"I came away from the second annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit with mixed feelings. I mean, it's hard not to support the group that pays Linus Torvalds to spend his time continuing to lead the poster-boy project for free and open source software. But at the same time, those golden chains are my biggest concern about the Linux Foundation."
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Member since:2005-07-06
That's the membership :
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Members
Where do you see ZaReason and iycc membership in there ? Attending a summit is not the same thing as being a contributive recognized and paying member. Otherwise Microsoft would be a member too as they tend to attend every GNU/Linux event ...
"Then he might have ... people from ISVs and OEMs."
No , he talked about the summit members agenda available to everyone :
https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/collaboration/program
He also went into detail between the disconnection between what was discussed and what's needed. Sure you talked about/worked on some of it , the developer always do and there is nobody who as a problem with developers.
The problem is with say example Dell who will put immense ressource on this :
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/12/04/36984.aspx
But not the same on this for normal desktop user's :
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/tags/Linux/default.aspx
And when you go looking on Dell.com
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks?c=us&c...
the laptop operating system choice is from the pull down menu :
Vista
XP
You have to know to go down and select the Open-Source PCs to be offered some models.
It's the same for all of the recognised members.
- Truth be told what is called *desktop* by the Linux foundation and it's members is really workstation.
Edited 2008-04-16 20:42 UTC
Member since:2005-07-07
One does not need to be a member to work on advancing Desktop Linux.
And companies like ZaReason and IYCC certainly do work on that.
https://www.linux-foundation.org/events/collaboration/program
Right and when you look at the second and third day, there is section called "Desktop Architects Meeting 5" linked to http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Desktop_April_Summit_2008_Agenda
Two days full of desktop related program.
So you are now agreeing that there was infact quite some desktop related things going on throughout the Summit?
It's the same for all of the recognised members.
Dell, HP, Lenovo and others are offering Linux on Desktop and Laptop computers now, which gets hardware component vendors working on Linux drivers.
Truth be told what is called *desktop* by the Linux foundation and it's members is really workstation.
No, they mean desktop, as in coporate office desktop, e.g. the kind of workload Peugot has on the 20000 machines they are migrating to SLED.
One of the case studies - Whitfield School - is about a successful rollout of Linux based laptops to highschool students.
Linux Foundation members like IBM might not work directly on common desktop items, but making Lotus Notes available for Linux is often the cornerstone of a comporate desktop adoption, which in turn gets members like Novell/Red Hat work on common desktop items like Network-Manager.
Not to forget that Linux Foundation funds, provided by its members, have been used to cover travel and accomodation of summit attendiees from several free software projects.
Member since:
2005-07-07
Take your previous desktop vendor listing , none of them are part of the Linux foundation...
There was a representative of at least ZaReason attending the Linux Collaboration Summit, as well as representatives from local IT companies selling Linux products such as http://www.iycc.biz/
Is point is simple to summarize , he looked at the conference subjects and can see that desktop is not being discuss...
Then he might have missed that there were two days of Desktop Architects Meeting, bringing together representatives of free software projects like GNOME and KDE as well as people from ISVs and OEMs.
It allowed us to get up to date on what others are currently working on, identify areas where we can improve sharing of technology, exchanging contacts for better coordination or work, etc.
I agree with Joe Barr that not allowing media people looks a bit weird, but unfortunately it is not unheard of that journalists report things out of context or using skewed interpretations to generate reader interests.
While Joe Barr would likely not do this, the pure chance of something like this to happen would restrict the quality of information during the meetings as attendees would be more cautious to address problems, etc