continuing with my earlier reply
2007/5/29, Vihan Pandey vihanpandey@gmail.com:
- Ubuntu translations does not respect upstream, they are forks. The
Rosetta translations don't go upstream (It is good in one way since the quality of the translations are very poor)Again, do you have a web link that states this?
"However, by studying and taking part in the translation of KDE to Norwegian I have reached something like a tentative, partial and temporary "conclusion". That conclusion, to put it very briefly, is that there is something ... (fishy?) about Launchpad. Now, here is the story that has led me to this ad hoc and provisional conclusion."
http://charismacode.blogspot.com/2007/01/powers-and-repositories-ubuntu-and....
It has the details of the experiment he did.
"Rosetta acts and exists as if it is independent of upstream." - again the same study.
So for me gNewSense, Debian, Fedora ... are much more important than Ubuntu (but again it is better than Windows, Suse ...).
As a Debian user myself, i would rather give Debian to someone wanting to to startup with GNU/Linux, however i don't want them to break their heads on building drivers in their 1st attempt at install. Nor do i want to restrict them by saying it will work only if you have this hardware it works else it won't - in fact that gives them the impression that it is me that is conditioning their freedom :-)
We are almost there to have complete Free Softwares and if we lose now, why did we do it all along? we could all have sit content with proprietary software.
Freedom aspect is not the top priority for Ubuntu (Ubuntu website highlights Free of Cost availability).
agreed.
That is why I said I cannot recommend ubuntu to anyone.
no, i meant - has anyone asked Canonical why is Launchpad not Free Software ?
There has been discussions on this.
Again from the study:
"Over time, it will be open sourced. Right now we compete with Progeny and Red Hat and other companies, so we need to have a unique offering to do so effectively, and that's Launchpad. There are already libraries and tools in LP that we have open sourced on request, especially in Rosetta, the translation infrastructure. ..." Mark Shuttleworth
"... to me, the only logical conclusion to that is that LaunchPad will be free when Canonical/Ubuntu are the only players in the market, or when Canonical's current business model fails and they switch to a different one. Which is fine: if you write some software from scratch, it's your choice what you do with it; but unless you're an underpants gnome or a slashdot commenter, the above doesn't qualify as a "plan" to free LaunchPad." - Anthony Towns, previous debian project leader.
Debian uses only Free Software for its infrastructure and it promises to give back to the community any new tools created.
agreed.
I believe that is a very important quality for a member in the Free Software community. If all they do is take everything in and not give anything back then that is not good for the community.
see the wiki link. It is not just launchpad, the entire data stored in the infrastructure is in proprietary format (Remember the case of bitkeeper).
Well, at the end of the day it got dumped for git and if all you say is true for launchpad it won't last very long either.
is it a prediction?
i would rather give Debian to someone over any other distro ANY day, only one can't do that all the time. If everyone i met was a techie and willing to go the extra mile - yes it works, only life isn't always like that. The normal non techie user DOES count.
I'm working on debian to make it easier for new users, so are many.
Sometimes it not so bad if you hold a child's hand while it is learning to walk :-)
I would love to do it myself rather than depending on someone else.
You will have to use a non-free program to participate in ubuntu development and your contributions will be stored in a proprietary format, you could retrieve it only through that program (remember bitkeeper).
i do and i also remember how it was chucked out and replaced by git.
Do you know why it was chucked out? the bitkeeper guys said, enough you can't use it any more. Here the case is different. Both guys are the same.
Cheers Praveen
http://charismacode.blogspot.com/2007/01/powers-and-repositories-ubuntu-and....
That was an interesting article. Only it seems that Rosetta suffers from a lack of project management in certain categories of packages. Again the simple logic being, if QA does not improve, people will simply not use those packages and if the same becomes true for the distribution, it will simply die.
"Rosetta acts and exists as if it is independent of upstream." - again the same study.
i do agree that it is strange that they are sharing submitted changes with the upstream. That is a self defeating policy as then one is not in sync with the base package. They probably could just submit that to the package maintainers for review and then get back the response and act accordingly. Not doing so is simply a waste of that effort.
