Slashdot Mirror
HP And Bruce Perens
After Bruce Perens' brief stint as a venture capitalist (which followed his stint with Debian and OSI among other organizations), he has moved on to
work with HP in a sort of consulting role for all things Open Source
inside and outside of the company. The article talks about HPs questionable history (including the recent printer driver debacle among other things) and what sort of things Bruce will be up to.
Not that I think my suggestion is worth anything to a company like HP, but there are some things I'd like to state.
First, I have a lot of HP products. From calculators to printers, everything I've ever bought from them was excellent.
Now they'll have to either take the first step embracing Linux drivers or face the competition that does.
Speaking realistically, not many companies are a threat to HP's desktop market. There's Epson, Canon, Lexmark and others, but HP is large enough to dictate tendencies.
However, consider that Linux users tend to be influential in the computer world. Let's suppose, for example, that I, as a network admin, have got to install a print server and a box for digitizing images in a small office. Linux would be the perfect choice *if* I had printer support for it.
With cheap printers getting 8+ ppm in black, one deskjet can be more than enough for a small office. I'd use this computer as a mail gateway as well, and maybe for NFS and other things.
I'm NOT willing to get a new box just to run Windows on it and use it as a print server, but as things are today, I have no choice. I refuse to buy a 2880x1400 dpi printer and use it in 300x300 mode under Linux.
Now if some company starts shipping a printer with decent Linux drivers, I'd buy it. I don't care if it only prints with half the deskjet-in-quetion's resolution and at half the speed. I'll get it!
Ditto for other devices with flaky Linux support.
So what I'm saying is that in some situations Linux support can be crucial. Perhaps not for the normal joe that runs office on his desktop at home, but that's going to change as well.
I, as a desktop user, find it irrational to reboot into Windows just to print a document that has a color photo in it.
As Linux takes over other shares of the corporate (and gasp! home user) market, HP will be forced to change.
Corporations don't care much about ideologies per se, but they will care when money's the issue. I'd do it early while I can if I were HP.
Flavio
No. Paper-pushing is dead. You aren't going to build a multi-billion dollar business on a dead market with no margins.
Carly doesn't have the brass to pull HP off of its dependence on paper products - here is the result.
If you can't get a decent printer to work with your Linux box, you can't move your office to Linux.
If printing is that important to you, you're nuts to even bother with linux. Its a no-brainer that you're using win2k if you absolutely have to commit to paper.
No kidding, you'd think you'd have learned not to buy Xerox printers by now.
P.S.: I am not the real Rusty (who claims the same). I guess nobody notices the irony...
--
There is no K5 cabal.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
IMHO if HP and Pern don't get a move on while the story is still somewhat hot off the press, they are out of luck as far as good PR in the open source community goes. However HP moving to an open linux would show some commitment.
As someone in California? said "while staring at a breakfast plate piled high with eggs and bacon, the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed"
For the Luddites of the world who resist computers, consider using computers to resist.
If you're trying to burn off karma, posting a message saying you would like to have it taken away will not work. Moderators will ignore the message just to spite you. Didn't you learn anything in Troll 101?
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
Personally, I only ever print receipts from on line shopping. But I'm surrounded by people at work who print everything. Printing is essential to most people who use computers. Why do you think people bought them all? Word processing started this whole revolution. If the computer can't print, it's useless for them.
You may be right that there's no margins. I don't know - I suspect there's pretty hefty markup on those monster network laser printers and large-format color printers that sit in the corners of a million offices in the country.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
>> Don't knock printers, they're damned important.
>No. Paper-pushing is dead. You aren't going to build a multi-billion dollar business on a dead market with no margins.
There may be no margins in the printers, but those ink carts sell for a pretty hefty markup. $30 at the local Best Buy for an inkjet cart is probably $5 in parts and labor, tops.
Nathan Mates
Actually, I'd rather Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens didn't presume to speak for the open source or free software movement. Remember when Bruce posted a crass email from Eric Raymond and called the police?
