What sort of market does FreeBSD provide ... ?

[User Freebsd]

IMHO, it *has* to be an officially recognized project, not something 
someone just throws together and hopes ppl will register ... it should be 
something that ppl are encouraged to become members of, since our goal is 
to show vendors that we *are* a force ... but, it *should* be 
semi-anonymous, since the last thing we want is vendors to use it as a 
troll-list for their sales men ...

As for Linux ... they already have their backing ... the fact that the 
'Tier 1' guys like IBM openly support them on their hardware gives the 
other vendors a reason to want/need to 'jump on the bandwagon' ...

The thing is, right now, what do any of the Advocacy group have to work 
with when Advocating?  Who *big* recognizes FreeBSD as a viable operating 
system, at least openly?  ICP Vortex did until FreeBSD 5.x, but they have 
nothing for 6 or 7 ... Adaptec, IBM, HP, etc ... none of them really *see* 
FreeBSD ... HP apparently has a test drive available for FreeBSD, but its 
not considered on of their 'supported platforms' (although the Proliant 
DL360 G4ps that I recently picked up are a dream with 6-STABLE) ...

The thing with this idea is that if we could get *every* FreeBSD based 
system out there registered/talking to it ... how many would we have?  Are 
we *really* a bunch of hobbiests working out of our garages, or ... ?

Also, what hardware are we using?  What drivers are the more popular? 
This is all information that we should be able to parse easily from dmesg 
and upload ...

Hell, how many ppl are still running 3.x or 4.x systems, vs the newer 
stuff?  Its easy to 'discontinue support for' an older release, but if ppl 
aren't moving up to the newer stuff, and the #s are showing that to be the 
case, why, and how do you encourage them to move up?

I'm not saying it will be an easy/small project ... nor do I think its for 
one person ... but I do think that it *has* to be an officially recognized 
extension of the project, and for the project ...

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006, Julian H. Stacey wrote:

>> Something just for FreeBSD users (well, all *BSD users should be invited,
>
> Why not co-operate with Linux guys on this ?  there's Free Net Open
> Dragon, & there' a load of Linuxes too, & a lot of the admin &
> design would be the same to collect stats regardless, .. & a lot
> of the hard  admin tool design issues, like how to decide & allow
> when to autopsy transaction logs, & delete semi obvious / suspect
> troll submissions, & update old entries, & change server & home
> host numbers & functions etc, & issue people passwords so they can
> change themselves.
>
> If much is done by a human it's thankless, & person would get bored,
> better use a robot (mail or web or both), & then a lot of the design
> would be common regardless if *BSD, *Linux, *Mach *Minix or whatever
> had a few special questions only applicaple to that OS.
>
> Results could be paralled mailed to multiple servers if we don't
> trust `the other OS camp(s), but i'd trust eg Debian site or any BSD
> site to host it, (I have 3 servers to host it on berklix.org,
> & I'm sure 100's of other's d volunteer to host it too).  I sure
> wouldnt want to spend time writing it though.  How about palming
> it off on some Summer Of Code hacker next Northern hemisphere summer?
>
> It's also possibly something non mainline computer people might do
> for us ! Ethnologist/ social research students with some programming
> skills, whatever they call themselves: Pperiodically I see references
> to Geek numbers, free software users & what they're up to, seem to
> recall something in Washinton Post a while back, though dont normally
> read that.  Those people would be OS neutral too, 'long as they're
> not Redmond based/ users/subsidised.
>
> -- 
> Julian Stacey.  Consultant Unix Net & Sys. Eng., Munich.  http://berklix.com
> Mail in Ascii, HTML=spam.     Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz.
>

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