Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [semi-OffTopic] UserLinux

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Tom> ~ as an _economic_paradigm_ essay, it's considerate of
    Tom> consumers, but silent on labor issues.

I thought it was quite clear about labor issues.  It's going to employ
lots of "service engineers" in "body shops".  And it's going to depend
on the thousand volunteers mustered by Debian.

The core development activity is $1,000,000 annually, which is _at
most_ 5 developers at $190,000 + $10,000 for facility cost as proposed
in your gnu.misc.discuss post.  No?  And (as Andrew also points out)
they're not really system developers in the usual sense; they're
providing _packaging_ around a system that needs to already be working
pretty well (note the attention Perens pays to widget set consistency).

To be blunt, most of the action is going to be in the *retch* *gag*
*barf* _marketing department_, although they'll be much more honest
than the usual marketroids, maybe even almost real engineers.

And probably most of the engineering budget is going to come already
stuffed in the wallets of engineers detached from the "industry group
that proposes to fund between $1 million or more annually to pay for
the engineering of a fully supported and certified GNU/Linux system,
without a per-seat fee, that meets the specific needs of their
industry."  These guys are _already_ doing the packaging and internal
distribution activities that Perens proposes to provide a host for
outsourcing to.

True, there's plenty of room for more industry groups, as Perens
points out.  But I wonder how far that generosity will scale,
especially as different groups start to have different ideas about the
direction the distro should go.

So AFAICT UserLinux is deliberately about customers, especially
enterprises, and not about engineering, not very much.  That's gonna
come from where it always has.

I think Perens pretty much has hit it on the money.  This will work.
Even if the generosity doesn't scale to much more than $10 million, I
think the first tranch will succeed wildly from the point of view of
Perens's industry group, while doing zilch for the kinds of things
you're interested in.  But it will still be a big kick for GNU/Linux
market penetration, and probably attract lots (scores) of new
developers to Debian, not to mention employing bunches of service
engineers.

I will say I do see a silver lining for you (Tom) personally, though.
Perens is probably talking about several thousand field engineers in
scores or hundreds of "service companies" over the next 5--10 years.
They're going to (according to his blueprint) be integrating their own
"value added" to the core UserLinux distribution depending on their
customer bases, and most are presumably going to be willing
to/actively interested in sharing much of the new value.  They are
_not_ going to be able to manage that task sanely with CVS.  And
Perens already likes arch....

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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