| Dates | + +# Posts | + +Subject | +
|---|---|---|
| Nov 08 | + +3 | + +accessing portal + site | +
| Nov 06 - Nov 12 | + +17 | + +Any artists interested + in doing a FreeBSD animated GIF banner? | +
| Nov 06 - Nov 08 | + +9 | + +CounterStrike | +
| Nov 10 | + +2 | + +FreeBSD Foundation: Examples of + FreeBSD as teaching aid/research platform | +
| Nov 07 | + +2 | + +Good piece of advocacy | +
| Nov 06 - Nov 12 | + +7 | + +Installation: what to (not) do + about it | +
This started out with a poorly composed letter of complaint, Cc'd + to us from a representative of Freedom Technologies Corporation, a + company that builds pre-installed FreeBSD systems. He seemed upset + over a URL on the Intel web site that doesn't load for anything but + IE, and used this is a plug to sell his services. A couple of + replies quickly let him know we didn't like that sort of thing.
+ + + +A continuation of last week's thread, here + we have a couple examples of what people are coming up with:
+ +This discussion is also continued on from last + week. Some interesting additions to the conversation were:
+ +++ + + +Some games have bugs that have audible manifestations on + FreeBSD but not on Linux, probably because FreeBSD follows the + spec instead of emulating OSS or Linux bug for bug - [Dag-Erling Smorgrav]
+
[Michael Wu] sends us a + couple specific examples of how FreeBSD is used as either a teaching + aid or a research platform by educational institutions.
+ +[Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven] + wanted to clue us in on a book he recently purchased. It seems + that Warren W. Gay has written a book called "Advanced UNIX + Programming" that uses FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE throughout the entire + book to test examples. Warren also supports and mentions FreeBSD a + lot. If you'd like to take a look at his book, I found it at Amazon. + The ISBN number is 0-672-31990-X.
. + + + +Another thread stretched into its 2nd week, Terry & Jordan are still + discussing an alternative to /stand/sysinstall. A couple of + interesting tidbits:
+ +++ +It would be nice if the project would publish a roadmap + indicating what it wants from developers, so that they don't end + up spending an incredible amount of effort, only to find themselves + stonewalled later. If the project would at least publish an + architectural roadmap for even only six months ahead, I think it + would help to commit more people to expending the necessary effort + to see to those goals.
+ +Clearly, the SMPng work is one goal that's pretty widely + known, thanks to Jason Evans and others publishing their + direction; if the project could be that forthcoming in other + areas, then there would be a "guarantee" that, even if the work was + ultimately rejected, at least you could know that you were + travelling in the right direction, instead of getting to your + goal, only to have the project say "that's nice, but that's not + where we are headed". At least put up some street signs". + - [Terry Lambert]
+
++ +Roadmaps are produced by people with the time and energy to + write roadmaps. One of the reasons SMPng is going so well is + that we paid to fly a bunch of people to a kick-off meeting and + get them working more cohesively together and then we continued + to pay the manager of the project to do it on a full-time basis. + Management is pretty important where the generation and + implementation of roadmap documents is concerned and it's as hard + to get it done on a purely volunteer basis as it is to get + companies to pay for it in all the areas it needs done.
+ +I'd love to see more management and more roadmaps but I've + also learned to live with the fact that there will never be as + much of either as I or most anyone else would like. - [Jordan Hubbard]
+
This conspectus expresses my understanding of what occurred on the + FreeBSD-advocacy mailing list during the specified week.
+ +Hey, I'm human... I may have made an error or two... If you think + this is the case, and/or that I have omitted some significant thread + or part of a thread, feel free to contact me via email.
+ + + +
