, for publicly
legitimizing my efforts. You others on -advocacy, even the newbies who
are watching, each of you can do the same, although I wouldn't recommend
a monster project like this. I have seen several other legit project
ideas come up here. We will need hand-out material, and that means
stickers, mouse pads and the like (Bear, Malartre, Jason C., others?).
You can create the _designs_ without spending a dime, and we'll print
them in a hurry when we get $$$. Second, the easy-demo-version disk is a
real winner, especially a you-*can't*-break-anything version that runs
completely off the CD and DRAM. _Please_ keep working on these, because
I'm gonna be way too busy to do more than kibitz.(Greg and Eivind?).
Finally, we're going to need reams of baby-food press-release copy that
explains everything from history to kernel superiority (Mark@vmunix?)
and all the rest.
> > 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
>
> Erm, what bandwidth thing? Could you maybe send me a private email
> message clarifying this reference? It sounds like something we should
> do something about.
No need to be private. I'm talking about his correct-but-slightly
premature assertion that the internet is going to collapse as all the
home users come on-line unless there's a rapid boost in backbone
infrastructure. As far as doing something about it, we set up our own
local-machine-to-local-machine net in parallel, but that's for next
year.
> In any case, I'll try to talk to those among the
> original Berkeley movement who don't already have a rather
> significantly vested interest in promoting BSDI's product. :)
>
> > 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.
>
> We can certainly get enough of their help to at least publically claim
> them as supporters, which would be rather legitimising. I'll try and
> at least make some arrangements with their test labs down here since
> they've already offered the use of the facilities, I just need to
> grapple with various NDAs in using their experimental pre-release
> hardware bits.
Actually, I think they'd be happy to JUMP RIGHT IN from a PR standpoint,
and I mean to the point that we'd have to be careful not to be
overwhelmed. Once we make it clear that this is not going to (at least
not by us) be an evil-Microsoft-bashing event, and once they see that we
are true-blue Intel addicts, they'll JRI in a hurry, as their bunny
suits have lost some luster recently.
On e-p-r hardware bits, actually, we need to stay away from those. ALL
stuff MUST be generally available to the public within 6 months of date
of test. What do you know that I don't, besides I2O and BX and Merced?
One thing I would really like to do out of this is to leverage the
opening-up of the I2O API so we can distribute our source code with I2O
drivers.
> > 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.
>
> Anyone with contacts inside these publications are also encouraged to
> PIPE UP NOW. ;-) Inside contacts really make all the difference, if
> you have them.
>
> > 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-)))
>
> None of the Berkeley ones I know of do either, actually. :( They're
> pretty spartan.
All right, I still say we do it in Berkeley somewhere because of the
historical tie-in. Have any of you ever seen the laser datalinks made by
American Laser and others? I did a video link test across San Pedro
harbor once and it was really trivial to set up. Line of site, a mile of
pure raw speed. We will have to get a permit to do it, but a
temporary-link permit is doable.
> > 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.
>
> I know it has technically, I'm just not sure if the Journalists are
> ready for it yet. We shall see, eh? :-)
I think they are, because this will force them to deal with us from the
'news' standpoint. Journalists need content, as do TV media people.
We're making this easy for them, because it can be described as a simple
thing. ("It's a race.") It also creates a vacuum for them to then fill
with explanations, commentary, interviews, etc., for as long as the
interest is maintained. That's why I'm really hoping the 'small demo
version' project will have disks ready to distribute. (HINT!!!) The
event creates the first wave of interest, the disks maintain interest
and build friends, and then my original 'fair Challenge' is the topper.
Jordan, if we pull this off you better have _lots_ of WC CD's pressed.
We _will_ have national media coverage.
--> Don
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