[lug] United Linux

[Ed Hill]

On Thu, 2002-05-30 at 10:11, rm at fabula.de wrote:
> On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 09:13:18AM -0600, Crawford Rainwater wrote:
> > 
> > http://www.unitedlinux.com
> 
> Hmm, most of the companies they quote i'd personally 
> rather put into the 'turn-me-of' corner :-)

Ok, granted, theres *plenty* of blame to go around for past (and
present) lousy support for Linux, Free Software, and Open Source from
the supporters listed in the announcement.  Very true.

But what does this have to do with standards adoption?  You whine that
you don't get support and then you complain that the standards (which
certainly *do* make it easier for the big companies to provide said
support) are somehow going to kill diversity?


> Ok, enough rant, let's get serious: what do they try to acomplish that
> isn't addressed by the Linux Standards Base? "ISVs and IHVs can now 

*snip*

> We need diverse players from different comunities - friendly competition
> (on all levels) is good for the software quality. 

Wrong!

Have you learned nothing from the "Unix Wars"?  We most certainly
*don't* need a handful of different common distributions competing on
pointless nonsense like installers, file locations, and glibc versions. 
Theres no point.  Its a waste of time for everyone involved.  And the
market, as evidenced by the struggling Linux commercial distros, 
clearly isn't able to support the cost.

Widespread adoption of the LSB is great news.  Its a huge step towards
making Linux easier for the plodding masses to use and the big lumbering
companies to support.  We'll all benefit.  Remember, thats the very same
support that you were complaining about *not* receiving under the
current situation.

At the same time, the standards and consolidation do *NOTHING* to either
limit your freedom or curtail real innovation.  You and everyone else
has the sources.  If you don't like the way something works or if you'd
like to do something completely new, then get off your buns and go do
it.  There will always be plenty of small, custom distros like Tom's
root-boot and others who will ignore such standards and will target
specific problems.

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD    |  Email:       ed at eh3.com, ehill at mines.edu
Post-Doctoral Researcher   |  URLs:        http://www.eh3.com
Division of ESE            |   http://wasser.mines.edu/people/edhill.php
Colorado School of Mines   |  Phone:       303-273-3483
Golden, CO  80401          |  Fax:         303-273-3311
Key fingerprint = 5BDE 4DA1 66BE 4F7B BC17  3A0C 932B 7266 1E76 F123