DCC Alliance failure modes

[Clint Tinsley]

> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Clint Tinsley wrote:

Hopefully this will not start in to a flame or troll ..

> Who really owns the DCCAlliance
> -------------------------------
> > There is a also a different focus between the core of the DCC which are
> > IMO Mepis, Linspire, and Xandros
> 
> The 'core' of the DCCAlliance is Progeny and their Componentized Linux. The
> other members (which you've listed above) are somewhat on the sidelines and
> have basically been persuaded to put their signatures and logos on the site.
> 
> If you look through the PR material, you'll see that (except with the
> website being hosted by Linspire) all the press-releases pimping the
> Alliance have been from Progeny.

As an attendee and having media creditentials, I attended LinuxWorld in San Francisco where I spent time with the major "movers and shakers" in the DCC initiative.  Progeny was not one of them, Ian Murdock statements and the name on the letterhead doesn't make it so.  IMO, I would give some credit to Mr. Warren Woodward of Mepis for leading the charge.
 
> Successful standards
> --------------------
> > LSB itself has already been tried and failed with SuSE Linux
> 
>    * UnitedLinux was the SuSE effort that (mostly) failed.
>    * UserLinux was the Bruce effort that (mostly) failed.
>    * The LSB is not a failure.  'sudo apt-get install lsb' on Ubuntu.

A Rose is a rose is not a rose.  AFIK, Debian LSB is attempt 3.0 and if you do install it, what does it break?

> They have been built bottom-up, not top-down.  Bottom-up is how the rest of
> the Free software we have has been built;  Ubuntu was started by a crack-
> team of 15 people, but very quickly has tried to push work and energy out
> into the community, rather than holding onto it.

No disagreement here.

> If you look around and try to name mistakes with Ubuntu, the closest you'll
> find are the two examples of top-down management---which are listed on
> Mark's own wiki page;  The soft-porn backgrounds and an 11th hour (last
> minute) change to click behaviour in the file-browser for Hoary.  As of the
> following release, both of those were superseded.
> 
> [The naked backgrounds were possibly the single BEST piece of PR exposure
> that Ubuntu has had.  Reversing that background decision was also the single
> BEST demonstration (to date) that users drive the direction of Ubuntu.
> Therefore, to me, the backgrounds were /not/ a "mistake".]

I am not sure the change in the background was as much user driven as by the PC police.

> Failing business models
> -----------------------
> > Novell, IMO, is not finding Linux to be its holy grail either,
> 
> OpenSuse is not the cash-cow that Netware was.  With GNU/Linux, if a
> business can get day-to-day support cheaper elsewhere, they will.

OpenSuSE is not the only cow on Novell's farm but only the Open Source one.  They also have the Open Enterprise server that encompasses Netware, SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server), NLD (Novell Linux Desktop), and the Zenworks suite which includes LUM (Linux User Management) and RedCarpet update channel.  The stakes for and investment in the Linux platform by Novell are substantial.  They also have a major partner in all this ($50 million), IBM, who have offered SuSE SLES on their mainframes for more than a couple years now.

> Support is being decentralised;  Good for us, bad news for software-only
> companies such as Novell, Oracle, SCO and that company in Redmond.

Novell support is currently a bit of a very bad, IMO, joke.  I bought SuSE 10.0 Retail so I could get support but so far have got none.  Their hours are like noon to 5 PM and the three times I have called, I have got the same person answering the phone.  I was calling to get my registration fixed so I could get my customer identification number so that I could get support.  Last time I called, I was promised action and I would get a confirming email.  None recieved.  The real reason I had called them was to get their take on the IPv6 issue but they only provide "installation" support and that doesn't include resolving connectivity issues such as IPv6.  I am a Novell CNE6, I have bled Novell Red, have attended the last 10 consecutive Brainshare Developer Conferences in Salt Lake City but I won't be making it 11.

> In the gold-rush.  Sell shovels;  but don't tell people how to use them.

I thought the appropriate advise was to teach a man to fish so he can feed himself...

Clint