Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
civileme wrote: I am one of the people bit by the cutbacks to keep Mandrake afloat and I STILL agree that their policy is on track. The idiots (and I can and will use that word for the lamers whose heads are so wrapped up in business they can't see five minutes into the future, now that I am not a Mandrakesoft Employee) who retreat to the tried and true business principles practiced successfully only by monopolies the minute the going gets a little rough, simply do not understand this market NOR do they notice where Mandrakesoft's assets are. Civileme Ah hell! Does that mean your off the list for awhile? It seems like only yesteday that you were getting back from your last leave of absence. My, how time does fly. Well I am sure conditions will improve, and you will be back again in some official role. I guy with your experience will always land on his feet Good luck, drjung -- J. Craig Woods UNIX/NT Network/System Administration http://www.trismegistus.net/resume.html Character is built upon the debris of despair --Emerson Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, civileme uttered these words of wisdom: Agree, Mike. SuSE could have a much bigger market share and Caldera is now insignificant, SuSE for its closedness, and Caldera for its abysmal support, proprietary software, and per-seat licensing. I am one of the people bit by the cutbacks to keep Mandrake afloat and I STILL agree that their policy is on track. The idiots (and I can and will use that word for the lamers whose heads are so wrapped up in business they can't see five minutes into the future, now that I am not a Mandrakesoft Employee) who retreat to the tried and true business principles practiced successfully only by monopolies the minute the going gets a little rough, simply do not understand this market NOR do they notice where Mandrakesoft's assets are. The one thing Mandrake has going for it is a very very small group of engineers who have designed a marvelous product. Those folk ccould be making rwice as much somewhere else without the 90-hour weeks they voluntarily work now. Start charging for the software in the wise of closed-source or anything hinting of Bill Gates tactics and that asset will vanish so fast no one will know what happened. The caliber of people there cannot be held by offers of more money, even if there was more money to offer them. Get a clue! Make it work as free software or watch it die. Quit the sideline sniping which is unproductive and clueless. Civileme I'm sorry to hear that you were layed off, I haven't been watching the lists that closely lately 'cause we've been moving and looking for work, etc... I would like to thank all those people who are putting in those 90 hour weeks, and also to guys like you and everyone else on these lists for the great work. My hope is that the 'lamers' of which you speak open their eyes and read these posts and consider the way of SuSE and Caldera. I do like the mandrake club and the different levels, the subscriptions, and all that stuff I think that whole thing was a great idea. I hope that that kind of originality continues to prevail. /mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com AOL for Dummies is kind of redundant, don't you think? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
J. Craig Woods wrote: civileme wrote: I am one of the people bit by the cutbacks to keep Mandrake afloat and I STILL agree that their policy is on track. The idiots (and I can and will use that word for the lamers whose heads are so wrapped up in business they can't see five minutes into the future, now that I am not a Mandrakesoft Employee) who retreat to the tried and true business principles practiced successfully only by monopolies the minute the going gets a little rough, simply do not understand this market NOR do they notice where Mandrakesoft's assets are. Civileme Ah hell! Does that mean your off the list for awhile? It seems like only yesteday that you were getting back from your last leave of absence. My, how time does fly. Well I am sure conditions will improve, and you will be back again in some official role. I guy with your experience will always land on his feet Good luck, drjung Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Doesn't mean I will be off-list--this was something I did before I was ever an employee--just means I won't have so much insider info to share. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sat, 13 Apr 2002 15:09:56 -0700 (PDT) Robert Barry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grabed a keyboard and said: I'm not an expert, but doesn't Mandrake only have to provide the source for all the modifications Mandrake did. Can Mandrake NOT provide the ISOs for free? And does Mandrake need to provide the source for all the other applications, etc that they bundle up in the Mandrake distrio. The source for these programs can be found elsewhere. Can somebody please explain this to me? Actually SuSe already does this. You can't download a SuSe iso anywhere that is SuSe supported (Someone may create their own and pay for the bandwidth but SuSe doesn't) The Truth is you only have to suppy the source code With the binary So if you only sell the software only your customers would be allowed the source. So for sale only software can still be Open Source. This does beg the question of one thing. Can a License be Open Source if you cannot give away copies. IE I can sell you what I have but not give you a clone. This is akin to the problem RH had with CheapBytes, or the fact that you can't build your own car from the ground up and sell it as a Chevy, even if it's identical. GPL is about ownership not marxism. James What does Mandrake need to provide to comply with the GPL? Thanks, Robert --- KevinO [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: sda wrote: RS has no problem with this at all, free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer. The heart of GNU/Linux is still free as in beer, however the ease of use necessarily isn't or shouldn't be IMHO. But RMS's license states that once I buy, download, whatever some GPL'd code, I am now free to give away this software however I please. Mandrake could run people off of their ftp servers if they wish, but they can't keep the latest versions out of the hands of the non-payers, unless they start writing code from scratch. This code would have to be totally non-derived from anything GPL'd and this would allow an alternative license. This of course would be seen as most unfriendly The situation is a little more complicated than this, but this is it in a nutshell. -- Kevin O'Connor People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun ... The GNU Manifesto - Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On 08 Apr 2002 00:45:02 -0400 Lyvim Xaphir [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grabed a keyboard and said: On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 10:59, sda wrote: Oh so if one criticizes MandrakeSoft they're FUD throwers? Comeon, if you cannot accept criticism wisely you're nothing but a fool. Did you even begin to figure out the math that this guy is throwing around? It doesn't make sense that a business model should be based on a subscription model, when the current distro is availiable for free download. MandrakeSoft has to realize that they will sooner rather than later need to make the current version a payfor download only. Let users have the last version or two behind only for free. OH pleeze - you're nothing but a conspiracy theorist. Mandrake deserves to take