Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 22:50:37 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: jmutter@netwalk.com, "Viren R. Shah" <viren@rstcorp.com> Cc: Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re:PCWeek article by Anne Chen -- Comments Message-ID: <4.2.0.37.19990504223819.00c28c30@localhost> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905042357120.402-100000@insomnia.local.net> References: <199905041651.MAA23567@jabberwock.rstcorp.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
It does reflect the weaknesses in the current marketing and promotion of FreeBSD. In particular, the article mentions the lack of native application support. (Running Linux binaries under emulation isn't acceptable to the IT crowd; the platform must be SUPPORTED by the application vendor.) As I've said many times before, the technical foundation of FreeBSD is excellent, and the people who work on the OS are very competent programmers and debuggers. FreeBSD's deficiencies are in the areas of marketing, promotion, native application support, and a good "story." In short, it has not technical problems but rather memetic problems. This is enough to cause it to lose out to Linux's more adaptive memes. To solve these problems, FreeBSD needs the sort of marketing that the current leadership rejects. To use a phrase coined by Alan Cooper, "The inmates are running the asylum." Even development efforts will fall behind -- due to a lack of enthusiastic volunteers -- if this problem is not rectified. --Brett Glass At 12:03 AM 5/5/99 -0400, James A. Mutter wrote: >Wow. I just finished reading this article. It's definately one of >the most positive pieces I've seen. This really belongs in -advocacy. > >It surprised me though that the author wrote this: > > "As inspiring as such stories may be, they're not always > enough to persuade risk-averse CIO's to take a gamble on > FreeBSD. IT Managers who are comfortable with mainstream > technical support shy away from FreeBSD, which does not > offer traditional technical support" > >Then, at the very bottom of the page, is a link to the FreeBSD Mall, >which does in fact offer what I would consider to be "traditional >technical support". > >Either way, I thought it was a pretty decent article. > > >On Tue, 4 May 1999, Viren R. Shah wrote: > >:>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu> writes: >: >: Steve> FYI, >: Steve> Anne Chen has written a fairly decent article about >: Steve> FreeBSD in PCWEEK vol. 16(18) p. 67. >: >: >: http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,400844,00.html >: >: >:Viren >:-- >:Viren R. Shah | Everyone was born right-handed. >:viren@rstcorp.com | Only the greatest overcome it. >: >: >:To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >:with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message >: >: > > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4.2.0.37.19990504223819.00c28c30>