Re: Brett Glass's postings to mailing.freebsd.chat

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 10:18 PM 3/8/99 +0000, Wandered Inn wrote:
 
>> What's "slimy" here is, in fact, to take my posting utterly out
>> of context. What I was discussing, in fact, was the advocacy
>> strategies already being used by promoters of Linux and their
>> applicability to other OSes.
>
>Please back this up.

I could repost the message that Jamie already posted, so I hope
you won't mind if I just refer you to it. You must have seen it,
because you responded.

The interesting thing is that successful product advocacy efforts
in the software industry are so similar. All have a "lunatic
fringe" that the remaining advocates sometimes have to apologize
for. All have people out there doing press releases to facilitate
the press's job of writing about the product (and making sure that
positive input is heard). 

>The point is, I don't care if it's BSD, Linux or Microsoft.  Getting
>into discussions with people and intentionally pissing them off is bull
>shit.  There are better ways to do what you want to do.

I'm not "intentionally pissing them off;" all of my postings are
carefully written and well reasoned. You haven't seen me fly off
the handle, and you won't. I can't help it if someone else suddenly
engages in ad hominem attacks.

>Worse yet, doing it, under the facade you've suggested is underhanded,
>devious and unprofessional.

There's no facade here. As I mentioned in a recent message to Jamie
Love, I advocate full disclosure and would NEVER advocate that anyone
say anything that is untrue. I'm even patently disclosing what I
believe are the elements of an effective strategy for OS advocacy
on a public mailing list.

>I recently added a 10 gig drive to my system in order to take a look at
>some of the other OS's on out there.  Thanks you BSD has just fallen off
>my list.

It'd be a shame if you wrote off every product I recommended (and, I
dare say, you'd probably hurt yourself a lot by doing so). I also
recommend BeOS, so I hope that you will still try it now that I've said 
so!

Also, please note that there is no product called "BSD." There are several
commercial and freely distributed operating systems based on BSD Lite 4.4,
a version of UNIX developed at UC Berkeley. To write off everything
derived from that would mean avoiding Solaris, Linux, BeOS, and NeXTStep,
all of which borrow from that work or its derivatives. Not to 
mention NetBSD, OpenBSD, and BSD/OS by BSD, Inc.

>The leopard has surely shown his spots...

I've never hidden any of them. Your message above, however, shows your
willingness to condemn, and I think that's a shame.

--Brett