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Bruce Perens on UserLinux and Ubuntu
SDenmark writes "Ever wondered what happened to UserLinux, and how it's faring now that Ubuntu has stolen the spotlight? Linux Format has an interview with Bruce Perens, founder of UserLinux, the Open Source Initiative and Linux Standard Base. Perens discusses the impact of Ubuntu, how industry bodies are helping open source and why figureheads are important for the Free Software community."
Ubuntu has a huge bankroll behind it. It's great, I use it. But the bankroll helps.
Why not help? http://www.osdl.org/lab_activities/desktop_linux/
BP:Well, some of the industry bodies try to help open source. OSDL is actually handicapped in one very important way, which is that the majority of OSDL's membership have a conflict of interest where the agenda of open source is concerned.
Figureheads are useles unless they're glamorous. I can see it now - (Pick your favorite Hollywood Floozie) dressed in a business suit touting the wonders of (favorite flavor Linux). Marketing speaks to mouth-breathers.
Debian has a floozy:0 4.php
http://www.linuxforum.com/linux_wallpapers_full/1
Fear and Loathing in La SuSE (They've got the lizards, just need some product placement).
Honey I Shrunk the Embedded Ubuntu.
Star Wars XV: Attack of the CentOS (Didn't this happen in Tuttle, OK?)
Miss Fedora Universe (Make the Geeks go crazy for models in Fedoras)
A Beautiful Distro (A Linspiring movie)
OK, I am done. But why not have product placement, much like Apple has done in popular culture for the past few years.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Every open source project should have a quick 2 line description at the top of the webpage. It shouldn't take me 6 clicks to get a BASIC description of your project.
Before you criticize, here's what I did:
"Main announcements have been moved to the UserLinux web site at http://www.userlinux.com/ . "
and
"# See http://www.userlinux.com/ and http://www.userlinux.com/about for more information. "
Great, so I click on http://www.userlinux.com/ and end up back at http://www.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl . No luck there!
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I still have no idea what UserLinux is. And that was what, 7 clicks?
Compare this to Ubuntu.com. It took me 10 seconds to read the 2 line blurb at http://www.ubuntu.com/:
"Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I remember being on the mailing list years ago. The conversations with Bruce can be summarized this way:
BRUCE: I can't tell you who I'm working for, but there's a lot of money behind this project. So, we have to be serious about this. What should we call this distro?
BOB: SuperLinux!
FRED: Enterprise-D Linux!
ELMER: CoolNIX!
BRUCE: No, no, no! You have to be serious about this! There's a lot of money behind this project. I can't tell you whose money, but we have to come up with a name for our distro that they'll like!
FRED: If they have that much money, why don't *they* pick a name?
BRUCE: I want this to be a community effort! How about 'UserLinux'?
FRED: Boring.
BOB: Generic.
ELMER: Ditto that.
BRUCE: But the community has to be serious about this! There's a lot of money behind this, and the companies that I can't name won't use Linux without a professionally named distro!
ELMER: So, this is a community effort, but the decisions will be made by fiat?
BRUCE: No, the community has to be a part of this. Now, KDE or GNOME? My clients only want GNOME. What do you think?
ELMER: That we should take this seriously because there's a lot of money behind this project from companies you can't name?
BRUCE: Exactly! So, KDE is out!
Eventually, there was a big rumble and KDE got shoved back in. I dropped the list some time after that, because it was clear that the community was meant to rubber-stamp a project that some large companies wanted to produce on the cheap.
I still think it's funny how there's a new `Holy War' between Linux distros every few months.
`Back in the day' when I had my first experience with Linux, you had the Red Hat Camp vs the SuSe Camp. (Real hackers used Slackware then, btw).
Then Red hat became the evil empire, people started yelling `Debian' at each other, while SuSe became something you didn't talk about.
Around then Mandrake finally made a proper installer (albeit a very limited one if you knew what you wanted) and raked in Windows users by the dozen.
Then that position was attacked by Lindows(C), which was so effective it got in trouble with Redmond itself.
In the meantime, Red Hat looked out of the Windows (pun inteded) and started to make some money. So they started Fedora to keep the free code coming (and stay somewhat compliant to the GNU GPL). And Debian went out of the picture again.
Now I'm hearing Ubuntu on all sides (still sounds like an African dictator to me, but whatever), while my work PC suddenly runs CentOS (where did that one come from?).
UserLinux? Never heard of it either, so must have been a pretty weak spotlight in the first place...
Wonder what the next `Must-have-distro' will be.
I'll make the switch when they stick to one for more than a year, until then, I'll use Windows and BSD.
Just my $0.02...
I take life with a grain of salt...a slice of lemon and a dash of tequila
This is all too confusing. Can't someone just cut to the chase and tell me what the best Linux distro is?
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
I am amazed how pragmatic Bruce Perens is. His paper on the economy of Open Source is much better -- both in terms of being concise, as in terms of being correct -- than anything I ever heard from some other Open Source or Free Software Gurus.
I highly recommend http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.htmlthis paper to anyone who has not read it yet. It is much more interesting than the interview itself (which is short, and, in my opinion, quite uninteresting given the experience and knowledge of Bruce Perence -- the interviewer(s) did not get as much of him as they could have).
The article is quite long, but very well researched, and definitely worth spending some time on it.
Cheers,
j.
In any event, the writer should consider himself chastized. Excerpts like that are only useful if they give you an idea of what the article is about, and in this case it says (when taken out of context and then edited) something totally different than what the person who said those words meant.
Because there are a lot of people - myself included - who have used Debian for a long time. We like it for various reasons including it's proper Free-(as in speech)-ness, the apt/dpkg package management system, the fairly hands-on approach to system configuration and all sorts of other reasons that vary from person to person. The biggest problem with Debian is that it sucks as a desktop distro because it's too out of date. Ubuntu gives those of us that are long-term Debian fans what we need on the desktop without sacrificing what we love about Debian - except, arguably, a certain level of stability since Debian stable is tested like crazy.
To put it another way, here's why I don't use a selection of other distros: Redhat - too commercial, Suse - ditto, Fedora - can't stand the package management, Mandriva - ditto, Gentoo - would rather spend my time configuring the package well rather than compiling it. I have Debian on my server and love it, and have the closest thing to Debian on my desktop.