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Date:      Fri, 24 Mar 1995 13:06:44 -0800
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com>
To:        ferovick@runner.jpl.utsa.edu (David C Ferovick)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: A "FreeBSD" Daemon 
Message-ID:  <20359.796079204@freefall.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 24 Mar 95 14:47:07 CST." <9503242047.AA17184@runner.utsa.edu> 

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> It would be hellish, but I am sure that you could gain alot from it.  
> I have had three different chances to run FreeBSD on systems in the past,
> to support a commercial userbase, and each time I was forced to choose
> NetBSD or BSDI instead, because the people involved didn't think it was
> a good idea to run a OS with the word 'Free' in it when you are charging 
> people to use it.. I'm sure this argument is much more widespread than
> just the three incidents I am talking about. 

I'm not saying that incidents like this don't occur, and I'm more than
aware of the potentially negative implications of the word "Free", but
I'm much more inclined to simply work on changing the perception rather
than the name.

20 years ago, would you have thought a computer named after a piece of
fruit to be a pretty silly idea?  Now you can talk about Apple
computers without even smiling at the joke (and believe me, when they
first came out this was most definitely not the case!) - it's become a
brand name and lost any elements of association with the more standard
english word that it may once have had.

I think that, with a little work, the "Free" in "FreeBSD" can either
gain brand-name status or become synonymous with a different
connotation of "free", that meaning openness (REAL openness, not the
ersatz openness of most OpenThis and OpenThat standards), freedom to
develop it, freedom to share the work with many external developers
which may constitute a serious part of your business development
resource, etc.

					Jordan



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