Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 02:37:45 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: A proposal for focus. Message-ID: <15760.896002665@time.cdrom.com>
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I've been watching the debates on this list ping-pong back and forth for the last couple of months now, and it occurs to me that one thing we're lacking here is even a reasonable consensus about what areas of FreeBSD advocacy to focus on first. Everyone's got all these good ideas and there's all this energy flowing, but it's also moving in a lot of different directions and, in some cases, even directly against itself. I'm not saying that a bit of uncontrolled ferment isn't a good thing, but without some sort of overlying structure and set of ground rules, it all quickly degrades to a room full of people trying to shout over one another. So, without trying to imply that my "vision" should supercede anyone else's (these are only suggestions), here are a couple of initial "ground rules" which I'd like to suggest: First, we agree to set aside, and strictly for the time being, all discussion on "commercializing" FreeBSD or the kinds of corporate entities we'd like to see formed to provide this or that support or this or that embedded product. I know that's a very large category of activity to set aside so casually, and don't think that I haven't spent a fair amount of time thinking it over, but I really think that choosing to focus on this *now*, right when we're really only just beginning to have a dedicated advocacy group at all, would be bad timing. I'd much rather we focused on gaining a better toehold in the free software community and attracting a greater number of followers there before even thinking seriously about spending much of our time and resources dealing with the far more demanding world of commercial software. I can appreciate people's impatience to reach "level two", but frankly I think we still have a ways to go in mastering "level one" and I'd really rather do that first since it'll also be a lot easier to contemplate a commercial venture if some larger compnent of the free software world is substantially more behind us. My second suggestion is that we agree to knock it off with the negative advertising. If we're to win at PR, it won't be because we're better at pointing out our opponent's flaws than we are at extolling our own virtues. A certain amount of pointed comparison is all well and good in certain contexts, but it's not a substitute for a good sales approach. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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