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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sgiblab!rpal.rockwell.com!news.Stanford.EDU!rescomp.Stanford.EDU!yoda From: yoda@rescomp.Stanford.EDU (Terry Lee) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: OpenBSD. PLEASE PLEASE! Date: 17 Jan 1995 21:17:48 GMT Organization: Stanford University Lines: 57 Message-ID: <3fhc5s$atq@nntp.Stanford.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: rescomp.stanford.edu I submit this as a plea to the wonderful developers of FreeBSD and NetBSD. I'm a new BSD user. And I've tried Linux too. After reading all the posts it seems to me that at the root of both teams is this. You both enjoy writing UNIX code. And you both want people to use your OS. When all other considerations are gone, it seems only these two remain. But if you want people to use your code, then you have to stop thinking like programmers for a second, and think marketing. Just for a second mind you. As a user, it's just plan confusing to have two BSDs. Because of Linux you are facing an rapidly shrinking market share. And then the customer base is again reduced a fold, because customers have to chose between two BSDs. And furthermore not only is this half of a small market share, it is further reduced because BSD as a whole is losing even more people to Linux because BSD's fragmentation is just another reason to use Linux. I've read that some BSD people don't give a hoot about Linux. I think that this is a foolish attitude since Linux is your competition! And healthy competition it is! Competition between yourselves serves nothing except to intimidate potential users. You want to enjoy what you are doing. Without that there is no project. You also want a solid user base. Without it there is no project. I think the future of BSD is in serious question right now. There is something about BSD that I like that Linux lacks, and I'd really like to see BSD have a bright future. Someone said the perhaps 3/4 of the members of both teams were in favor of a unified effort. Well those 3/4ths of you please speak up and take some action! Please! I think more than anything else you could do for BSD, more than any new kernel code or new device driver, a unified effort would be by far the best thing you could do for the users and potential users. I think even a new name would further promote your creation. FreeBSD sounds, well, free. It's sort of cheap sounding. Not something I'd particularly want to use for, say, my business. It's not impressive. NetBSD, well net just doesn't really mean anything to the user. What does the 'net' mean? Actually I don't really care except for the fact that it doesn't mean anything to me. OpenBSD. NOW THAT'S A NAME! That's something I'd really want to show people and brag about using. Add 3.0 to it and I think people would chose it over linux just for the name itself! In conclusion, I just want to thank all of you for this wonderful gift. This world needs a free BSD 4.4lite-based OS package. Sincerely, Terry Lee Computer Systems Consultant