>>> On Mon, Apr 3, 2006 at 11:06 PM, in message
<125d27dd0604032006t3122b99bt6eeebe2d4fb191fd@mail.gmail.com>, "Daniel
Jarboe"
<daniel.jarboe@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the link John. Like Ken, I was disappointed by the first
> half. While Jeff does have an excuse of sorts for it ("This first
> posting has been long on thoughts, philosophy, and opinions. Next
> posting will get into the facts of the new desktop from Novell."),
it
> really was a disgustingly weak start. Leading the entry with more
> ideas along the lines of the: "Our team that is building SUSE Linux
> Enterprise Desktop 10 is a small team that leverages the efforts of
> thousands of developers that work on dozens of different Open Source
> projects" rather than general notions of how Jeff doesn't like
Windows
> would have helped get this off to a better start.
>
> And I see he did take a moment to imitate Sun blogs a bit. The
> average years of experience for 58% of participants is 11? What's
up
> with statistics like that?
>
> Anyway, despite the shortcomings, you guys probably gained more
ground
> than you lost in this particular entry (narrowly) thanks to bonus
> points for initiating this form of openness. Jeff seemed to make a
> decent effort to define Novell's position in the world. I imagine a
> wide range of people, from investors to open source contributors
> appreciate Jeff attempting to clarify this position. I'm curious to
> see how the next entry compares.
>
> About half way through, Jeff does address the largest obstacle to
> competing with Microsoft on the desktop.
>
> "With Windows having such a huge market share advantage over OS/2,
> there was simply no interest." and "There was no alternative in
terms
> of breadth and popularity. And soon, there was no alternative in
terms
> of capability."
>
> It's unfortunate this shortcoming was not among the six areas Jeff
> stated that Novell could be useful to the open community. Maybe he
is
> hoping IBM, HP, or one of Microsoft's other competitors backing
Linux
> will do it for him? Really, his sentence following the six areas
> nearly undermines the earlier accolades he had given the open source
> community and development model.
>
> So Jeff says Novell will be useful by: Participating, Integrating,
> Selecting, Completing, Distributing, and Supporting. "To achieve
all
> of this requires a company." Though there is definitely truth in
> this, his particular wording almost seemed to imply the OSS
community
> model is doomed to failure... at least a failure to meet Novell's
> objectives on its own. Well this should come as no surprise since
the
> objectives of the software community/projects Novell is utilizing
are
> not 100% aligned with the objectives of Novell itself . But it is
> true, integration among disparate projects (often including several
> efforts with the same general purpose) tends to be very weak.
> However, this weakness feeds the open community's strength:
innovation
> and technically great software. Depending on your goals, this
> weakness can manifest itself as a great strength.
>
> I don't know if Jeff is guiding Novell and Novell's interaction with
> open communities largely motivated by anti- Microsoft sentiment and
> heavy emotion from the OS/2 era, or if his shots at Microsoft were
> taken because he feels that is the way to win the support of the
> community. Hopefully neither is true, or maybe now he's got it out
of
> his system. It is unlikely to benefit him or Novell to have his
eyes
> blurred/colored by such negative emotion.
>
> I'm glad he wrote it, I just wonder how many people he rubbed the
> wrong way. Still, outlining an honest position to the OSS community
> is more useful to it than saying nothing.
>
> This went on a lot longer than I expected. Go Gators!
> ~ Daniel
It does go on and on and he really isn't that long winded in person.
One aspect of Dr. Jaffe that did come out is 1) his passionate spirit
and 2) his candor. He tells it like he sees it.
Please do share this feedback on the blog page.
Thanks...JP
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