Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 03:24:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: scrappy@hub.org, jcwells@u.washington.edu, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: From Slashdot... Message-ID: <199902010324.UAA18580@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <79926.917830105@zippy.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 31, 99 04:48:25 pm
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I feel like I'm picking on Jordan... it's not intentional. 8-(. > The server. The server the server the server. Have I made the > point clearly enough? :-) > > Our slogan is also "the power to serve", and while I think that > doesn't exactly substitute for a mission statement, it does give a > fairly reasonable indication of where we're headed and what we think > our primary strengths are. And look how well focusing on the server side of things, after giving up on the desktop, has been for UNIX, in general. Now that Microsoft is pushing NT hard for the server market, where will UNIX go next, when they give that up? All of us UNIX people are what Geoffrey Moore calls "innovators", "visionaries", and "technology enthusiasts" -- basically, the first people to adopt new stuff. What we seem to be ignoring is that the technology adoption life cycle tells us that the majority of customers are in the early and late majorities, who buy products not because they smart, sexy, or even fast. They buy them because they do a job, and because whoever is behind them can be trusted to be around a long time. The late adopters have even more requirements for what's called "A Whole Product"; they require that there be a service industry grown up around their market segment before they will consider buying into a product. If we keep looking for a deux ex machina to come along and save UNIX's butt, then we'll have a long wait. The hype behind Linux is just that. They are in the same boat. The *one* thing that Linux might have going for it is if the "rebate" thing comes to pass. If that happens, and, as a number of lawyers have suggested, you can "opt out" of the license at a later date for a refund because of initial lack of choice, then maybe it can make it to the mainstream (imagine a company that is cash strapped and has 1500 PC's running Windows; if it could switch them all to Linux, and Microsoft would pay them 150,000 to do it...). > > Look at Solaris...Sun just recently announced they were going to start > > working on Linux emulation also...nothing about xBSD, only Linux...where > > are failing (if we are failing?) as far as users are concerned? > > Why would they want to do BSD emulation? Where are all the BSD apps > that Solaris users want to run? I think you're rather missing the > point here as far as how things are driven in this industry. I agree. They are only doing it at all because of the press coverage and customer good will it buys them. Same for the recent announcement by HP that they will offer customers Linux on their HP Workstation purchases as an OS option. If someone is really concerned with Solaris running BSD emulation, there's a sure-fire way to get it: write it yourself and give it to them. That'll only work well if the BSD ABI's don't mutate as much as they have been lately (same for Linux: they will buy their good will, and having bought it, when Linux's ABI runs out from under SCO and Sun, they won't chase it). Actually, this whole Linux ABI thing could result in a serious backlash against Sun and SCO. If you're a UNIX developer, and you want to write an app that will run in as many places as possible, whose ABI is going to be your native ABI? That's why it's always been worthwhile for the BSD folks to try and keep a uniform ABI (but of couse, BSDI had to "differentiate" their product and lock their customers in), AND for them to do the job of making Linux run BSD binaries. A concerted effort to make every platform capable of running FreeBSD binaries could do a hell of a lot more to get widespread native FreeBSD applications than *any* amount of letter writing or hand wringing ever will. > > I'm not afraid to *pay* for something, but how do we convince the > > companies out there developing software that there are ppl willing to pay > > for the software? > > By being willing to pay for it, plain and simple. So far, those few > companies who've dived into the FreeBSD multimedia market have gotten > burned by very poor sales and that's the "convincing" that needed to > happen but didn't. Paying for it up front helps. One friend of mine got the Linux ball rolling at Netscape by calling them up and convincing them to put in a method whereby he could pay for his Netscape copy for Linux. He'd only pay if they'd account it as a Linux sale (they were more than willing to take his money and account it as a Windows sale or a Solaris sale, but this did not satisfy him). > Now given all of that, we have two choices: We can sit and sulk about > the state of the FreeBSD desktop market (been there, done that) or we > can realize that maybe our strengths lie elsewhere and we need to > focus on our strenghts (doing that too :). It's be nice if we got the hell out of the huddle wherein we've tied everyone's shoe laces together, such that none of us can run ahead and scout the territory, while we're at it. I think it's time to get some non-technical people involved, and actually have the technical people yield them some power. At a bare minimum, there *have* to be people who like to do marketing for marketing's sake, if there are people who like to code for coding's sake. > Frankly, I think their Unix on the desktop strategy is fundamentally a > losing one anyway and that the Linux folks are chasing a brass ring > that's only receding ever more rapidly into the distance. Sure, it > gets them lots of users in the short term since the great percentage > of people run desktop machines, but it also leaves them increasingly > vulnerable to a Microsoft which is very very strong on the desktop and > has shown itself to take an exceeding dim view of competition. It doesn't matter. People hate Microsoft. People hate the fact that Bill has more money than God (actually, they hate the fact that Bill has more money than them, but they want to make the hate God's fault). It's all well and good to talk about sticking to your knitting (doing what you know you are good at instead of something else), but the reality is that just because Microsoft is good at one thing doesn't mean that they're not going to be able to get good at *your* thing in time. And don't kid yourself about them not leveraging the fact that they have a lock on the desktop to get servers. To truly put the fear of God into you, here's a little something from the Office 2000 prerelease MSDN documentation: Note: Microsoft Office requires you to enter a 25-digit product key during installation. This product key is XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. If you use the default product key, you will be prompted to register this prerelease copy of Office with Microsoft during your first 50 work sessions of any of the Office programs. You can do this by using either the Internet or e-mail. We recommend that you use the Internet method to register. The Registration Wizard will guide you through the steps. Any bets on whether the the Registration Wizard will be shipping on standard *2000 products from Microsoft? Any bets on what Internet service it will try to hook you up with if you attempt to do "Internet or e-mail" based registration? Any guess at what list of ISP's they're going to use? Any guess at what OS you'll have to run on your servers to become a "Microsoft Certified ISP"? Any guess on if that will be sold as "Certified For Our Customer's Protection"? Have you got your "Microsoft Certified System Administrator" certificate on your wall yet, so that those ISP's can give you work without blowing their own certification (or their licenses)? Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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