Re: Proposal

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> 
> Well, Jean, do you expect that Red Hat is going to put SEUL in a big
> box and sell it there in France? I have not seen any sign that they
> want anything to do with you.
> 

Do you think I am naive?  Of course they will not.  And I don't care.

I ahve already exposed the plan but let's retry.

What's wrong in present distributions?  They are built by people who
were _teached_ Unix (commercial Unix) in universities.  They don't
know what is to have to do difficult system administration when you
are still looking at the book to know how in the hell to copy a file.
They seem to ignore than there is something intermediary between LAN
and no networking at all: dial-up access.  They ship overkills like
INN.  They push people to learn VI (why in the hell?  Emacs is in
every Linux distribution and I don't want to ever again dealing with
AIX).  They think than LaTeX is enough and don't care to include a
Wysywyg WP.  That makes than too often the software or the way it is
confihured in distributions is hard for people at home or user
hostile.  There is alternative software but it is hard to find in the
Internet jungle and you have to know it exists: a beginner does not
know about it.


The idea is to create a site where beginners and specially those
Linuxing at home would find software more fit for them.  They would
also find at times the same software they have in the distrib but
tuned for a home user not a corporate or university user.  That
software would be well packaged and not intermixed with the dozens of
compileers or web servers you find in mirror sites.  This way people
would know where to look.  If nothing more happens but if some users
find it useful, if some of them don't return to DOS because they found
what they needed in my site I will already be happy.  Notice than this
phase requires relatively few programming and fits with the sociology
of the people in the list: most of them were burned when trying Linux,
programmers didn't got burned so they didn't come that is the reason
they were scarce in this list.

Then go public, try to lighten a spark so some _programmers_ get
interested to work on user friendliness and in people who have to
learn Unix the hard way and try to make replacements of the RH config
tools when those are weak.  If some of the software developped finds
its way in conventional distribs be it RedHat, Debian or whatever I
will be happy.  Same thing if some software collected at the site
exits of undeserved obscurity and finds its way in distributions.
Same thing if users comments about the configured software they found
thanks to Indepedence makes RH or Debian pay more attention to users
needs.  You see I am not particularly eager to see at my nearest
retail store a big box with "Independence Linux" in big shinny
letters.  What I am eager is see the Linux distributions fix the brain
damages they have and who make Linux unnecessarily difficult: these
brain damages harm Linux expansion.

Phase three: If RH by this time has still not fixed the problems
remaining in their install try to make an alternative one.  The user
would download our alternative install and use it but our install
would use the RH CD.  If it helps some people and that makes them stay
in Linux I will be happy.  If RedHat inspires of our install and fixes
its own I will be happy, if other distribs get ideas from it and for
instance fix the networking part I will be happy.

About the choice of RH: they seem to be the dominant distribution, and
they have more beginners than say Debian.  So for now concentrating on
helping people using RH or even Slackware is more useful than helping
people using Debian.


Successive phases no longer depend on us: to reach end users you haver
to be distributed large scale on commercial channels.  In addition if
distributions fix their installs having Independence on the market is
not particularly useful.  If they don't perhaps voice of mouth will
have the distrib edited, perhaps not.  What I think is than piggy
backing gives better chances to reach end users than a conventional
distribution.

Now notice than I do not need to have Indepedence Linux on the stands.
Completing the softwre repsitory will be enough to be useful.  If I
get distribs paying attention at what us users would want (ie they get
ideas and/or software) and improving, then Independence would have
been useful.  By the way here is a little remembrance from when I
learned statistics: when analyzing customer satisfaction be careful
about the structural effects: if you interrogate Linuxers about a
feature don't forget than the people who fled to DOS due to that
feature are not in the sample, nor the people who never came because
they heard about that feature.

A lot of things don't depend on me: gertting programmers and a
commercial publisher.  Therefore I try to make something useful from
the start and who would depend only on me and in the people I have at
hand.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

The worthy man is the one who would drink muddy water if such were the
water of truth.


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