It sounds to me like you're an investor.
Are you an investor in HP? An investor in another company mentioned in your post? If so you should disclose this in your post.
Now, do you keep up on their financials? If not, here's some information for you, taken from HP's latest quarterly:
--------
Net revenue, in millions, 12 months ending Oct. 31, 2000.
Imaging and Printing Systems: $20,476
Computing Systems: $21,095
IT Services: $7,129
Other: $1,299
Total Revenue: $48,782
Earnings, in millions, 12 months ending Oct. 31, 2000
Imaging and Printing Systems: $2,746
Computing Systems: $960
IT Services: $634
Other: ($103)
Total Earnings: $3,889
--------
So, while it is true that they earn the most money from "Printing and Imaging Systems," they're hardly a "dud of a company." And if you really get down into HP's financials, you'll find some interesting things - their largest growth sector was Asia at 61% over 1999, and their fastest growth in "Printing and Imaging" happens to be in imaging:
I hope this has been at least a little enlightening. HP is not doomed now, and certainly wouldn't be if HPUX dropped off the face of the planet this evening and HP never sold another server again. And their interest / investment in Linux shows they know where their money comes from. It won't be long before their AiO's and digital cameras will be running embeded linux along with their print servers.
Cheers,
Jon
Disclaimer: I don't own any publicly traded stock.
VeriFone - a subsidiary dedicated to POS terminals. In order to develop software for those beasts (OMNI is their name), you use a SDK provided by them (called Verix - closed-source, of course) along with a C compiler from SDS whit a horrid copy-protection scheme. I have a hunch that you might be able to use gcc for that, but haven't yet the time OR stamina to work on this. Feel free to de-spamproof my email and discuss technical details with me.
Yep, low-end printers are definately a Razor-n-Blades situation.
But, for HP, it's a little more complex. When you see those Best Buy ads for "Buy a Compaq Presario 666-Q and get a FREE HP PRINTER", part of the reason why is that HP wants to remain absolutely associated with computer printing in people's minds. That means giving out free or near-free printers to newbie users just so the association of Printer==HP sticks in their brain, and they come back for a HP LaserJet when their little inkjet craps out on them.
Of course, any printer for free (or less than $100 really) is going to have to be a software-driven, cheaply contructed piece of crap. Problem is, people want to use those printers with Linux, and it's a little harder to tell them to buy Real Hardware (like a Lexmark with Postscript) when you are talking about $399 than it is with the WinModem situation.
Actually, a large number of HP-UX machines have video cards. $1500 video cards. PA-RISC makes for a real sweet workstation. I admit I don't have hard facts, but from what I've seen, the proportion is higher than 5%. You're right, Linux isn't ready for heavy enterprise. Linux is a wonderful desktop OS for those who don't mind tinkering, and it is developing towards the common user well. It is certainly adequate for compute-intensive or heavy serving, but the "tool-for-the-job" phenomenon is leaning towards the professionally developed Unices for these environments.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
All right, I'll even accept that there are isolated cases of innovation in the OSS community.
But aren't these really exceptions that prove the rule? What struck me about your original statement was that you seem to really believe that OSS is a fountain of innovation. I'm wondering if you really believe that, when it's (let's say) 90% imitation and 10% innovation (and I think I'm being pretty generous there).
Now, this is not to say imitation does not provide useful tools. I use Linux everyday as a low-cost Unix development platform. But from where I sit at least, everything I use that is innovative came to me commercially.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
HP builds more than servers.
One good reason for functional sound drivers on a HP/UX box:
HP boxen are commonly used in SCADA systems. Chances are if I have a big industrial control system I would want said system to relay me as much information as possible. Using various signal tones and pitches would allow me to do this in a way that would be sure to catch my attention while I am busy surfing pr0n sites.
I humbly decline your offer.
