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Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 18:34:27 +1000 (EST)
From: David Leonard <d@fnarg.net.au>
Reply-To: David Leonard <david.leonard@csee.uq.edu.au>
To: advocacy@openbsd.org
cc: netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG, FreeBSD-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Merging Net/Free/Open-BSD together against Linux
In-Reply-To: <19981201035928.25921.qmail@measles.ecst.csuchico.edu>
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Errors-To: david.leonard@csee.uq.edu.au
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So far this thread has discussed
	- technical changes
	- licensing changes and
	- organisational/leadership changes

There have also been implications that we are fighting for recognition
against:
	- Linux
	- Microsoft

Yet I have not seen anything yet that addresses the _immediate
visibility_ of the *BSD camps. So, here is my AUS$0.05:

It is pretty easy to start naively creating web sites and documentation
merges for a '*BSD' site - in order to present the one-stop BSD
shop.  DaemonNews' success is true inspiration for starting such
an activity.

It is also straightforward to naively create mailing lists, newsgroups,
and icb/irc/icq channels for a *BSD. However these would probably
fail because in such fora, user-talk cannot be separated from
developer-talk and surfacing distinctions between the three BSDs
will again cause natural bifurcation. The only counter for this
that I can think of is total mind control stemming from (i) strong
leadership (ii) a common enemy/s or (iii) inherently perfect
direction/ideology.

So we see that user-contribution is perhaps the most important
dynamic of any of the BSDs, as it is also the most important catalyst
for divergence.  So I strongly believe that it would be impossible
to recombine the three camps insofar as their dynamic elements are
concerned. There is also the great dialectic (trialectic?) currently
achieved by the three camps by way of implementation osmosis which
I would rather not see hindered.

However, returning to the immediate visibility point, we really
should concentrate on unified, published, stable artefacts in order
to project a consitent and palatable image to the vast unwashed
masses.

Maybe this means having a www.bsd.org with a unified documentation
tree employing apache magic to show the docs for a particular OS
based on cookies or whatever!? jkh's multiple PR phone calls are
good; more feeding of the press is good - but all in a *BSD-unified
fashion. Projecting only a single-camp's image into the media will
serve only to confuse the poor (BSD-poor) reader.

  SUGGESTION: In all future propaganda from all camps, some phrasing
  to describe the collective *BSD should be foremost.

I already contribute to daemonnews and find it very rewarding
blending openbsd's perspective into the freebsd+netbsd answerman
files. The similarities in the codebases and the ingrained shared
isms from traditional BSD are things that we can hang onto. It isn't
as distasteful as you may (or may not) imagine.

So I say: keep the diversity! Things are going great technology
wise!  But form a _unified public image_, because things aren't
going great on the mindshare front. The word Linux is on people's
lips. BSD isn't. Already we've seen people *on this thread* slip
up about whether or not it was freebsd or netbsd that had an arm
port or something. This is not a good sign.

Long live *BSD.

d

PS: if after s/BSD/Unix/ has anyone mentioned posix yet? What about
unix guru universe? what did they achieve? do we actually have
critical mass?

-- 
David Leonard                           David.Leonard@csee.uq.edu.au
Dept of Comp. Sci. and Elec. Engg   _   Ph:+61 7 3207 5332 (AH)
The University of Queensland       |+|  http://www.csee.uq.edu.au/~leonard/
QLD 4072  AUSTRALIA               ~` '~ E2A24DC6446E5779D7AFC41AA04E6401