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From: wjin@hermes.cs.uh.edu (Woody Jin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD social event Sept. 2/3
Date: 14 Aug 1995 02:07:14 GMT
Organization: University of Houston
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <40mb4i$aei@masala.cc.uh.edu>
References: <DD6HuH.HEA@bonkers.taronga.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hermes.cs.uh.edu
In article <DD6HuH.HEA@bonkers.taronga.com>,
Christoph P. Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>Second announcement:
>
> INVITATION
> FreeBSD - Hackers - Weekend
> "Social Event"
> September, 2nd/3rd 1995
> Aachen, Federal Republic of Germany
> ...
>Saturday Afternoon Open discussion on various topics
> ... "How can FreeBSD be made more popular?"
I suggest that the name FreeBSD be changed to a better one.
I understand that most FreeBSD users are unix experts, and they understand
what is going on. However, majority others are not, and they don't bother
to be.
I have several following cases :
Me : "I suggest that you should buy a nice PC and then install FreeBSD.
I used it sometime ago, and it was quite reliable."
Other : "free BSD ? " "Hmmm... free ?"
^
"free means something not reliable, and not guaranteed ..."
"And I heard that BSDs are just for hackers ..."
"We can't afford to hacking an unreliable system ..."
Me : "Well, in fact, the name itself is FreeBSD which is one of
BSDs on Intel platforms..."
Other : "Even the name is FreeBSD ?" "Hmmm... shouldn't be any good".
"I think that we will buy just SUN or DEC Alpha. We won't have
much trouble ....".
What I realized was that in many sites, they even cannot afford to
trying some exploration because of lack of fund, and/or lack of
human resources, and consistent request of reliable system from the users.
They just would not take a risk.
IMHO, having a good name with repectable evaluations, and ease of
use/installation with good documentation are must to be
popular. It was some years ago, but most FreeBSD (esp. NetBSD folks) users
used to say, "BSD is for the poeple who know something ..."
Essentially, they humiliated novice users (esp. from DOS).
(I don't know whether they are still doing this). This gave the
impresstion that FreeBSD is for hackers only. It will take time and
lots of efforts by FreeBSD members to get rid of such false impressions.
Believe it or not, most people never try. They hear it from others.
--
Woody Jin