Sure they would. If they suspected some company, they could just reverse engineer the other company's driver. Microsoft got caught stealing Stacker code. Stacker took them to court and showed the judge that the assembly code was the same. Stacker was not a big company. If they can do it, surely HP can.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I found an excellent way for HP to keep their IP locked up tight and I still get excellent print: I bought a Lexmark Optra color 40, added 32MB of RAM, and said fsck it to HP.
My Lexmark does PostScript level II in hardware, keeping my CPU usage to a minimum, and it cost less than $100 US.
THIS kind of message is the only message that HP exec's will ever understand. You vote with your wallet every day; don't loose sight of that.
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
Join the club, I submitted it too and was rejected immediately. Note that it isn't attributed to anyone. I guess if you're Taco you're "in the know" and don't need to attribute stories like this to anyone.
That would have been cool, since everything he's posted has been modded up to +5.
;)
That way, my post would at least be at +3!
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Ah, but chances are that if you invested the money in real HP PA-RISC servers they you'd be wise to also have a management system running NNM/ITO (Openview) and have a nice big projection screen turn red if something went wrong. Most enterprises, banks, etc. Don't have someone anywhere near a machine;therefore, sound is a little pointless on a $1,000,000+ HP V-Class or SuperDome. BTW, Check out that SuperDome, SWEEEEEEEET.
Paul
(no disrespect intended)
$ man reality
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I think you can also go back to slashdot archives where this question has been asked and answered before. It turns out that we are not quite so immitative as you think.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
>As for your comment about the story being rejected when you submitted it, I assume you just wrote that because you are frustrated?
It might be due purely to the note that it's a person submitting an artical on himself.
I don't actually exist.
Do we count things like bash (which most unix people seem to use) and autoconf and apt? or is the competition restricted to stuff like Freetype and Apache? (All of the above have improved the "state of the art" in the sense that there is at least one thing which each does better than any of the commonly available competition).
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
In August of 1998, while at the first open source conference, I briefly talked with Tim O'Reilly about approaching Paul Allen's Interval Research concerning open source strategies. I had a few well placed contacts at Interval and I figured if Linus would go work for Allen, maybe it was appropriate that Allen's think tank get in the act. However, it turned out that my contact with Joe was more important than my contact with Interval.
Joe Ellsworth's foresignt at HP turned out to be critical to HP's participation with open source -- something I think he should have received more credit for initiating. Joe knew it would be very difficult if not impossible to get Idea Futures set up as an executive decision support system within HP, so predictions like my (his) LibmUX claim weren't enough to establish priority for open source ideas within HP.
Nevertheless, we did discuss the idea of setting up prize awards for achievement of various open source objectives and after the first open source conference, Joe took that idea and ran with it within HP management, as well as contacting O'Reilly. The end result of his effort was a meeting with representatives of O'Reilly Associates on the same day that I departed for Russia. In fact, I walked Joe to the first meeting with Brian Behlendorf on my way out to catch Aeroflot. Joe thought he had convinced key managers of the HP-UX division to put up almost $10 million in a variety of open source awards that would have systematically converted all of HP-UX's administrative utilities to Linux as a way of channeling the growing base of Apache servers into the HP family of large servers. It was a great positive sum vision that I still think would have worked. In fact, I was convinced enough of its merit that I was traveling to Russia, on my own nickle, to discover what the impediments might be from the perspective of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to distributing prize awards in Russia for open source projects should HP actually come through with some major award money. The RAS desperately needed (and still needs) hard cash for their programming teams. That meeting with O'Reilly went well and my meeting with the RAS folks got their interest up and exposed some of the pragmatics of distributing such prize awards in Russia.
Fortunately, I presented the Russians with a lot of caveats, knowing how often they have been let down by Americans before. I say "fortunately" because support within HP with O'Reilly quickly went a fairly different direction than Joe (or I) had envisioned. For some reason, HP decided not to fund prizes for the massive translation of HP-UX utilities to Linux, and what money was available for prize awards was limited to US participants. Also, for some reason, Joe was not kept as the lead representative in the relationship with O'Reilly Associates and the rules governing the Open Awards program were substantially altered from the original internal white paper on the concept.
I don't know the status of all of this, lo these 2 years later, but its pretty clear to me the entire open source community could benefit from a way to set up objective prize awards, with provision for second and third place contenders. That way programming teams in developing (or recovering) economies can eat and (in the case of Russia) keep from freezing in the winter as they bring their manifest skills to bear on open source.
Seastead this.
in some cases you may be able to command the device to destroy itself
:)
Interesting
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I'm responding to the drivel above inorder to burn off excess karma points.
It's either this way or losing them via meta-moderation. This is faster. Meta-moderation requires that I actually have moderator points and it takes a while for that to cycle around.
Oh, and I'll leave my +1 bonus on for extra effect.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Well, I wrote the original parody; the original song is by Eminem, ("Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up") and if you really want to know my secret identity...
:)
Well, I don't care if you credit it to "Will The Real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up"; otherwise, I could set up yet another free e-mail account or something.
But yes, whatever you decide, please rap it, and post the link.
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Well, my girlfriend has an HP Deskjet 710C, and there are patents on it, and it is barely useable under Linux (no colour, for example). So he's not entirely wrong.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
on this one page they claim Linux support for their new HP 2200/2250 printers: Wider operating system compatibility (Yeah, right) The only pity is that the base model, the 2200, does not and will probably not ever get supported, as it's another variation of a WinPrinter. HP keeps sending me those automated responses, but so far they haven't fixed the lies on that page (Like "Lower printing costs"). I don't think I'll ever buy HP again.
You probably are!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...the lack of respect that online media really gets. Maybe respect is a bad choice of words but it's Monday so I'll explain: While it is true that online publications are the minority, their contribution to the journalism "scene" seems to be minimized by traditional journalists who are afraid because anyone with just a AOL account (and 2 free megs of hosted space) can get as much attention as the NY Times. Decentralization of content publication is as worrysome to traditional print media as Napster is to the record labels. Anyone else see the parallels between RIAA v Napster and Mattel v That Guy Who Criticized Them On His Web Page? Anyway, The IOC doesn't see any online rags (not counting ABC, CNN, MSNBC and other traditional news franchises) as reputable, established news sources. I just hope in 10 years this conclusion comes back to bite them in the ass... we can all guess at how everything will change by then.
I can see their point. If they did release the information, and a competitor started using the same color correction algorithm, HP would have no way to know that that competitor had stolen the code and violated HP's copyright (since the competitor wouldn't open the source either). The assurances of large companies that they do not violate licenses like the GPL apparently are not enough for HP.
If only there were a way to enforce their copyright without resorting to expensive reverse-engineering and legal battles, that would clear the way for HP (and many other companies) to release Open Source products. Are there any technical solutions? How can you know if somebody is using your code in violation of the GPL?
Meanwhile, fortunately for PPA owners, a rather good reverse-engineering effort has resulted in a working Linux driver that has been included in several distributions:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnm2ppa/
Keep up the good work!
Yeah right. Ever try to code sound on an HP/UX box? It's just yet another freaky, crufty Unix implementation, and it's weirder than most. When their passwd file gets corrupted, and they drop you to a prompt that says "Warning: you are SUPERUSER!", well... you'll be laughing too. Besides, HP has gotten Linux to run on HP hardware as well. But don't trust me; just see what HP migrates to...
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
i Know a way to gte a modurator to slap me a good one.
rite a dum mesage weth lats o' spellign arrows.
Maibe reffer to uthers bad gramer? What do you, think.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I wish Agilent was still part of HP. Or Agilent would get a similiar open source rep. When I pay $100's of K for a test-set and it doesn't support Linux or have some type of open source driver I get rather pissed off. I would sure like to see this change.
Unfortunately Agilent and Anritsu make the best stuff, so there is no choice really.
No. Paper-pushing is dead. You aren't going to build a multi-billion dollar business on a dead market with no margins.
Despite your blind assertion that printers are dead (what planet are you from?), I think the point was that even if HP is riding on its printers, the fact that it can do so is evidence that HP could still be a major force if they got behind Linux and started doing things as well as they do their printers.
In other words, the printers are enough to keep paying attention to HP.
Nice try, troll. But associating the *huge* printing industry with Win2k isn't going to fly. The call of the paperless office has been ringing for more than a decade, and there has been no significant change in paper usage, except *upwards*. Also, here you will see Micron Tech's stock over the same time period. While not matching exactly, the curve is pretty daggon close to HP's, and Micron just had their most profitable quarter ever, by far. What does that prove? Just that yet again stock price is a poor judge of a CEO's ability to lead a company, or their performance, either one.
It's no brainer that if printing text is important to you, you're using [La|Te]TeX -> dvi -> PostScript -- which works best on a UNIX, hands down.
Color printing is bit tougher, but that's why Kinko's (et al) is open 24 hours...
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
Either you're a troll, or you've never *actually* worked in an office environment. Most of they companies I've worked for spend millions on printers. Everything from lowly inkjets for exec's who can't be bothered to walk out of thier office to pick up their print jobs, to monster ass network laser printers for the rest of us working stiffs to share.
Finish your degree kid and get a job. The world isn't as simple as you think.
Are you sure that it's the REAL Bruce Perens? I think that the one in the article has Slashdot Id #3873- he must be an imposter...
If a year isn't brief, what would be short enough? A month? Does anybody who is halfway serious act as a VC for a month?
Also, I thought you were joking when you said you submitted it twice. Are you saying you really did submit it twice? You're freakin me out.
-------
Vidi, Vici, Veni
you use unix to COMPILE KERNELS and use emacs, not to listen to sound
Apple Computer and this here Mac OS X box disagree with that sentiment... and anyway, unless it's *BSD, you won't be compiling kernels on a "real" Unix. Unless you've shelled out da BIG BUCKS for a source license. Or Solaris, I just remembered, the source is available for that I guess.
As for sound and multimedia and "real Unix" ever heard of IRIX? Mac OS X (as I already mentioned)? No? Oh well...
Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity
Even more amazingly, they make more money on printer supplies than they do on the printers themselves.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
In any case, until said progress arrives, people ought to take stock of those companies that offer better support for free software users, and buy products from them. HP makes all sorts of things (reasonable mid-range LAN euipment, workstations, etc) but as I mainly know printers, here's what I know about the industry as things stand right now:
As always, if you want to know anything about the state of free software printer support, consult www.linuxprinting.org. Particularly apropos are my vendor scorecards and suggested printers pages.
Well, that's the real trick with these inkjet printers at least.. you buy the printer and then you have to buy the supplies because the cartridge runs out after 5 pages. Companies that make inkjet (and some cheap laser) printers make BOATLOADS off of the supplies, much more than they made off selling the printers themselves.
:>
They're not going to want to lose that revenue stream any time soon.
Of course, if someone made a printer that could take anybody's printer cartridge that would be interesting.. but then you'd see the patent lawyers going crazy too.
--
Delphis
To anyone who thinks that printing is not important... they should work printer tech support for a little while. I did that for HP for over a year, and people become VERY HOT when they can't print for any reason. It is truly scary. I've had instances where I just answered the call and without my saying a word the person on the other end is screaming, crying, yelling, curssing, threatening legal action, and asking to speak to everyone from my supervisor to the CEO. I think it's important to those people. And many other 'normal' people. Cheers, Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
How about this new HPA High Performance Architecture on the Business Inkjet 2200?
They may talk about opening intefaces, but meanwhile they keep reinventing the winprinter.
This HPA appears to do the rasterizing in the driver and then send that compressed to the printer.
