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Date:      Mon, 14 May 2001 17:27:10 -0300 (BRT)
From:      Giovanni Picoli Tirloni <tirloni@din.uem.br>
To:        "Walter C. Pelissero" <walter@pelissero.org>
Cc:        <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: is distribution sinking?
Message-ID:  <20010514170206.D471-100000@mink.ath.cx>
In-Reply-To: <200105141406.PAA08601@pelissero.org>

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On Mon, 14 May 2001, Walter C. Pelissero wrote:
> I'm writing this as a sort of open letter to the FreeBSD community
> because I belive my concerns may be shared by a big part of it.
>
> Last year I decided to discontinue my subscription to the FreeBSD
> CDROM.  I've been subscribed since almost the first CDROM issue (on
> single media at that time).  My decision wasn't easy and didn't come
> out of technical or religious motivations.  It was mainly bad customer
> support.
>
> Actually, the problems arised one day when I received a letter stating
> that Walnut Creek had problems with my credit card and they where
> expecting the payment of the last shippment (items I never received).
>
> Well, not a big deal.  I mailed the required informations and asked
> informations about the never-delivered CDs.  No answer.  Ok, I assumed
> the subscription would come in effect starting with the next issue.
> Nope.
>
> Since then I never received anything (but I haven't been charged for
> anything) and all my e-mails have been ignored.  Ok, I let my
> subscription got frogotten.

Just because you couldn't receive your copy of the CDs that doesn't
mean the project is sinking. Shipping has nothing to do with
development and if you really would like to have a copy you could just
login on any ftp server (to mention one of the many alternatives) and
grab it at any time.

Selling CDs is just a support service that Walnut Creek (and many
others) does for the community.

> Recently I tried to buy a 4.3 distribution from a local store (London,
> UK) and while they had all the releases up to 4.1 they told me they
> had problems with the last one.  They suspect this is due to the
> recent take over of BSDi (once again).
>
> I don't know if FreeBSD is distributed by anyone else but WC/BSDi.  My
> impression is that currently the FreeBSD distribution is slowly
> sinking.

Again, does "sinking" mean developers leaving the project ? I can't
see anyone doing this so, for me, it's not sinking in any way. If
you're in doubt just look at the development of -CURRENT, it has quite
impresive new features that probably a "sinking" project wouldn't have
planned to add since it's "sinking" anyway.

> In the meanwhile it turns up that NetBSD and OpenBSD CD distributions
> are more easily available than FreeBSD so I see myself forced to
> switch to one of them.

Despite our problems with the main ftp server these days I don't see
why these OS'es are more easily avaiable than FreeBSD. You can go to
www.FreeBSDMirrors.org and pick up the nearest mirror(s). CDs aren't
the only way to have it in your system.

Don't make precipitate assumptions about anything, just my $0.02.

 --
 Giovanni Picoli Tirloni
 tirloni@din.uem.br


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