some hits and some of us shareholders are watching carefully, although we do seem to be a minority around here. It truly is a pleasure to see that your disagree with this post. Given what you are and the attitudes that you have, it's always a litmus paper indicator that the correct attitudes are opposite where you stand; kind of like a broken compass that points south and the correct heading for the trip is north. I appreciate your inadvertent mindless anti-contribution. LX If i may a direct quote from the writings of Richard Stallman SNIP Since free refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program that people are not free to include on these collections is not free software. /SNIP Full text available at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/stallman.html This is from the book Open Source the Unathourized White Papers. I'd also point you to My White paper at. http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/245/ If you want my full attitude on this. Finally to quote Heinlien TNSTAAFL There's no such thing as a free lunch. This list isn't even free. I pay for it with bandwidth and HOPEFULLY answering questions that I can, correctly. In return I get my questions answered. I don't owe anyone an answer, in the sense that I asked a question one of you HAS to answer Nor do I ask why someone wants the answer or how they will use it. (Is this answer for home or corporate use? I could care.) Someone has a question I have an answer I give it because I want to. The fact is that the GPL is not a ticket to leach. It is however a ticket to ownership. I own copies of Mandrake RedHat SuSe and Redmond Linux. I paid for the disks. Mostly with Cash, Sometimes by agreeing to test and report the results of my testing. Either way I pay. James -- °°° Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sat, 13 Apr 2002 21:15:25 -0400 sda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grabed a keyboard and said: On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 01:47:40PM -0700, KevinO wrote: sda wrote: RS has no problem with this at all, free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer. The heart of GNU/Linux is still free as in beer, however the ease of use necessarily isn't or shouldn't be IMHO. But RMS's license states that once I buy, download, whatever some GPL'd code, I am now free to give away this software however I please. Mandrake could run people off of their ftp servers if they wish, but they can't keep the latest versions out of the hands of the non-payers, unless they start writing code from scratch. This code would have to be totally non-derived from anything GPL'd and this would allow an alternative license. This of course would be seen as most unfriendly Unfriendly to whom? The people who have bought it previously or the ones that haven't? I don't think anybody is worried about people giving it away sans the Mandrake specific tools [if they were copyrighted - unfortunately they aren't now]. FWIU GPL allows this, doesn't it? The situation is a little more complicated than this, but this is it in a nutshell. Well, personally I think Mandrake should make their configuration tools proprietary, otherwise what is their business model? Is surely isn't the corporate market and I'm not convinced that Compaq belives strongly in Mandrake. Remember, at the end of the day, MandrakeSoft is a public *for profit* company. Now as to whether they should be is another topic and rather moot at this point in time. What tools does GM have that are proprietory? Yes they have design patents. So Ford just does the same thing with their own design. What kind of Business model is that? A Very successful one. -- -^- -^- ? ?Steve ^ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ' ` Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, 14 Apr 2002 19:25:46 -0400 sda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grabed a keyboard and said: On Sun, Apr 14, 2002 at 12:48:55PM -0800, civileme wrote: sda wrote: SNIP I don't think anybody is worried about people giving it away sans the Mandrake specific tools [if they were copyrighted - unfortunately they aren't now]. FWIU GPL allows this, doesn't it? They have copyright notices. Look at the source. Mandrake Tools are copyrighted, and licensed under GNU GPL, and Mandrakesoft is the copyright holder. I stand corrected. Might be something for MandrakeSoft to consider[making them proprietary that is]. Probably work better with something like the BSD license however. At the least they should make the current distro only available to paying customers. Uh if they go BSD then I can take the software they write and put it under my own proprietory license without regard to the original owners. BSD is not more restrictive. In fact it simply says Here's the code do whatever you want. James -- SDA ICQ 35454764 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
I'm not quite sure of the roots of this email, I jumped in late. I have just read several posts in the thread and would like to add a couple of words. Even though I love using Mandrake (it's on most of my computers including my server), if it weren't around, I would choose another version. Yes, I like Mandrake's config tools, but I could live without them. I think that I heard a couple of people alluding to Mandrake making their config tools proprietary. Again, I heard other people talking about making only previous version of Mandrake free for download. Both of these things IMHO would take Mandrake off of most people's computers for good. Till Kampeter has done wonderful work with cups and printing - and I'm sure other people could name people(s) that did something great with some other aspect of Mandrake; but I don't use Suse because I can't download the latest version ISO. Linux is more than just an operating system or software at this point - it's a movement, it's an entity. It's not just one company that has put Linux together or created what it has become. It's people on developers lists world-wide and even though I sincerely appreciate the work of the developers at Mandrake, they could not have made the distribution that Linux-Mandrake is today without the help of all those people world-wide. People give suggestions and figure things out and beta test and basically take up there time for the same reason that people give time and money to churches and other organizations. People like me are using Linux and telling everyone around about it because of the absolute irritation that's created by the arrogance of a guy named Bill Gates; a man who I believe has the audacity to try and patent the air we breathe! I realize that people need to make money, but leave it in the pay for support arena. There's already several poles out there that show the biggest complaint with Linux is the lack of corporate support even when you pay for it - the market is there!! One last comment, I like to make money, who doesn't? I do believe however, that EVERYONE has a right to technology. How many people believe that it costs phone companies the $50+ per month they charge me for a cell phone? How many people think it's just right on target that I'm charged $80 per month for 1.5M/384K dsl? How many technologies are stalled simply because we have to figure out a business model for charging for the product? That's bull-crap! Everyone should be able to get dsl, it should be included in regular phone service! I'm sorry for the length of the email, but I hope there's someone out there who understands what I said and agrees. Thanks, Mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com AOL for Dummies is kind of redundant, don't you think? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
