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On Sunday 26 September 2004 9:29, Neil Williams wrote:
On Sunday 26 September 2004 8:07 pm, john wrote:On Sunday 26 September 2004 5:35, Neil Williams wrote: I dunno where you're coming from here Neil, and it would help if you tied your colours to the mast,http://www.codehelp.co.uk/html/about.html http://code.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ http://isbn.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ plus the sites in my sig.
that's not what I meant.
for the moment I am split between wondering whether you're more interested in shooting me down becauseyou are peddling FUD. :-) Actually, I just want to make it clear that there is more to GNU/Linux than a stable GUI.
there's more to a motor car than shiny paint, most people aren't interested though.
Freedom must be discussed, licences and technical details are important. There's a place in the group for all contributors, I feel that it is right to encourage new users to aspire to something better than where they are now,
running debian ___IS___ better than where they are now.
to motivate experienced users to find new ways of helping
convert them to debian, they'll find their own motivation by and large.
and to inspire those with the desire to load up their text editor and start writing some code.
I reckon most of those will already be playing with code, it's not like nobody can code until they discover linux
Those users who take, take, take should appreciate how much the community has already given them and be encouraged to give something back.
coo, listen to her. you have an attitude problem, your god stallman says information wants to be free, you can't take what is free, and you can't take without denying someone else access, since this patently doesn't happen (denial to others) then by definition it isn't taking.
When it's provided free of charge, there sometimes needs to be a clear message that it should not be deemed worthless or easy.
then it is not free is it. freedom of speech is either free or not, you do not have freedom of speech or expression where certain things cannot be said. you are not providing anything free of charge when in the very same sentence you are trying to mandate a sneak charge that users must worship and be grateful.
Companies wanting to make money out of GNU/Linux can only do so if the users appreciate the value of the system and the company. If you do-down the worth of developers and the community as a whole, it devalues the system itself.
the only value it has is as a whole, subdividing it into developers and trying to ringfence their inherent value destroys the whole thing. you are a code monkey, just as I was a grease monkey, our value is sod all because there's an effectively unlimited supply of people just as skilled waiting to fill our shoes..... NONE of this devalues me as a human being. it is ONLY when I try to ringfence MY little patch that everyone loses and human beings in other parts of the globe become effectively worth less than me that humanity as a whole loses.
This list does discuss those issues because they are more important than converting more users.______________NOTHING_____________ is more important than incresaing the user base.WRONG. Without developers, you will have no users.
I know nothing about you Neil, but you sound like a very young and very inexperienced person as regards to the realities of life. try playing the foxes and rabbits game sometime, you pick whether developers are foxes or rabbits, and start playing the numbers to see if you can come up with a viable ecosystem.
Developers are the key to the future, users are the key to profitability - something that is not essential to free software.
so (paint and canvas) artists are the key to the future, and patrons are they key to profitability, a good analogy, yes artists can create art in a vacuum with no users to patronise them.... your way ensures that there will only ever be one statue of david, one haywain, my way ensures that everyone can have a photograph of their loved ones.
One cannot be without the other.
never said they could, just saying you consistently put the cart before the horse.
You appear to be equating success with £
not in the slightest.
- this is simply not applicable to free software as it must be to proprietary software. My code costs nothing to develop, it also provides no income to me or anyone else - that does not mean that the code is unnecessary or unsuccessful.
it does however mean that it is worthless in the financial sense, therefore there is no 3rd party influence upon it, the only influences there are are your own, and peer review (which you are free to ignore) of people just like you, in effect you have a monopoly on any influences on your code. now, what were you saying about monopolies?
At it's deepest level, this entire thread comes down to a definition of success. You equate success in terms with which BG would be familiar.
having the greatest installed user base, correct. by the way. bill the CEO has an inescapable legal duty to his shareholders to act in a certain way at all times, bill the man is not the evil borg entity you would have him be.
I equate success in terms that bugs get fixed, freedom is protected and users get better programs.
you use the word freedom a lot, I don't think you know what it means.
I don't give a hoot about financial rewards, footprints, desktop impressions, marketing spin or any other form of bums on seats measurement.
I had gathered that, so now I'm here to tell you something, it is not something you will like, but it is fact nonetheless. if you don't care about those things, then you do not care about anyone else's freedom but your own, so long as you are free to code what you want, who cares, because you are far too busy doing your thing to devote any time to helping those that are less free than you out from under. when they came for the jews, I said nothing, etc.
(Don't forget, I'm a user too!) Would you disagree with that assessment (not the validity of the two positions, just the summary of the overall position)?
yes, you have it all back to front, at least, you have it all back to front if your true ambitions are in line with your presumed ambitions as a proponent of free software.
We need more contributors. People who can make a difference, make things better, write documentation, help others. Not sit around feeling smug like parasites.what we need are less self appointed elite looking down their noses at others and branding them as lusers and parasites.I was a newbie once - as I clearly outlined. I resent only those who refuse to learn for they cannot be taught and cannot be helped - the clueless users who think that they can get by without ever getting their grey matter operational.
Oh, so it is Ok if I resent you because you can't rebuild an internal combustion engine so it's better than new, I can insult you at will because the only possible reason you cannot do this is because you are indolent and stupid and refuse to learn. ___love___ to be a fly on the wall when they tell you you have experienced a myocardial infarction and then sneer at you and tell you you deserve it for sitting in front of a monitor instead of living a healthy outdoors lifestyle and then refuse to treat you because you'd be too stupid to understand the effects of the medication. of course you will claim that this is different and I'm just being stupid.
GNU/Linux is free software because the community puts in massive amounts of effort. GPL/BSD, ePatents, TIMTOWDI, Mach, SCO, copyleft - all these things must be discussed and understood or the OS itself will die.What, all the code already written will unravel and evaporate?Become irrelevant, existing bugs won't be fixed, new standards will not be adopted.
bit like (to give just one example) a certain national and international hotel chain that is still running windows 95b then...... which appears to be working as well as it did ten years ago and more importantly still making them money hand over fist.
sure, the linux operating systems out down won't evolve without further development, but that is not about to happen, and converting windows users to linux will not in any way, as you are trying to imply, weaken that.If they all sit idle, blinded by sales talk instead of inspired to cooperate, contribute and defend the OS against ludicrous things like ePatents.
it's not ludicrous if it doesn't apply to you personally today. but then the next elections which _I_ am eligible to vote in won't be based on electronic devices made by an ATM manufacturer that run windows embedded and store all the votes in an access database. it is hard to conceive of a worse solution, but then again, flip side of the coin is ask the question, Why did Diebold get the contract based upon such frighteningly easy to rig software? mainly because there were absolutely ZERO tenders from anyone offering a secure open source solution, you got that? ZERO. So the elections for chief chimp of the most powerful military industrial complex the world has ever known will be upon a foundation of windows software, only the geeks are saying dick because the users don't know anything else because geeks like you think installed user base and exposure doesn't matter. your precious _imagined_ freedoms (you think you're free, do me a DeCSS code snippet and host it on your websites for download, or DMCA violations by holding down the shift key, or a million other things) will get curtailed by whatever degree and at whatever rate campaign contributors to an election in a foreign land dictate. and you will still be sitting here harping on about developers, ungrateful users who take take take, and the importance of talking about freedom when, as inevitable happens, the Uk copies and pastes the same laws here 18 months later. then you'll get an extradition notice to be tried for a crime in a country you never set foot in and you'll get convicted bang to rights and THEN you will start to scream, when it is way too late.
Don't paint a picture of either extreme, don't leave either party out of the equation. You appear to elevate users above developers which is nonsense. Developers and users must work together - that's the reason GNU/Linux has grown so quickly.
rubbish microsoft has made cheap and ubiquitous hardware possible, and that has made linux possible, look at the history of how linux came about for proof. fact is the cheap and ubiquitous hardware is here now, even MS is talking about making hardware FREE with the OS, there is an exploitable window (forgive the pun) right now since the development of mepis and knoppix, but 50 billion dollars (why do you think MS built up a war chest?) isn't going to leave it open for long.
your arguments appear riddled with hypocricy, you pro linux and therefore anti copyright?? No-one in GNU/Linux is anti-copyright. Read those RMS links properly!
Sorry, stallman is not my god, I am capable of making my own observations and deductions and forming my own opinions, I do not need to rsync my morals with stallman of chomsky et al, none of whom are exactly impartial anyway.
Copyright is the basis of the GPL. ePatents are not the same issue, neither is DRM. Copyright (as originally designed) is fine
so was the original united states constitution. unfortunately water doesn't flow uphill.
- what we don't need is yet more extensions to the life of a copyright restriction but that's another issue entirely.
don't see anyone taking any notice of what you need, the media giants have already won that battle..... you sound like the motorcycle action group in the mid eighties, ten years old and still fighting the helmet laws (which you will probably agree with because you are probably as ignorant of those issues as job public is of these issues) and twenty years further down the line we're still wearing them and it seems like nobody even remembers when things were different and we had a choice.
I am passionately pro-copyright.
Registrant: Mr Neil Williams 65 Oakdale Drv Heald Green Stockport SK8 3SN UK Domain Name: NEILWILLIAMS.COM Administrative Contact, Billing Contact: "Mr Neil Williams" Phone: 01614377778 Fax: Technical Contact, Registrar: "Mr Easyspace Hostmaster" Phone: +44 1932 350 097 Fax: +44 1932 350 222 Record last updated on 2004-06-11. Record expires on 2008-03-02. Record created on 2000-03-02. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.EASYPOST.COM 216.167.71.20 NS3.EASYPOST.COM 216.167.71.24 let's see you get passionate.
This does not preclude an equally passionate anti-DRM stance.
not possible, the two are inextricably interwoven now, you no longer have the option of just the baby or just the bathwater.
If we changed this list to Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux User Group - would you object?Yes, for obvious reasons.Explain. (As this is very likely to happen.)
because you are simply increasing the confusion levels and the chances that potential linux users just turn away and stick with windows.
All we are doing is giving credit where it is due.
no you're not. you're descending into committee hell, you know the sketch from life of brian about the peoples popular front of judea, the popular peoples front of judea, etc etc etc.
This system is not Linux
so what, it is technically incorrect to say I own a car and a bike and so on, so what? my missus didn't fly to greece, she watched the olympics on the telly (god knows why) but nobody felt the need to explain this when asked "did you see xxx last night" because it's B***** obvious even to a retard. see my earlier comment about oxbridge linquistics dons
- that's just the kernel. The system is GNU/Linux. We don't only support kernel users, the majority of threads centre around programs, interfaces, protocols and procedures. These are all based in the GNU realm, not the kernel.
there;s two sorts of people. 1/ people who already know, and don't need it spelling out. 2/ people who do not know, and who will not understand without hugely long and drawn out and un-necessary (to a newbie) explanations. I have a local (business) convert that calls Mepis "memphis", so what, he has installed it on every computer in the business and loves it to bits.
As a programmer, accuracy and precision are important to me
when it suits you as it does with all humans unless you are prepared to have everyone else correct every last petty breach of etiquette, grammar, punctuation, etc etc etc etc etc that YOU make I suggest you content yourself with being your own critic in the areas that suit you and you alone, and leave the rest of the world to enjoy the same dignity...
and I feel that we have been doing GNU/Linux harm by not giving credit to those who helped create the rest of the system that we seek to promote and improve.
you have a mandate to speak for them?
If you did I'd simply unsubscribe because there is little point being associated with something that is doomed to be an also ran.....You object to GNU as opposed to ??
"Linux" it's enough. there's already enough people who don't know what it is. only last week a chap came round to pick up his kid (same school as ours etc), takes a look at this laptop after I had been using it for ten minutes and asked, "Is that Linux" You know why he asked, because I windowblinded the open windows and exposed the "Linux Addict" desktop wallpaper. that pretty much says it all.
you know, at the meeting there were strong sentiments about people wanting to make a living out of linux, making a living out of windows is easybecause people pay for it.
NO!!!!! because it has a HUGE installed user base.
GNU/Linux is free. It's harder to make money but it can and should be done.
