Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 12:06:56 -0500 From: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com> To: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD dead? Well, not in theory... Message-ID: <200003101712.MAA12621@etinc.com> In-Reply-To: <5137.952691230@axl.ops.uunet.co.za> References: <Your message of "Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:00:20 %2B0100." <005501bf8a88$35905520$030000ac@scully>
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At 02:27 PM 3/10/00 +0200, you wrote: > > >On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:00:20 +0100, Johnathan Meehan wrote: > >> That is not fair, Sheldon. Didier has some concerns, and I cannot >> blame him. > >I guess what I wrote makes for a very harsh comment in isolation from >the grin I had on my face while I was typing. :-) > >> I find it difficult to believe that a group of people who have worked so >> hard for so long to produce a superior product will walk away from it, or >> see it corrupted. > >What are their alternatives? Think about how the world is waking up to >Open Source. Think about how companies are realizing that a small group >of paid engineers simply can't keep up with a world-wide organization of >contributors. What would you do if you didn't feel you could keep up? They dont have to keep up. They just have to add some bells and whistles and package it (ala RedHat), which is probably what BSDI plans to do. They just want to get in on the Open Source Mania....they see RedHat drawing all that money with no real product....... As long as they keep their grubbly little hands off of it, and dont let the ciscos and uunets of the world (who both own a piece of bsdi) dictate policy, and as long as several key developers dont go work for BSDI (they would have already if they were going to I think)....it shouldnt be much different. >If BSD Inc. were to "buy out" FreeBSD with the sole purpose of reducing >competition, they'd be a bunch of idiots. The volunteers that make >FreeBSD great now would move on to something else and _that_ would soon >become the new threat. They can't stop a branch from forming...the question is who will run the branch? > >However, if BSD Inc. were to use FreeBSD as the base platform and sell >extra toys and service along with it, they'd benefit directly from the >volunteer energy of the project. >I think that there is only cause for concern if the folks at BSD Inc. >are a bunch of idiots. Thus, I'm not concerned. ;-) BSDI is a very poorly run company and the principals are the same. They have good engineers and terrible management. They've completely missed the boat all along, they have been trying to compete with Microsoft instead of Linux, which is a terrible mistake. ..I dont see any change that will make things any different. Their new CEO is an old world guy who's been there a long time...he's not an internet guy and not likely to do anything spectacular. Hes been their director of marketing through their market share freefall, so why will he do better as CEO? They've been buying full page ads for years and BSD is far from a household word. Unfortunately, as much as I like freebsd, FreeBSD isnt the answer. People want linux. Its a toy, and people like toys. Dennis Emerging Technologies, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- http://www.etinc.com ISA and PCI T1/T3/V35/HSSI Cards for FreeBSD and LINUX Multiport T1 and HSSI/T3 UNIX-based Routers Bandwidth Management Standalone Systems Bandwidth Management software for LINUX and FreeBSD To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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