Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 22:40:49 -0700 (MST) From: chris@tci.com To: dan@dna.tsolab.org Cc: mmercer@ipass.net, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, me@T-F-I.freeserve.co.uk, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Confusion Message-ID: <199903190540.WAA07008@lazlo.tci.com> In-Reply-To: <199903190501.AAA10701@dna.tsolab.org>
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On 19 Mar, Dan Ts'o wrote: > > uh... the Release Notes are easily available on the Web, as are > many other bits of info that would have provided the same pictures. > I wouldn't ever deploy ANY OS Unix, Windows or whatever, without getting > some kind of feedback from its user community, not only about what that One of the NT guys once told me that, "It [some ms server product] is so simple to set up that monkeys could do it." I replied with, "Apparently, they are." The point I'm making here is just to show that, as computers get easier for people to use, more and more people who know less and less about them are now using them. In today's world, it's not long before these same people are helping make decisions about what to use and what not. > I most certainly disagree with this statement. I guess you don't > remember the fiasco with DOS 4.0, or Windows 3.0. With nearly ever No, you're right, I most certainly don't remember this. I was in the DEC VAX and PDP world at the time and had considered PCs to be toys. > milestone release of a MS OS, it was very questionable about moving to > it quickly -- in fact foolish to do so. WinNT 3.1 was a joke and it > wasn't until 3.51 that it arguably useable. The transition to Win95 was > gradual -- if it wasn't for those MS forced-preloads, it would have taken > much longer. Remember the nickname for WfWG 3.11 was Windows for Warehouses, > because no one wanted to transition to it (again it took the MS forced-preloads > to start the ball rolling, after at least 6-9 months of stalled deployment). > > Corporate MIS is very leery of jumping to major releases, and Perhaps in your experience this is true. I work at a large company, and have personally seen Microsoft come in and feed us all kinds of hogwash and FUD (a separate thread by itself). IMHO, labels of vX.0 mean virtually nothing any more - it's just yet another version of Software X. > rightfully so. They are currently very leery of moving to NT 5.0. In my experience this is very true, although it has absolutely nothing to do with NT5 being named a ".0" release > So the move to FreeBSD 3.0, by its very numbering as a dot-zero > release should have been enough to prompt SOME investigation. We're getting off track here. The primary point I was agreeing with is that, without clearly labeled packaging, the current naming scheme is confusing to consumers. Many of the people who admin today's systems are young enough to not remember the problems encountered while DOS grew up and rightfully couldn't care; it's ancient history and things change in this world ever so quickly. More recent versions of something are preferred over older versions. Look, the NT admins I know who are getting their feet wet are doing it of their own free will - they're wanting to check out what all the hype about OSS and the like is about. They go to retail stores, check out the packaging, and buy what they think is the "better" product. I'm happy as Hell they're doing this, but do we really want to be confusing people from the very start. Remember the Betamax? chris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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