Could someone with programming experience tell me how much work it would be to implement that in Linux, if HP actually released some specs on it? It doesn't sound as hopeless as a regular GDI printer, does it?
I hadn't heard that, although I suppose you would know better than I would :). Thank gods somebody in open source can influence where the RF design software runs.
This is very good news indeed.
The Free ODMG Project needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
"He criticized HP for holding on to the source code for its printer drivers, and for not releasing printer interface specifications, thus hindering development of drivers ported to other operating systems, namely Linux and the BSDs.
Not only that, but he asked HP either to kill its HP-UX operating system and replace it with Linux, or just Open Source the Unix splinter. He finished up the letter with this warning: "You'll also find that we're rather cynical about ringing endorsements; we've heard those before without result, and they won't earn you a lot of cred by themselves without actions and commitments that back them up."
He's focusing on opening up options for users. Will he have any kind of authority/ear of senior managment? Somebody there must have grabbed him because they have ideas for making open source profitable for HP
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
perhaps they are finally starting to see the light?
this seems seriously strange for a company who designs things that are patent-able first, usable second. perhaps someday i may consider buying an HP product if they straighten out....
C:\>ls
bad command or file name
C:\>uptime
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Wasn't it a printer that got RMS mad in the first place?
That's why they make all their money off of the ink cartridges!
Exactly. The Real Bruce Perens has some low UID or something, and doesn't post anonymously and stuff.
And I haven't seen him posting on this SID yet, but we'll see.
Incidentally, I'm the guy who originally notified him about "Bruce Perens.", the original impostor. Weird, eh?
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Hey Bruce,
Can you make them understand that HP-OpenView is not *open*? They are very disillusioned about that product of theirs.
A beowulf cluster of Bruce Perens. troll accounts on slashdot...
Oh wait...that happened over a year ago.
when you're done with the printers, bruce, please get my hp scanner to work under linux.
What I'd like to see is a really modular printer. That is, one that I would never have to turf completely. If I could buy replacement mechanisms to increase speed, dpi, interface (move to USB or Firewire or whatever-else-may-com) or deal with different styles of ink cartridges (as technology improves there), and not have to do a complete replacement, I'd be supremely happy. Also, there would be less of an environmental impact which would be much nicer in the long run.
Anonymous Cowards: Proving daily that human beings are innately jerks.
Thats all you need to know about this complete dud of a company. I don't really think Perens is going to have any impact on this Silicon Valley dinosaur.
For the last ten years HP has been a day late and a dollar short on just about any interesting innovation you can think about, with dwindling marketshare and nonexistant mindshare in unix systems.
So how have they been paying the bills? Printers. Sad but true, this tech titan is nothing more than a paper pusher. Carly has done an excellent job dragging the stock through the mud and now people are taking their money over to SUNW where at least someone understands how to market a product that has some margins of interest. I expect Sun to effectively push HP out of the server room within four years, with IBM and Compaq picking up the scraps
From the article:
"...the normally outspoken Perens isn't turning into a schill any time soon."
That's a relief. Those cross-species transmogrifications typically left Calvin in a bit
of a mess.
C'mon, Taco, could you mask the contempt a little bit better, next time:
Show some integrity, for chrissakes.
It's FUNNY +1!!
(gee, I hope I remember to click "Post Anonymously"...)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The Original Upstart is a great piece, highly recommended reading.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I think Andover will make you a Slashdot editor.
How do I know this?
When the speech reco company I work for was a startup (back in '96), we lost two big contracts because sound is basically broken on HP workstations.
Not buggy-- sound is such an afterthought on *NIX workstations (except SGIs) that it's always buggy. Our head developer navigated the Sun bureaucracy to the point where he eventually got the name of one the guys who wrote the Solaris audio drivers, and took him to lunch. So now there are all kinds of hacks in our code to determine what revision of, say, flaky Sparc 5 sound hardware it's running on. (Don't think youcan just ask the driver what chip rev is installed. You need to crank up the input gain and see whether the DC offset stays constant of drops with time.)
