The Website

Devon H. O'Dell dodell at sitetronics.com
Tue Mar 30 05:51:21 PST 2004


Paul Robinson wrote:

> [snip; poor formatting]
> 
> 
> Well, this is the problem FreeBSD generally has. A lot of people would
> actually like to see more developers move to FreeBSD and contribute to
> the project. It then follows that as the "product" improves, we are able
> to see a rise in the number of users. Pedantic, yes, but I'm becoming
> less convinced of the need for us to get FreeBSD onto the family PC. I
> would like to see it on a lot more developer's desks though.

And in more companies. FreeBSD is already used by many (large) companies 
(including those in the Fortune 500). I know that even MS uses FreeBSD 
for the SFU software.

> [snip; poor formatting]
> 
> 
> Won't you expect the competition's product to be a better alternative to
> the one you currently use? Do you honestly believe that OS choice is
> dependent on what the website looks like? If so, how did Mandrake ever
> take off?

I have to agree here.


> [snip; poor formatting]
>>	the moment it looks like a three column url listing with no
>>	really strong visual cues to things important to capturing,
>>	converting, and supporting new users.
> 
> 
> Well, you know what the answer is then, don't you? You can grab the
> source, talk to the web team, produce a better version. Remember it has
> to be readable in text browsers, conform to WAI and Internationalisation
> standards and everyone has to agree by mutual consent it's a better
> design than the existing one.

AMEN. This is a bikeshed that gets discussed every 6 or so months. 
Search advocacy@, doc@ and any number of other mailing lists for the 
amount of complaints about the webpage. As per the  suggestion always 
posted that the FreeBSD page is too ``simple,'' my answer remains:

http://www.google.com
http://www.sun.com

Simple, huh?

As I stated on your other thread regarding the post on the ZDNet.au 
site; if you can't put up, shut up. I say that in a coarse manner not to 
be obtuse, but to discourage you and others from continuing with a 
bikeshed that nobody seems to care to fix. If you want to make a new 
site for FreeBSD, make a template, see what you can do, but don't expect 
it to be used.

> [snip]

Kind regards,

Devon H. O'Dell


More information about the freebsd-advocacy mailing list