Bruce Perens was in Denver yesterday and today, and I had the chance to hang out with him in the hotel bar last night. He had just given a talk at the Colorado Linux Users and Enthusiasts (CLUE) meeting. The subject of Fedora came up and I thought this might be relevant here. Bruce cautioned that, if anyone posted what he had to say, to be certain we emphasize that HE HAS NOT THOUGHT ALL OF THIS OUT YET and so his thoughts and opinion are still subject to change. OK, re-read that paragraph just in case... Good! Now - He did have some interesting comments about the future of Linux, OOo 1.4, some ideas he has for Debian and how they relate to Fedora. First, he clearly favors Debian (so surprises there), however not necessarily for the reasons most people think. It has a lot more to do with full community ownership as opposed to opening up the possibility of companies taking their ball and going home. With respect to OOo, he said its success is critical to desktop Linux. He then noted version 1.1 provides 100% of the features 80% of the population needs, and we should all do everything we can to get a copy into the hands of everyone we know. Give them the Windows version if they run Windows, but get it to them. We discussed maybe marketing it as an upgrade to a free office suite. He also said the top priority for OOo has to be font support. Ugly font substitutions and those venerable question marks due to missing glyphs is definitely OOo's biggest obstacle in his mind. He pointed out most end-users see this as incompatibility with MS Office formats and that, even though it really isn't, perception is reality. Bruce expressed strong interest in delivering a community Linux project that has a *lot* of the same features and qualities that both Debian and the Fedora Project have, but also said the last thing we really need is yet another Linux distro. When I asked him what his issues were with Fedora, he said that really he had no issues with it other than that it is "dominated by Red Hat". He said if it were dominated by Red Hat and about 100 other companies, he thinks it would be great, and also seemed to be tossing around the idea that there might be a way to link up and cooperate between the Fedora Project and what he had in mind for doing with Debian - providing a base core of Linux that is fully owned by the community, available at no cost, and something that big companies would work together on. Again, he emphasized he hasn't worked all of this out yet and I am going from my own interpretation of the conversation. He noted that Red Hat has historically done the right thing when it comes to the community and he saw no reason why this would change, at least in the near term. But he also cautioned that every company has a "Multiple Personality Disorder" that requires the community always remain vigilant. That MPD is caused by the fact that a company's first responsibility is to its shareholders. He summarized it up by saying he wasn't really worried about what Red Hat is today, but he is concerned about what Red Hat *could* become tomorrow if the values of the company leadership changed. That, he said, is what happened to SCO - a good Open Source citizen that, through leadership changes, "became ferrule". He was definitely less positive about SUSE, by the way. The other criticism he had was that RHEL AS requires companies not disclose the contents of service bulletins that come from their support contracts. He said, "That means there could be a service bulletin about my software and I won't get to see it." He also said that one of Debian's biggest benefits is that it keeps companies like Red Hat honest - just in case that MPD crops up. Anyway, that's a short synopsis of what I remember over a very good, late-night Honey Wheat brew and a plate of hotel Chicken Fingers. Hopefully, this will be useful to someone here. Sounds like Bruce has certainly left the door open to cooperate with the Fedora Project, albeit somewhat cautiously. Cheers, Chris -- ==================================== "If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' someone else's dog around." --Cowboy Wisdom
