[lug] United Linux

[rm at fabula.de]

On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 11:49:56AM -0600, Ed Hill wrote:
> 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.

Hmm, my point would be more like this: i'm amazed on who insensitive
so-called OpenSource Companies are to the tone of the comunity the try
to serve (and need as customers). This is the same old marketing rant
i've seen over and over. For me, Linux/GNU/OS has something to do with
being competent/knowlegeable about my work.  Don't try to fool your
customers (esp. when they tend to know quite a bit) - "this ain't KA.. err,
Windows Land". People don't by IDEs and compilers only because of the
cool So-n-so Wizzards and nice icons. I read an interview with Borlands
chief in "Linux-Enterprise" where he basically went arround kicking the
knees of kernel/gcc developers (nice to hear that i was using inferior
tools all those years) when at the same time the demo version of Kylix
and the test apps i tried where segfaulting all over my harddisk.

> 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?

I love standards (esp. the older ones which could be read by mere mortal
like me over the weekend ;), and as i that, i love to see a strong move-
ment towards the LSB . What bugs me is: they say 'standard' and mean 'our
distro'. Don't declare a distro as a standard, declare it - as it's done
in the LSB - as a shared effort and follow it pedantically.


> 
> > 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"?  

I guess i was too you then, i watched it from the playground (Mac progmming
all allong) ;-)
No, IMHO this is a marketing trick. There never was something a UNIX war, there
was a war between (hardware) companies that abused the (sometimes) justifiable
differences between their OSs to gain market share. And remember, those where the
same companies that created the consortia to standadrize UNIX (again, often to
sneak in their proprietary stuff).
In the open source comunity there's a different mechanic going on: people
(read: developers) don't need to compete for market share. KDE and GNOME 
(or Perl and Python and Sheme and  you -name-it) are different because they
serve a different comunity. Pyhon and Perl aren't a waste of effort or
double development solving the same problems. They cater comunities with
rather diverse mindsets and i'd hate to see that go. Most of the interesting
stuff i've seen lately was inspired by 'outside' resources (Lamba/Functional
Programming in Python, Monads in Scheme etc.). The same goes for the GUI frame-
works. 

> 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.

File locations are dealt with in the LSB, thats a project that is rather
mature by now (and lukily, most of the distributions follow it by now).
I don't buy the story about glibc version: this is Windows talk ;-) We
are the proud owners and users of a linker library that can handle multiple
versions of the same library. Nothing stops you of having 7 different version
of glibc on you server. But why would you need? Software that depends on the
exact minor version of a library? Hard to belive. Yes, one needs to know her/his
compier/linker to take advantage of library versioning, but that can hardly be
a factor for commercial software companies.

Linux icommercial distros struggle, you are right. And the first thing they
do is point at us: your OS is a mess. Shure, why didn't i spent 99$ for a
SuSE box if i can get the Debian one for 20$ ? Better support i guess, but
unfortunately, anything not related to putting the disks into the drive and
pressing install forces me to use SuSEs non-free telephone support. Bummer.
Oh, i _did_ buy SuSE (professional) for a customer last year (huge company,
the like the box with stickers). The one application this box was supposed
to run (postgres) didn't work. Bug in the startup script (and missing exec
bits if i recall right). That's not what i call professional.


> 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.

Never said anything against standards. Au contraire.

 Ralf 
 
> 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
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