Openness vs. Comfort

[Dave Hayes]

On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:37:42 +0200
Vincent DEFERT <20.100 at defert.com> wrote:
> My sole purpose was to provide you with an insight of how FreeBSD and 
> its community could be perceived by an outsider in 2020. 

I would be careful about confusing a perception of the community with the actual
position of the community in general. 

As the number in a community grows large, human genetic diversity being what
it is, you begin to include people who are much more vocal about specific issues
than the average community member. If the average community member does not
feel the need to be vocal, this tends to create a perceptual illusion where the
worldviews of the vocal seem to be the worldviews of the community. This is
often not the case. 

> It means FreeBSD imposes on its new users a tremendous cost - a cost 
> which is incurred only ONCE for each Linux distribution for the benefit 
> of all its users.

FreeBSD, like any complex system, requires that one devote effort to learning.
In my experience it has never been a system for the average human; rather it
caters to the computer scientist (or IT professional). You can achieve
some technical solutions in FreeBSD that you cannot achieve anywhere else.

This is not to say that FreeBSD is without it's community problems or
technical issues, but it is at least driven by mostly scientific (rather than
profit) motives. This is one of my philosophical reasons for using it; note
that this idea is glaringly not true with other, more popular, operating
systems...Linux included. 

I sincerely hope you can solve your apparent issues and learn to enjoy this OS
as I do. :)
-- 
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave at jetcafe.org 
>>>> *The opinions expressed above are entirely my own* <<<<

Most anything that annoys you is a mirror.