From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 30 05:41:04 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1410D16A4CF for ; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:41:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from reverendtimms.isu.mmu.ac.uk (reverendtimms.isu.mmu.ac.uk [149.170.192.65]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 41DF443D3F for ; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:41:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from p.robinson@mmu.ac.uk) Received: from agena.mmu.ac.uk ([149.170.168.195]) by reverendtimms.isu.mmu.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #2) id 1B8JUC-0000il-00; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 14:41:00 +0100 Received: from MMU-HSS-AGENA/SpoolDir by agena.mmu.ac.uk (Mercury 1.48); 30 Mar 04 14:41:00 +0100 Received: from SpoolDir by MMU-HSS-AGENA (Mercury 1.48); 30 Mar 04 14:40:56 +0100 Received: from PRGMMITER (149.170.101.200) by agena.mmu.ac.uk (Mercury 1.48) with ESMTP; 30 Mar 04 14:40:56 +0100 From: "Paul Robinson" To: "'Charon'" , Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 14:40:56 +0100 Message-ID: <002f01c4165c$a0c0d1d0$6f01a8c0@miter.local> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627 In-Reply-To: <20040330102525.GA27612@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Subject: RE: The Website X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 13:41:04 -0000 Charon wrote: > Hopefully a pedantic description of 'corporate' or 'professional' > won't be used as a means of negating any argument. Don't count on it. :-) > I assume we are trying to get more people to use FreeBSD for home, > business, and other markets. Well, this is the problem FreeBSD generally has. A lot of people would actually like to see more developers move to FreeBSD and contribute to the project. It then follows that as the "product" improves, we are able to see a rise in the number of users. Pedantic, yes, but I'm becoming less convinced of the need for us to get FreeBSD onto the family PC. I would like to see it on a lot more developer's desks though. > Theres also the factor of belief reinforcement. For example, if I > am looking for alternatives to my current OS I will expect the > competition's website to look and behave in similar ways. Won't you expect the competition's product to be a better alternative to the one you currently use? Do you honestly believe that OS choice is dependent on what the website looks like? If so, how did Mandrake ever take off? > What I am arguing for is a change to the site to make it more like > the competition. In this case RedHat, MicroSoft, IBM, and so on. At > the moment it looks like a three column url listing with no > really strong visual cues to things important to capturing, > converting, and supporting new users. Well, you know what the answer is then, don't you? You can grab the source, talk to the web team, produce a better version. Remember it has to be readable in text browsers, conform to WAI and Internationalisation standards and everyone has to agree by mutual consent it's a better design than the existing one. > ps: when I started hunting for a new OS around 1997/8 my selection > of > FreeBSD was based on the website being prettier than Net or > OpenBSD's > offerings. You know how silly that makes you sound, right? -- Paul Robinson