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Date:      Fri, 06 Jul 2001 13:06:29 -0700
From:      Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com>
To:        tedm@toybox.placo.com
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, wes@softweyr.com, ewayte@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   RE: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral
Message-ID:  <20010706130629R.jkh@osd.bsdi.com>
In-Reply-To: <004901c10610$a37ff540$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
References:  <20010706020341B.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> <004901c10610$a37ff540$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>

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From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
Subject: RE: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 04:41:47 -0700

> >Times have clearly changed, however, and Walnut Creek CDROM is long
> >and sadly gone.
> 
> Jordan, I agree with most of what you say except for this.

You disagree with me that Walnut Creek CDROM is gone?  How odd.  Well,
if you'd like to confirm this with Bob Bruce, be my guest!  It's
finished, toast, pushing up daisies, gone to its reward, shuffled off
it mortal coil, met its maker.  This is an ex-CDROM company!

> Since the core team seems to not know what to do with me, throwing
> the stones at them isn't going to make much difference now, and I'm
> used to getting in trouble anyway.

Erm, why would you throw stones at the core team over this in any
case?  You think they had anything to do with it?  Ted...  I can only
suggest that you increase the medication - this is a seriously
pointless rant you're engaging in here and I honestly don't see the
aim of it.

> I have always disliked senseless destruction - and now in hindsight it
> appears that the destruction of WC due to this BSD merger mania is
> both senseles and inadvertant.   No matter how much you sugarcoat it -
> BSDi screwed over FreeBSD by acquiring Walnut Creek.  You all have to face
> that even though you may have all worked for them and been the ones to
> make the mistake.

I think you're suffering from a serious lack of knowledge at what went
on behind the scenes, to say nothing of business in general, if you
somehow think that everybody went into the merger with the aim of
killing off Walnut Creek CDROM.  WC was already in the process of slow
collapse when the merger took place because whether you're willing to
admit it to yourself or not, THE CDROM PUBLISHING BUSINESS SUCKS.
Take a look at the number of CDROM vendors in the market place 2 years
ago and compare it to the number you see today.  Go to CompUSA or
Fry's and check out how many Linux distributions you even see on the
shelves now.  We could all see the writing on the wall even then, and
it was for the best of reasons that we decided to combine what were at
the time the two most visible "BSD vendors" in an effort to stop
competing with one another and try to formulate some sort of hybrid
strategy that would let both companies survive by getting into areas
like services and custom engineering as well as publishing.  Did we
succeed?  No, obviously not.  Did a lot of people suffer a lot more
than you or FreeBSD did in the process?  Absolutely yes.  We put a lot
of work into trying to make it fly and when it hit the ground, it was
a great disappointment to many people.  There are no "culprits" here,
at least not on the Walnut Creek CDROM side, just some folks trying to
make the best of a bad situation.  If you want to blame BSDi's upper
management then be my guest, but they won't know or really care much
about that so I don't see what you'd hope to accomplish.

> I SEE NOTHING to prove that the conditions that created WC's involvement
> don't exist for another CDROM vendor to take it's place.

Feel free!  You want to learn about the CDROM publishing business and
have the moral authority to be this sanctimonious?  Go create a
distribution and hawk it on the street corner.  My posting made it
more than clear that this sort of thing will be encouraged and you're
perfectly welcome to show how this business model can be profitably
sustained.

> Was WC financially failing? If so why would BSDi take on more debt, that is
> completely stupid.

There were a lot of things done in the late 90's which matched that
description.  We started the merger before the bubble burst and there
was VC money raining from the sky.  Walnut Creek CDROM had never shown
itself to be adept at dealing with VCs and the BSDi top management
folks claimed they could get money simply by walking outside and
opening an umbrella, so we grasped at that particular straw because
our other options looked even more bleak.  Of course, the bubble did
burst and the VC money we would have used to make up various
shortfalls never materialized, but if you want to indict us for being
stupid then you should also point your fingers in a lot of other
directions because people a lot smarter than we were also bet (and
lost) on the same market horse.

> Plenty of other CD distributors WERN'T failing and the
> CD distribution model is going great guns today.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

> Do you really think that people would prefer to FTP the distribution
> when they can pick up the phone, make an 800 call and have it
> next-day shipped to them?  And 3/4 of the time they just expense it
> to their company so they pay nothing anyway?  Now your talking about
> FIVE ISO's, think of all the users that have problems getting even
> ONE down.  Not everyone out here has fast DSL and Cable - in fact
> the majority don't.

FINE.  As I keep saying, put your money where your mouth all too
visibly is and do something about it if you think it's so easy to set
up this kind of infrastructure and run it properly.  Your entire rant
is full of half-baked assertions and a buttload of assumptions which
are frankly as false as Tammy Faye Bakker's eyelashes.  If I were less
polite I'd make even more references to the scatological percentage
of your various internal organs, but I won't go there.  You have
already been inflammatory enough in your own posting and, as Paul
Vixie likes to say: "your bozo bit is set."

> BSDi was run by morons when they bought WC and we know that's not
> true.

We do? :)

- Jordan

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