We are almost there to have complete Free Softwares and if we lose now, why did we do it all along? we could all have sit content with proprietary software.
Again, isn't it a bit too presumptuous on your part. i mean that literally sounds like a Bushism Either you are with us or against us - that just does not work.
"Over time, it will be open sourced. Right now we compete with Progeny and Red Hat and other companies, so we need to have a unique offering to do so effectively, and that's Launchpad. There are already libraries and tools in LP that we have open sourced on request, especially in Rosetta, the translation infrastructure. ..." Mark Shuttleworth
sounds like he doesn't want Launchpad to goto into the bazaar model as that would drift its focus - namely competing with Progeny and Red Hat.
"... to me, the only logical conclusion to that is that LaunchPad will be free when Canonical/Ubuntu are the only players in the market, or when Canonical's current business model fails and they switch to a different one. Which is fine: if you write some software from scratch, it's your choice what you do with it; but unless you're an underpants gnome or a slashdot commenter, the above doesn't qualify as a "plan" to free LaunchPad." - Anthony Towns, previous debian project leader.
Hmm...
I believe that is a very important quality for a member in the Free Software community. If all they do is take everything in and not give anything back then that is not good for the community.
agreed.
Well, at the end of the day it got dumped for git and if all you say is true for launchpad it won't last very long either.
is it a prediction?
its the law of nature.
I'm working on debian to make it easier for new users, so are many.
cool.
Sometimes it not so bad if you hold a child's hand while it is learning to walk :-)
I would love to do it myself rather than depending on someone else.
as i've said before there is life in the Universe other than techies. In fact not respecting that life qualifies as a kind of Nazism that only people of a certain conditioning can use a particular thing while others can't.
Do you know why it was chucked out? the bitkeeper guys said, enough you can't use it any more. Here the case is different. Both guys are the same.
The case is kind of similar, if your doomsday theory regarding Canonical is true then Ubuntu will be chucked out by many - law of nature.
Regards,
- vihan
2007/5/30, Vihan Pandey vihanpandey@gmail.com:
Sometimes it not so bad if you hold a child's hand while it is learning to walk :-)
I would love to do it myself rather than depending on someone else.
as i've said before there is life in the Universe other than techies. In fact not respecting that life qualifies as a kind of Nazism that only people of a certain conditioning can use a particular thing while others can't.
This is one thing I keep hearing again and again - and it is not a bad thing probably - people who could play the intermediate role - one level above the end user and below the core developers (request features, write documentation, help with localisation, ...) - want to be just end users. The converse is equally true people who think of only from a geek/power user perspective and ignore the need for newbies/newbie friendly software. I just want to remind again that there are roles that many could play other than just being the end user - and we absolutely need those people if we want to achieve the goal of making it newbie friendly.
My perspective is that we don't have to give up on our philosophy to reach out to newbies - we could keep our beliefs firm and reach out to the newbies - may be that path takes longer time (after all we already spent more that 20 years). I absolutely respect your opinion if you think otherwise - I just wanted to warn and think about it and be careful that we have not reached our goal yet - a completely Free Operating System - and if we lose it now - it might be tougher to get back.
Do you know why it was chucked out? the bitkeeper guys said, enough you can't use it any more. Here the case is different. Both guys are the same.
The case is kind of similar, if your doomsday theory regarding Canonical is true then Ubuntu will be chucked out by many - law of nature.
I did it already, and I just wanted to tell why I did it.
Cheers Praveen
My perspective is that we don't have to give up on our philosophy to reach out to newbies - we could keep our beliefs firm and reach out to the newbies - may be that path takes longer time (after all we already spent more that 20 years). I absolutely respect your opinion if you think otherwise - I just wanted to warn and think about it and be careful that we have not reached our goal yet - a completely Free Operating System - and if we lose it now - it might be tougher to get back.
agreed.
The case is kind of similar, if your doomsday theory regarding Canonical is true then Ubuntu will be chucked out by many - law of nature.
I did it already, and I just wanted to tell why I did it.
agreed.
Regards,
- vihan
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Praveen A -
Vihan Pandey