I should point out that I'm not representing HP, and although they can ask nicely, they can't tell me what to do on the board. They have Scott Peterson of HP Legal representing them. Peterson is the attorney assigned to Free Software issues within the company and is very cognizant of the GPL, etc.
Please send your comments to www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org . W3C reads and responds to public comment. Public comments will give the free software representatives on the board support to make the changes we need.
Most of our customers install their own loads anyway. But the ones that don't, don't run a leading-edge distro. And yes, there is a contract with Mandrake, and another with Progeny to work on Debian.
Most of our customers install their own loads anyway. Especially the bigger ones, they all seem to have built their own install CDs with their own feature set.
What about the TRS-80 Color Computer with OS-9. That was amazing. Multiple users in 128K RAM and two floppies. Unix-like OS. It even had a (small) Free Software community.
Remember, this is one of the people behind CORBA. He would say source is useless. He wants a software world of black boxes connected together. Most people have accepted that this particular promise of OO programming was hype. He hasn't.
HP has contributed two entire Debian ports (PA-RISC and IA-64) done with HP engineering staff, and supports a number of Debian maintainers to work on company hours.
Unless said naive users are administrating their own systems, Debian is ideal for their desktops.
You pretty much made my point for me. Yes, Debian probably works in a situation where there's an office with a savvy sysadmin and naive users. But that is not the typical situation. Debian needs to be easier to administer (getting there) and easier to install (work is in progress). And it needs better commercial support (I have a plan).
HP supports all major distributions and uses Debian as its internal development center. Yes, Debian is not what I'd use to support naive users on the desktop at this moment. But what I'd like to concentrate on is having a Free Software desktop that actually works for the naive user to use for their regular work-load. We are almost there, and once we have it all distributions can provide it. The main issues are robustness (must get OpenOffice and Moz to be solid), ease of use (almost done, IMO), and ease of management and installation (where we need the most work).
We haveare Free Softw drivers for the PSC-950 multifunction unit on USB - it print and scans from Linux. I have one here. It does some cool stand-alone stuff with camera memory cartriges, too. It prints a proof sheet, and then you can check photo orders on the proof sheet, scan it, and it will fulill the order! We have Free Software drivers for other USB and parallel units too, but not every one. We're working on some of them. A few, very few, HP printers have embedded intellectual property from a big company that doesn't like Linux, and those may never have drivers. The newer printers are intended to be "net" printers, and have more intelligence onboard, including, in some cases, PhotoREIT. This makes them easier to drive from Linux.
Let's please concentrate on getting a desktop on which the naive user can do all of their typical work-load using Free Software alone. Then, we can have it on all distributions. We need to address some ease-of-use and installation issues.
At the moment, Debian is not the best way to support the naive user. It's not really the community that the Debian developers are writing for - although there are exceptions among them. Debian developers, in general, make Debian for themselves and people like themselves. This is something I've always regretted, and I want to do more about it.
Oh boy. The old Saturn CPU stuff. I can ask. Aren't there still calculators on sale that use it? It could be buried. It might belong to someone else now. It might have embedded 3rd-party code. So, don't hold your breath.
Don't forget that we have a number of Open Source Java-compatible VMs today. Speaking for myself as a free software evangelist, and obviously not speaking in my HP role, I'd rather see the work go into the ones that are already free. But I can't win every fight.
Utility pricing is for hardware - you can have a machine sit around until you need it, and not pay for it until you do. Obviously, we can't charge utility pricing for a Free operating system, only for the hardware it runs on. The point is that Linux-running hardware is now part of the program.
Utility pricing is for hardware, not software. The point here is that the program is now extended to Linux-running hardware. You can have a machine sit around until you need it, and not pay for it until then.
HP actually has a contract to develop GNOME... on HP-UX! All of the code goes back to all versions, of course.
HP supports all major distributions, but the really new thing here is the desktop. Multinational corporation has a partnership to build a Linux desktop, when they have a big $$$ business with Microsoft. Wow. A year ago, I couldn't get anyone at HP or IBM to believe in the Linux desktop.
Fonts? If you ask me, I'd put making a robust, easy to install and use, desktop first, and then go for esthetics once that's stable. But I'd love to hear your argument, and your choice of font mechanism.
Alas, I am not at LinuxWorld. Valerie had surgery today. She's OK, thank goodness. We had a difficult week.
Yes, if your wireless card is based on the Prism II chip (as many new cards are, but not your old ones).That's the only thing we have an AP driver for.
Before the upgrade to Linux, you have to open the box. After the upgrade, Linux and your own software are what protects whether or not a network upgrade is allowed. You have to become root on the box to do it.
We need better hardware architecture, too. Remember the iAPX 432? Every function was a protected island. Too bad the thing was designed to run Ada and the technology of the time made it too slow and expensive. We could do it well today.
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce
Bruce
We don't get everything we want, but we've done pretty well.
Bruce
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Bruce
You pretty much made my point for me. Yes, Debian probably works in a situation where there's an office with a savvy sysadmin and naive users. But that is not the typical situation. Debian needs to be easier to administer (getting there) and easier to install (work is in progress). And it needs better commercial support (I have a plan).
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
At the moment, Debian is not the best way to support the naive user. It's not really the community that the Debian developers are writing for - although there are exceptions among them. Debian developers, in general, make Debian for themselves and people like themselves. This is something I've always regretted, and I want to do more about it.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
HP supports all major distributions, but the really new thing here is the desktop. Multinational corporation has a partnership to build a Linux desktop, when they have a big $$$ business with Microsoft. Wow. A year ago, I couldn't get anyone at HP or IBM to believe in the Linux desktop.
Fonts? If you ask me, I'd put making a robust, easy to install and use, desktop first, and then go for esthetics once that's stable. But I'd love to hear your argument, and your choice of font mechanism.
Alas, I am not at LinuxWorld. Valerie had surgery today. She's OK, thank goodness. We had a difficult week.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Would not UV lithography work on silicon?
Bruce
I guess I'm a noob - never got too deeply into snmp :-) . That worked great. Thanks! - Bruce
Bruce