Advocating for FreeBSD in 2022 and Beyond
Now for many folks, advocacy is also conflated with the dreaded M word. Marketing. I know, I know, it’s even in my title. In the course of my 20+ years in this industry, I’ve heard the words sleazy, untrustworthy and useless thrown around when discussing marketing departments. Many communities, especially those in open source, see very little value in the “non technical” people selling their work. The thing is, I firmly believe marketing gets a bad rap. Of course, there are always a few bad apples. Marketers who focus on fantasy rather than fact. You know the type. Those folks make defending the role incredibly difficult. However, the reality is, marketing is essential for any open source project and I’ve had the good luck to work with some of the best in the business. In fact, the team of marketing folks at the Foundation work extremely hard to remain true to the heart of FreeBSD. We don’t make up statistics. We don’t oversell the features or make up something out of nothing. You can be sure that when we speak about the value FreeBSD brings, or the work we’re doing to support the Project, we’re not spreading propaganda. We’re instead speaking to the benefits of using the operating system and becoming part of the community.