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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!jkh 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