From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Jun 23 10:52:33 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from odin.acuson.com (odin.acuson.com [157.226.230.71]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE7A737C3CB; Fri, 23 Jun 2000 10:52:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from djohnson@acuson.com) Received: from acuson.com ([157.226.69.47]) by odin.acuson.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.54) with ESMTP id AAA3D14; Fri, 23 Jun 2000 10:53:56 -0700 Message-ID: <3953A34F.F9ED6D89@acuson.com> Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 10:50:07 -0700 From: David Johnson Organization: Acuson X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Joe.Warner@smed.com Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some questions re: FreeBSD References: <85256907.0054D783.00@Deimos.smed.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Joe.Warner@smed.com wrote: > "If you can do all this with FreeBSD and get > everything for free, why isn't everybody using it?" Probably the biggest reason is that it's a consumer OS. It's not preloaded, there's aren't any 'FreeBSD For Dummies' books, all the shrink-wrap titles on the store shelves say "Windows" or "Mac", and until very recently, there was no support. In the enterprise, a consumer OS is a de-facto requirement. The CEO and CTO have Windows or Mac at home, and that's what they want at work. Plus, the lack of support is a major drawback. For example, gcc is free, yet my work continues to pay out handsomely for the cygnus packaging because we get support. And finally, FreeBSD (and other unices) are not easy. It requires computer literacy and willingness to learn more. A Unix requires administration, and a lot of users don't want that. > Another one is: "This > is an excellent OS but if people can get it for free, how do the people > that produce it make any money?" or.."How can they produce such an > excellent product and support it without any profits?" The people who originally produced BSD were academics. They had monetary grants to develop it. Today you find a mix of hobbyists, adademics, and professionals working on it for free. The hobbyists work on it at their spare time for enjoyment. Academics work on it at part of their studies, or as proofs of concept. Professionals work on it to improve the products they are using. A lot of FreeBSD contributors are a mix of all three. But a lack of profits only goes so far and for so fast. The biggest thing that ever happened to Linux were the commercial distributors. I suspect that the BSDi/WalnutCreek merger may be one the biggest things for FreeBSD. The question you didn't ask was "Why are they giving it away instead of selling it?". I can't answer for any of the FreeBSD developers, but for my own software, my answer would be: "I want people to use it 'cause I had so much fun writing it." David To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message