Michael Holt wrote: I'm not quite sure of the roots of this email, I jumped in late. I have just read several posts in the thread and would like to add a couple of words. Even though I love using Mandrake (it's on most of my computers including my server), if it weren't around, I would choose another version. Yes, I like Mandrake's config tools, but I could live without them. I think that I heard a couple of people alluding to Mandrake making their config tools proprietary. Again, I heard other people talking about making only previous version of Mandrake free for download. Both of these things IMHO would take Mandrake off of most people's computers for good. Till Kampeter has done wonderful work with cups and printing - and I'm sure other people could name people(s) that did something great with some other aspect of Mandrake; but I don't use Suse because I can't download the latest version ISO. Linux is more than just an operating system or software at this point - it's a movement, it's an entity. It's not just one company that has put Linux together or created what it has become. It's people on developers lists world-wide and even though I sincerely appreciate the work of the developers at Mandrake, they could not have made the distribution that Linux-Mandrake is today without the help of all those people world-wide. People give suggestions and figure things out and beta test and basically take up there time for the same reason that people give time and money to churches and other organizations. People like me are using Linux and telling everyone around about it because of the absolute irritation that's created by the arrogance of a guy named Bill Gates; a man who I believe has the audacity to try and patent the air we breathe! I realize that people need to make money, but leave it in the pay for support arena. There's already several poles out there that show the biggest complaint with Linux is the lack of corporate support even when you pay for it - the market is there!! One last comment, I like to make money, who doesn't? I do believe however, that EVERYONE has a right to technology. How many people believe that it costs phone companies the $50+ per month they charge me for a cell phone? How many people think it's just right on target that I'm charged $80 per month for 1.5M/384K dsl? How many technologies are stalled simply because we have to figure out a business model for charging for the product? That's bull-crap! Everyone should be able to get dsl, it should be included in regular phone service! I'm sorry for the length of the email, but I hope there's someone out there who understands what I said and agrees. Thanks, Mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com AOL for Dummies is kind of redundant, don't you think? Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Agree, Mike. SuSE could have a much bigger market share and Caldera is now insignificant, SuSE for its closedness, and Caldera for its abysmal support, proprietary software, and per-seat licensing. I am one of the people bit by the cutbacks to keep Mandrake afloat and I STILL agree that their policy is on track. The idiots (and I can and will use that word for the lamers whose heads are so wrapped up in business they can't see five minutes into the future, now that I am not a Mandrakesoft Employee) who retreat to the tried and true business principles practiced successfully only by monopolies the minute the going gets a little rough, simply do not understand this market NOR do they notice where Mandrakesoft's assets are. The one thing Mandrake has going for it is a very very small group of engineers who have designed a marvelous product. Those folk ccould be making rwice as much somewhere else without the 90-hour weeks they voluntarily work now. Start charging for the software in the wise of closed-source or anything hinting of Bill Gates tactics and that asset will vanish so fast no one will know what happened. The caliber of people there cannot be held by offers of more money, even if there was more money to offer them. Get a clue! Make it work as free software or watch it die. Quit the sideline sniping which is unproductive and clueless. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, 07 Apr 2002 15:04:20 -0500 J. Craig Woods [EMAIL PROTECTED] Grabed a keyboard and said: Wolfgang Bornath wrote: And for the Journalists: Which journalists? I think most of these online platforms are mere places to get your opinion read by some other who will post a controversal (?) opinion and off it goes. May be there are some ppl working for those sites as regular writers but I wouldn't regard them as journalists. wobo AMEN, brother. This is as true for the popular print media as it is for online publications. It would seem that anybody possessing the ability to opine, and that, I belive, includes just about every human on earth, has as well deluded themselves into thinking they can write too... Dr John The night tripper P.S. whether or not an s should or should not be affixed to tripper would depend greatly upon in who's presence I find myself. A big grin to the Countess... trippers. why would you be more than one at once *grin* James Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
sda wrote: SNIP I don't think anybody is worried about people giving it away sans the Mandrake specific tools [if they were copyrighted - unfortunately they aren't now]. FWIU GPL allows this, doesn't it? They have copyright notices. Look at the source. Mandrake Tools are copyrighted, and licensed under GNU GPL, and Mandrakesoft is the copyright holder. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
sda wrote: RS has no problem with this at all, free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer. The heart of GNU/Linux is still free as in beer, however the ease of use necessarily isn't or shouldn't be IMHO. But RMS's license states that once I buy, download, whatever some GPL'd code, I am now free to give away this software however I please. Mandrake could run people off of their ftp servers if they wish, but they can't keep the latest versions out of the hands of the non-payers, unless they start writing code from scratch. This code would have to be totally non-derived from anything GPL'd and this would allow an alternative license. This of course would be seen as most unfriendly The situation is a little more complicated than this, but this is it in a nutshell. -- Kevin O'Connor People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun ... The GNU Manifesto - Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
