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From: vdlinden@fwi.uva.nl (Frank van der Linden)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Differences in populatiry of *BSD, Linux
Date: 18 Jan 1995 11:56:22 GMT
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam
Lines: 62
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3fivl6$d3c@mail.fwi.uva.nl>
NNTP-Posting-Host: carol.fwi.uva.nl
Keywords: NetBSD FreeBSD Linux
A lot of the current discussions on merging, comparisons to Linux
actually come down to one thing: marketing. People choose the system
that they people told them about. Announcing things you've achieved in
the OS of your choice makes people thinkg it is 'happening' and
the thing to use. For example.. Linux folks could have announced
that "gatewaying now works and is stable", and a lot of people reading
that would think "Hey, that's great", forgetting that *BSD always had
this feature from the start. FreeBSD people can announce that "we're working
on a Sparc port", and people reading that would think that's great, and not
even realize that NetBSD has had a very good looking Sparc port for a while
now.
Promotion like this have, to give another example, left a lot of Linux
users thinking that Linus Torvalds invented things like a VFS interface
and a merged VM/buffer cache, things that already have been known and used
in Unix kernels for a while.
The three systems are on different spots on the 'PR-scale'. First, there
is Linux, whose users have the attitude "Go and tell as many people as
possible about it. Defend the system fanatically" (see the thread in
which some magazine _seemed_ to say something not so positive about it,
and outraged Linux users were all over the place..). "If someone announces
that he/she might be working on some feature, put in your .sig that
Linux is way cool because this feature is already there". All this seems
to work quite well; Linux gained a lot of momentum, and the press noticed
that, etc. etc. Speaking of which: want to get your OS to be popular?
Say that "MyOS is the the system which is THE system to use to gain
access to the fabulous and wonderful Information Superhighway". Works like
a charm ;-)
NetBSD is on the other end. The main developers are, in the first place,
concerned with having a good design, especially one that works across
a lot of different platforms. They don't care much for posting over here
(can't blame them sometimes), and discussions mostly take place amongst
their (small?) but loyal following on the mailing lists. As a NetBSD
user myself: I like this. People on the mailing lists are often people
with a respectable history of Unix usage and/or programming, and know
what they are talking about. However, the danger is that NetBSD might
end up the way some other systems in the past did: having the best
design, but without many people knowing it and using it. In a perfect
world, you'd build the best-structured system, and people would come
and use it, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way (if only it did).
FreeBSD is somewhere in between. They have stepped up their PR effort,
and seem to want to get into competition with Linux more. Announcements
of FreeBSD events are frequent, people are quick to respond in newsgroups
about things that are or will be in FreeBSD, etc. They have an arrangement
with a company (Walnut Creek) for support and putting their system on CD.
So far, this seems to have worked for them, since the amount of FreeBSD
messages has grown quite a bit in these newsgroups.
Anyway, why am I boring you all with this? I have no idea. One thing
that I could say as a conclusion, that it's funny that in the world
of free OSs, marketing should play such a key role.
- Frank
--
Frank van der Linden, vdlinden@fwi.uva.nl
Use NetBSD, it's free and works on: i386, Mac, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4c, PC532
Work in progress: DEC MIPS R2k/3k, VAX, Sun4m, Alpha
(And even more architectures to come)