NO!!! it is EASIER to make money, per installed system, because instead of spending £500 on hardware and another £500 on software and another £250 every year for software updates and upgrades they spend £500 on hardware.
yeah, and what do they get presented with to read? hmm?Plenty of excellent documentation is available, books and online. Lots of people have learnt this way, it's fun.
you can say EXACTLY the same about windows, in spades. you have to dig real deep in google to find any significant amounts of widows noobs being insulted by windows coders and told to go an read the f***** manual you stupid newbie lamer. you have to dig REALLY deep to find windows coders expressing attitudes to their users like yours.
you just don't "get" marketing do you.So what? Marketing is a pack of lies. It has nothing to do with free software.
ever had a girlfriend? that's marketing no reason whatsover to deduce from that that all sexual relationships involve the exchange of cash for services rendered. no reason whatsoever to deduce from that that all sexual relationships involve deceit either. no marketing = no market penetration. can be viral marketing like all your base, no money involved, no lies involved, just the right timing, broadband and flash enabled browsers while it is still new and fresh.
I guess all the businesses that serve the above lack of interest should close up shop and send out "Dummies guide" books?You're comparing material goods with software - do you need someone's help to read a newspaper?
yes, I had to grow up in a society that was full of people who could read and write the language in question. Can you read a japanese newspaper without someone else's help? Does it make you stupid if you cannot? Do you think you should be forced to learn it because you want to own and use some japanese consumer equipment?
Or listen to the radio?
see above As I've said elsewhere I suffer from dyslexia, makes coding in anything other than very basic BASIC an impossible task for me, yet I wrote programs in Spanish BASIC on an Ordenador, chances are you couldn't read them, does that make you stupid? Does having a page full of code make my eyes go out of focus and water make me stupid?
No, of course not. So it is with code - it's a form of communication, a form of speech.
bad news if you're deaf and dumb huh, what about my mate, if he is struck dead and dumb how is he going to use BSL to communicate? seeing as he had his right arm amputated at the shoulder after a brachial plexus injury?
There's nothing wrong with people learning how to do things themselves - it's not as if they need to have specialised equipment or even spend any money.
So you have never at any time paid anyone else for a service that you could have learned but chose not to? no need to answer.
whom, may I ask, do you suppose you are developing your 0.00001% of linux for?Me!
Full credit to you for being honest.
It's great that it benefits others but the main impetus to do code rather than go for a walk on Dartmoor is because I need the program to do something that it cannot already do. That and the fact that I'm always thinking up new functions anyway. Some people paint or write music, I code.
Hey that's great, I like to ride my bike and have sex and listen to music and so on, that doesn't increase the installed user base of linux either.
4. The emphasis of GNU/Linux must be on both the users and the developers. You cannot expect growth if we are all reduced to explaining every TLA.doh, most users will help themselves or each otherThat's the contribution that I want most users to offer. That's all it is. Fine if they want to go further, but what's wrong with helping each other?
you have to create users before they can exist in sufficient numbers to help themselves.
, the more users you have the easier that gets, most windows problems are sorted by fellow windows users, not MS developers.True - it's the same with GNU/Linux except that it is easier for keen users to become developers.
ONLY IF YOU ARE A GEEK. I'm gonna shout this so you get the message. To 95% of the people a computer WILL ONLY EVER BE A TOOL, just like a television or motor car, they really couldn;t care any less what makes it do its thing.
To get 1000 new developers you probably need 100,000 experienced users, because total conversion doesn't apply. To get 100,000 experienced users you need 10,000,000 bog standard users.I've never said developers can exist alone, you seem to think users can exist alone.
dogs and their fleas.
How many new users has dclug created in the last year? do you even know?Why should we know?
because if the dogs aren't encouraged to multiply the future for fleas looks bleak.
We don't need to take a register or take payment for licences, let people do what they like doing.is there anywhere for potential new users to go and browse new users opinions and experiences.Like that's going to help - blind leading the blind.
how crass and insulting can you be? only linux knowledge counts. one cannot possibly be an expert developer if all you know is windows.
Very new users should go to more experienced users, who can look to the developers who can look to the more experienced developers. Somewhere along that line, the problem should get fixed!
you know my original trade was engineering, through a strange set of circumstances I was apprenticed to an engineer who was apprenticed to an engineer who was very traditional in his ways, the result of this was that I was extremely fortunate to have an apprenticeship that very very few people my age were lucky enough to endure. to give just one example you were taught how, should it be required, you should go about making a tool, that would enable you to make a tool, that would enable you to make a tool, that would enable you to do the actual job of work. of necessity you covered a lot of ground, at least enough to be proficient in each, should it ever be required, for example while it was highly likely that if ever you needed any turning done (lathe work) you would simply give that piece of the job to a skilled turner, however, you _might_ find yourself in a situation where there was no skilled turner and the clock was ticking, so YOU had to be able to do it yourself, not nearly as fast as the turner, but that didn't matter.... as it happened while doing one of my long foreign motorcycle trips I blew the big ends in the middle of nowhere, at least 100 miles from the nearest workshop and as it turned out 250 odd from the nearest machine shop equipped to grind a big end, luckily a carried a spare set of shells (because old BSA singles were known for weak bottom ends and rare crankpin diameters) and wet and dry paper was available, took me 2 days to grind the crankpin by hand until it was "good enough", that bottom end lasted another 1000 miles before letting go, long after I was back in blighty. the point of this? today all I see are niche specialists, who have little or no exposure to other disciplines... where there used to be electronics engineers we now have television engineers who cannot fix a microwave, and plumbers who can fit a cistern but not a boiler, I'm not sure where this came from, union demarkation? end result is niche specialists, really good at one thing, totally ignorant of everything else, and through this lack of exposure to the trades of others, lack of respect for their abilities.... we have linux developers who just assume that anyone coming from windows is going to be clueless and is going to need their hands holding by someone with maybe six months experience of linux..... kinda off beam when you take my last hardware customer as an example, managed to get him to agree to set up his laptop as dual boot windows and mepis/debian. and yet he is an old VAXen dude...
I haven't either seen any signs that you grep that TimBL gave the world a wonderful thing, but 1000 people trying to ape him or cloning him 1000 times probably still won't produce a single comparable piece of work.Of course not, I do what I can but I readily pass problems on to those who can help me.The issues will change in the future, but freedom will still need to be defended.you cannot defend something you do not haveSo don't give it up to those seeking their 'rights'.
your "freedom" is an illusion, rights are the only thing that counts.
you cannot defend ANYTHING by just talkingBut talking is essential to communication and thereby to motivation and action.
there is no inevitable progression. talk is cheap action counts it may well be preceded by talk, but it supercedes it.
cos you want it to become a mainstream OS, not OS2....It's doing that already, without much marketing help.
no it isn't, it's a niche market in a small temporal window of opportunity.
monopoly isn't the enemy of anything.?? Pardon? anti-competitive practices, cartels, if monopolies are so good, why does every commercial avenue promote competition?
if monopolies are always evil why has the postal service to name but one example gone down the tubes. you going to rail against x86 architecture too? you going to tell me how the root dns monopoly has damaged your ability to host a website compared to some other scenario? or are you referring to the competition between say Curry's and Dixon's that ensures your next telly will be cheap _and_ sir stan gets your money? you going to tell me about how free market forces and competition and certain companies being done for price fixing has made ram prices fall steadily for the last 2 years? (tip, they haven't) monopoly vs competitive market per se is meaningless, demand vs supply is closer, but ever that cannot reliably predict market value of a commodity. you going to tell me how the near monopoly of wintel has made hardware so cheap any G7 citizen can afford their own powerful computer and this created the circumstances which ALLOWED linux to come into it's own in the first place?
I don't think it is justifiable to push GNU/Linux onto every computational device on the planet to the exclusion of all else.
it's a good direction to aim, that'll do for now.
It isn't healthy and it isn't wise.
lot healthier and a lot wiser than the only other game in town, which is DRM
Freedom thrives when there is a stimulus to improve
you keep using that word...... it doesn't mean what you think it does.
- many would postulate that Microsoft lost their way between Win3.11 and Win95 because competition wasn't strong.
Many would be talking out of their backsides then those of us who were around then had a lot more choices than wintel, a lot more....
We are all still living with the consequences.
no, you're living off the fat of the runaway success of wintel, dogs and fleas remember. tell me about living with the consequences of american political lobby groups slicing up the pie (which is baked to their recipe anyway) based upon a voting system that between fox "news" programming the proles and voting machines running windows and access with zero paper trail checksums and convicted fraudsters working on the development. I would like very much to hear how you fancy living with the consequences of writing a piece of code that an american court decides is illegal in america and finding yourself extradited there to serve hard time in pound me in the ass penitentiary as a lesson to all other subversives. really, I would, cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.