>>> On Sat, Sep 3, 2005 at  1:39 am, in message
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 
> Hi,
> 
> On Friday, September 02, 2005 at 15:13:45, Daniel Radetic wrote:
> 
>> > On the other hand all you want to do is adding another repository.
That
>> > does not help in any way. If you read the sentence from the
roadmap
>> > again you will see that openSUSE plans to bring packagers
together. That
>> > is what we need not another one of your forks....  
>> 
>> Well yes, but opening to public usually does result in prodcut fork
>> weather you like it or not.
> 
> Sure. These people then have to live with me opposing then. Thats the
deal 
> :)

Oh Henne!

Who is talking about a fork?  You are. We were talking about how to
keep things open and growing fast with a low entry point to packagers,
yet at the same time find ways to control - QA the output for the
packages to be usable. We were, if you read our emails, Henne, actually
talking about how to bring Packagers together, with what structure on
what basis.

  I can see Daniel's point, that opening to the public could result in
a fork, but only if the public has the feeling that the opening has not
really occurred and their ideas are not considered or stopped at onset.
When that happens you will find people screaming.

So why don't we start talking about how to create a really democratic
and open non elitist distribution-contribution structure, as such a
structure will completely destroy any need for a fork, since all ideas
people have are actually integrated in some way. 

> 
>> Some users will even think of this "let's get together" type of
hippy
>> philosophy to be aggresivly assertive and dogmatic, and will try to
>> present the product in a different light ( better by their
standards
>> and design "vorsprung durch technik !!!" ).
> 


Amen to that. Individualism is what counts and valuing individuals
contribution, regardless of how one personally thinks about it. A hippy
philosophy cannot integrate individualism as it is based on the concept
of natural altruism, but as we all know lots of technicians/people have
a big ego and certainly cannot be called altruistic ( would include
myself in that group) ... and those are the ones we will loose and scare
off with a dogmatic, we "have already thought of it and made internal
decisions" approach.

The more we integrate individualism, the more maintainers from other
distro's will we attract. This is ultimately my goal here to create an
open, very fast paced contribution structure, that allows for all sorts
of ideas to be integrated without breaking anyone's system. Such a
structure, IMHO needs to have a web based face (this day and age) and
allow very experimental stuff to happen, but a user should be protected
from those experiments, unless he/she wants to actually try it out. A
web based software ware house, where each of us "geeks" in a bazaar
style model can present our wares to the market. The build servers our
roadmap mentions are just the backend of something that has to have a
front and a structure. A normal packager should not even get to see the
backend. Packages are compiled by the autobuild system I assume.

If you want to lay the internal structure on top of this project you
will end up with a cathedral and not with a bazaar.

Now just please for a second try to imagine how such an open structure
would impact other distro's as it would make them intrinsically
obsolete. This could create the unifying force Linux needs. When you
basically formalize such forking and take the actual physical fork out
of the picture (meaning the I am leaving and create my own), you not
only prevented a real fork to ever happen, since you actually cater for
the needs of such a very ego driven individual, but you also create a
new need: The need of maintainers of other distro's to see for
themselves how well their own ideas are integrated into a real bazaar
distro as opposed to a dogmatic cathedral style maintainer saying: This
is allowed and this not. Such individuals will come to us sooner or
later. 

In our boxed set, software has to be official, tested and trialed many
times. But another option of the warehouse, would be able to give the
best and most tested packages to the user without having to increase the
amount of CD's to 20. Ultimately we should have 10000+ packages one day,
but not that many iso's,right. So how do you solve that if not in a
similar way as I explained? well I am sure you have ideas .. so let us
hear them. My ideas are just that and I would love to have an open
discussion where people actually do not get slammed for doing it,
especially since this is what our message at Novell is to be an open
distribution and have internal people contribute openly and honestly
with external people on an equal footing.

To summarize: If Individualism get's harnessed into a real bazaar model
(the one we all really know by heart), then a packager system for an
open distro like openSUSE will attract the cream de la cream of other
distro's maintainers as the good ones will automatically feel the need
to find a place where their ideas are valued and where they can actually
implement them, without fear of retribution or without being told the
whole time, if they wanna fork then they should leave. No .. if they
wanna fork, they should stay and contribute their deviant package and it
will be presented in a webinterface to the user to install if the user
chooses to. And if the idea is good (bazaar model) it will survive.

Let's formalise forking into a web based easy to use system and that
could be the basis for a great thing. And please let's all try to think
of new innovative ways instead of trying to preach the same old distro
structure, that has created the need for thousands of distro's. Let's
analyze why there are so many and remove the need and we will see that
the trend can be reversed. From my own experience, if I would have felt
that my distro of choice listened to what I said should be done on the
desktop, then I would not have done Yoper in first place. A fork would
never have happened. And now 4 years later to my decision in my
baseement all major  Linux desktops are going into the same direction
(fully integrated easy to set up, fast and looking good) ..... well I
wish they would have listened as it would have saved me nearly 4 years
of sleepless nights and debts. I could have easily lived happily without
all that. But as a good geek I had to do it. I could not just sit back
and say: Oh let's wait until the others wake up and smell the coffee. I
just start brewing the coffee and make them wake up. A one man distro
from New Zealand certainly has only had so much impact, granted and I am
certainly the first to say the influcen was minimal, but that is beside
the point. The point is that I could have easily spend my 4 years on
another distro, not creating Yoper, if I would have felt that my distro
would have catered for my need/critisizm. Bua ll I saw is a dogmatic,
arrogant, cathedral style approach. OSS is proud to have brought the
bazaar model into the software development landscape. Why don't distro's
follow that model then?

So why not stop talking about "fork" and start talking about how to
create a packager structure, that prevents a fork ever to happen, since
the motivator for a fork is removed and integrated.

I do think I am making sense, but of course if you have a different
opinion, please let me hear it as I am always open to see another view
and adapt mine to that.


Good night to Europe ;)


Andreas





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