Instead of freebsd.com, why not...

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Feb 11, 2005, at 7:54 PM, Anthony Atkielski wrote:

>> On a related note:  Balmer's big mouth hasn't killed Windows
>> yet either.
>
> Only because Gates built the company up into a successful multinational
> with a lot of inertia before Balmer took the helm.  But that big mouth
> is still a liability for the company.  Fortunately for Microsoft, most
> of the competition is just as clueless (look at people like Larry
> Ellison or Steve Jobs, and Balmer almost starts to look wise).

I am not a Steve lover, but lumping Jobs in there with Balmer and 
Ellison is not fair.   Steve has a lot more respect than that and uses 
his bully-pulpit well.

>
>> These mailing lists are not official mouthpieces of the FreeBSD
>> project.
>
> Where _is_ the official mouthpiece?  CIOs want to know.  Whom do you
> call?  Who commits?  Who signs on the dotted line?  Not knowing these
> things makes executives nervous, and they don't adopt products that 
> make
> them nervous, even if they are free.

Linux has the same problem.

Linux does have the advantage that their are *commercial companies* 
that have evolved around it, so you can purchase support from Novell, 
Red Hat, etc if you want.  FreeBSD unfortunately does not have that 
branch available.  However, your same criticisms of FreeBSD support 
also apply to Linux and it has been doing pretty well.

>> If the FreeBSD projects website, official announcements, etc were like
>> this, you'd have a case.
>
> The Web site actually looks pretty amateurish compared to the
> competition.  It screams "shareware hobbyist" rather than "enterprise
> solutions center."

Linux seems to be doing pretty good and look at

www.kernel.org
www.linux.org
www.linux.com

www.freebsd.org is not bad at all.  It does not scream 
"shareware/hobbyist."  It is reasonable for a project like FreeBSD.   
FreeBSD is an open source community project.

Linux has the same problems as FreeBSD.

Now, I agree with you about a logo needing to be designed for FreeBSD.  
And there are probably pay-for-support companies that will help you 
with FreeBSD, and maybe they need to get more "air time".  But open 
source is catching on and FreeBSD doesn't suffer from anything that 
open source in general doesn't suffer from.

Chad