Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 22:09:53 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: dennis@etinc.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation Message-ID: <17107.853740593@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 19 Jan 1997 14:59:00 MST." <199701192159.OAA14188@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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> One of my main talents is the ability to see order in apparently > chatotic systems. But further, I see orders of order in these > systems. This is what makes me a good systems engineer. This has also enabled you to pick what was probably the most tediously unreadable method of conveying a series of points that it has been my displeasure to come across so far this year! Congradulations! ;-) > Let's look at the situation, the order of the situation, and the > degree of the order of the situation. A nice physics analogy: "Oh god." > Q = m mass > Q' = m ds/dt momentum > Q'' = 1/2 m (ds/dt)^2 kinetic energy "No! NO!" > I'll limit myself to asking order 0, 1, and 2 questions, and stay out > of the more esoteric heights. "Yeah, RIGHT!" > OBSERVATION: Other OS's have achieved these tasks. "OBSERVATION: NO OS has acheived these tasks without paying a full-time staff, and none of the free OS camps has enough clued-in bodies to do even half the things they'd like (and possibly even need) to do. Terry is peering into alternate universe again due to local field effect of as-yet undetermined nature." > QUESTION: Why is it that the "sufficient clued-in personnel > to do the job" were not lacking in their camps, > but *are* lacking in the FreeBSD camp? "Oh, I see. It's an intellectal exercise. Terry wants us to participate in a little hypothetical scenario with him, perhaps one of those neat mathematical ones where you end up proving that 0 != 0 at the end of it." > QUESTION'': What can be done to the structure of the FreeBSD > camp, itself, to promote the generation and/or > maintenance of increased levels of "sufficient > clued-in personnel to do the job"? "Well now that's not a bad question just taken out of context and set to stand on its own. I'm always open to suggestions given the ongoing nature of this question." > QUESTION: Why has the interest been missing in the FreeBSD camp, but not missing in other camps? "Good question. Anyone in the audience?" [ Next 4 questions elided due to to the fact that they all essentially restate the previous two questions again ] > PROPOSED GOAL: Effect changes as a result of the answer(s) to > the question. California translation: "Awesome. Totally dude. We should, like, do something." > QUESTION: Why is is that the adoption of ELF is categorized > as premature, when it works? Defense lawyer: "Objection!" Judge: "Yes, Mr. Selachii?" Selachii: "The actual statement was ``a premature move to elf'', the context of which makes it quite clear that any assumption of maturity, or lack thereof, refers entirely to the action of movement, or in this case the merging of code, rests entirely with the speed or pace at which this action is carried out and does not, in fact, make any assumptions or claims concerning the actual maturity level of the ELF software itself." Judge: "What!?" > required for the FreeBSD camp to better enable it > to achieve it's stated primary goal of research? I'm not sure that research *is* its primary goal. This is another false premise. Research is one of FreeBSD's goals, but the primary one? No. I'd say if there was a "primary goal" at this point, it would be improve the software and let user feedback drive much of our prioritization of effort. Pure research is only one of the many uses to which FreeBSD is put now, and a consortium of people with many diverse "real world" goals as well as pure research goals constitutes a healthier organism. Since there's little disagreement where it comes to security issues or general improvement of the code base, why not have people from all segments of "the industry" working together? > OBSERVATION: The Linux camp has hardware donated by major vendors > and other interested parties. So have the MACH, > NetBSD, and OpenBSD camps. I have received personal Cool, please pass on these contacts then. I haven't received any such email myself, that's all I can say, and anyone with free hardware they want to give away is MORE than welcome to contact me at any time! They can even call me collect if they have to! :-) > QUESTION: Why is hardware made available to the other camps, > either in the form of corporate sponsorship for > ports, or in the form of people who already have > the hardware available volunteering their effort, > but the same is not true for FreeBSD? Probably because we haven't strongly advertised an interest in other platforms up to now. That's now changing, and we can only hope that the word goes out that the FreeBSD project is now considering support for other platforms more seriously and that this attracts all this nifty corporate sponsorship you're talking about. I've tried very directly to get DEC interested in sponsoring the ALPHA work, but no real reaction yet. > QUESTION': What is it about the structure of the FreeBSD camp, > itself, the abstracted variable, that imposes hidden > conditions above and beyond those implied by the > stated goals themselves? We've been over that. You refuse to acknowlege that making one person change is a lot easier than making 15 of them do so, and you'd prefer to turn the iceberg than the ship. Sorry. > OBSERVATION: A recent discussion with this same subject line > revisited corporate modelling, with the prominant > observation that short term expediency is adverse > to long term success. In point of fact, inclusion Yadda yadda yadda. Go back to business class again and pay special attention to the part where they talk about *small* business models and making different tradeoffs at different times in the company lifecycle, from 2-guys-in-a-garage to multinational corporate empire. I've known more than a few garage companies who were too proud to make any sort of concessions in order to win an initial customer base, and you know what? They're still in their garages, wearing dirty tee-shirts and railing at the industry for failing to recognise their genius! :-) > You can supply your own complexity decomposition examples for the rest. Thanks, but I think I'll pass. :-) Jordan
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