What sort of market does FreeBSD provide ... ?

[Darren]

kevlar Hodge-Podge wrote:
> I just want to see if I understand the issue correctly.
> 
>> From what it sounds like there would need to both be a server for all the 
> individual machines to connect to, and some sort of scripted client to 
> capture info on the machine and send it to the server. When asking about 
> older machines such as the RELENG_4 mail server mentioned, wouldn’t that 
> person have to go back and in stall this software on the machine? Also 
> if this project were to work, it would almost have to be placed as a 
> high priority install, if not almost mandatory. When and how often would 
> the client contact the server? Every reboot would seem like a good time, 
> but possibly more often. Would it be possible to modify a very thin 
> email client to work as the client, meaning the server would send an 
> email, and when received it would prompt you “would you like to send 
> uptime/user data now?” perhaps even being able to choose what types of 
> data to send. I think the average person would be more likely to send 
> more info if they knew exactly what was being sent.

The outrage over the behavior and potential of WGA is a pretty good 
meter of the general population's opinion of software "calling home."