Where is FreeBSD going?

[Timothy Beyer]

Brett Glass wrote:
>FreeBSD also keeps falling farther and farther behind Linux in the area of
>advocacy (and, hence, corporate adoption)

Granted, this is true.  However, you should be more specific when you 
refer to advocacy.  When I think of the term "advocacy," blind, relentless 
loyalty comes to mind.  This is one of the things that bothers me about 
Linux in particular, since it seems to have the most "advocates" of any OS 
that I have used.  Linux Users and Developers [in the "advocate" category] 
insist Linux is "superior" to other offerings, (usually windows, when in 
actuality, its strengths are quite different) quite often without stating, or even 
understanding what exactly constitutes these "superior" qualities of the 
operating system.   This comes across to most people as zealotry, and as a 
result, people will think less of the hard work done by the developers, many 
of whom would only express an opinion that they fully understood.  Quite 
frankly, it was this type of behavior in the Linux community that kept me 
away from using non-proprietary operating systems for a long, long time.

Yes, you are correct that more people need to promote *BSD, the BSD license,
etc, but I think the term "advocate" implies the wrong emphasis.  Keep the
elitism at the minimum, or else the majority will take it the wrong way.
Blind faith could potentially hinder corporate acceptance, though it would be
unlikely to encourage it.

>Many of the developers actually have an antipathy toward advocacy,
>since they dislike answering newbie FAQs and don't want too manypeople to
>adopt the OS for fear that it'll overcrowd their "sandbox."

Yes, thats quite true of FreeBSD developers.  While these individuals are
typically rational, productive individuals, they most likely don't produce
the required volume of noise to give a name to FreeBSD. However, it is nice
to know that people exist who put money where their mouth is;  I don't see
that in some other free software communities.

--Tim