FreeBSD Most wanted

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Vulpes Velox wrote:

>On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:04:51 +0000
>Daniela <dgw at liwest.at> wrote:
> 
>  
>
>>   o better compatibility
>>
>>I asked a lot of people what keeps them from dumping Windoze. The
>>main reason for not switching is that they fear having to throw out
>>their existing data and apps with it.
>>    
>>
>
>Sorta find it odd to expect the exact same program to work, and wine
>is a pain to work with, but what could be useful is something that
>points to programs that provide similar features or whatever to what
>they where using on windows...
>  
>

That's a good point,  but we still don't
have genuine data compatibility.  I mean,
we can open a *.doc, *.rtf, *.wmv, *.ppt, etc.,
as long as we've had a month or three to check
out the latest version of whatever M$ has done
to break the old format.  I see two barriers:
standardization and economic pragmatism.

We need to try and convince the world that
_standards_ should be adhered to, and
that applications should write data to files
that are platform/application independent
rather than proprietary.  (And probably,
we need to convince them that we adhere
to the standards while the 'industry leader'
doesn't ... we all know it's true, but nobody
complains about this loudly in the public
square.  And it's probably only the Open
Source community that really cares about
standards....

When you have to have a converter for a
Windows(R) "Notepad"* file, somebody's not
playing ball with the rest of the world.
I think we all know who that is.... :-(

As far as apps go, people just tend to
be very pragmatic.  Once they've learned
a way to work, they prefer to _do_ work, rather
than learn another way to do the same thing.

For the public to want/need us on their
desktops, we need to be more _practical_ to
use than any other system.   Better price?
Absolutely :-)  Better support?  Doubt it.  We have
very talented people, but less of them, and less $$
to waste on phone banks.  Better stability? 
99 && 44/100% yes.  Better reputation?
dunno...ours may be 'better', but theirs is 'bigger.'
Better learning curve?  This is where 'tools, not
policy' hurts us.  Don't get me wrong, I love this
paradigm, but Joe and Sally User just want to be
told what to click when, not to "RTFM" and think
for themselves.  And to compound the problem,
sys admins know these facts as well, and many of
them are walking testimonies to what I've said;
and we've got to convert them as well....

I see very few reasons why IT guys shouldn't have
offices full of users with Gnome or KDE on
FreeBSD, but the reasons that are there are giants....

Maybe we need to convince IBM they need an
total OS, not just a kernel ... ;-)

Kevin Kinsey
DaleCo, S.P.

*"Come, sir, I think you picked a poor example...^M
Did I?^M"