[nycbug-talk] Re: advocacy materials (fwd)

[Dru]

With permission, I've forwarded some correspondence I received from Bruce 
regarding a new book that is available for advocating FreeBSD. He's 
sending me some copies for GTEC and I'll be posting a review once I have a 
chance to read the book. His reasons for writing the book are included 
below.

Dru

-----

Hi, Dru. Regarding your GTEC booth post inquiring
about FreeBSD advocacy materials on
advocacy at freebsd.org...

I can send you 3 copies of a 150 page book that I
have recently written, to be given away free, thrown
in the trash, whatever you want. The book is basically
a rationale for using FreeBSD and the BSD license.
It is aimed at traditional IT professionals and
academic/government computing staff types.  I'm
particularly interested in young grad student research
types---I think many of these are potentially going
to get burned by the GPL. The book contains more
history that hopefully illuminates things than most
books of this type. BTW, I've found that many CS
faculty, even OS and system researchers, are not
aware of the legal issues.


Book Title:

   "Elements of Operating System and Internet History:
    A FreeBSD Rationale"

Jacket text:

   "This book contains a non-technical introduction
   to the FreeBSD operating system, followed by
   elements of history relevant to FreeBSD. This
   book contains a rationale for adopting FreeBSD
   and an introduction to open source and open
   source licensing. This book can also serve as
   a survey of how operating systems and Internet
   engineering came to be the way they are today."

When I wrote "recently written" that means finished
last week! However, I have been experimenting with
various publish-on-demand schemes in silicon valley
for about 5 years. I've now got a system where I can
usually get 1 day turnaround.  Some of the material
in this book comes from an earlier book I first did
4 years ago (but only sold to UCSC). I originally
got dragged into this book to provide some material
for a FreeBSD-based lab at UCSC. I've been doing
OS engineering for some 30 years and been in the
silicon valley area over 20...  I've watched a lot
of manuals get written... (not that I'm good at it).

One reason I've tried to do a good job on this is I
indirectly noted a high-profile "cluster" (the UCSC
system that first mapped the human genome) use Linux,
when it could have used FreeBSD and the senior
tech-types wanted to use FreeBSD. But somehow FreeBSD
just didn't have the "presence" and momentum of
Linux. (I think they did end up finally going to
FreeBSD for the NFS server). This scenario is likely
being repeated numerous times. Having in-hand some
sort of management-oriented "exec summary" or "white
paper" book might prove helpful.

I will get a web-page up sometime next week.
I will ping when it's ready.