[CLUE-Talk] FWD: Red Hat 8.0 To Launch This Month With Enhanced Linux Desktop

[David Anselmi]

hildy at totalspeed.net wrote:
[...]
> 
> As Sun Microsystems prepares to debut its next Sun ONE Desktop on Linux
> later this week, Linux leader Red Hat plans to show a more aggressive
> desktop bid with Red Hat Linux 8.0.

So I ask myself, "what's a Sun ONE Desktop?"

Here's a link: http://wwws.sun.com/software/.  It seems that Sun ONE is 
a brand they apply to all their software.  For desktop apps they have 
GNOME, StarOffice, and StarSuite.  So I suppose it is the Sun version of 
.NET.

I'm glad to see that Red Hat has a similar soup of products, like 
Advanced Server, Stronghold Enterprise, and Red Hat Database.  I hate it 
when marketing jargon hides what's underneath but I supose it's 
necessary for something.

I also notice that Red Hat has acquired ArsDigita.  ArsDigita was 
founded by Philip Greenspun, a CS prof at MIT.  He seems like a smart 
guy and was/is interested in how to make the Internet more useful.  The 
company developed the ArsDigita Community System, a colaboration tool 
that takes more time than I have to understand.  But it seems to be a 
predecessor of Wiki Wiki Webs, blogs, etc.  They developed ACS on a 
shoestring and became very successful, until venture capital was brought 
in and ruined things.  Dr. Greenspun had a long article about the 
problems and the litigation but it's been removed as the result of a 
settlement.  Googling on arsdigita and lawsuit will find it for you.

ACS was initially open source in some ways.  When it was taken closed, 
Open ACS was started.  It would be nice if Red Hat would merge the two. 
  One day I'll find out how ACS compares to Zope and other web server 
tool things.

It's a shame that ArsDigita didn't stay true to its founding.  One thing 
they did was to found/fund ArsDigita University which offered an 
undergrad computer science curriculum for free.  It was a one year 
program (a BSCS without all the non-CS courses) and all the material was 
available on the Internet.  There was also some sort of correspondence 
way to take the program.  It only lasted one year before ArsDigita's 
legal/financial problems resulted in a loss of funding.  It would be 
cool to see Red Hat or other companies fill the gap--the people running 
the program seemed *very* bright.

The courses are still on the web.  I hope to spend time studying them 
some day, since I don't have any formal CS training.  Take a look: 
http://aduni.org/courses/.

Sorry if you read this far and didn't find anything interesting.

Dave