I'm not an expert, but doesn't Mandrake only have to provide the source for all the modifications Mandrake did. Can Mandrake NOT provide the ISOs for free? And does Mandrake need to provide the source for all the other applications, etc that they bundle up in the Mandrake distrio. The source for these programs can be found elsewhere. Can somebody please explain this to me? What does Mandrake need to provide to comply with the GPL? Thanks, Robert --- KevinO [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: sda wrote: RS has no problem with this at all, free as in speech, not necessarily free as in beer. The heart of GNU/Linux is still free as in beer, however the ease of use necessarily isn't or shouldn't be IMHO. But RMS's license states that once I buy, download, whatever some GPL'd code, I am now free to give away this software however I please. Mandrake could run people off of their ftp servers if they wish, but they can't keep the latest versions out of the hands of the non-payers, unless they start writing code from scratch. This code would have to be totally non-derived from anything GPL'd and this would allow an alternative license. This of course would be seen as most unfriendly The situation is a little more complicated than this, but this is it in a nutshell. -- Kevin O'Connor People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun ... The GNU Manifesto - Copyright (C) 1985, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Mon, 2002-04-08 at 22:49, daRcmaTTeR wrote: good heavens! who got this one started!?! ;) Mark a.k.a. daRcmaTTeR Hoyt is a *real* journalist (one of the good ones) and I used to contribute a computer column to a local business newspaper. So when we ran into each other critical mass was exceeded and there was a thermonuclear word explosion. ;) L8R, LX :) thats awesome! keep it going. fallout and all. Mark a.k.a. daRcmaTTeR -- °°° Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
- Original Message - From: Lyvim Xaphir [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: ExpertMandrake-List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 8:12 PM Subject: Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 11:31, Hoyt wrote: As someone who considers himself a journalist (several tutorials, reviews and opinion pieces published in MaximumLinux and LinuxFormat magazines; three chapters contributed to Red Hat Linux 7.2 Unleashed and currently a technical reviewer for SAMS Publishing), I don't consider a lot of what I see published on-line as journalism. It's usually opinion, fluff and shallow writing because that's what is easy and cheap to offer; on-line publishers don't have a lot of loot to throw to writers, much less buy them off - neither do Open Source companies. I agree; I've noticed a painfully discernable difference in quality. Not that there's any high quality material to be found on the web at all; on the contrary, if you look in the right places there's quite a bit of it. Still what you point out holds true enough; the good sometimes is nearly overrun by the amateurish or unprofessional. Remember that controversy builds page hits and advertisers are happy with higher page hit counts. My editorial pieces are written that way (controversial), but I try to avoid that in my factual articles. It's up to the Editor to see that the two types of writing stay separate; some do a better job than others and in my opinion, the boundaries are a little less clear for on-line publishing. When I wrote for MaximumLinux, Editor in Chief Brian DelRizzo told me that if a product was bad, write why it was bad; if it was good, write why it was good; don't pull a punch because they advertise; help them make the product better. I was told I could write what ever I wanted as long as it was factual. I have written some unfavourable reviews and the only response I ever got from an advertiser was that I got the capitalisation of their name wrong. MaximumLinux was the favorite mag of mine for all time. I loved the genre of users that you guys represented, the new approach to the Linux world that you had. It seemed more aggressive and hip than everything that had come before. Sort of a car-racing attitude as applied to Linux. It was very cool. I've still got the premiere issue and every other one I could scarf off the stands. To this day, I still wonder why the publication did not make it, as opposed to the success of Linux magazine and Linux Journal. Never did make any sense to me. As an intelligent reader, you should be sceptical of everything you read. Don't let someone else do your thinking for you. Learn to separate opinion from fact. But there are several ways to consider facts, are there not? Even facts are possible victims of perception. This is easily demonstrable. For instance, take a 16 ounce container. Put 8 ounces of water in it. Is the container then half empty or half full? Both perspectives are true, yet one has a negative slant and the other has a positive. Newsforge has gone beyond the half glass scenario, way into the realm of FUD, by making statements that are obviously lies. For instance, take the assertion recently that the subscription model of business is not a valid business model. It's obvious that the subscription model is already working for many companies, such as Transgaming, which I pointed out numerous times on their site. Yet their writers continue to ignore such points in favor of fuddist oriented attitudes. Can you imagine the tidal wave of fuddism that would have burst through if MandrakeSoft had actually attempted a truly new way of business? It's no wonder that new ideas have a way of being drowned to death in committee. It's not that they are bad ideas, it's just that there's an overabundance of a$$h*les around. Their attitude to the Linux world is irresponsible in comparison to, for example, how Linux Journal handles it. Here your views are verified when we compare the online anti-journalists to the bona-fide Linux Journal journalists. Your points about there being no such thing as bad press, a la Hollywood, had actually occurred to me; however, to me it is irresponsible to grab for hits at the expense of a new and struggling company such as MandrakeSoft, just so you can cover your own rear. It's like trying to stay afloat by pushing someone else under the water. But Mandrake is not the only one; other distros have taken hits as well. I'm not casting an anathema spell on criticism unilaterally, you understand; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm fully capable of sorting facts from fud; and it's my opinion that there is more of the latter than the former. I don't mind a critical eye; but with the same eye I'm also looking for negativists hunting fodder for their negative orgasms. I don't believe that the solution is to post positive because that is just a public relations ploy, simply putting a favourable
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Mon, 2002-04-08 at 22:49, daRcmaTTeR wrote: good heavens! who got this one started!?! ;) Mark a.k.a. daRcmaTTeR Hoyt is a *real* journalist (one of the good ones) and I used to contribute a computer column to a local business newspaper. So when we ran into each other critical mass was exceeded and there was a thermonuclear word explosion. ;) L8R, LX -- °°° Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Son, 2002-04-07 at 21:14, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 13:46 -0500, Paul Cox wrote: On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. Not exactly. Who can demand Mandrake to provide ISOs at all? Nobody. Does SuSE provide iso files even BEFORE the boxed verion is in the stores? That is one thing nobody seems to take in account. All I read in the newsgroup is 8.2 is out. What takes Mandrake so long to bring the boxes into my home town? If MandrakeSoft did not provide the ISOs as soon as they are ready those ppl did not even know there was a new version. That's like the other big distros handle it. The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the public to get the sources. You are certainly right in terms of GPL. But I don't agree that mdk will fail because it makes ISOs accessible through the net (too early). I myself have been downloading the ISOs starting with 8.0, when I changed from SuSE. The reason for changing was exactly that: why should I pay for a badly set up distribution when I can have others, far more better ones for free? SuSE (like many others) goes the way to sell their distro the standard way. But buying SuSE too often meant means that you pay 100 