Mailing List Archive

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 5:19 PM, Barry Schwartz
<chemoelectric@chemoelectric.org> wrote:
> Damien Levac <damien.levac@gmail.com> skribis:
>> My humble opinion:
>>
>> If people want to work on a project, it is their own decision.
>
> That pertains to hobbyists. I’m purely a hobbyist, filling timek; I
> work on what I enjoy. Anyone who argues with that can keep it to
> themselves.
>
> But we are talking, instead, about profit and non-profit organizations
> that have goals and in some cases ask for our donations. Whose goals
> are being achieved?

You do need to consider the resources you're actually talking about
here. You can't compare the resources of a community-driven distro
like Gentoo to something like RedHat, and you can't even compare
something like RedHat with the likes of Google. At my workplace the
entire annual Gentoo budget would pay one employee for a few weeks
tops. Most of the more community-oriented distros try to use their
money as effort-multipliers. The Gentoo mailing lists, cvs, forums,
etc don't cost that much to run but they enable huge amounts of
community interaction.

And when you look at stuff like Freedesktop the goal is for you to be
able to plug a USB headset in and have it suddenly usable for phone
calls, just like on any other modern OS. Sure, fonts are also
something that can stand improvement, but they've actually come a long
way. I'd say that getting printers to work is more important - though
it is telling that even major vendors like Apple, Google, and
Microsoft haven't even tried to solve that problem on their new OSes.

--
Rich

On Tue, 7 Oct 2014 17:45:20 -0400
Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>
> And when you look at stuff like Freedesktop the goal is for you to be
> able to plug a USB headset in and have it suddenly usable for phone
> calls, just like on any other modern OS.
>

Here is where I, among many others I would hope, differ philosophically.

The key phrase is "just like any other modern OS." Is the function
of an OS to do everything for the user? In my view, an OS is merely
an enabler. It provides a general framework for executing programs.
Anything beyond this basic, nonspecific functionality is to be left
entirely up to the user.

Freedesktop, or any of its equivalents, should remain just another option
among a wide array of options that is enabled by the basic OS. The
danger arises when a certain clique of developers, with the backing
of corporate big bucks, unilaterally decides that a general, nonspecific
OS is somehow antiquated, "old school," and irrelevant for modern times.
For such a clique, an OS cannot be bare or sparse, but absolutely must
incorporate certain "features" as standard and inviolable components.

To give an example, regarding freedesktop (FD), color management is one
such feature. Formerly, color management (CM) was implemented by the user
in his own way using a variety of available tools. Now, however, CM is to be
accomplished as an integral part of the FD environment with no need for
user supervision, and, even though FD is supposedly only an option, more
and more image/graphics software will likely be written to utilize only
the FD approach rather than to keep CM open and flexible. All other alternatives
to CM will then be left to slowly rot and wither away.

FOSS developers have to maintain an awareness that there is no One True
Way. A computer has always been and always will be a general purpose machine.
Therefore, the only rational philosophy for OS development is for an OS
to empower the user to apply this generality for his own needs.

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> FOSS developers have to maintain an awareness that there is no One True
> Way. A computer has always been and always will be a general purpose machine.
> Therefore, the only rational philosophy for OS development is for an OS
> to empower the user to apply this generality for his own needs.
>

You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a
working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort
maintaining 3 other solutions for that something, and ensure that none
of the solutions becomes any better than the others. OpenRC and
Portage should work just as well with only csh installed as it does
with bash installed, etc.

That just isn't realistic. Most distros would rather support 47
features that users want, and not 3 features implemented 5 different
ways each in a manner that is completely interchangeable. If a distro
did things the way you wanted, very few would bother to use it, and
likely fewer would bother to maintain it.

You'll always have alternative solutions in FOSS because volunteers
will work on things that interest them. Even after 99% of everything
supports systemd exclusively you'll still find people writing sysvinit
implementations from scratch in Ruby, just for the fun of it.
However, you'll never find those alternative solutions receiving
mainstream support, unless one actually tips the scale to the point
where it is considered an equal. Heck, look at postgres - most would
say that it is superior to mysql in many ways and yet many packages
still don't support it.

Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant
Solutions" - with the express aim of maintaining all the stuff nobody
uses any longer. I can't imagine you'll get a lot of donations - even
if people might agree with you philosophically at some level, they're
going to want to spend their money investing in stuff they actually
use.

