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Message-ID: <19990222190721.31350@fundy.ca>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 19:07:21 -0400
From: David Maxwell <david@fundy.ca>
To: mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu, Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org>
Cc: current-users@netbsd.org, netbsd-users@netbsd.org,
	netbsd-advocacy@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: Community Issues ** LONG **
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	current-users@netbsd.org, netbsd-users@netbsd.org,
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References: <v6yalrszkx.fsf@kechara.flame.org> <Pine.SOL.3.96.990222084615.26556A-100000@bitter.mit.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.990222084615.26556A-100000@bitter.mit.edu>; from mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu on Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 09:09:33AM -0500

On Mon, Feb 22, 1999 at 09:09:33AM -0500, mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu wrote:
> > greywolf@starwolf.com (Trouble Free RecepPFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF) writes:
> > 
> > 
> > I also don't think NetBSD has much of a chance without someone taking
> > the PR lead and getting NetBSD to be more widely known.  It is very
> > embarassing to see "works on FreeBSD and linux, and probably OpenBSD"
> > but NO mention of NetBSD.

It would be interesting to see what Altavista says to...
(So interesting in fact that I'll copy the results here too ;-)

"+openbsd +linux +freebsd -netbsd"
AltaVista found 4935 Web pages for you

"-openbsd +linux +freebsd +netbsd"
AltaVista found 39928 Web pages for you
(Well, that's a pleasant surprise :-)

"+openbsd -linux +freebsd +netbsd"
AltaVista found 3304 Web pages for you

"+openbsd +linux -freebsd +netbsd"
AltaVista found 792 Web pages for you
(Which I expected to be the lowest)

For comparison,
"+openbsd" 13180
"+netbsd"  25699
"+freebsd" 423963
"+linux"   3008713

Someone so inclined could take a look at some of those 4935 pages from
example #1 and suggest NetBSD information where appropriate. (I would
think it's probably appropriate to almost all of them except the "and I
run OpenBSD, Linux, and FreeBSD on my servers..." type of pages)

As for sheer volume, well, that's quite a bit of quantity to catch up
on (in any meaningful way, i.e. not posting NetBSD in the meta tag on 
every page you run :-)

> One thing that can be done (this was suggested a while back by someone,
> but I don't recall who) is anytime one of us creates a package is to ask
> the author of the program to create a link from the homepage of their
> software to the NetBSD package.  As far as commercial software, I don't
> have any great suggestions.

I know we have a commercial software page off of www.netbsd.org, what
do people think of an 'emulation compatible' commercial software page?
(I'm not aware of any such thing currently)
Along the lines of 'WINE' it could list commercial software for Linux,
FreeBSD, and the other binary emulations we support (SCO etc) and which
versions have been tested under which versions of NetBSD. Ideally, it
could be coded in a way that people could submit reports which someone 
would approve before they went public (not testing the validity of the 
report, just accepting the decency of the text). This could be a fairly
low-maintainence feature to add.

Additionally, we could approach vendors to ask for copies of their
regression test suites to run under NetBSD for the most complete testing
possible.

-- 
David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville