Daniel de Kok wrote:

>On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 04:19:33PM +0000, Bruno wrote:
>  
>
>>We all make mistakes, but our mistakes can be the opportunity others need.
>>FreeBSD developers and release enginners have done a great job and will 
>>again in the future, but this hiccup might as well be the opportunity 
>>for NetBSD to be considered a respectful competitor in the i386 platform 
>>in terms of performance on pair with FreeBSD and Linux.
>>    
>>
>
>I for one believe that NetBSD can stand on its own merits. It is good
>to have independent benchmarks, both for advocacy, and for identifying
>where bottlenecks are. But, in my humble opinion the general tone should
>not be ``NetBSD can do this better than XYZ'', but ``NetBSD can do A,
>B, and C''. I firmly believe our target market is rational enough to
>do their own evaluation*.
>
>-- Daniel
>
>* Yep, I am an optimist in this respect ;).
>
>  
>
Well, if you get seen as a respectful competitor on i386 server and 
desktop in terms of performance with independent benchmarks, you'll also 
start being more bashed for not having that X or Y feature that another 
operating system has. So we'd end up aiming higher both in terms of 
respect and criticism, and facing the risks of hype.

But as you said, benchmarks are useful both for advocacy and finding 
bottlenecks, so it's worth the risk IMO.

Bruno