Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 03:37:20 -0800 From: "Timothy Beyer" <beyert@cs.ucr.edu> To: <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Where is FreeBSD going? Message-ID: <002a01c3d449$727cd2b0$650a0a0a@aeonrem>
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Brett Glass wrote: >FreeBSD also keeps falling farther and farther behind Linux in the area of >advocacy (and, hence, corporate adoption) Granted, this is true. However, you should be more specific when you refer to advocacy. When I think of the term "advocacy," blind, relentless loyalty comes to mind. This is one of the things that bothers me about Linux in particular, since it seems to have the most "advocates" of any OS that I have used. Linux Users and Developers [in the "advocate" category] insist Linux is "superior" to other offerings, (usually windows, when in actuality, its strengths are quite different) quite often without stating, or even understanding what exactly constitutes these "superior" qualities of the operating system. This comes across to most people as zealotry, and as a result, people will think less of the hard work done by the developers, many of whom would only express an opinion that they fully understood. Quite frankly, it was this type of behavior in the Linux community that kept me away from using non-proprietary operating systems for a long, long time. Yes, you are correct that more people need to promote *BSD, the BSD license, etc, but I think the term "advocate" implies the wrong emphasis. Keep the elitism at the minimum, or else the majority will take it the wrong way. Blind faith could potentially hinder corporate acceptance, though it would be unlikely to encourage it. >Many of the developers actually have an antipathy toward advocacy, >since they dislike answering newbie FAQs and don't want too manypeople to >adopt the OS for fear that it'll overcrowd their "sandbox." Yes, thats quite true of FreeBSD developers. While these individuals are typically rational, productive individuals, they most likely don't produce the required volume of noise to give a name to FreeBSD. However, it is nice to know that people exist who put money where their mouth is; I don't see that in some other free software communities. --Tim
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