Re: SEUL: Resignation as seul-install leader

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> I am surprised that these issues weren't raised in this manner much 
> earlier, if you thought them to be a problem.  As it is, I am now in the 
> position of scrambling to fix what can be fixed.
> 
> You have raised several very good points, but unfortunately some of them 
> are either misunderstandings or things that have been poorly communicated.
> The most obvious disagreement you seem to have with the plan of this 
> project stem from the Debian choice.
> 
> 
> Debian:
> First of all, Debian was chosen over RedHat for, as you say, partially
> political reasons.  There is nothing wrong with doing so, regardless of
> how much you may disagree.  The reasons are such: Debian is completely free
> while RedHat is a commercially control distrib, Debian appears to have more
> support in the free software (Linux) community, and Debian appears to be
> better architected.
> 
> RedHat is a commercial distribution, which means it can change direction at 
> any time, at the whim of their CEO.  Yes, I know roughly what their 
> direction is, but sad to say, corporate America has been known to change 
> its mind.  Debian, on the other hand, is a known quantity, and will remain 
> so.  It is the obvious choice for *precisely* the same reason that Qt is 
> *not* the obvious choice.  You yourself have iterated those reasons better 
> than anyone else here, so you should understand why RedHat is not a good 
> choice.
> 

Suppose REdHat no longer GPLs RPM.  I am not suere this is legal in
case they have accepted forign code but even if RPM becomes
proprietary we have legitimate copies of RPM with source code and the
right to hack it.  RedHat cannot impede us to develop a free version
concurrently to that hypothetical proprietary version of RPM.  In fact
the free version could be better than the proprietary one.  Do you
think Caldera and Suse are so stupid to use RH software if RH could
kill them by making its software proprietary?

GPL was designed by RMS and this guy has an IQ higher than yours and
mine put together.  He carefully worded it to make it a trap difficult
to escape.

> RedHat is still a very good source for ideas and software, though.  Just 
> because we will be starting from a Debian base does *not* mean we will not 
> consider RedHat pieces.  The installer is the most obvious.  There are 
> several policy decisions that RedHat has done better on than Debian.  I'd 
> like to incorporate everything that works from RedHat, but not be tied to 
> their base.
> 

Starting from Debain means than we cut ourselves of most of the prsent
user base and than in fact we make it harder to have SEUL act like as
a laboratory for the distributions accounting for most of the user
base: RPM is the de facto standard, not DPKG.

> I have heard from Bruce (but it has not yet been confirmed as fact) that 
> he would like to see Debian become more of a basis for distributions, a 
> kind of packaged software repository (like what Yggdrasil is doing).  The 
> Core/Layers concept that I've proposed fits very neatly into that, and SEUL 
> would be a logical extension of that, 'simply' by adding and replacing
> appropriate layers, with those layers being contributed back into the 
> repository.
> 
> Given that, Debian is the right choice.  Any other would force us into the 
> choice of either following down the path of a diverging commercial 
> distribution or breaking away completely and becoming Yet Another Standard.
> 

How are you putting SEUL in the hands of end users?

Go to the nerarest end user store.  You will _not_ find Debian.  The
way for SDEUL is the piggy backeed distribution and it must piggy back
on adistribution than you can find easily in end user stores.

> 
> As for the leadership infrastructure, several of us (luka, arma, and 
> myself) have spent hundreds of hours apiece working out the details.  It 
> has been carefully crafted to meet the needs of this project, which is a 
> unique in its goals and requirements.  It is a huge project, calling for 
> bazaar-style development of individual pieces, but those pieces must be 
> coordinated in a way that only the 'cathedral' model can.

The problem about the cathedral is than 100 years after starting you
still get wet when hearing mass.  My model is not bazar it is beyond
that: wolf pack.  Make them scent blood by giving them an easy prey
immediately (the repository) and then when the chase is started have
more and more wolves, until we can bring down a mamoth.
> 
> Dreams:
> Without dreams, this project wouldn't exist.  You mention the 'dream' of 
> writing books for SEUL, yet later on you mention that SEUL cannot succeed 
> by using Debian because there are no books for Debian.  First of all, there 
> is a serious flaw in that logic, as what make you think that a book for 
> RedHat would apply for SEUL anyway?  But primarily, my dreams include
> coordinating many of the existing documentation projects and actually
> writing the books you mention are missing.  If you think that's an
> impossible dream, why are you working on Linux in the first place?
> 

I was hocked about the sharing of money before the first line had been
written.

> 
> Politics:
> Like it or not, they exist, and we are a part of them.  Cooperation is the 
> name of the game, and without politics there can be no cooperation.
> 

France cooperates with African countries: we send them some teachers
to teach french and brain wash their leaders and future leaders until
they end buying french goods even when they could find cheaper and
better in other countries.  We also send them some engineers to build
bridges but the bridges are built by french companies and they are
expensive...

> I am working towards a more unified Linux community, one in which groups 
> work together to make things happen faster, share data, and bring Linux to 
> the desktop in a year, rather than 3.  I have proposed a list be created 
> for the leaders of the major projects, where high-level information can be 
> shared and organizational decisions made to further Linux.
> 

Good idea but until SEUL has something to show we are _nothing_.

> This effort will hopefully encompass every aspect of Linux development, 
> from development to advocacy.  There are hundreds of projects out there, 
> most of which have no notion of each other, and each can accomplish very 
> little on its own.  Together all these project have the advantage of 
> numbers (there are 4 or 5 advocacy projects with too few people to do 
> anything, but combined they'd have enough to tell every journalist on the 
> planet, if organized properly) as well as communication with the rest of 
> the community.
> 

This is a good idea.

> I emailed the list proposal to Bruce almost a week ago and haven't heard 
> back yet.  As soon as I get his comments, I will rewrite it as appropriate 
> and attempt to get this list going.  I will also attempt to write a paper 
> describing the methods I see necessary to accomplish this, likely the 
> largest software development project ever.
> 
> 
> I am very disappointed that you insist on starting up yet another project, 
> with almost the same goals as SEUL.  Project Independence seems to me 
> nothing but an allergic reaction to those things that are broken in the 
> SEUL methodology.  I would encourage you to work towards *fixing* SEUL 
> rather than abandoning it.  Creating another project does nobody any good.
> 
> There are many ideas in the Independence manifesto that can and should be 
> applied to SEUL.  I would rather see SEUL apply those than a separate 
> project start up.
> 

Apply them and we will see.  I have two ideas I want to implement: the
repository and the piggy backed distribution and the later cannot be
implemented with Debian.  The repositoryu could be implemented in
parallel for the three major formats in Linux world and there is no
reason if I find a software than you could need or a trick useful I
would not send the idea to SEUL.

> As I mentioned above, I am now in the position of scrambling to keep this 
> project alive.  For this reason I will become much less responsive to email 
> for a week or so while I attempt to work out all the details.  Anyone 
> with comments on methodologies or time to volunteer should still contact 
> me, of course.
> 


Use five men teams.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

The worthy man is the one who would drink muddy water if such were the
water of truth.