I expect to have the formal proposal for Userlinux done on Thursday. Sorry it's taken so long, I've been busy with closing out work for some current consulting customers.
I'll be off Slashdot for a few hours now, time to give Stanley his bath and put him to bed.
Well, my solution to that would be to have them all build on the same base for the non-differentiating packages in the distribution. And we'd solve that problem in common. And that's what I proposed for Linux Standard Base, and what we didn't do. And it still needs doing today.
Tax software is the ultimate proprietary project. It's something that isn't done for love, and isn't done by engineers. It makes sense in the proprietary paradigm. Only things with deep added value or time-value do make sense in that paradigm. We're past the point where word processors or even operating systems fit in that category.
By the way, I already have the first customer group planning a $1M to $2M/year investment. And they do have the money. That does make a pretty big difference, doesn't it?
The intent is to do the work within Debian, except the very few things that the paying customer demands and Debian won't accept. Mostly graphics card drivers. And to build a customer service structure that works with it. Thus, it is not YALD. Really just a layer on top of Debian.
Ever think about why the Safari web browser in OS/X is derived from Konqueror? All of those people who were being paid saw how excellent the work of the people who weren't getting paid was.
I had this same argument with Steve Jobs in 1999. Today we have more people on the Linux desktop than on OS/X, and Steve stood in front of a slide saying "Open Source, We Love It!" at MacWorld.
I wrote a character-mode installer that fit on one floppy, and was the best installer in 1996! It's not 1996 any longer. I think character mode would still be OK if it were easy, and that's where the new Debian installer is heading. It partitions your disk if you want it to, and so on. But it is built so that it can get a GUI front-end too. I think the developers are going for functionality before eye-candy.
I don't like developers who bear contempt for newbies. But the place to handle them is somewhere other than where the developers are attempting to do their work. This is why you need a layer over Debian.
I expect to have the written proposal done sometime Thursday. Then you can see it. All you have seen so far is reporting about stuff I'm saying. It's sort of third-hand.
Actually, at the moment I am focusing on the enterprise. They are paying. Granny comes later. And the enterprise really does not want games. Actually, they want a "kill games" feature:-)
I did spend about 19 years working in film, the last 12 at Pixar. We sometimes used Photoshop, but we also had paint and compositing tools that were more appropriate for our industry.
I thought CUPS was doing a pretty good job. There is also XPrint, which I don't know much about but I think it is for providing a way to get from the graphical output to the printer that most X applications can use. It seems to me that we are getting this problem solved.
Debian has gone to a database-driven configuration for many packages, which is accessed through dpkg-reconfigure. It provides "wizards" to configure various packages. It generates the various forms of configuration file, one need not edit those in many cases. They seem to be on the right track.
As good citizens of the Open Source developer community, the authors and editiors in Bruce Perens' Open Source Series place the text of their books under Open Source licenses. We think that Open Source software deserves Open Source documentation. As a result, you can already get all but 5 chapters of this book online from the Samba project, and the remaining 5 will eventually be there too. Most people buy paper because it's hard to curl up with an e-book. That seems to be working for this title, we are already in the second printing. But if you want to read it online, you are welcome to.
The book is under an Open Source license, as are all titles in Bruce Perens' Open Source Series, and the remaining 5 chapters that aren't already checked into Samba CVS will be there soon. Unencrypted PDF will also be made available.
If you look at the legal papers they've filed so far, it seems pretty clear that they have no "secret weapon". Even the judge seems to have thought so, and rather than wait for another attempt at discovery, scheduled the oral arguments.
What we will get from this is not any more material from SCO, but material on what they have told others that can be used against them in the Lanham act case and subsequent cases against them.
My guess is that the UserLinux corporate backers are large IT *users*, not developers like Red Hat. If that is the case they don't need to make any profit on it - they want to save money by using it themselves.
Yes, you got the point. I am talking about changing the economic paradigm of the "commercial" distribution, from a marginally successful profit-center to a collaboratively developed cost-center that saves all of the participants money. The participants are expected to be IT users predominantly, but there are angles for participation of IT vendors - the proprietary application makers who want a good base, the hardware makers who want good software for their hardware, the "widget frosting" companies that want to add value.
I think that Rusty was trying to say that MS could make IE DFSG-compliant here
You're right. I read him wrong. And you know what? It would be in main then, because it would probably run on wine:-) But if it didn't, it would still belong in Contrib, and we'd look once in a while and see if Wine could support it now.
You can tell if this is true for yourself. Go to bugs.debian.org and look at the critical bugs. See if they are port-related. I frankly doubt it.
My experience has been that ports only help to isolate bugs that might have been more subtle on the i386 architecture and more difficult to find, but would still be there.
Remember KA9Q NET? Phil Karn, the author, was on the Geek Cruise. Phil says his biggest mistake was not making it free when Alan Cox, myself, and Russ Nelson asked. Because that software is dead, dead, dead now. Were it free, it would probably have been integrated into the Linux kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll be off Slashdot for a few hours now, time to give Stanley his bath and put him to bed.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
I had this same argument with Steve Jobs in 1999. Today we have more people on the Linux desktop than on OS/X, and Steve stood in front of a slide saying "Open Source, We Love It!" at MacWorld.
Bruce
I wrote a character-mode installer that fit on one floppy, and was the best installer in 1996! It's not 1996 any longer. I think character mode would still be OK if it were easy, and that's where the new Debian installer is heading. It partitions your disk if you want it to, and so on. But it is built so that it can get a GUI front-end too. I think the developers are going for functionality before eye-candy.
I don't like developers who bear contempt for newbies. But the place to handle them is somewhere other than where the developers are attempting to do their work. This is why you need a layer over Debian.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
This was Bruce Perens' posting :-)
Bruce
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
I don't see why Eric wouldn't want to testify. I'd like to. I sure don't have anything to hide with regard to this case, and I can't see how he would.
Bruce
What we will get from this is not any more material from SCO, but material on what they have told others that can be used against them in the Lanham act case and subsequent cases against them.
Bruce
Yes, you got the point. I am talking about changing the economic paradigm of the "commercial" distribution, from a marginally successful profit-center to a collaboratively developed cost-center that saves all of the participants money. The participants are expected to be IT users predominantly, but there are angles for participation of IT vendors - the proprietary application makers who want a good base, the hardware makers who want good software for their hardware, the "widget frosting" companies that want to add value.
Bruce
You're right. I read him wrong. And you know what? It would be in main then, because it would probably run on wine :-) But if it didn't, it would still belong in Contrib, and we'd look once in a while and see if Wine could support it now.
Bruce
My experience has been that ports only help to isolate bugs that might have been more subtle on the i386 architecture and more difficult to find, but would still be there.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce