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On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 07:57:47 -0500
Zach Crisler <zcrisler@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

> I would normally say that Linus is just ranting, so leave it at that
> (as Herb Peyerl suggested).  But Linux is getting so much press
> nowadays...his opinion matters because it gets published and read by A
> LOT of people--it then becomes their opinion.

Exactly. That's what I wanted to point out. It's sad when some people
take comments like as the one true opinion (tm).
 
> > The point I want to make is, if people like that guy can't (or don't
> > want to) think for themselves, it shouldn't be NetBSDers job to fix
> > that. I'd rather have those guys running Linux :)
> 
> So we recognize their ignorance only to leave it unrectified?

No. I try to do my bit of advocacy now and then, we even have a couple
of old Sun boxen running NetBSD for DNS services. When somebody asks
about NetBSD I'm glad to spend time showing them what the system can do,
and why it's a great operating system. But for that to happen the person
has to be willing to learn and has be able to form his/her own opinions.
That's what I meant that it's not NetBSDers work to teach people to
think.
  
> Good question!  How and to whom?

A place to start is to deconstruct the myth that NetBSD is slow. The
recent benchmark articles that made it into osnews and slashdot (and
other places too) are a good start. Another selling point is pkgsrc. You
show it to the Solaris people, they love it, then you show them NetBSD,
the system on which pkgsrc originated, and they see the same high
quality code. BSDers in general seem to be knowledgeable of the other
alternatives and usually make their choice based on technical merits.

Linux people, some are willing to learn about these *BSD systems, others
don't care too much. The embedded market also has a lot of potential,
and NetBSD has been used extensively there. I remember reading about a
SGI-branded camera running NetBSD. It would be great if success stories
like those could get more coverage. Perhaps a section in the information
part of the NetBSD home page. "NetBSD was the choice for company $FOO
and company $BAR for their products $PRODUCT1 and $PRODUCT2". You get the
idea.

Cheers,
-- 
Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.es.eu.org>     | lea     gfx_lib(pc),a1
http://www.energyhq.es.eu.org                | moveq   #0,d0
PGP Key: 0xDC8514F1                          | move.l  4.w,a6
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