The BeOS Journal and BeGroovy have posted a rather long inteview with BeUnited.org‘s Simon Gauvin.
The BeOS Journal Interviews Simon Gauvin
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Good Interview can’t wait for part 2
Thanks Travis.
It’s always interesting when Nutcase and I get together on something… Weird things just happen.
Thanks for the notice OSnews, and thanks for the interview TBJ and Begroovy!
I dont want to be a bitch, but hasnt “OBOS printserver BETA annoncenment” more newsvalue then what David Reid thinks about OBOS?
Just a Qestion!
Hey.. I love the site, so.. no hard feelings…
Regards!
/Konard
well konrad you can Expect to be blown away by part two of that article ;D
We still have things in store at BU.
Btw. I must say i love the begroovy interview with Jean louis DeGausse (JLG)
that nutcase did.. especially the “btw how are your nipples doing” part..
Simon: Well, yes it’s open, but you need approval from Sun to distribute it.
And to contribute back to the source base, which makes the difference between being an official porter, and someone with anonymous access.
First LGPL project that requires permision to fork. Wow. Wonder if it would go down the FSF’s Legal Hall of Fame (or Shame, whateva) 🙂
Simon: Sure, let me ask you a question, is IEEE a business?
Funny he should ask that, it is one of the few standards body that allow royalty demands by patent holders….
Nice interview though….
The way I understand it, one of the purposes of BU is the protection of OBOS.
[The following assumes that when OBOS eventually arrives, it will be a very attractive alternative to Windows. Commercially attractive.]
If OBOS were GPL’d, it would be very much protected from some well-funded corporate interest to come along and fork it, introduce anti-free closed proprietary changes, market the hell out of it, marginalize the original devs, draw users away from the “one true OBOS”, and so on.
It’s not GPL’d (for very good reasons explained many times by various OBOS grand poobahs), so (IMHO) this sort of scenario could conceivably happen. I think that what’s supposed to keep it from happening is BU. If they maintain themselves as the center of the OBOS-universe, they can protect the community’s interests simply by not endorsing the sort of fork described above.
beunited.org’s overall aim is not protection of OBOS it is in fact to allow the creation of standards between all Open Source BeOS Operating Systems, currently that means BlueEyedOS, OBOS, Leonardo, Cosmoe and Zeta.
The “protection” of OBOS is not an aim at all, rather it is the aim of beunited.org to make it so that it would be commercially inviable for an OSBOS distributer to deviate from a proposed set of standards that will hopefully create true inter-operability between all versions.
Of course any commercial company can still use any of the OBOS code in any product of theirs, be that proprietary or not – the “protection” of OBOS code is impossible with the license agreement chosen by OpenBeOS…all beunited.org can do is make it beneficial for all Open BeOS OS developers to adhere to standards.
Good to see you both keeping your news-sites in the “must read” status 😉
I should wait for part two of this interview before saying anything. And, please know, I’m not trying to be a troll – this is simply my understanding of the interview, whether I’m dumb or not. To me, it seems like Simon has perfected the art of talking without saying anything. I come away, so far, feeling that BeUnited.org is meaningless and actually serves no purpose. I say this because, to me, his answers to questions are mostly vague and often have no clear meaning or are based in avoidance. I hope I have misunderstood what he said or am too obtuse to latch on to what he says, but I don’t get it. And, I mean no offense to anyone.
Jay,
If you have any specific question, please ask. I would be happy to clarify anything for you.
Simon.
Thank you, Simon. I should have, as I said, waited until the other part of the interview. LOL, if I don’t “get it” by then, I will ask. Thanks!
Simon, I’m thread-hopping <g>. I see over in the BeOS Replacement thread how passionate you are about the importance of standards. I agree! The interview confused me because I was having trouble getting how BeUnited exists for standards but doesn’t actually, well…standardize standards, for lack of a better way of putting it. I’m sorry about what I said – I just didn’t get it.
It’s simple really. No one person or organization can make standards. The standards must be agreed to by the members. When B.E.O.S., OpenBeOS, Cosmoe, Leonardo, and Zeta all agree to handle an extension of the BeOS API in a certain way, Be United will publish the “STANDARD” for this extension. Be United is not the maker of the standard, but they are the vehicle that allows the developers to discuss and agree to a standard. They are also the “Official” repository of the standards agreed to by the community.
There have been no Standards implimented yet, just a process and a place to meet and a repository for the agreements. For BeUnited to say ” This is the way it will work” to the developer community would not be appropriate. What they are doing is saying ” This is the way we agreed that it will work” and documenting those agreements and the process to change them.
Jay,
No problem, I’m glad you got it =)
bbjimmy,
Could not have said it better myself =)
Thanks
Well put!
Thanks Simon!!