But sound on HPs just didn't work-- too bad both AT&T and the New York Stock Exchange had HP boxen on every desk and were interested in speech, and we had to walk away.
What are the lessons here? That I'm still bitter, heh. And that you shouldn't be so quick to accept buggy hardware-- somebody is getting screwed, and maybe it'll be you, unexpectedly, when something you never thought of becomes important.
A lot of people don't seem to like them, but I own a Sony Mavica. It stores the pictures in JPEG format on a 3.5" floppy disk, and I can view them on any computer than happens to be handy. Well, except for iMacs.
I don't think any corporation can be considered Open Source friendly until we can see some actual open source code.
IMO, Linux' role can only increase. With that said, some things will take years,
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Upon entering the site, I was greeted with a pop-up window asking if I would be willing to participate in a survey. I agreed.
I took the opportunity to document my ownership of numerous HP products, as well as my displeasure with the company's decision not to support me as a user of Linux.
I went on to reveal that for this reason, HP had recently lost a sale, when I purchased a flatbed scanner from a competitor, without first even considering an HP product.
I warned that in the future, HP had forced me to buy from such competitors as IBM, Epson and Kodak, as these manufacturers either directly or indirectly support the use of Linux with their products.
I am only one of thousands who have surely registered the same complaint.
What matters is that HP listened.
I'd also like to thank the person that moderated my original comment down. :P
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Rather than chase down every flavor of operating system, shouldn't I just get the interfaces documented so that people can write their own drivers?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Isn't HP supposed to be replacing HP/UX with Linux?
Isn't that why they were supporting Itanium in the first place?
Is Slashdot getting as sensationalist as ZD-Net?
I mean, really, people, this is a perfectly sane article about one of the pillars of our Open Source community getting a job where he can guide the strategy of yet another Unix distribution. We should be happy for him.
Why don't we all stand up?
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This appeared on Bruce's site Technocrat.net yesterday. It also links to a Cnet article on the topic.
Bruce sez: "There are two parts to the job. I get to be an activist in the Linux community, on company time, and speak for myself when necessary. And I get to advise top management. There are three people between Carly (the chairman) and I. So, I'll be a pretty effective bridge between the Open Source community and HP management." Here's the link.
Man, that's a catchy song! ;)
.mp3!
If anyone who can rap wants to record this for me... well... Post the link on slashdot; I'll happily link to the
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
The problem is that you put the linux stories in the linux section. That would make sense for any other website, but this is slashdot and linux stories go ON THE FRONT PAGE!! WOOHOO!! GO LINUX GO!!
Like it costs them anything substantial to pay for him. Some $60-100k/year, which is nothing compared to $x billion in revenues. If a thousand Linux-heads picked up a HP printer on the "good feelings" from this instead of an Epson (who's printers I prefer anyways) they'll pay for it.
They can ignore him at will, too. They'll be able to get advice from him on a few ways to make money without any possibility of affecting their intelectual property or bottom line.
Gentoo Sucks
Yeah. It was long enough to be sure that I was wasting my time, this time. I remain in touch with a bunch of VCs, from Opticality Ventures (the Zope and Python investor) to HP's own venture fund, and yes, some of them have been in this for a long time.
Depending on who reads the submission, and what else they've read that day, and what their mood is, anything can get accepted or rejected.
Not such a great system IMO.
I submitted on Wednesday and Monday.
Besides, don't you think it looks a little less like self-promotion if the article is submitted by someone else?
Indeed. But sometimes there is something gained in getting the news from the source.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Luckily, the konica protocol, which has been published by konica, is very similar, so it had been relatively easy to reverse engineer the protocol for gphoto.
I can only advise you to buy digital cameras from Nikon, Minolta, Konica, or any company that provides the specs so that you can actually use your camera.
So far for HP and open source...