--
Rich

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 9:15 PM, Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > FOSS developers have to maintain an awareness that there is no One True
> > Way. A computer has always been and always will be a general purpose
> machine.
> > Therefore, the only rational philosophy for OS development is for an OS
> > to empower the user to apply this generality for his own needs.
> >
>
> You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a
> working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort
> maintaining 3 other solutions for that something, and ensure that none
> of the solutions becomes any better than the others. OpenRC and
> Portage should work just as well with only csh installed as it does
> with bash installed, etc.
>

No. Just no. If somebody is putting together an OS, they maintain the
interfaces / APIs that applications on top would use. That's all. If one
solution for, say, package managers or daemon startup works better than
another, so be it. It's not the responsibility of the Kernel / OS
developer, unless some application reveals a bug that others do not. Other
than that, pick the package manager / initializer / etc. that works best
for YOU.

>
> That just isn't realistic.


The above scenario is ABSOLUTELY realistic, and the way it should work.
The straw man you've created above, not so much. But it's just a straw man.


> Most distros would rather support 47
> features that users want, and not 3 features implemented 5 different
> ways each in a manner that is completely interchangeable. If a distro
> did things the way you wanted, very few would bother to use it, and
> likely fewer would bother to maintain it.
>

But isn't that the point of Gentoo in the first place? You're selecting
packages for various functions that are typically source compatible, and
you compile them yourself. How many text editors can you choose from? How
many cron implementations? How many development languages and libraries?
How many email servers and clients? What would happen if the maintainers
decided Gentoo should only support one desktop environment, one shell, one
option for everything? Would emacs users look elsewhere because only VI is
available in Portage? I suspect so.

The beauty of Gentoo is that even options not available from official
sources can be integrated with either an overlay, your own ebuild, or even
just building from source.


> You'll always have alternative solutions in FOSS because volunteers
> will work on things that interest them. Even after 99% of everything
> supports systemd exclusively you'll still find people writing sysvinit
> implementations from scratch in Ruby, just for the fun of it.
> However, you'll never find those alternative solutions receiving
> mainstream support, unless one actually tips the scale to the point
> where it is considered an equal. Heck, look at postgres - most would
> say that it is superior to mysql in many ways and yet many packages
> still don't support it.
>

Ah - but au contraire. For that type of thing, it is very rare that any
application that needs a relational database can't be plugged into
postgresql through some mechanism or another. Sure, server-specific
support packages don't (phpmyadmin won't work with it any more than pgAdmin
will work with MySQL), but out side of that, you will find very few
applications that have a hard dependency on a specific relational
database. That's the kind of thing that Oracle does. Even though they now
own MySQL, you still can't run Oracle's PeopleSoft on top of it - you need
Oracle 11g or whatever.


> Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant
> Solutions" - with the express aim of maintaining all the stuff nobody
> uses any longer. I can't imagine you'll get a lot of donations - even
> if people might agree with you philosophically at some level, they're
> going to want to spend their money investing in stuff they actually
> use.
>

Before all these deep dependencies on borked does-it-all-but-nothing-well
solutions like Pulse Audio and systemd came along, we used to call that
Foundation "The Open Source Community".


>
> --
> Rich
>
>

Harry Holt, PMP
Cyber Architect
Social Media Strategist

On Tue, 7 Oct 2014 22:28:58 -0400
Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>
> You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a
> working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort
> maintaining 3 other solutions for that something ...
>

No. I am simply stating that some things do not belong within an OS
as they are better for individual users to implement.

Is file searching an integral part of an OS? For MS Windows it is.
Should it be for Linux? I would hope not, but maybe the Freedesktop
folks would not agree.

There are many ways to search files, such as regular expressions using
grep, sed, or perl, or utilizing special software devoted to the purpose.
Why then would we demand that the OS include functionality for searching
and indexing?

The same can be said for my other example of color management.

>
> Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant
> Solutions"
>

So, then, an OS which includes integral searching/indexing, CM, image
viewers, video players, word processors, etc., in spite of already existing
software devoted to those tasks, is not being redundant?

My original point may have been misunderstood but I am still aware of a
great divide between my conceptions and those of others.