bucks for something that sucks. I like the Mandrake-style, making it possible to test the entire distro without paying anything for it - thats fun for me and risk for them of course. I am aware that compiling a distro is not free and I will eventually even buy a whole set, but certainly not every time. If I could not download the ISOs anymore, I would just wait for one or two years or so till I bought another release and update just the most vital applications. So I think the Mandrake-Club is a nice thing to create some kind of relationsship between guys like me and a commercial organization like mandrake. And changing to a different license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will never happen. That is true and will never happen as loing as MandrakeSoft exists. They could not even if they would like to. All they can do is withdraw their own programs and put them under a different license. And that would be the end of a Mandrake Linux Distribution. Just my 180,00 Euro (Sorry, but that's what my opinion costs on the market! You get it for free (as in 'free beer')) wobo -- Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 --- PDAs? Laptops? Linux? UnddasallesineinemWort? http://www.xtops.de ! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Monday 08 April 2002 00:45, you wrote: On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 10:59, sda wrote: Oh so if one criticizes MandrakeSoft they're FUD throwers? Comeon, if you cannot accept criticism wisely you're nothing but a fool. Did you even begin to figure out the math that this guy is throwing around? It doesn't make sense that a business model should be based on a subscription model, when the current distro is availiable for free download. MandrakeSoft has to realize that they will sooner rather than later need to make the current version a payfor download only. Let users have the last version or two behind only for free. OH pleeze - you're nothing but a conspiracy theorist. Mandrake deserves to take some hits and some of us shareholders are watching carefully, although we do seem to be a minority around here. It truly is a pleasure to see that your disagree with this post. Given what you are and the attitudes that you have, it's always a litmus paper indicator that the correct attitudes are opposite where you stand; kind of like a broken compass that points south and the correct heading for the trip is north. I appreciate your inadvertent mindless anti-contribution. LX well put L.X. I agree whole heartedly. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:41 +0200, udo rader wrote: On Son, 2002-04-07 at 21:14, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 13:46 -0500, Paul Cox wrote: On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. Not exactly. Who can demand Mandrake to provide ISOs at all? Nobody. Does SuSE provide iso files even BEFORE the boxed verion is in the stores? That is one thing nobody seems to take in account. All I read in the newsgroup is 8.2 is out. What takes Mandrake so long to bring the boxes into my home town? If MandrakeSoft did not provide the ISOs as soon as they are ready those ppl did not even know there was a new version. That's like the other big distros handle it. The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the public to get the sources. You are certainly right in terms of GPL. But I don't agree that mdk will fail because it makes ISOs accessible through the net (too early). I Where did I write that? I am whole heartedly agreed with the Mandrake way of distribution. Else I would not contribute to them since version 5.3. wobo -- Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 --- PDAs? Laptops? Linux? Andallthatinoneword? http://www.xtops.de ! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
--- sda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mandrake deserves to take some hits and some of us shareholders are watching carefully, although we do seem to be a minority around here. It truly is a pleasure to see that your disagree with this post. Given what you are and the attitudes that you have, it's always a litmus paper indicator that the correct attitudes are opposite where you stand; kind of like a broken compass that points south and the correct heading for the trip is north. I appreciate your inadvertent mindless anti-contribution. Do you do anything but play to the choir? As a wiser man once said, I'm been insulted by far better individuals. yeah, dude ... looks like you have just been insulted by someone very very far more better than you ... now im curious about your motives of investing in Mandrake. whats could be your *real* reason? __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
udo rader wrote: On Son, 2002-04-07 at 21:14, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 13:46 -0500, Paul Cox wrote: On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. Not exactly. Who can demand Mandrake to provide ISOs at all? Nobody. Does SuSE provide iso files even BEFORE the boxed verion is in the stores? That is one thing nobody seems to take in account. All I read in the newsgroup is 8.2 is out. What takes Mandrake so long to bring the boxes into my home town? If MandrakeSoft did not provide the ISOs as soon as they are ready those ppl did not even know there was a new version. That's like the other big distros handle it. The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the public to get the sources. You are certainly right in terms of GPL. But I don't agree that mdk will fail because it makes ISOs accessible through the net (too early). I myself have been downloading the ISOs starting with 8.0, when I changed from SuSE. The reason for changing was exactly that: why should I pay for a badly set up distribution when I can have others, far more better ones for free? SuSE (like many others) goes the way to sell their distro the standard way. But buying SuSE too often meant means that you pay 100 bucks for something that sucks. I like the Mandrake-style, making it possible to test the entire distro without paying anything for it - thats fun for me and risk for them of course. I am aware that compiling a distro is not free and I will eventually even buy a whole set, but certainly not every time. If I could not download the ISOs anymore, I would just wait for one or two years or so till I bought another release and update just the most vital applications. So I think the Mandrake-Club is a nice thing to create some kind of relationsship between guys like me and a commercial organization like mandrake. And changing to a different license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will never happen. That is true and will never happen as loing as MandrakeSoft exists. They could not even if they would like to. All they can do is withdraw their own programs and put them under a different license. And that would be the end of a Mandrake Linux Distribution. Just my 180,00 Euro (Sorry, but that's what my opinion costs on the market! You get it for free (as in 'free beer')) wobo -- Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 --- PDAs? Laptops? Linux? UnddasallesineinemWort? http://www.xtops.de ! All very interesting, but what the fellow who insists that Mandrakesoft sell the distro as a business model is missing are the facts: 1. SuSE is five times Mandrakesoft's size and is not totally GPL and has been around a lot longer and gets outsold by Mandrakesoft in terms of consumer sales volume. SuSE had to be bailed out last year by Intel and IBM to the tune of $45 million. Caldera is not GPL and has a per-seat license, and their linux division loses money, and their desktop consumer sales are around 1-2% of the market. Yet they can't quit linux because their UNIX business customers often want a single-source solution. Now are these the models Mandrakesoft should follow? 