Re: The case for FreeBSD

Quoting Scott Long <scottl_at_freebsd.org>:
> Diego Calleja wrote:
> > In the firefox 1.0 release it has been demonstrated
> > that agressive "marketing" _matters_ even if you are not a company. Firefox
is
> > a great browser, but it would not have been as succesful if there was not so
much
> > noise around it. What Freebsd needs is to make more noise, documeting
changes
> > is good but it doesn't really makes lot of noise.
>
> The Firefox comparison is actually very apt.  There are quite a few
> areas where Firefox is still inferior to the Mozilla Suite, but the team
> has done an _outstanding_ job of advertising Firefox for what it is.

Erm.  I'm not sure where you think Firefox is inferior to the suite,
but that's not the point: the point is, ordinary people find it
useful, compared to Internet Explorer (not compared to the Mozilla
suite).  I know plenty of Windows users who've switched to Firefox.
On the other hand, you need to be a Unix whiz to use FreeBSD.  There's
absolutely no point pretending it's useful to ordinary users: it's
not.  Nor are the other BSDs, and Linux is just barely getting there
(though there's a huge market there, given that 90% of Windows PCs
are reportedly spyware infected and people are just getting sick of
it all).

Besides, Firefox got some very good, honest third-party reviews in major
newspapers.  Of course, they'd have worked hard to get those reviews, but
at the moment even the most user-friendly Linux distro can't hope for
anything better than "holds promise for the technically advanced user".

Now, there is a (much) smaller market, of knowledgeable unix users
who are not scared of the command line and value stability, performance
and a clean system, that FreeBSD could target (and has traditionally
targeted).  But is even that small market going away?  People are
still complaining about 5.x on the lists (even on this thread) and many
people who want a solid system are still using 4.x.  I don't think the
problem here is advertising.  The sort of user who would experiment
with NetBSD after years of using FreeBSD is not the sort of user who
is easily swayed by marketspeak.

Advertising works, but only if there is a sound product behind it.

Rahul