Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 13:33:18 -0400 From: Joshua Lee <yid@softhome.net> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <20020902133318.404b831f.yid@softhome.net> In-Reply-To: <3D7380EE.A37DFF03@mindspring.com> References: <200209011802.g81I2N144217@hokkshideh2.jetcafe.org> <3D72E44E.CB303FAE@mindspring.com> <20020902105118.21bffb18.yid@softhome.net> <3D7380EE.A37DFF03@mindspring.com>
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On Mon, 02 Sep 2002 08:17:02 -0700 Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> wrote: > Joshua Lee wrote: > > > The BSD community is roughly self-assembled around the issue of > > > license, just as the Linux community is roughly self-assembled > > > around the issue of license. > > > > Funny, I always thought the self-assembling of the community was > > around the fact that BSD is the best Unix-based OS available, not > > because of the license which is only a small part of why its the > > best. :-) Then again, I'm a hacker, not a lawyer or philosopher. > > Every Open Source OS advocate thinks that's how their community > came about. Actually, that belief is an emergent property of Actually, BSD came about because of a need for utilities and for a virtual memory Unix on the VAX. The license issue attraction is definitely one that developed later, and has little if any to do with why I run BSD. > people who have already selected a community. It's an effective > defense against "buyer's remorse". It's not limited to Open > Source Software; it's also something you see with regard to car > brands, or, in extremis, specific makes and models. I mostly joined this particular FreeBSD mailing list (as opposed to the more technical lists, though I have fun with those too) for fun. I've always enjoyed freewheeling technical discussions ever since FidoNet (don't laugh ;-) ) and Usenet, the latter of which I also used when many of the sites including the one I used, ukelele, still got feeds via uucp, though I think you're more than an old-timer than me. > The real question is "Why did you subscribe to the mailing list?"; I joined -chat so I could follow redirected off-topic discussions and so I could talk with people I had something in common with; BSD. (I joined the other lists of course for technical content and the pleasure of helping out those who are even more clueless than myself. :-) ) > It's like the initial confusion about web browsers: they were going > to "guide" (read: "control") your "Internet experience" (read: "where > you point your eyeballs"), and depend on resetting the default home > page to some portal-play site, when you installed the browser. Mozilla doesn't do that, but I don't like *its* default either. :-) > same way that starting Netscape Mail brings up the "Start Center" > page in the message display portion of the screen, and forces your > link up). That sounds annoying, remind me never to use Netscape Mail. > What actually happened is that people picked their own home pages; > a lot of them picked "about:" or "blank:" or "intranet": things > that did not bring the link up. Actually, from what I've seen in supporting non-technical users, the kind that never would touch BSD (other than OS X :-) ), is that most people don't reconfigure that. > and the only "stickeyness" will be as a result of a reluctance to > admit that their first decision was not optimal... which people > are really reluctant to admit. Most people actually don't change their browser's homepage because they don't know the first thing about how to do that. I've had to explain to many users how to find a file on their hard drive, that's the level of over 40% of today's computer users according to a recent survey incidentally. Using the defaults has nothing to do with if they are rationalizing a taste for www.msn.com or not. Does anyone consider www.msn.com to be their favorite website?! (That's even a more scary thought to me than 40% of computer users not quite knowing what a file directory is.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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