Well, just thought I'd thrown in a quick comment on this, because its been 
bugging me for a while...  kind-of a flame about the events list...

How come the USENIX "event" isn't posted in "future events" on the site??
I'm sure its been known thats it been coming up for at least a few weeks now, 
and yet nothing.

Thinking about it, I've been watching the "events" list over the past year or 
so, and I don't think I have *EVER* seen *anything* posted under "future 
events", and yet somehow things appear under "past events".   When will we 
see the USENIX conference posted... when it becomes a "past" event???

-----

Anyways, onto advocacy...  one of NetBSD's strongest points is, of course, 
its portability to new platforms.  Thats the main reason I like it, is that I 
can run it on my Vaxen, DecStations, PC's, Mac's, Sun 3's & Sparc's...  and 
while the Linux folks like to argue about having more "ports", I've looked 
and few seem to be in real "release" condition (sometime "soon" Linux/Vax 
will be able to boot to a multi-user shell!!)...  although they seem to love 
having flashy web sites for the various "ports" (hmm... if they spent less 
time writing HTML and more writing code, NetBSD might actually lose out on 
having more ports...  :-)   

So, I think that any "advocacy" slogan or other info should definitely push 
this point.  The "of course it runs NetBSD" line does push this idea, but 
maybe its time for a change...  kind of a "Portable and Powerful" type msg.  
How about "The power you need, on the platform of your choice."??

The two strongest arguments I've heard from Linux users (other than generally 
non-substantiated "performance" issues) are NetBSD's lack of MP support, and 
that Linux supports more devices.  I would love to see a list worked up 
sometime (maybe an article for DaemonNews?) on a comparison of device support 
between the BSD's and Linux.  Perhaps if we had a real list of what Linux 
supports that the BSD's don't some people would get motivated to write some 
drivers for what is "missing"??   We could post a list of whats needed and 
ask for volunteers.

The MP issue is a big one, especially in the PC/Alpha world...  and yet, in 
browsing the NetBSD site I don't see any obvious references to the fact that 
anyone is really working on it.  Is anyone?  Anything done on some kind of 
Machine-Independant multiprocessor interface code?   I've seen a few posts 
lately on the Vax list from people who would love Vax/MP support...  


As with any project, what NetBSD needs more than anything is more exposure 
and people willing to do the work.  As any volunteer organization will tell 
you (and I volunteer for several.. nothing to do with computers..), the most 
important thing, and the toughest thing to get, is getting people to 
volunteer and get involved.  Write an article for DaemonNews, write a driver 
for an unsupported device, do some performance tests between Linux & the 
BSD's and post the results (maybe someone will write an article), help with a 
port to a new platform (anyone thought of the HP/PA series HP systems?),  
just get involved.

Pete Hufnagel
CaptnZilog@aol.com