2. There is a significant cost in human and financial terms. Mandrakesoft has some wonderful engineers who could be making three times as much for many fewer hours of work elsewhere. Going to a model for sales most likely means that those engineers will have to be replaced, and their equivalents won't come cheap. What good does it do to double revenue if you multiply costs by 3? Or consider the 40% or so of the packages done by volunteers now... Will they stay? If they don't, what will it cost to do them in-house? Finally, what gets lost between having people who want to work there and people who are there to draw a paycheck? The management at Mandrakesoft is quite competent, and they have a good handle on _ALL_ the facts and have experienced the peculiarities of this niche market. Be certain that all models are considered and there are some reasonable causes for their choices. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sunday 07 April 2002 01:12 am, you wrote: I'm starting to get a little peeved and suspicious of Newsforge with regard to who exactly are they serving and where their reporters are exactly getting paid from. (under the table or otherwise.) SNIP I can see where journalists could be bought off from within the open source world. Not like it hasn't already happened in the big three networks. Anyways, heads up. As someone who considers himself a journalist (several tutorials, reviews and opinion pieces published in MaximumLinux and LinuxFormat magazines; three chapters contributed to Red Hat Linux 7.2 Unleashed and currently a technical reviewer for SAMS Publishing), I don't consider a lot of what I see published on-line as journalism. It's usually opinion, fluff and shallow writing because that's what is easy and cheap to offer; on-line publishers don't have a lot of loot to throw to writers, much less buy them off - neither do Open Source companies. Remember that controversy builds page hits and advertisers are happy with higher page hit counts. My editorial pieces are written that way (controversial), but I try to avoid that in my factual articles. It's up to the Editor to see that the two types of writing stay separate; some do a better job than others and in my opinion, the boundaries are a little less clear for on-line publishing. When I wrote for MaximumLinux, Editor in Chief Brian DelRizzo told me that if a product was bad, write why it was bad; if it was good, write why it was good; don't pull a punch because they advertise; help them make the product better. I was told I could write what ever I wanted as long as it was factual. I have written some unfavourable reviews and the only response I ever got from an advertiser was that I got the capitalisation of their name wrong. As an intelligent reader, you should be sceptical of everything you read. Don't let someone else do your thinking for you. Learn to separate opinion from fact. As to Mandrake, they have become a market leader and are a legitimate target for criticism. My personal criticism of them is not so much of their product (which I believe is very good), but of their management (I'm a former corporate Senior VP, so I understand that as well), which I believe is inconsistent and unfocused. Given that they have a good product, it makes sense to improve their management and they show every sign of making that attempt. With every release, they refine their process and they _seem_ to be learning from their marketing and management mistakes, albeit slowly. Hopefully they can get it together before the money runs out. I don't believe that the solution is to post positive because that is just a public relations ploy, simply putting a favourable spin on topics. I suggest that the best approach is to post truthfully and think critically about what you read in others' posts. If a problem arises with a Mandrake product or practise, they need to know about it. How they handle it is up to them. Simply putting a pleasant face on it is a certain invitation to disaster. If you want to positively influence the on-line press, write a factual review of some little-noticed Mandrake feature (like multiple network profiles, msec, and so on) and submit it to the on-line press for publication. Just remember that spelling and grammar count for things like that, aim for 300 to 600 words, keep it factual, avoid being superficial, give pros and cons and make it tell a story, i.e, have a beginning, middle and end. It's not that difficult. If you want some advice, let me know off the list. -- Hoyt http://www.maximumhoyt.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
sda wrote: Let users have the last version or two behind only for free. I disagree. Read the GPL. I don't want the money that I have given to Mandrake to go towards adverstising in a big way. I believe that some of the best things come from less than fully commercial sources. Public TV and radio is an example, and I don't mind contributing to those also. Personally, I started donating money to Mandrake last year before the creation of The Club. I have since joined just to help them out finacially. Mandrake deserves to take some hits and some of us shareholders are watching carefully, although we do seem to be a minority around here. If you bought stock this early in the game expecting a return on your investment in the short term you may have been foolish. There is money to be made in technical support etc. but it will take time for the corporate idiots to realize how much cheaper it is to just pay for the support then for the software licenses too. I work for a Fortune 500 company. We are a MS house primarily (what I meant by C I ). Our IT infrastructure only kind-of works, and we are spending around $2000 per seat per year including server licenses for Windows, Exchange, Oracle etc.. Not all of this makes much sense to me. And the one thing our poor front-line IT people could use is better support. While I accept and appreciate the moral and political advantages of Linux software, I use it constantly because it just works so much better. With 6 machines running Mandrake here at the house, including the two my girlfriend has, the money I have donated seems a quite a bargain. Note to self : Send more $$ to Mandrake. Just my 2c. KevinO Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 01:12 -0500, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: to the positive, since lurkers abound at that place. I'm worried that the negative comments or press will badly impact subscriptions to the Mandrake Club, which will be an extremely bad thing (tm). I'm starting to get a little peeved and suspicious of Newsforge with regard to who exactly are they serving and where their reporters are exactly getting paid from. (under the table or otherwise.) MandrakeSoft has taken some really uncalled for hits over there, and that place is considered by many to be a bastion and fort for open source. Instead, they don't seem to be pushing support at all; rather, the opposite seems to be happening. This from an Open Source publication! I can see where journalists could be bought off from within the open source world. Not like it hasn't already happened in the big three networks. Anyways, heads up. If you want to read REAL bad mouthing of the MandrakeSoft company you don't have to go that far away. Just read the Mandrake newsgroup. I don't think you can gather more FUD anywhere else. And for the Journalists: Which journalists? I think most of these online platforms are mere places to get your opinion read by some other who will post a controversal (?) opinion and off it goes. May be there are some ppl working for those sites as regular writers but I wouldn't regard them as journalists. wobo -- Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 --- PDAs? Laptops? Linux? UnddasallesineinemWort? http://www.xtops.de ! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: I disagree. Read the GPL. I don't want the money that I have given to Mandrake to go towards adverstising in a big way. I believe that some of the best things come from less than fully commercial sources. Public TV and radio is an example, and I don't mind contributing to those also. Personally, I started donating money to Mandrake last year before the creation of The Club. I have since joined just to help them out finacially. Why should I re-read the GPL? What has that got to do with the points you're making? If you mean the source has to be provided, that can be accomplished quite easily without providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso. NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. And changing to a different license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will never happen. -- Paul Cox paul at coxcentral dot com Kernel: 2.4.18-6mdksecure - Uptime: 5 days 11 hours 4 minutes. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 13:46 -0500, Paul Cox wrote: On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, sda wrote: I disagree. Read the GPL. I don't want the money that I have given to Mandrake to go towards adverstising in a big way. I believe that some of the best things come from less than fully commercial sources. Public TV and radio is an example, and I don't mind contributing to those also. Personally, I started donating money to Mandrake last year before the creation of The Club. I have since joined just to help them out finacially. Why should I re-read the GPL? What has that got to do with the points you're making? If you mean the source has to be provided, that can be accomplished quite easily without providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso. NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. Not exactly. Who can demand Mandrake to provide ISOs at all? Nobody. Does SuSE provide iso files even BEFORE the boxed verion is in the stores? That is one thing nobody seems to take in account. All I read in the newsgroup is 8.2 is out. What takes Mandrake so long to bring the boxes into my home town? If MandrakeSoft did not provide the ISOs as soon as they are ready those ppl did not even know there was a new version. That's like the other big distros handle it. The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the public to get the sources. And changing to a different license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will never happen. That is true and will never happen as loing as MandrakeSoft exists. They could not even if they would like to. All they can do is withdraw their own programs and put them under a different license. And that would be the end of a Mandrake Linux Distribution. Just my 180,00 Euro (Sorry, but that's what my opinion costs on the market! You get it for free (as in 'free beer')) wobo -- Registered Linux User 228909 Powered By Mandrake Linux 8.1 --- PDAs? Laptops? Linux? UnddasallesineinemWort? http://www.xtops.de ! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 13:46, Paul Cox wrote: NOT providing free and easy access to the _current_ .iso is about the biggest violation you can make to the GPL. And changing to a different license will go against everything MandrakeSoft stands for and will never happen. -- Paul Cox paul at coxcentral dot com Kernel: 2.4.18-6mdksecure - Uptime: 5 days 11 hours 4 minutes. Not true. The GPL does not force anyone to provide their own or anyone else's software for free. It only forces them to include the source code, including any changes they make, when they give or sell the software. Mandrake would be fully within their legal rights, inculding both the letter and the spirit of the GPL, if they chose to only sell their software and not give it away -- again, as long as they provide the source code with the software. The thing you need to understand is that there is a *big* difference between free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech. The GPL only defines and enforces free-as-in-speech. The free-as-in-beer approach is a longstanding and respected tradition in the *nix world, but there is no legal enforcement of that tradition within the GPL. Even RMS himself has no philosophical problem with commercial software being sold for profit, as long as that sale includes a true transfer of ownership, including source code, of the software. In other words, he believes that once someone pays for software, they own it and have every right to do with it whatever they want, including modify the source, and copy and sell it to others for a profit -- as long as they include the source code with any modifications, and as long as they also transfer the ownership of the software to their customer to do with as they wish. Truly free software (even in RMS' definition) can still have a price tag attached. *Standard disclaimer* I am not a lawyer, and have made no in-depth analysis of the GPL. The above statements are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and understanding, including everything I have ever read about or from Richard M. Stallman. -- Dave Sherman Beware the wrath of dragons, MCSE, MCSA, CCNAfor you are crunchy, and good with ketchup. lynx -source http://sildara.dyndns.org/davepub.asc | gpg --import signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
Wolfgang Bornath wrote: And for the Journalists: Which journalists? I think most of these online platforms are mere places to get your opinion read by some other who will post a controversal (?) opinion and off it goes. May be there are some ppl working for those sites as regular writers but I wouldn't regard them as journalists. wobo AMEN, brother. This is as true for the popular print media as it is for online publications. It would seem that anybody possessing the ability to opine, and that, I belive, includes just about every human on earth, has as well deluded themselves into thinking they can write too... Dr John The night tripper P.S. whether or not an s should or should not be affixed to tripper would depend greatly upon in who's presence I find myself. A big grin to the Countess... Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sunday, Apr 07, 2002, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: The GPL does NOT say you have to put out ISOs of your product ASAP. The GPL doesn't even say you have to put ISOs on the net at all. All the GPL says is that if you have a product you can make it public and if you make it public it has to be free and you have to provide a means for the public to get the sources. Ok, ok, I stand corrected. =) But I think as long as Red Hat still provides isos, Mandrake should too. Would there be nearly as many Mandrake users right now if they never offered isos? I think not. Which also means Mandrake wouldn't be nearly as good as it is now. At least that's what I think. -- Paul Cox paul at coxcentral dot com Kernel: 2.4.18-6mdksecure - Uptime: 5 days 12 hours 59 minutes. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 11:31, Hoyt wrote: As someone who considers himself a journalist (several tutorials, reviews and opinion pieces published in MaximumLinux and LinuxFormat magazines; three chapters contributed to Red Hat Linux 7.2 Unleashed and currently a technical reviewer for SAMS Publishing), I don't consider a lot of what I see published on-line as journalism. It's usually opinion, fluff and shallow writing because that's what is easy and cheap to offer; on-line publishers don't have a lot of loot to throw to writers, much less buy them off - neither do Open Source companies. I agree; I've noticed a painfully discernable difference in quality. Not that there's any high quality material to be found on the web at all; on the contrary, if you look in the right places there's quite a bit of it. Still what you point out holds true enough; the good sometimes is nearly overrun by the amateurish or unprofessional. Remember that controversy builds page hits and advertisers are happy with higher page hit counts. My editorial pieces are written that way (controversial), but I try to avoid that in my factual articles. It's up to the Editor to see that the two types of writing stay separate; some do a better job than others and in my opinion, the boundaries are a little less clear for on-line publishing. When I wrote for MaximumLinux, Editor in Chief Brian DelRizzo told me that if a product was bad, write why it was bad; if it was good, write why it was good; don't pull a punch because they advertise; help them make the product better. I was told I could write what ever I wanted as long as it was factual. I have written some unfavourable reviews and the only response I ever got from an advertiser was that I got the capitalisation of their name wrong. MaximumLinux was the favorite mag of mine for all time. I loved the genre of users that you guys represented, the new approach to the Linux world that you had. It seemed more aggressive and hip than everything that had come before. Sort of a car-racing attitude as applied to Linux. It was very cool. I've still got the premiere issue and every other one I could scarf off the stands. To this day, I still wonder why the publication did not make it, as opposed to the success of Linux magazine and Linux Journal. Never did make any sense to me. As an intelligent reader, you should be sceptical of everything you read. Don't let someone else do your thinking for you. Learn to separate opinion from fact. But there are several ways to consider facts, are there not? Even facts are possible victims of perception. This is easily demonstrable. For instance, take a 16 ounce container. Put 8 ounces of water in it. Is the container then half empty or half full? Both perspectives are true, yet one has a negative slant and the other has a positive. Newsforge has gone beyond the half glass scenario, way into the realm of FUD, by making statements that are obviously lies. For instance, take the assertion recently that the subscription model of business is not a valid business model. It's obvious that the subscription model is already working for many companies, such as Transgaming, which I pointed out numerous times on their site. Yet their writers continue to ignore such points in favor of fuddist oriented attitudes. Can you imagine the tidal wave of fuddism that would have burst through if MandrakeSoft had actually attempted a truly new way of business? It's no wonder that new ideas have a way of being drowned to death in committee. It's not that they are bad ideas, it's just that there's an overabundance of a$$h*les around. Their attitude to the Linux world is irresponsible in comparison to, for example, how Linux Journal handles it. Here your views are verified when we compare the online anti-journalists to the bona-fide Linux Journal journalists. Your points about there being no such thing as bad press, a la Hollywood, had actually occurred to me; however, to me it is irresponsible to grab for hits at the expense of a new and struggling company such as MandrakeSoft, just so you can cover your own rear. It's like trying to stay afloat by pushing someone else under the water. But Mandrake is not the only one; other distros have taken hits as well. I'm not casting an anathema spell on criticism unilaterally, you understand; quite the opposite, in fact. I'm fully capable of sorting facts from fud; and it's my opinion that there is more of the latter than the former. I don't mind a critical eye; but with the same eye I'm also looking for negativists hunting fodder for their negative orgasms. I don't believe that the solution is to post positive because that is just a public relations ploy, simply putting a favourable spin on topics. I suggest that the best approach is to post truthfully and think critically about what you read in others' posts. If a problem arises with a Mandrake product or
Re: [expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 10:59, sda wrote: Oh so if one criticizes MandrakeSoft they're FUD throwers? Comeon, if you cannot accept criticism wisely you're nothing but a fool. Did you even begin to figure out the math that this guy is throwing around? It doesn't make sense that a business model should be based on a subscription model, when the current distro is availiable for free download. MandrakeSoft has to realize that they will sooner rather than later need to make the current version a payfor download only. Let users have the last version or two behind only for free. OH pleeze - you're nothing but a conspiracy theorist. Mandrake deserves to take some hits and some of us shareholders are watching carefully, although we do seem to be a minority around here. It truly is a pleasure to see that your disagree with this post. Given what you are and the attitudes that you have, it's always a litmus paper indicator that the correct attitudes are opposite where you stand; kind of like a broken compass that points south and the correct heading for the trip is north. I appreciate your inadvertent mindless anti-contribution. LX -- °°° Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] Mandrake Club advocates: Post Positive
The CEO of MandrakeSoft, Jacques Le Marois, recently submitted an article, titled Our Mandrake Club makes business sense to Newsforge, apparently in response to recent allegations by Newsforge (contrary btw to the perception that they actually champion the open source philosophy) that the Mandrake Club is a beg for money rather than a legitimate subscription service. If you'd like to set them and the other FUD commenters straight before the article goes off the front page, here's the link: http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/04/05/0021253.shtml?tid=3 You can post comments or responses to comments to Mr Marois's article at that address. It's likely your words could swing some folk's opinions to the positive, since lurkers abound at that place. I'm worried that the negative comments or press will badly impact subscriptions to the Mandrake Club, which will be an extremely bad thing (tm). I'm starting to get a little peeved and suspicious of Newsforge with regard to who exactly are they serving and where their reporters are exactly getting paid from. (under the table or otherwise.) MandrakeSoft has taken some really uncalled for hits over there, and that place is considered by many to be a bastion and fort for open source. Instead, they don't seem to be pushing support at all; rather, the opposite seems to be happening. This from an Open Source publication! I can see where journalists could be bought off from within the open source world. Not like it hasn't already happened in the big three networks. Anyways, heads up. Cheers, LX -- °°° Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
