Blah-blah, blibbety-blab.
I feel in part responsible for raising the rhetorical pitch of the
discussion. Wherefore, these remarks.
I agree, and have said before, that Ben and Lenz and many others are
doing a wonderful service to their fellow-users.
I agree, and have said before, that SuSE makes a wonderful
distribution and seems to be a good corporate citizen.
I agree, and have said before, that I am happy to help SuSE make a
profit by buying the boxed set if SuSE's standards are maintained.
I like YaST, and certainly did not intend to fuel speculation about
its disappearance (though as someone pointed out, most of us never
said that it would disappear). However, Cliff has pointed to reasons
why we might suspect it will be less than fully supported in the
future. And indeed, it is hard to imagine SuSE committing the
resources to maintaining two different config. tools. There are ways
for them acceptably not to do this, but in the absence of full
transparency about their intentions, SuSE expects us to go on faith,
which I prefer not to do in this case.
Nothing of the above contradicts my distinct impression, as I have
also said before, that the marketing gorgon is starting to feed on
SuSE. There are whiffs of it here and there. Nothing conclusive, but
there's no reason for us not to voice our opinions pre-emptively if
it's something we care about. If that's what SuSE thinks they have to
do to survive, so be it, but we're entitled to express our opinion
about it -- so SuSE can make their choice informed. Although they
don't monitor this list, so it may all be moot.
Corvinus
--
Corvin Russell