Re: Penguin Computing & LinuxCare

["Aaron D. Turner" <aturner@pobox.com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Micah Yoder wrote:

> "Aaron D. Turner" wrote:
> 
> > Good luck in the job!
> 
> Thanks.  It's actually more likely that I'll be heading to Austin.  But
> we'll see.  Sam said he didn't know when he'd be needing someone else. 
> That's OK - Austin would probably be a more interesting place to live
> anyway...

Texus huh?  
 
> > One thing though...  There's some bad blood between VA and PC (aparently
> > not friendly competitors) and VA asked me to not work a sponsorship deal
> > with PC for the LKB.  Figured I was safe, so I happily said yes.  Oh well.
> > I just love politics (sic), but alas, humans are policitcal animals.
> 
> Crap.  I sort of expected Sam didn't want to hear that.  I guess we're
> OK.  I doubt PC would give us anything we couldn't get from VA.

True.

> But that brings up a point ... do we have a contract with VA for this
> stuff?  What are our obligations exactly?  Can we work out deals with
> other companies, as long as they don't compete with VA?

I have a "contract".  I'll fax it to you if you'd like.  The don't deal
with PC was a gentlemens agreement.  The contract we have with VA
basically says:

1)  The system is on loan.
2)  If VA wants the system back, they have to give us 30 days notice
3)  They can request the system back "in the event that LinuxKB.org
disolves or acts in a manner inconsitant with it's advocacy role in the
Linux community.  Essentially, if LinuxKB.org becomes bad for Linux in
some unforseen way, ... we give the box back."

> Speaking of VA, they have some money on their hands.  A *MILLION*
> dollars for linux.com?????????????

The scary thing is that they weren't the highest bidder. :-)

> > As for Linux Care and the rest of the LKB's in the world, I really don't
> > think they have anything to offer us.  Our model is drastically different
> > from theirs.  Ours is a de-centralized content model, everyone else's is a
> > centralized model.  They want to keep control, we want to give out
> > control.
> 
> They have content.  And they *might* want our DB setup, who knows. 
> Might be worth talking to them.  Maybe not.

It would be nice to get thier content, though most of what they have is
man pages, LDP, etc.  Easy for us to add ourselves.  They won't want our
DB, because it's designed for a de-centralized control structure.
 
> Brings up another point.  Are we gonna be releasing our code and DB
> schema at all?  If we do, it might be a good idea to agree on a license.

Maybe if we find the free time to package it up, but not a priority.   GPL
I would assume we could all agree on.


- -- 
Aaron Turner           | Either which way, one half dozen or another. 
aturner@pobox.com      | Check out the Red Hat Linux User's FAQ Online!
www.pobox.com/~aturner | http://www.pobox.com/~aturner/RedHat-FAQ/
All emails from this account are PGP signed.  Lack of a signature is "bad".
PGP Key fingerprint = FB E1 CE ED 57 E4 AB 80  59 6E 60 BF 45 1B 20 E8



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBNtzUSzM3jpXy1kJtAQENJwP7BdrwKuq4zM5ClS5juOBL1H2SsqVFNmMI
W16cGSERCqt3uLmc2uwORTTeFMlec8kEP57/GiJGtkloAp9/j3ymjysDaq1zINlD
eIduvY302fRHwkmeGOOxB6bPWlLBougDOXwNvukLIYURAdcMeipan01PgiG+r83r
LrL37UIMBAI=
=YYYT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----