Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 23:02:50 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: The ongoing Brett thread. Message-ID: <7838.936165770@localhost>
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First, let me just say that since I don't subscribe to this list (too much noise), I haven't been following the discussions and don't really want to get sucked into any either; I'm too busy right now doing many of the things which Brett seems to feel I'm not doing to waste my time in an extended flame war. I'm also not sure if I even understand Brett's concerns about "Walnut Creek CDROM taking FreeBSD private" since that's nothing we've ever shown the slightest inclination to do and to even worry about such a thing happening strikes me as nothing short of paranoid. If one is frequently chased by little green aliens then one has every right to worry about them, but if one has never even SEEN a little green alien then it's probably rational to assume that it shouldn't rank high on one's list of personal worries. It has always been Walnut Creek CDROM's wish that FreeBSD be as open as possible, we've never made any bones about that fact, and we've even sneakily tried sending sample copies of our CDs to known pirates in Asia in hopes that they'd copy the heck out of the disks and spread them (and the FreeBSD cause) far and wide. Since that doesn't seem to have worked (the pirates are picky and only seem to go for the high-dollar value products), Bob and I are going to Japan, Hong Kong and China next month to try the more direct route. We want FreeBSD to cover the earth and we'll do whatever we can to make that happen. I also take issue with Brett's assertion that he's somehow single-handedly responsible for FreeBSD's recent exposure in the Linux market since that only a grave disservice to the time and energy that I and many others have invested in showing up at Linux conferences, participating in open source panels, going to the O'Reilly show, doing television interviews, writing articles for electronic and paper publications, etc etc. In fact, I can't recall seeing anything from Brett since the article in "Smart Reseller" and that was more than 8 months ago. I'm happy and even a little proud to say that my own recent efforts at doing PR have been far more timely and effective than anything I've seen recently from Brett, and I've every reason to be - I've worked damn hard at it lately! I'm also well aware that the Boston Globe interview I recent did was rather heavily slanted against us and I've already commented in -advocacy on how my words were taken out of context and otherwise heavily filtered by a journalist with a pre-existing agenda, but sometimes you just have to take the good with the bad. If I only did interviews with journalists I knew and trusted personally, I'd miss out on the many *positive* opportunities for good PR and I probably also wouldn't be in the Wall Street Journal this week (keep an eye open for that article, I think it's going to be everything that the Boston Globe article was not). I also hope to get a few inches in Byte Online this month and the 6 different magazine interviews I did in Japan (C Magazine, Unix User, Software Design, Linux magazine and the intro issue of the new "Linux/BSD" magazine) have all shown up in the July/August/September issues and appear to be quite good. My sincere thanks to the folks in Japan who organized that press tour and deserve a great deal of credit for establishing venues that I and Satoshi Asami were able to speak at. With their help, it went very well and was definitely worth our time. As Satoshi's experience also shows, I'm hardly the only one around here capable of doing PR and I encourage each and every one of you to "get on the stump" and take every opportunity you can to spread the word. Contrary to what was said earlier, I've also *never* objected to "linux style advocacy" and think that many of the things that Linux has done are quite obviously effective or we wouldn't be seeing the Linux penguin on everything from T-shirts to condoms. What I've only (and always) objected to was "attack advocacy", where one tries to score points for one's product by attacking the competition. I've also referred to this as "rabid advocacy" in the past and I've always been quite clear with Brett, in email and in person, that it's THIS I object to and really would regard as a step down to see done on the FreeBSD side. Even though it may generate what look like short-term gains to turn around and slam your competition, I think the long-term effects are only negative and there is always a large contingent of folks who *don't* react well to this kind of "advertising" and will, furthermore, never forget it if you do it so much as ONCE. When it comes to mud-slinging, memories are long and I think we've all worked too hard to have a reputation for more maturity and level-headedness than this. Sure, there is probably always some collection of angry teens out there who won't flock to your cause if you're not burning something or getting a gang together to go kick the other side's butts, but that kind of "action" is not our cup of tea and I prefer to leave the knife-fighting for the West Side Story fans and those who feel that they're not achieving something if they haven't kicked a few puppies before breakfast. I think we can do better than this, we HAVE done better than this, and we will CONTINUE to do better than this if I have anything at all to say about it. As David has already pointed out, FreeBSD is growing very rapidly right now, we're getting more "column inches" in the press than ever before and the health of the FreeBSD product line at Walnut Creek CDROM has never been better. These are certainly not the signs of a "dying effort", as our detractors so frequently love to claim, and this hardly seems like the time to try and pull defeat from the jaws of victory by turning to a non-productive and needlessly confrontrative stragegy when the current one IS working whether certain individuals choose to acknowledge the manifest truth of that or not. If people weren't paying attention then I wouldn't be in the position of having to actually turn down certain speaking engagements now due to having a surplus of them and only one body to be in a single place at a time. I also don't think I'd be getting invited to anywhere near as many linux shows and linux events (in which we're graciously invited to share the spotlight) if I chose to slam them out of some ill-defined and immature marketing ideal which substituted sheer volume for substance. As always, please keep an eye on the press page at www.freebsd.org for updates on FreeBSD in the press. Many of us are working very hard and racking up the frequent flier miles (to say nothing of jet lag) in the service of FreeBSD evangelism and the proof of our efforts is both very tangible and available for all to see, even if we aren't always as good as we should be at keeping the press page up to date (something for which I also share significant responsibility - I've been so busy, I haven't even had a chance to keep Mr. Koshy updated on my own interview schedule). I apologise for that and will work harder to keep everyone aware of the FreeBSD articles I manage to get into print, radio and television. I hope to see you all at FreeBSDCon '99! - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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