Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 15:18:40 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> Cc: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the name "FreeBSD" (Was: Market share and platform support) Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990910145334.047bad50@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909101626210.14497-100000@sasami.jurai.net> References: <4.2.0.58.19990910120630.0479db30@localhost>
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At 04:36 PM 9/10/99 -0400, Matthew N. Dodd wrote: >If I had to guess I'd say that Cheap Bytes doesn't solicit the official >dist from the release engineers or otherwise attempt to put itself in the >loop, Why should they have to? Their goal is to produce a smaller, cheaper distribution of the OS, and they do it rather well. Again, the whole BSD philosophy is that you should not HAVE to ask anyone's permission or provide any mandatory compensation for the use of the project's intellectual property. >and they probably don't give all their profits to The FreeBSD >Project like WC does (did? I don't know.) You mean that there's a quid pro quo for publishing code from FreeBSD, or from being noted as a source on the project's Web pages? >Why would the Project favor a CD that doesn't have any other benefit than >being 'cheap'? It should not favor any distribution in particular. To do so suggests an inappropriate tie to one vendor. >Stop thinking of WC as the publisher then. Consider WC to be the >distribution arm of The FreeBSD Project. Walnut Creek is a private, for-profit company. For it to be the sole distributor of the product would mean that the FreeBSD developers were in effect working for a private company, gratis. > > The development of good distributions is, as I've mentioned before, in the > > project's best interests. It has done much good for Linux. > >Its not clear that anything you would have a hand it would be considered a >'good distribution'. Who is to be the judge? The only fair and unbiased arbiter is the marketplace. If a distribution is not of good quality, it will fail there. >Thus my confusion. You've efficively positioned yourself as a 'hostile' >distributor of FreeBSD software. My efforts would be in no way hostile. In fact, as I've pointed out MANY times, they would greatly benefit the entire community. Of course, if I can't get the legal issues and due diligence resolved, I'll have no choice but to go with something else and market it AGAINST FreeBSD. I'd really rather not do that, as FreeBSD is my first choice. But if things are really structured so that Walnut Creek has an exclusive, sweetheart deal, and the playing field will not be level, there's not much I can do; it'd be a fool's errand to base a distribution of FreeBSD. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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