Re: http://www.freebsd.org/marketing/os-comparison.html

On 08/30/11 17:34, Chris Brennan wrote:
> On 8/30/2011 10:30 AM, Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:
>> On 08/30/2011 05:21 PM, Hartmann, O. wrote:
>>> On 08/30/11 12:31, Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:
>>>> On 08/30/2011 12:59 PM, Hartmann, O. wrote:
>>>> But I also express my opinion that updating such a document should be
>>>> done by a third party.
>>> I slightly disagree with that.
>> No problem
>>
>>> Who else than the developer/core team
>>> members know better about what's
>>> in and what's not in the FreeBSD box?
>> So, for a features listing, it's OK. I really agree on turning it into a
>> feature list.
>>
>> For a _comparison_, I think it's up to somewhere else:
>> To really compare, it's mandatory to really now the multiple compared
>> items. Who cares about the latest MS Windows internals (deep networking
>> capability, filesystem tricks, kernel scheduler specs,...) in here?
>>
>> I migh be wrong, but IMHO "core devs" and "power users" wont spend time
>> to deeply investigate on the other systems.
>>
>> Again, just an opinion.
>>
> As a casual user and a staunch supporter, I would strongly disagree with
> you here. if a third party wiki (even Wikipedia) contained such a
> comparison, I would question it's validity moreso then if the project
> itself were to maintain a release-based comprison of currently supported
> branches (7.x, 8.x, 9.x*, etc) vs  a selected choice of mainstream Linux
> Distro's, OS X Server and Windows 2003/2008.
>
> But this comparison can't be trivial, it has to be genuine, authentic,
> (peer reviewed across the board if possible), backed up by fact (links
> back to other reputable sources). In short, it's a monumental
> undertaking and may require the work of many dedicated people
> (new/active marketing team?) It should very much be done by FreeBSD as a
> project and should be taken seriously as a marketing technique, the
> object is to show people *WHY* FreeBSD is a sound (and valid) choice
> against the competition, we can't just claim we're better because we
> know we are, we have to provide a convincing argument that is true and
> honest fact.
>

FreeBSd hasn't "the market" is may have had in the past and the lack of 
developer is always brought
up when it comes to the lack of features. So you would found "a 
marketing team"? Professionals?
Who cares for the costs in money and manpower for that?

This is why things get "drown" like a young puppy dog. There are some 
essential facts the different
operating systems differ in. Even the *BSD UNIX systems do have those 
and it could be a nice thing to
gather some aspects together and compare them. It would be hard to make 
any ground against
Linux these days - this is what I gathered in the past two years 
desperately looking for a support of
GPGPU vailability in *BSD. This is only one small aspect, but I guess 
there are more. On the other hand,
I'm not deep inside the system and if there is no source of a half-way 
trustworthy webpage telling a story about
different aspects of development and "decently written terms" of how 
FreeBSD is a bit better than others ...what
can I propagade to my colleagues and others?

Well, everything new and everything "unprofessional" but true is much 
better than the old "smiley"-infested webpage.
Think of people starting with an OpenSource OS or starting being courios 
about the *BSDs. I would be scared
away by such an arrogant looking page! New people do not even know that 
the FreeBSD was once a backend of
many big companies due to its rockstable network stack. Roumors said, 
that even Microsofts MSN was backed up
by FreeBSD. But today, this doesn't count anymore. Operating systems are 
workhorses, not pieces of art keeping
and replenish their value. The art of programming is its clarity 
cleaness and this is not aproved by the developer
himself, this is a attribute which is earned by those who has to 
administer and develop for such an OS. And I guess
compared to Linux, there are big diffrences. Since I have to administer 
my CUDA/TESLA cluster (since FreeBSD's lack
of support for that we needed to switch over), I'm scared about the mess 
the distributions celebrate. In my opinion, Linux
is "scripted to death" in many aspects and without the distro's 
management tools, there is no straight passage to the
problem's core anymore! That is maybe a foggy sight of things since I'm 
with BSD systems since my first
private DECstation 5000/133 with a good old 4.3 RENO BSD and I havn't 
already understood the Linux' philosophy.
But there  must also be a reason why network-responsible administrators 
favour BSD based firewalls but have to workd
with Linux due to the contracts of the companies ...