Rants Archives - Page 7 of 9 - Yet Another Linux Blog

mv elitism /dev/null

In the beginning of things, open source was about open everything. I remember joining an irc channel # on efnet back in 1993 and chatting with people who could make things happen with computers…really make things happen. Coders, managers, hackers…they were all there and a tight nit core of about 6 of us stayed in touch for about 7 years until we went our separate ways and began to use irc less and less. The thing that I remember the most is the fact that when I joined their little group, I was a complete and total n00b. Not just a n00b to Open Source…but to computers altogether. I had a Texas Instruments computer back in 1985 but only messed with that for about a year. Mice were new to me…I didn’t know ANYTHING at all. In the short time that I began chatting on irc, I was shown how to do things. When I didn’t know how to do something, I could count on one of the guys or girls in the channel helping me to solve my problem within a matter of minutes. These people stepped down off of their level of operation long enough to educate me in the ways of the open source.

I look fondly back at this time and have spoken about it before…not because I don’t think something like this exists now…just that I think it is a rarity. There was a time when this “spirit of open source” was all about educating and furthering the program/app that you were working on. Now it seems that when a new user comes in to any channel on irc or forum, they are told off with a hearty RTFM (Read the ‘Friendly’ Manual).

Where did this Elitism come from? Where and when did Linux and open source become about the mentality “you must be this knowledgeable to ride?” It pains me to see people do this to new users…distancing themselves from potential advocates of open source…zealous ones at that. It’s a real testament to some of these new users STILL wanting to plug open source and Linux, despite being squashed by elitists in forums.

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More Printer Mayhem

Many of you may have read my last post on this subject regarding action that needed to be taken in the form of a petition for Linux and printer manufacturers and their lack of drivers. In a sense, they hem us in to a Windows environment by not allowing us the choice of operating system. I felt this was wrong and started an online petition. The host of the petition has actually seen large companies such as WebTV and CNN, respond to their petitions. I was hoping that our petition would garner enough interest to do so as well.

Many of you thought it was too agressive and felt that we should get them where it hurts by ‘talking with our money’. Some also felt that the correct action would be to write letters urging manufacturers to produce Linux drivers.

For those of you that were thinking along these lines: a reader emailed me recently and sent me scans of the official reply that Canon gave him after he pulled out of a $4000.00+ deal for his business with them. It seems that money doesn’t talk unless it is from a large corporation. It also seems that letters to your manufacturer don’t work out that great either. All private information from the individual providing these letters has been removed. If you’d like to get in touch with him or his business, please email me and I will forward it to him. I’d like to draw your attention to the underlined text on the letter itself. It’s rather funny that a company comes right out and lies about reasons for not developing drivers…everyone knows that they could release binary versions of drivers that could be compiled on ANY and EVERY version of Linux and that people would just snag them and adopt them. The real reason they don’t release them has yet to be devulged. Without further discussion, the letter and envelope:

Envelope

Letter

The simple fact is that Canon threw away 4 thousand dollars US worth of business at the drop of a hat. That’s because it is a drop in the proverbial bucket. Large corporations only listen when other large corporations tell them to…although there are exceptions…in this case, 4k isn’t anything…nor is the opinion of the man who sent a letter to them. In fact, if you’ll notice, they ask him to purchase products from them in the future! The audacity these companies have is flabbergasting. If you don’t feel like taking this lying down, go out and sign the Linux Printer Driver Online Petition and make your voice count by bringing it into harmony with over a thousand people who have signed it already. Thousands of voices together can be quite an influence. Let’s get these companies to take notice. A letter with a link to this petition might cause them to change their minds…but we need more people. Pass this on as much as possible. The more attention this thing gets, the better our chances are at having printer manufacturers take notice.

Click This Link to Sign the Linux Printer Driver Online Petition

MEPIS Linux Loses Another Support Site

It seems that MEPIS is having trouble again. Some of you may recall a few bumps in the road in the past for MEPIS and the MEPIS community. Dotmepis.org, set out to fill a niche for the MEPIS community by providing community developed packages and kernels for advanced users. However, according to Josh, webmaster of dotmepis.org, “it has become increasingly clear that the Mepis development team, reasons that are still unexplained to me, is not a fan of what we have been doing.”

He went on to state, “I personally cannot say exactly why, or what specifically has caused this rift. What is obvious to me, and the rest of the admin team here at dotMepis, is that a true technical community, with our combined insight and experience does not fit within the current framework of Mepis. We have contributed untold amounts of time and effort in making debs to enhance Mepis, providing support for all types of issues, and building friendships among each other. For some reason, that has apparently angered some within Mepis to the point that they will no longer support our efforts. Rather than continuing on in a more censored fashion, and with no hope of any inputs into improving Mepis, we have decided it is simply time to move on.”

Therefore, dotmepis.org will be closing its doors on all 333 of its community members. How is it that a distrowatch #4 distro can have NO developer community? Your guess is as good as mine.

This announcement comes on the coat tails of a release of Professional Quality Sound Applications that were developed by dotmepis and its team. Even Debian proper didn’t have the applications that went into this release. Odd that you would feel a release such as this to be a hinderance to your community, but it is obvious by the announcement that this must have been what took place.

The question remains to be answered: Will MEPIS ever be a true Community driven open source flavor of Linux? It could have been what Ubuntu IS, had it allowed a community of developers in. I am confused about how a community of package developers (developing according to Debian package standards) and kernel hackers (developing kernels according to Debian kernel standards) could NOT BE CONSIDERED A WELCOME ASSET TO MEPIS? With the loss of this site, Warren Woodford, the creator of MEPIS, has a lot of explaining to do. He and his official community website, mepislovers.org, have now caused over 500 users and 2 major support websites go down without so much as a WORD. How many lost users will it take before a reply will come out of Morgantown, WV? Is the microphone on? Perhaps time will tell.

The Linux Printer Driver Online Petition

I’ve had it! I’ve been locked in for the last time. No longer will I sit idle and allow choices to be made FOR me. I make the choices around here. When I’m in the market for a printer, I don’t want to have to think about which one to get. I want to be able to just go out, browse, pick one, and bring it home. Everything should just work right out of the box right? Wrong! You have to check the Linuxprinting.org Printer Database just to list out printers that you’re allowed to buy…that is, if you want them to work with Linux. I say this is a crock. I say it is a sham. There are more than one operating system on the market, and it is high time that companies…large companies…start to understand this.

You’ve heard it all before I’m sure. My thoughts on this are no where near unique. However, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. Having been involved with a couple of new user friendly distros of Linux lately, I can assure you that printing is one of the main disqualifiers of Linux converts. It is VERY frustrating for a new user to not get that $200 CANON computer they just bought up and running with Linux when there is no driver for it. In a sense, Canon is dictating what operating system that person must run! To me, this isn’t supportive of capitalism…it locks you into a certain OS. When was the last time you were locked into thinking a certain way and acting a certain way and having choices made for you? The only thing that comes to mind is McCarthism of the 1950’s…and I don’t think that’s a hugely positive stain from America’s sordid past.

How can we remedy this? Perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree writing emails and letters to the companies. Most of the letters I’ve written fall on deaf ears. The thing that these companies forget is that WE are the consumers…therefore, WE dictate the rise and fall of the market. WE push a product or pull it. Sure, they advertise like hell and try to sway us this way or that…but the ultimate choice lies with US…you and I. The ball is in our court.

Therefore, instead of just writing these emails and letters, perhaps a different type of action can be taken. An online petition.

Let’s see what we can do to shake these manufacturers up. Let’s start a petition where we can each vote and generically address ALL manufacturers and let them know that we won’t take it anymore! Let’s collect as many signatures as we can and show them that Linux is no longer a small player in the market. Let’s force these guys into accepting their responsibility to provide us with a product that works REGARDLESS OF WHAT OS WE CHOOSE. Is anyone with me? If so, drop by the online petition I started today and add your name to the listing. Together, we can make a difference (corny I know…but true). Strength is in numbers. Let’s show them how strong we are.

After signing this petition, spread the word to everyone you know. Emails, links to this article, links to the petition, call people on the phone, snail mail, telegram, morse code, and smoke signal to everyone and anyone you can think of to get support for this. Let’s kick these manufacturers in the proverbial crotch. When the petition hits a mark of approximately 5,000 signatures…I’d say it would be a good time to start sending emails and letters to our printer manufacturers and let them know about our little petition. Perhaps you’re thinking that companies won’t repsond to these things…but rest assured, CNN has responded to these petitions before with apologies for their faulty action…so a printer manufacturer isn’t a far stretch. Spread the word! Let’s make this count!

Visit the online petition and cast your vote!

Animosity Unfounded

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” Marcel Proust

NOTE: This post is in responses of criticisms that have arrived after the posting of an Ubuntu review by a new Linux user in our “Reviews” section.

I figured that I’d have to do something like this. Too many it seems look upon this experiment as “Just another Review” without truly figuring out what it is about. They say things like “just open a shell and do this” or “use synaptic/kpackage and install this” or “use the update client” or “how can you compare this to windows” without any understanding the scope and goals at all. They speak their mind without first understanding what it is that they are speaking on. To me, this is ignorance and looking at things in the same old way instead of with new eyes. However, this isn’t the only problem that is evident.

There are so many out there that empathize so much with a Linux distro that they feel someone is personally attacking them when their distro is trounced in a review…but also because Linux seems to have taken on a social stigma that makes it self defeating. That is, if you are inside of the ‘movement’ and decide to constructively criticize an issue in Linux…you are completely sold out by the movement you were so set on defending or helping. You are sold without a single consideration. Look at RMS…he’s been sold out as a lunatic by half of the world despite being the most clear and unwavering voice on his subject. But this lil rant isn’t about RMS…it’s about what happened when my wife reviewed, and trounced Ubuntu…because it didn’t suit her needs as a new Linux user. Things need to be said…because it is obvious that no one is getting it…and by IT I mean the whole point to the experiment and all of the reviews.

By some of the responses, it is obvious that some haven’t read all of the reviews nor the original intent of this experiment. If you haven’t, before you comment further…go back and read each and every entry under the section “Reviews” because ignorance has no place in this discussion. In order to appreciate what we were trying to accomplish, do you research. Do not speak with authority on that which you do not know.

Secondly, do not bring the GPL, freedom of speech, or anything else GNU/licensing/copyright into this experiment….it never had a place before in any other review (before ubuntu) and please do not have the audacity to bring it into the foray now. It also has no place in this experiment. This is not an experiment that has been done to debate the nuances of Free Software, the OSI, the GPL, or other such nonsense.

I say nonsense because this review is about Desktop environments of Linux. It would be asinine to not discuss how they compare to windows because windows is the de facto standard. Trying to discuss the Linux Desktop without comparing it to windows will not happen no matter how hard we want to pretend it won’t.

We can’t say Linux is better than Windows when it suits us (when we’re bragging or showing off to our friends) and then pull that card when it comes to a review. That is bias and bias has no place in this review. Mrs.D had an overwhelming task ahead of her and she trudged on and stayed fresh as she could. Did she do a good job? I believe she did.

We need to shake the mindset of the old developer who develops linux for his friends and users and start to develop Linux for EVERYONE. New users are a place that Linux has never been strong in…but as we see with this experiment, times are changing.

If one Linux distro includes mp3 support…then all can. No excuses. It doesn’t even matter for licensing. Do you think PCLinuxOS isn’t sold overseas? SimplyMEPIS? Look again. Tout your licenses all you want…but they mean squat to the end user. The end user just wants something that works. They don’t want to get into the whole debate of free vs. proprietary…they want things just to work. We need to make it work for them. We need to stop squabbling because someone trounced your favorite distro and grow up.

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Are too Many Licenses a Bad Thing?

“One country . . . one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches . . . We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind.” Dalai Lama

Open source and Linux is currently at the forefront of the new OSI Licensing Process and the GPL version 3. This usually would boil down to nothing for me and most likely boils down to nothing for most end users. However, in the cases of both of these ‘improvements,’ there are alternative motives. Don’t fool yourself into believing that all intentions of the OSI is to make Joe Common and his laptop full of Linux happy. While they may have Joe’s best interests in mind…they have his pot on the backburner while the new Teflon coated enterprise pot is heating up nicely on the front one.

You’ve heard me talk about this before in a couple of articles [1] [2] that attempt (albeit, my first attempt so please be kind 🙂 ) to address the issues that come into play when businesses and corporations assert their influence into open source communities and projects. Once again, I feel that not enough people are looking at the whole picture. Not to say that I have any ability to understand anything better than others; just that I make a consorted effort to always look at things in 3-5 different ways (leftover habit from college philosophy class).

What do I have a problem with this time? Let’s start with the OSI wanting to ‘trim the fat’ and drop or de-emphasize licenses. Why do we need this? Intel seems to think that it is needed and the community seems to think that there are too many licenses also. Why too many? Who says that this is needed? Can fewer licenses even be feasible?

I don’t think the OSI is actually thinking about things…they’re listening too hard to businesses and enterprise to be thinking. They’re listening to these enterprises and large businesses whine about having to hire X number of lawyers to sift through licenses to make sure that they know what they have to do in order to use the code. Notice I put emphasis on what “they” have to do i.e. the business or corporation. My reasoning lies in the fact that, by nature, a business wants to do as little work as possible to A) save money while at the same time they want to B) save time. In this case, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the benefit of few licenses to sift through and they want the OSI to do it for them…and for free. What’s the best way to do this? Have a keynote speaker (HP’s Martin Fink) from a company that is Linux-friendly (HP) give a call-to-arms at Linuxworld.

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