Re: SEUL: [Fwd: Addition to commercial port advocacy howto]

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <9ab3c3f8.361f572e@aol.com>, eamorical@aol.com writes:
>In a message dated 10/9/98 11:46:53 AM EST, dloss@csrlink.net writes:
>
><< I wrote to Scott Draeker and got this response from him.  I'm thinking
> of mentioning his company in the CPA howto, with the caveat that I have
> no direct experience with them (similar to what I wrote about the TWIN
> library).  What do you think--good idea or not? >>
>
>Doug,
>Hard call. Certainly mention the idea that outsourcing is an option.
>I would hesitate putting a specific company's name in the howto. They
>could go out of business. Other companies could enter the business.
>This would require constantly updating the howto. Better to have a
>maintained list of companies supporting Linux and refer to this list in
>the howto. Seems to me I've seen such lists.
>
>Bob

On the other hand, we want to give the people reading the howto a
concrete -- professional -- entity to contact. And we want to reward
companies that are willing to do this, by giving them advertisement.
The Linux community is different from the 'normal' corporate world --
we don't (ok, shouldn't :) bicker and act cut-throat about money. Our
goal is to get Linux into shape where it can replace the lower-quality
OS/operating environments out there.

And if we maintain this community aspect of things, then we will be
able to succeed at slowly replacing all proprietary software with
higher quality free software. (Alternatively, we can convince companies
to open up their source and their licenses.)

This doesn't mean that proprietary-software companies are evil. We need
them, and eventually they will need Linux. There is much money to be
made on support and contract programming -- "write this program, so I
can use it" -- that works very well with the free software model. So..
we should do our best to get companies to port, and this includes
telling them about companies offering to help.

But to address the specific issue of whether it's practical to keep a
list of companies willing to port software to Linux: yes, I think it's
feasible. It's certainly feasible to keep a list of some of them, and
mention some of them briefly in the howto. We want to list as many
actual resources as possible, as directly as possible.

Thanks,
--Roger