Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 18:19:14 -0500 From: Adam Turoff <aturoff@isinet.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux to be deployed in Mexican schools; Where was FreeBSD? Message-ID: <98Nov24.180838est.113829@pandora.isinet.com> References: <48004.911945650@zippy.cdrom.com>
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<delurk> Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/16107.html > > FreeBSD probably wasn't on their radar. More helpful indeed would any > suggestions on your part (and possibly organizational efforts) on what > it takes to get on mexican radar screens. If you follow the advocacy trail in this case, it wasn't Linux that won, but rather Gnome, and their linux-friendly development team. http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-list/1998-October/1298.html > As is my usual gripe in advocacy, what we really need around here > aren't a bunch of firemen who arrive at the scene of the fire well > after it has already consumed the building and stand around saying > meaningful things like "This was a fire! It appears to have burned > down the building! Fires are bad, someone should do something." > > Such firemen are obviously of no use at all and should probably go > into less challenging professions like chicken inspection or lavatory > maintenance. What we need are firemen who actually arrive in time to > have a meaningful affect on fires *as they are happening* or can turn > practical expertise towards preventing fires in the first place. :-) Exactly. If we all whine about how nobody uses FreeBSD while we're on our own small patch of sand, FreeBSD won't amount to a hill of beans. We need to advocate among other communities (such as Gnome/KDE, perl, python, apache, tech/business journalists, etc.). [Kudos to anyone actually _doing_ this, Brett & Jordan. :-)] > In this specific case, what would have constituted attacking the fire > rather than the ashes would have been to let me know about this well > before the selection process took place so that I could have sent > these folks some evaluation CDs and possibly a book or two. I send > literally tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise to schools > and other educational programs every year and will continue to do so, > but people still have to tell me where to send them since I'm not > psychic here, folks! Sadly, I doubt it would have mattered in this (high-profile) case. It was a win for Gnome, made by local Gnome developers. I honestly don't think FreeBSD is locked out in perpetuity. If there's a case that FreeBSD runs Gnome as well or better than Linux, or if large numbers of FreeBSD desktops were more easily managed than Linux desktops, then it would certainly mean something to the Scholar Net program. The most important thing here is to have a decent amount of wise FreeBSD evangelists making the case for co-existance with Linux (rather than displacing linux). -- Adam </delurk> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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