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
I agree with all Corvin says below. Let's be clear. There are a huge number of distributons. I have tried out most of the major ones. Most of the major ones you can download ISO CD images for and burn your own CD, or pay a few dollars to someone to do it for you quite legally. This is not the case with Suse, because of Yast which is not GPL. As for the series "pay" that doesn't have to be on such a disk - if that is also the problem. I (and presumably all of you) have decided to pay for the distro - because it is good. However that puts we (as users) in a much more commercial arrangement with Suse. To that end I feel they have different responsibilities than say Debian do. One of these is to pay respect to the investment people have made in them. Yast is a pinacle of this investment. It is perfectly legitimate to nag Suse about it - and know the answer, at least in my case, before I pay for 7.1 ... onwards. The amazing thing about Linux/GNU, as you can see from the type of questions and the origin of the questioner, is that it is used by everyone from Hobbyist's to Businesses. This spectrum (which is possibly even more true of FreeBSD) is what is revolutionary. This means that everyone should have their voice heard by commercial concerns like Suse. if they become "box shifters" they will loose the good will and efforts of the non-corporate users (who may in any case be in much more of a position of influence where they work than Suse realise). It is not necessary to go "Tra La La" and say how wonderful Suse is all the time. We know it is good, that is why we use it and participate in this list. I for one, want it to remain good. Cliff On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 12:24:35PM -0500, Corvin Russell wrote:
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
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq
On January 10, 2001 06:18 pm, Cliff Sarginson wrote:
I agree with all Corvin says below. Let's be clear. There are a huge number of distributons. I have tried out most of the major ones. Most of the major ones you can download ISO CD images for and burn your own CD, or pay a few dollars to someone to do it for you quite legally. This is not the case with Suse, because of Yast which is not GPL. As for the series "pay" that doesn't
ftp.suse.com So what's on the FTP site then? What's on this machine that was installed via FTP? I've even got an Infomagic 6pack that includes SuSE along with three other distributions. So unless somethings changed since I bought that years ago the only thing you don't get is the pay series that SuSE doesn't own the copyright to. Sorry but the only problem with downloading SuSE is that the mirrors are sometimes slow to get it other then that it's pretty easy to get IMHO. Nick
participants (3)
-
Cliff Sarginson
-
Corvin Russell
-
Nick Zentena