I just had to say this.
Lutz
Sorry, Bruce.
:)
For some of us, slashdot is just fun and games, but some people take a good joke too far (or too seriously).
FWIW, I remember the original impostor, and that wasn't cool at all. In fact, I even wrote a song about it...
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
However HP moving to an open linux would show some commitment.
Commitment to what?
Open Source?
Can't they show that committment to Open Source by releasing parts (or the whole) of HP/UX as source? How about print drivers? What if HP said 'We will embrace BSD for Pa-RISC boxes - would that not be a commitment?
What if HP took the linux kernel and placed SAM on top of it? (Linux for HP/UX admins) And added their own lodable modules/userspace. HAving YET ANOTHER linux distro helps exactly how?
Changing the way a WHOLE company thinks about source code, with seperate divisions, etc la is a hard task. And, unless the CEO is 110% behind the decision, it is not gonna happen. Bruce Perens is going to have his work cut out for him.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Regarding open-sourcing HP-UX, I think right now it makes more sense for me to put energy into Linux on PA-RISC. But if I have to seed a few HP-UX licenses into the community, nobody at HP will complain about that.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This is a good thing. HP printers are the most rugged and long lasting creatures that I have ever used (Not so long ago I had the fun job of installing and maintaining computers and printers in trains and other heavy equiptment...and I must say that the HP 540's 550's and 660's just kept printing....)
Maybe it was just dumb luck -- but I have chosen to go with HP's in my new (less bumpy) jobs -- and now am glad that maybe Linux drivers (and support) from HP may be a reality.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
> I'll need a retainer for that.
No need.
http://www.levien.com/patents.html
But also look at gimp-print for a very impressive example of what a "pure" free software project is capable of. What Bruce said originally is true - all we (the free software community) needs is the basic documents about how to get the dots on the page, and we can do a damn fine job of arranging them. I believe "intellectual property" is a non-issue for getting inkjet drivers under Linux.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I have been working with QT lately, and it simply would not have been possible to develop free/GPL'ed software using QT without Bruce's beautifully diplomatic persuasion of Trolltech. He is a true scholar and an eloquent statesman of the first caliber.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I've asked some of the original protocol developers and they don't have access to the documentation anymore. I've asked some of my friends who work at HP, and their access to the places where this doco is stored came up empty.
I've asked maddog via his Linux International link (of which HP is also a primary sponsor) to talk to HP for us, but never received a reply. He's a busy dude, so I didn't mind too much.
PPA printers are well supported using pnm2ppa 1.0.4. Usuable versions are in most of the distributions now, and we are FreeBSD/NetBSD/BeOS compatible (and for that matter, cygwin and simple to make under Visual C++). I develop under NetBSD on the alpha, and it's 64 bit clean.
About the last thing I'm going to work on is ghostscript integration. We need some help from the ghostscript dudes as we must calibrate our printers, so that should be fun.
PPA printers do use a lot of CPU time. We feed the printer data that is ready for the print head - there is nearly nothing in the three families of PPA printers. The sheer amount of data is uneconomical from the point of view of how fast you can send data down, and the level of compression we can achieve in the protocol is only moderate in comparison to PS or PCL3e (which is what the other HP deskjets use).
Andrew van der Stock
I think what CmdrTaco was saying was that you did some VC work, but you didn't make a career out of it. I mean heck, I've had temp jobs that have lasted for as much as four months, a year really isn't that long a time to spend in a profession.
As for your comment about the story being rejected when you submitted it, I assume you just wrote that because you are frustrated? Depending on who reads the submission, and what else they've read that day, and what their mood is, anything can get accepted or rejected. For that matter, how long ago did you submit? Maybe they'd already decided once to post this story before your submission came through. I had a story wait in limbo for over a week before being posted once, and another time I had a story get rejected less than ten minutes after being submitted. Besides, don't you think it looks a little less like self-promotion if the article is submitted by someone else?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD