“Basically the operation is shutting down.” With these words, Tal Danzig, the owner and technical lead for the Libranet distribution, quietly announced in his blog on November 25 the news that users had been dreading ever since his announcement two months ago that the distribution was “restructuring.” Danzig did not rule out the possibility of reviving the distribution after his return in February 2006 from a three-month trip to Israel. Yet, for now, the announcement seems to mark the end of one of the oldest and best-loved Debian-based distributions. On Distrowatch, Libranet’s status is now marked as “dormant.” On June 1st, 2005, Jon Danzig, co-founder of Libranet and father of Tal Danzig passed away.
The distribution was a success because of both Jon and Tal and it will certainly be missed. The level of service they provided to their customers was incredible and was certainly a feature of the product. It would be nice if one of the other Linux companies would pick Tal. He has a lot of experience that the community would benefit from.
Very sad.
Dave
Libranet is the only Linux distro that I have actually bought, and I will remember Libranet as one of the most shining examples of the open source model. Not because it changed the world, or because it became the killer-OS.
But simply because it showed what a few dedicated people can do, when building upon other dedicated peoples work, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel themselves.
Why don’t they try to find someone to help them out? The community is large enough, there surely must be people willing to help!
There seems to be a difference of opinions between the 2 developers, Tal and Daniel. Daniel believes that software should be free in both meanings of the word. Tal doesn’t seem ready to agree. I am pretty sure Tal badly needs a vacation, he is only 22 and he must have gone through a terrible time: his father was getting worse all the time and eventually died, and in the meantime he had to look after Libranet.
That would be nice Thom, but I don’t know how many of the Libranet community can code etc. I don’t think documentation would be a problem. But it all comes down to what Tal wants to do. I don’t think he wants to run the financial side of the business etc. Can’t say I blame him. Then there’s the marketing/sales side of things etc. That really needs people close at hand, located in Vancouver, Canada etc.
Dave
I have written Tal twice to this end and have gotten no reply.
Me too? I offered to purchase the company or the product.
IMHO, his decision to walk away is stupid, personally irresponsible and selfish. IOW, it is the decision of a 22 year old.
He has my sympathy and pity.
Quote: “IMHO, his decision to walk away is stupid, personally irresponsible and selfish. IOW, it is the decision of a 22 year old.”
Oh, so now your needs for Libranet outweight Tal’s needs? Doesn’t that make you hypocritical and selfish?
Your views on what Tal should do are yours, but only just that. In the end, it’s Tal’s business. If you love Libranet so much, and you’re so desperate to continue Libranet, and possibly GPL to code, then why not buy the business and run it yourself? It’s easy to say one thing, but a lot harder to do it.
Dave
Don’t the door trip you on the way out…
what a dick !! i hope you step in a nice big pile of dog shit today.
Libranet is great. I’ve sometimes found it was the only distro that I could get to work when others had too many unresolvable dependencies.
that was not a nesesary comment. i dont use libranet anymore, went to true debian. but even so, it is a very wonderfull distro with some great features and will be very missed.
i do agree it should b opened to the comunity to ask for support… find sumone who wants to take it in the original direction the founder was going in.
Libranet was also the first distribution I paid money for. The 2.8.1 release with adminmenu was such a smooth machine to admin.
Unfortunatly I decided to upgrade to 3.0 to late, and purchases were already closed. I have sinced tried Fedora, Ubuntu and have finally settled into debian proper.
But, boy do I miss Libranet. The community forums are some of the nicest that exist in the *nix world. I’m sad to see the distro go dormant.
There have been some debates on the Libranet forum about trying to convince Tal to opensource the admin menu. I would love to see that. however, I can see that they may want to keep it for now in case they resurrect the project.
I only hope that Tal does find the support he needs to keep this alive. It is truly a fantastic distribution.
I’ve never had the change to play with adminmenu, but I hear its fantastic for newbies to play in the kernel recompile department.
Here’s to seeing a OSS release of the adminmenu
gpl adminmenu and the installer and release 3.0 into the wild…turn it over to the community, let others make something out of it…. something please
or at least just go back to selling 3.0….
Well this might be kind of mean of me but it was his fathers creation and certainly it should live on…. as a memorial or tribute or whatever…
Give it to the community and ask that it always mention his father and the history and story of libranet. Let his creation, his gift live on…. possibly forever!
UNIX sux anyway, too many distributions.
And AmigaOS 3.9 has far superior performance and usability.
“UNIX sux anyway, too many distributions. ”
What an awesome way to show your complete and utter ignorance.
“And AmigaOS 3.9 has far superior performance and usability.”
This just cements the ignorance even further.
not that I would want to see it happen but if linspire was smart this is the one they would buy and make a nice distro they could sell. Make it a second product – linspire-geek edition, no CNR or anything… a REAL linux distro from linspire…
Damn fine product!!!!
After they shut down the business when somebody on the team died, I figured it was only a matter of time before they went under. When the whole business grinds to a hault as a result of a personal tragedy involving one person, that’s not exactly the kind of company I’m going to invest heavily in.
I’m not saying they’re wrong for doing what they did, just that when you’re in the business of selling something as complex as an operating system, you really need more resources than that.
Well that is the cool thing about libranet…it IS a business but then again it ISNT a business. It is the only ‘business’ that has ever seen a dollar from my wallet, and I prefer to call it a group or something but not a business, it would never be that impersonal and bureaucratic….
There’s lots of pros and cons to family run businesses. You’re right in that the death of a key member can cause them to fall appart. But on the other hand, family run businesses can survive through several generations too, and sometimes they make very good products you would never see from the big companies.
Personally I’ve been impressed with some things from family businesses and independent developers. Right now I’m hoping to be an independent game developer myself.
The admin-menu was certainly nice, but it was basically a GTK front-end to a bunch of perl scripts. It’s definitely not the “right” way to do system administration.
Instead, people should just take some of the ideas from adminmenu and turn them into programs for the gnome-system-tools project, or something similar.
well it may not be the right way in your opinion but it sure did work and work well…. never forget the first time I clicked my way thru compiling a kernel to fix my crappy intel video problem…
Yes, a lot of it is simply a front end to a debian tool or a perl script but it worked and worked well for me.
Just enough hand holding! Not too much, not too little. Best thing was I could always do it the ‘hard’ way or the adminmenu way…. I was free to learn as much or take a shortcut…and sometime the shortcut is damn fine…
“The admin-menu was certainly nice, but it was basically a GTK front-end to a bunch of perl scripts.”
“people should just take some of the ideas from adminmenu and turn them into programs for the gnome-system-tools project”
gnome-system-tools is the same thing; a GTK+ frontend to a bunch of Perl scripts.
linux ‘business’ that has seen a dollar from my wallet
Though I’ve never tried Libranet, it seems like a damn fine distro, and the Adminmenu has received heaps of praise. It would be a pitty to see it go to waste.
It would be great if one of the the other Debian derivatives, that are actual businesses like Mepis, Xandros, or Linspire, purchase Libranet, and bring on Tal as an employee/developer, and absorb in the Adminmenu, and various other Libranet goodies (the installer was supposed to be great, and same with hd detection).
Its a shame
libranet was the best. And was the only 100% debain compatable os around hopefully tal will gpl whats left of ot and let its legacy live on.
Michael Robertson – where are you when someone actually NEEDS you….
Buy this thing, turn it into Linspire True Geek edition instead of that newbie version you’ll sell….PLEASE
Jake Tate has spoken
I gootta go email him and KC if they dont still have me blocked 
Forget Michael Robertson… what about Mark Shuttleworth?
Think Libranet administration/installer on Ubuntu.
that would be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet…good point
I was just trying to help out Linspire and give them a good true geek version to sell… oh well
I’m very disgusted with some of the comments that have graced this article. And, they’re from anonymous posting trolls again. osnews.com took a step in the right direction by banning anonymous posting, but then did a backflip when they all bitched and complained about it. If you can’t get off your rear end and register an account, then you shouldn’t be posting. It’s as simple as that.
If osnews.com can’t implement things the right way, I’ll continue to “bitch” about it, as you so succinctly put it.
I’m far from impressed.
Dave
i agree
It is funny “morgorth”.
You are always a “free as in freedom” zealot until someone posts someone disagrees with you. Then you become a “do what I say dammit!” facist. I see the same shit on the libranet forum.
stfu. No one cares about your opinions.
” someone posts someone disagrees with you.”
Should read :
someone disagrees with you.
Quote: “You are always a “free as in freedom” zealot until someone posts
someone disagrees with you.”
Comments like:
“Don’t the door trip you on the way out…”
and
“UNIX sux anyway, too many distributions.
And AmigaOS 3.9 has far superior performance and usability.”
and
“what a dick !! i hope you step in a nice big pile of dog shit today.”
are trollish. Furthermore, they are all posted by anonymous cowards. I
stand by my comments earlier that they are disgraceful comments and should be
removed. It’s not a matter of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of the
comments are off topic, and innappropriate. If they’d been on topic, I’d not
have said anything.
As to “stfu”, it’s actually, “stuff you”. At least, can you please endeavour
to learn English?
Quote: “Then you become a “do what I say dammit!” facist”
No. I’ve made a fair comment – the comments above that I’ve quoted show that
we still have trollish comments being made. And they are still just as bad
as before, and just as prolific. And furthermore, they are still being made
by anonymous cowards. Statistically, it was proven that the level of trolls
dropped dramatically when anonymous posting was disabled. osnews.com rolled
over and re-enabled it simply because some people whinged about being too
lazy to create an account.
Quote: “I see the same shit on the libranet forum.”
Good for you! Tell me, have you contributed much to the Libranet forums, or
just sat back in the shadows? I find no posts for user ‘Innova’. Of course,
you could be registered under another name.
Quote: “No one cares about your opinions.”
Well, I hate to prove you wrong, but berzerko replied to my post, and agreed
with me. So, it’s no longer ‘no one’ as you are trying to implicate, but
someone.
Dave
“As to “stfu”, it’s actually, “stuff you”. At least, can you please endeavour to learn English? ”
———-
Actually I think stfu in net slang is ‘shut the f–k up’. Personally I agree with you Dave. Some of these posts just sound like angst ridden 12yr olds hoping to get a rise. They should be deleted & Anonymous posting disabled. Just my 2 cents on the subject.
On topic I’m sorry to hear the tragedy of Jon’s fathers passing. I hope the best for the family. Libranet was a great distro & I think most people who use unix would agree that thanks are in order for the hard work they did.
gee, dave because you rant and rave about anonymous comments being cowardish and trollish, i am convinced that you are the forum god. i will feel guilty sometime next week for posting my comment about the pile of dog shit. be careful and watch where you step, huh ?
why would banning anonymous matter? yes there are ugly comments…and they are easily ignored… stop feeding them, just ignore them….
I just dont bother registering, whats wrong with that…
whats wrong with not registering ?
nothing
but why should anyone pay any attention to anything you ever say ?
You might come on here to cause abuse, or you might have a valid point, it doesn’t matter, if it says anonymous, it is “usually” a ruibbish post.
If you did register, we would get to know who you are, and what you think like, using a history of your posts.
If you stay anonymous, you might be the next Einstein, or Ghandi, and give us loads of wisdom…. but we would miss it, as you are anonymous and therefore someone who gets less attention paid to them
Is there any way to relegate anonymous posts to the end of the reply Queue? That way we could read down to the first such post and then just skip over the rest.
As for Libranet, I have used it for some time now and it is the only commercial distro I have kept on paying for past the first time I tried it. It will eventually share a spot on my shelf with BeOS as one of the OS’s I will regret passing.
Bill
so someone has to be einstein, ghandi, morgoth, or a reaver for you to take a insterest in what they say? I prefer my point to be taken on its face value, not on who I am or who knows me or anything I have said in the past… If the only wisdom you ever gain is from some important person then I have to say you have probably missed a lot…
Why should anyone pay attention to what I say… I dont expect them to! You think people really pay attention to what you say simply because your made up name is posted along with it. SO if einstein said we should all have bed-head and never comb it because it is a ssure sign of intelligence, you’ll would trash all your combs and never comb your hair simply because someone you knew said it…. silly really! Just another example of why I think this world is a mess…
Yes dave, you are right! Happy now! Those are ALL troll comments…. When you went to school and sat in a class of 30 kids around your age wasnt there always some trolls in there, the kids that had to run their mouth about everything, mostly to get attention, to be recognized. Those kids were craving attention. It always made me wonder how ignored they were at home to have to seek attention by being obnoxious. Did they know of no other way to gain some attention? Well, this is the exact same thing…nothing more, nothing less! Put thousands of people on the net and you will get everything the world has to offer….so what! Easily overlooked and ignored…
btw – raver31 you kind of discredited your whole argument when you responded to my post since I am anonymous
this is not trollish….
Lets have a end to it! I wish he would just state his intentions and be done with it. We are restructuring…I am going on vacation…its over unless….. blah..blah…blah…
Just say it is dead and be done with it or decide to let it live and be done with it. Nothing is worse than watching something flounder… Soemthing hanging over your head will always be hanging over your head unless you just make a decision. Go on vacation with it hanging over your head and I bet you will see it hanging over your head the whole time….
Whenever I find myself kind of lost I just remember this line “Get busy living or get busy dying” usually that makes me realize that I am living and need to get on with it….
I, too, used Libranet for a little while. Unfortunately, when you have a small shop that is producing the distribution, the viability isn’t as great because if something happens to even one of the members of the team the whole distribution is in jeopardy.
That is why I now use distros that are supported by a large development base as well as a large community base.
Libranet will be missed, however.
It’s sad to see any great project end, even sadder under these circumstances. My heart goes out to everyone involved, hopefully they will be able to grieve, recover and maybe even return to it.
as a show of good faith to the readers of os news, i am now going to share my uneducated and worthless opinions with my new registered name. and, as always, watch out where you step, dog shit is everywhere…especially here in rdj, brasil.
Thank you for taking the time to register. I, like many readers, prefer to respond to someone who has. While I may not agree with your comments I applaud your decision to register. Long live Libranet…
Spent some time in Brasilia, (I won’t say hoe many years ago that was), and got to spend a few days in Rio. While I didn’t see any doggie-doo I did see some fantastic views. You live in a beautiful country.
Bill
yeah, there are some excellent views. but, up here on the north side of the city where i am living there are plenty of stray dogs doing those wild and crazy stray dog things. getting back to the subject of libranet, i never used it, and therefore i know nothing. but i do like xandros and pclinux. the man who wrote the initial negative comment about the door was what inspired me to think in terms of doggie business.
troooollllll
Altho I haven’t used libranet for a while, it was the distro that made me switch. The distro was great, but the community was even better.
I am saddened for the family loss and pain that Tal and his family have experienced. While I never met Tal or Jon, they were open to my questions, and were always helpful, personable, and friendly.
Adminmenu is clearly an extraordinary piece of work. The easy installation, including proprietary video drivers, development packages, and hardware config are outstanding for all of my desktops and laptops.
LN’s community continues to be an excellent source for help, both on their forums and on IRC’s #libranet, even as there is a significant level of uncertainty for future development and support.
I wish only the best for Tal and his family.
Clint
Libranet was indeed a fine distro. But there really are too damn many distros out there. Linux’s greatest strength is proving to be it’s greatest weakness. Everyone is off working on thier own versions of this or that when they need to consolidate thier efforts if Linux is ever to stand a chance on the desktop.
if someone was replying to anonymous then that would kind of break the whole stream of thought wouldnt it….
I got a idea, how about anytime you see ANONYMOUS you just skip and ignore that post…. GOTCHA! here you are reading my post….
Dick
I find there’s a lot of hype about Libranet. I briefy tried version 2.7 and it worked very well indeed but most of the work has not been done by the Danzigs, father and son. It’s been done by the community.
If, for instance, the material recognition of LN 3 is so much better, it’s because of the work of Red Hat developers on Kudzu, which Klaus Knopper and friends brought further. This work has brought a whole new era in terms of material recognition. What did the Danzig contribute in exchange? As far as I know, strictly nothing.
Some dumbbells believe that if LN installs Nvidia drivers, Adobe Acrobat and other closed source software whereas Debian doesn’t, it’s because Debian programmers are lazy.
As we all know, it’s rather because they want to pressure companies to provide open source software and drivers. They want to make you think twice before buying an Nvidia driver. It makes sense, both from a strategic… and a security POV.
What distros like LN do is circumvene the intentions of the people who do most of the work. Hence they get a few dollars more because, say the dumbbells, they’re so easy to install.
At a time when Tal, a younger man, is stuck with the code and nothing much to do with it because too many good distributions are being offered for free, I had hoped he would understand and give the code rather that just sit on it until it rots.
If this had to happen, it would have happened now. But, as I said, the Danzigs never gave a line of code and it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
There’s something totally ridiculous about Libranet. Jon Danzig’s death at a young age is certainly a tragic event, but things must be kept in perspective. This closed source icing that sits on top of Debian and that make some developers ask money for their “distro” is certainly nothing I would pay for. And certainly not 90 f–king US dollars!!!
If $90 should be sent to LN, how much should be sent to all Linux developers? Certainly at least $9,000, cause not only has LN never provided a line of code, as far as I know, they’ve never sent a cent to developers. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Instead of being corrected, my last post, where I expressed this point of view on the Libranet forum, has been sensored as “oil on the fire” and the thread has been locked.
Seems the truth is not really appreciated.
Hi Gil!
Most of the work? The installers is a custom installer. Adminmenu is written by Libranet. Both of these are ‘value added functions’, that distinguish Libranet from Debian proper, and other Debian based distributions. Both of them are what makes it easy for Libranet to establish and easy to install and setup Debian system.
Sure, the installer for Libranet 3 uses Kudzu, but so do many other distributions (some of them you have to pay for as well). The whole idea of the GPL is to allow someone to take someone else’s work and use it. Why reinvent the wheel? Also, the GPL doesn’t preclude you from onselling others work(s).
Quote: “Some dumbbells believe that if LN installs Nvidia drivers, Adobe Acrobat and other closed source software whereas Debian doesn’t, it’s because Debian programmers are lazy. ”
No. Value added functions again Gil.
Quote: “If this had to happen, it would have happened now. But, as I said, the Danzigs never gave a line of code and it’s not likely to happen anytime soon. ”
Are you so sure? Do a search for Tal Danzig and Debian. You’ll see that he’s been around on the Debian lists for quite a while. And he’s done a fair bit of bug testing as well on various applications, bug reports, and if memory serves me correct, suggestions on code etc.
Quote: “This closed source icing that sits on top of Debian and that make some developers ask money for their “distro” is certainly nothing I would pay for. And certainly not 90 f–king US dollars!!! ”
Good for you. Others will pay that sort of money. Each to their own. And yes, you can say what you think about the fact that Libranet sells a Linux distribution. Whether others really care, or consider your viewpoints valid, is up to them. I don’t. Many others don’t. I suggest that you re-read the GPL and grok that you *don’t* have to offer your distribution for free, you can certainly charge for your services! This is all Libranet is doing. You try and paint a picture that Libranet are thieves, etc, etc and in reality, you’re just showing yourself to be spreading FUD.
Quote: “Instead of being corrected, my last post, where I expressed this point of view on the Libranet forum, has been sensored as “oil on the fire” and the thread has been locked. ”
No, the post was locked because of political comments that you made. Don’t spread FUD. I can copy/paste the relevant post into osnews.com if you really want. I don’t mind disproving you.
Quote: “Seems the truth is not really appreciated.”
Truth, or FUD?
Dave
Morgoth wrote:
“Most of the work? The installers is a custom installer. Adminmenu is written by Libranet.”
—
Really? Hey, that’s a lot of work! No wonder they were asking $90 US for LN. I’d rather write Firefox, that’s for sure!
Morgoth wrote that the Danzigs made “suggestions on code.”
Hey! That’s really great!
Morgoth wrote:
“No, the post was locked because of political comments that you made.”
The thread was locked after my last post was censored. How do you know what it contained?
In two of my previous posts I did question the appropriateness for Tal to visit a country where a Palestian exile born in Palestine can’t get back to his homeland whereas a jew, whose ancestors lived in Israel a mere 2 millennia ago, has no problem becoming an Israeli citizen because of his “birthright”, as Charles Bronfman puts it.
There wasn’t a word about this in my post that was censored. It was all about Libranet.
“The thread was locked after my last post was censored. How do you know what it contained?”
Many of us had all the time to read it before it was rightly deleted. It was nothing but more of the same, after you had been politely asked by both Tal and Daniel to take your politcs elsewhere and to be more fair.
For every OSAlert reader who wants to judge with his/her own eyes, here is the thread:
http://forum.libranet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9141
Anonymous (IP: 216.252.81.—) is in fact Gil.
Edited 2005-12-01 03:28
Anonymous Penguin wrote:
“Many of us had all the time to read it before it was rightly deleted.”
Since you’ve got my IP address, you’ve got access to Libranet’s server. So, there’s no doubt you had time to read my message: you’re quite possibly the one who deleted it. Too bad you did, we could have talked with the facts before our very eyes.
“Since you’ve got my IP address, you’ve got access to Libranet’s server.”
Gosh, you aren’t the smartest person on earth. Your IP address is on top of each of your messages here, as you have chosen to post as anonymous.
“you’re quite possibly the one who deleted it”
That would mean that I am Daniel de Kok: I wish I were!
“we could have talked with the facts before our very eyes.”
We are doing it here now, and that it is why I posted a link to the “incriminated” thread, so that we can have impartial witnesses: OSAlert readers.
Anonymous Penguin wrote:
_”Gosh, you aren’t the smartest person on earth.
I guess I’ll have to agree: It’s my first time writing here amd I trusted Morgoth too much.
_”Your IP address is on top of each of your messages here, as you have chosen to post as anonymous.””
That’s what I was just checking at the moment. I wonder why so-called Dave Morgoth is complaining about anonymity here
If you register with, say, an Hotmail address, you’re more anonym if you register.
As for the fundamentals, I see we’re agreeing: after making a living writing the code, Tal Danzig is now trying to sell it to make a few dollars more. Perfectly legal! Great development model for Linux!
Just to put an end to this argument, once and for all, Libranet is not the only linux distro which has closed source components.
A typical example is Mepis, which has a closed source installer. However you don’t hear people complaining too often, because Mepis has always been available for free.
And yet Warren has found ways of making money with Mepis. Imagine that tomorrow Warren gets enough of Mepis and sells it. What will Mepis users have to say?
Conversely a lot (the majority) of Libranet users have never paid for it: they have either used a free, previous version, or the got they current one from a friend or relative.
Therefore I don’t find it fair that somebody who has never paid for Libranet complains about Tal’s plans.
yak yak yak…. some other distro this some other distro that, gpl doesnt require handing it out…yak yak yak
YES! we got all that, now can we discuss the actuall situation?
“Therefore I don’t find it fair that somebody who has never paid for Libranet complains about Tal’s plans”
Well how else are we suppose to get libranet now consider he isnt even selling it….
You think he can find investors or anything for a company that currently is stale and unavailable???
Gil,
I fail to understand why you are attempting to create so much trouble. For someone who’s been a member of the Libranet forums for a while, you’ve never contributed or helped that much from what I can see. You then suddenly start to sprout all sorts of nonsense and FUD, with the intent (I suspect) of having as much attention paid to yourself as possible. Myself and others were incredibly polite to your rather impolite posts on the topical thread in question.
Anonymous Penguin is not Daniel, nor Tal. Only Daniel and Tal have admin rights to the Libranet forums, so it was one of those two persons that removed your “offending” post.
Do we really need to fight over this? Chill out, calm down, and maybe reflect on some of the things that you’ve said for a moment. My advice to you is to let this lie.
Cheers,
Dave
Morgoth wrote:
_ “I fail to understand why you are attempting to create so much trouble.”
Yes, “trouble”, “oil on fire” in the nice little community. But what we have here is a very typical exemple of why no ressources should be invested in non-GPLed code. So, excuse me for not being politically correct.
_”For someone who’s been a member of the Libranet forums for a while, you’ve never contributed or helped that much from what I can see.”
I’ve never used Libranet because I never agreed with the business model. Though I hoped for a moment Tal would come to his senses, I believe what is happening now has proved me right.
_”You then suddenly start to sprout all sorts of nonsense and FUD”
Readers here… if there’s any left beside the Libranet aficionados, will judge if I’m “sprouting FUD”.
_with the intent (I suspect) of having as much attention paid to yourself as possible.
Yes, it’s of course my only purpose
_”Anonymous Penguin is not Daniel, nor Tal.”
He’s got my IP address, he’s got access to the server.
_”Do we really need to fight over this?”
Well, for one thing, I don’t like my message being deleted and then being accused of saying things I’ve never said in the said message.
Otherwise, my fight is to tell people that these nice little communities based around closed source Linux projects — be it Libranet, Xandros, Linspire, etc. — are just a joke.
I’m sure if you go to Linspire and Xandros forums, you’ll find a happy-go-lucky community nurtured to praise their own little distro. But, like it or not, it’s quite clear from the Libranet adventure that, for Linux, this is just a waist of time and energy.
Libranet has been “restructuring” for 2 months now, and the code is still rotting. Now, Tal is going to Israel for 3 months. Then… who knows? The code is rotting before our very eyes.
Libranet took the community’s code, the subscribers money and, in exchange, am I told by an anonymous here, made “suggestions on code” to Debian. What a joke!
What Libranet did was absolutely legal, but shit, do Linus users have to be so dumb as to get into this kind of scheme?
That’s what I talking about here. Yes Libranet was a nice distro, it worked well and installed all kind of proprietary software that Debian programmers refused to make part of Debian, but from Linux users’ perspective, it must be made clear that it was a really stupid business model.
I would have had no problem with Libranet selling support, but the LN code should have remained GPLed.
So yes…
_”Cheers”,
but let’s face the facts: Libranet’s users money has gone to a project whose code is now lost to the community. That’s what the trouble is all about.
I agree with your last thought. I also note here that GPL was created just so some such thing should not happen apart ofcourse from the fact that people play fair with each other and help each other. As the saying goes “You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t force it to drink”. So you can explain it to the people, but leave it to them to agree or disagree. In this case, I think you should have had a private discussion with the developers concerned. There was no need to involve other people. You can’t take back what you have said once it is out in the public, and then the discussion centres around what you said and didn’t say which becomes an ego issue leaving the original point of contention aside.
But what can I say. I am also posting as anonymous ;^)
Just my two cents.
Regards
i think you may have a point and maybe we should be very wary of ‘pay-for’distros…. I guess people who use Linspire should honestly think about what happens if Linspire goes under. Why would they release CNR rather than sit on it or try and sell it? They wouldn’t! I guess I have learned a lesson….
The rule is very simple: pay only for GPLed code.
One fine day, Bruce Perens comes on the Knoppix forum and asks why Knopper doesn’t join Debian. Somehow, Knopper didn’t seem interested. Here’s what he answered: “All my code is GPLed.”
What does this means? It means Knopper is working for Debian, or for Fedora or Mandriva, whatever. He’s working for Linux. If you send him money and he dies next year, the code will still be there for ANYBODY to use. There’s no way Knopper can sit on his code.
This is what open source is all about: sharing code. GPLed projects is where the money should go. Otherwise, it’s just as if you decided to subsidize Microsoft. Chances the code will ever come back are rather slight.
That’s right folks, commit yourself or your organization to any given Linux distro…is like playing Russian roulette.