The GNU project and FSF were born in a time when people used computers
and not vice versa, but that time seems to be fading fast. The motivating
concept is now "user transparency" where everything just works without
having to know why or how it works. I used to believe that GNU/Linux
was immune to these trends but now I have my doubts.

On 10/07/2014 11:19 PM, Harry Holt wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>> You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a
>> working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort
>> maintaining 3 other solutions for that something, and ensure that none
>> of the solutions becomes any better than the others. OpenRC and
>> Portage should work just as well with only csh installed as it does
>> with bash installed, etc.
>>
>
> No. Just no. If somebody is putting together an OS, they maintain the
> interfaces / APIs that applications on top would use. That's all. If one
> solution for, say, package managers or daemon startup works better than
> another, so be it. It's not the responsibility of the Kernel / OS
> developer, unless some application reveals a bug that others do not. Other
> than that, pick the package manager / initializer / etc. that works best
> for YOU.
>
>>
>> That just isn't realistic.
>
>
> The above scenario is ABSOLUTELY realistic, and the way it should work.
> The straw man you've created above, not so much. But it's just a straw man.

You may think its absolutely realistic, but the market doesn't agree
with you. Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, et al call their products
*distributions*, not *operating systems* because their customers don't
want to create their own solutions. They want a collection of software
pieces--kernel, libraries, applications--that solve their (end-user)
problems.

>> Most distros would rather support 47
>> features that users want, and not 3 features implemented 5 different
>> ways each in a manner that is completely interchangeable. If a distro
>> did things the way you wanted, very few would bother to use it, and
>> likely fewer would bother to maintain it.

Precisely.

> But isn't that the point of Gentoo in the first place? You're selecting
> packages for various functions that are typically source compatible, and
> you compile them yourself. How many text editors can you choose from? How
> many cron implementations? How many development languages and libraries?
> How many email servers and clients? What would happen if the maintainers
> decided Gentoo should only support one desktop environment, one shell, one
> option for everything? Would emacs users look elsewhere because only VI is
> available in Portage? I suspect so.
>
> The beauty of Gentoo is that even options not available from official
> sources can be integrated with either an overlay, your own ebuild, or even
> just building from source.

But Gentoo is still a *distro*, not just an operating system. And it is
less commercial than most, relying on volunteers to code "useful" stuff.
There's coding going on, and a lot of whining going on. It's easy to
see who's credible.

>> Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant
>> Solutions" - with the express aim of maintaining all the stuff nobody
>> uses any longer. I can't imagine you'll get a lot of donations - even
>> if people might agree with you philosophically at some level, they're
>> going to want to spend their money investing in stuff they actually
>> use.

Thank you, Rich. This is perfect.

Phil

On Wed, 08 Oct 2014 08:34:10 -0400
Phil Turmel <philip@turmel.org> wrote:

>
> You may think its absolutely realistic, but the market doesn't agree
> with you. Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, et al call their products
> *distributions*, not *operating systems* because their customers don't
> want to create their own solutions. They want a collection of software
> pieces--kernel, libraries, applications--that solve their (end-user)
> problems.
>

Market??? This whole spiel sounds like the snooty squawking of some
MBA automaton.

FOSS is neither market-oriented nor market-driven. In fact, I would
hope that all FOSS developers, secretly or otherwise, give the middle-finger
salute to all market advocates. FOSS is motivated by a computer science idealism,
i.e. what is technically good and proper rules the day and let the market
be damned.

Are we to start judging merit by counting the number of users? Most
POS software packages (and I don't mean "point of sale") tend to be
quite popular because they cater to total idiots, and such useless statistics
would only appeal to a deluded and delirious marketdroid.

Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, et. al. should fork off their corporate concerns
and leave the FOSS community entirely. Under their direction, we'll soon
be having "new and improved" Linux releases every Black Friday to snag
all the impulse buyers within the demented Xmas crowd.

Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net> skribis:
> Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, et. al. should fork off their corporate concerns
> and leave the FOSS community entirely. Under their direction, we'll soon
> be having "new and improved" Linux releases every Black Friday to snag
> all the impulse buyers within the demented Xmas crowd.

Except failing at it. Canonical are the ones marketing to Xmas crowd,
and the main thing I have been observing Ubuntu do lately is create
Arch users. :)