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From my perspective[1], instead of being a good example of a company that knew the right product to build and the right way to get it built, I think it just sho

From my perspective[1], instead of being a good example of a company that knew the right product to build and the right way to get it built, I think it just shows what happens when a company gets some bubble funding, tries to build "The Right Thing" and gets forced into an acquisition when it turns out too hard to do and the easy money runs out. I find your quality claims rather incredible but I have no experience with your box. However I do find it rather curious and ironic that you of all people, an original member of the Java team, were burned by quality problems in Java. I know WORA fooled a lot of newbies but shouldn't you of all people known enough about Java at that time to have avoided being bit by those? Perhaps you personally benefitted from the deal and I'm sure it was fun while it lasted, but your overall rationalization leaves me unsatisified. Let's be serious here. If FreeGate a. knew what to build b. knew how to build it we'd all know about it. [1] Well, I could have posted this from the HN account I abandoned 4 years ago but who cares. I'm just a FreeBSD contributor who got wind of what FreeGate was doing second hand and was a bit saddened when I heard about the whole database thing. That meant I thought they would be unlikely to ever be able to contribute back to the FreeBSD codebase in a meaningful way (e.g. the way Whistle did with netgraph).

ChuckMcM 14y ago
FWIW we sold a few million units between the A1000 and the A500 over the lifetime of the product. The FreeBSD folks weren't interested in some "other" way to manage system configuration (it was all user level anyway), and third party awareness isn't a measure of quality for any product. To this comment "Well, I could have posted this from the HN account I abandoned 4 years ago but who cares." I don't know if anyone 'cares' whether you post on a newly created count or existing count, but I do care that creating a throwaway with a snarky name often can indicate a lot of unresolved personal pain and anger on the part of the poster. That stuff can eat away at you and leave you in a bad place. As a community we've lost too many good people to unresolved anger and depression.
- freeflop 14y ago
  Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments.
- freeflop 14y ago
  Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business.
- freeflop2 14y ago
  Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business.
- freeflop3 14y ago
  Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. Oh, and people who keep suppressing honest criticism by marking comments dead are also quite annoying. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Odd for a company so few have heard about.
- freeflop4 14y ago
  Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Oh, and please stop deleting this comment whoever you are. It's really annoying.
freeflop 14y ago
Oh and people who keep suppressing honest criticism by marking comments dead are also quite annoying. But go ahead and keep it up, whoever you are. As they say if the facts don't support the theory, they must be disposed of. My original statement: People who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Odd for a company so few have heard about.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

FWIW we sold a few million units between the A1000 and the A500 over the lifetime of the product. The FreeBSD folks weren't interested in some "other" way to manage system configuration (it was all user level anyway), and third party awareness isn't a measure of quality for any product. To this comment "Well, I could have posted this from the HN account I abandoned 4 years ago but who cares." I don't know if anyone 'cares' whether you post on a newly created count or existing count, but I do care that creating a throwaway with a snarky name often can indicate a lot of unresolved personal pain and anger on the part of the poster. That stuff can eat away at you and leave you in a bad place. As a community we've lost too many good people to unresolved anger and depression.

freeflop 14y ago
Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments.
freeflop 14y ago
Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business.
freeflop2 14y ago
Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business.
freeflop3 14y ago
Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. Oh, and people who keep suppressing honest criticism by marking comments dead are also quite annoying. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Odd for a company so few have heard about.
freeflop4 14y ago
Well, people who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Oh, and please stop deleting this comment whoever you are. It's really annoying.

freeflop 14y ago

Oh and people who keep suppressing honest criticism by marking comments dead are also quite annoying. But go ahead and keep it up, whoever you are. As they say if the facts don't support the theory, they must be disposed of. My original statement: People who misrepresent their part in successes and obscure or gloss over their role in failures bother me, especially when said individuals go on to offer advice such as yours about something as difficult as finding the right problem to solve and solving it in a practical way. I really don't have a dog in this particular race but anything that could substantiate those numbers[1] or your other claims would be much more convincing and satisfying and go a long way to quelling my objections to your earlier comments. [1] Millions of units? At a few thousand each that would mean FreeGate would have done around a billion dollars of business. Odd for a company so few have heard about.