*BSD News Article 48593


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From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD social event Sept. 2/3
Date: 14 Aug 1995 05:21:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <40mmgh$cuo@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <DD6HuH.HEA@bonkers.taronga.com> <40mb4i$aei@masala.cc.uh.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

In article <40mb4i$aei@masala.cc.uh.edu>,
Woody Jin <wjin@hermes.cs.uh.edu> wrote:
>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.

Sorry, Woody, but that's just too impractical.  We've already been
through this before, and all that the various anti-FreeBSD folks
could say was that we needed "a better name."  When pressed for
actual SUGGESTIONS they either shrugged and said "I don't know,
something better than FreeBSD" (really big help, thanks) or suggested
something even worse, like "OpenBSD."

People who pick an OS based on its name will always be people
who pick things for the wrong reasons, and I'm not really much
inclined to go out of my way to support people with such poor
judgement.  What would be the point?  You think we want to deal
with the kind of questions we'd be likely to get from someone who picked
"WowBSD" just because it had a cool name?

Likewise, the workstation users who pick Sun or ALPHA boxes are going to
pick those platforms because they're either too conservative or too
intelligent to use PC hardware - it won't matter what we call FreeBSD,
they'll still buy Sun or ALPHA.

In the final analysis, the name means very little.  Would you
buy a computer called a "banana?"  This evidently didn't stop
several million Apple users from flocking in droves to that machine
when it first came out in the '70s.

I'm fully aware that marketing is important, but rather than spend
months debating a new name for FreeBSD I'd much rather put the energy
into _improving the product_.  Sorry, I'm just kind of silly that
way.. :-)

					Jordan