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Corel Linux Advisory Council
Hos writes "Saw this press release this morning. Looks like they have an interesting list of members (Linus, Larry Augustine, Bob Young), though it doesn't say whether thy will be speaking or not. "
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One can only hope. I'd like to see Philips open up their hardware more, they make some good stuff.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Yup - companies don't generally make investment decisions based on dejanews or altavista search results and informal e-mail with package maintainers.
This Linux Council provides a way for a company to send over their CEO and VPs and chat about Linux with other bigwigs over a nice lunch. It also allows Linux folks to promote open source development right at the top.
The only real equivalent right now is probably RedHat's marketing department, so a vendor neutral group seems like a good thing.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This is like the jedi council and Linus is yoda.
The desktop isn't the only missing piece. Some others are:
;-), since most of them don't even know what a Journaling FS is.
* Broader hardware support (eg. USB, MPEG-2, bleeding edge video and sound support)
* Better support for highly SMP systems (16 processors and up)
* Better support for huge files and memory
* Journaling FS
* Better ACL support
* Better Palmtop/small graphics support
All of these are being worked on. Most of these can even be managed now, but with a lot of convolutions. The desktop is all that's needed to get the Press in line (and maybe a bribe or two
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Open mind, insert foot.
Something in the article made me say, "Hmmmm":
"The Corel Linux Advisory Council will attempt to address issues and propose solutions to create an environment which helps Windows(r) operating system vendors to understand the possibilities of Linux...."
/* Deep breath, asbestos underwear on */
The wording makes this group sound a little like a counter for the recently-announced Microsoft Linux disadvisory group. I don't know if this is a Good Thing(tm) or a Bad Thing(tm). Is this group going to be focused on advocating Linux, attacking Windows, or both?
If the group intends to attack Windows, I wonder if The Linux Community, Inc. really wants to play that game. It might give them less room to complain about MS FUD attacks. It also means taking on one of the most well-funded PR machines of our time.
Perhaps it would be better to take the high road and talk about what Linux CAN do -- leaving out the "...and Windows can't".
I also wonder if they will concentrate on technical OS features, or the overall benefits of using Free Software. That's probably a whole 'nuther issue, though.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I mean, I hate to start that old flame war up again, but it'd be nice if there were more than one "free speech" advocate on the board- or even anyone with a political agenda at all. While I generally agree with RMS, this board (which seems mainly corporate) doesn't even have an OSI representative- so the politics of free software are likely to be completely swamped by making money, which is undeniably Corel's goal. Even if you don't agree about the politics, we must remember that there *are* politics to this- we *are* trying to change the way people think and do business, not just provide a new method by which the old forms can attempt to make profits.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY