[clue-talk] A Significantly Better Mousetrap, was Re: [clue-tech] Mephis linux

[Nate Duehr]

rex evans wrote:
> Nate,
> 
> Try to see the glass half full.
> 
> If there are some specific things that need fixing,
> try create a project and attract people to work on it.
> 
> If you keep a very negative view of the work-product
> and the workers, you will not attract workers.
> 
> Rex

There's an assumption here that I'm interesting in fixing Linux's 
problems and providing free work to do so.  I'm not.   :-)

No offense, but I like to get paid for working.  I tend to "make the 
world a better place" via other means, other than computers -- other 
than perhaps spending a lot of personal time doing "tech support" for 
people for free.

I have no desire to "attract workers".  Perhaps the "management staff" 
of a distro might be interested in such things, I'm not.

The glass half full or half empty isn't the issue at hand, the state of 
Linux is what it is, without need for spin.  It either works better than 
commercial offerings, or it doesn't.

In my OPINION, Linux desktop managers don't make for good desktop -- so 
I guess to me "it doesn't" is the answer... but others disagree with me.

That's fine.  I don't mind.  But I'm certainly not interested in fixing 
it.  If I ever find myself so broke that $100 for an OS is too much, I 
might feel differently then, but I also probably wouldn't bother with 
anything other than sending patches upstream if I ever fixed anything 
that was bothering me about the free OS.

As a server, Linux is great, but it's mostly due to the efforts of the 
server daemon's developers.  Apache, Exim, MySQL, and others are good 
stuff.  Having a free-as-in-beer OS underneath is just a "nice to have" 
thing.

I could care less about the GPL... if Linux were to disappear, I'd just 
go find BSD-licensed stuff, or use BSD itself... or maybe even the 
free-to-download Solaris 10... ZFS is pretty nice.  I'll DEFEND the 
GPL-licensed stuff and respect the wishes of the GPL-licensed software 
from the authors, of course... but it's not a religion I care to follow.

ESR makes more sense to me than RMS, so to speak.  RMS can't even hold a 
real-world software job... he has to work in Academia to feed himself 
and his ideals.  Emacs isn't paying his bills.  Nice work if you can get 
it, but pretty far from the reality most of us live under in the real 
world.  His rants are fun to read, but similar to other "pundits" 
they're loaded with things that simply aren't practical in any way.

Nate