Re: SEUL: About Independence, LaetOs, RedHat and Debian

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

> So SEUL and LaetOS, if your goal is to have a consumer distribution then you
> need to make like RedHat and be heard and seen by the peaple.  Without that
> you will never have the resources to compete with them.  You will develop
> features that they will see on other distribs or not at all.  You will fade
> into the night.  If you are developing for the desktop users then develop
> the things that the WinTel and Mac users want, faster than anybody else
> develops them and then distribute for the desktop consumer.  Whining about
> not being noticed does not work.
> 
> The frightening part is that you will soon be competing with the big closed
> source developers and hardware manufacturers for the upcoming Linux Desktop
> Apps market.  You will see Linux PCs on the shelf for Christmas whether you
> listen to me or not....but will your distrib be running on them?
> 
> Bill Housley
> billh@lgcy.com
> http://www.lgcy.com/users/b/billspg/writings/linux2desktop.htm
 
I should clarify SEUL's position here (apparently). We are not trying to
develop a distribution. Long ago, we started out as a distrib project, but
...er, well, http://www.seul.org/archives/seul/pub/Apr-1999/msg00000.html
covers it pretty well, so I don't have to repeat myself there.

My goal in all of this (speaking as SEUL) is to get people to realize that
there are other projects out there working in the same direction as they are
(no matter what they're working on), and to start them communicating and
keeping track of the progress of the other groups.

Every once in a while a new group pops up and says "we should make a Linux
distribution!", and I try to talk some sense into them. Sometimes they end
up talking to sense into me instead, and then I do my best to give them some
publicity, help them out with site hosting, and point volunteers in their
direction (I get a lot of volunteers, often for things seul is not currently
working on).

One of the big ways we can help work together with other projects is to be
the group with all the faqs and advocacy documentation. For instance, it
would be really good to sit down, thumb through this discussion, and write
up a set of frequently asked questions, and frequently used (good)
arguments, for starting out a new distrib or deciding not to. I could help
contribute to this and edit it, if somebody wants to volunteer to lead and
coordinate it. (Volunteers?) This way, we'd have a document we could point
people to next time they decide to come up with a new distrib, rather than
having to go through a long discussion with them.

Quite a few people go through the seul site each day (more when we announce
new additions), so we have some influence when we choose to support or not
support a project. This also means that putting an advocacy document,
persuasive essay, or list of resources on our site (with a pointer to the
projects that helped develop it) gets everybody more publicity.

I guess we could best be characterized (at least for this facet) as
meta-development. From our perspective, it's all about keeping the user and
development community informed, coordinated, and educated.

--Roger