Puppy 4.3: Why Built on 4.1?

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Lobster · #21 Post by **Lobster** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 00:29

I think as has been pointed out there was a great deal of fixing in 4.2 and 4.2.1 but there was also (mentioned in a post elsewhere) some features that meant 4.1 was more reliable.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy420ReleaseNotes

So as Pizzasgood pointed out Barry started with 4.1, added features that he felt improved on 4.1 and perhaps missed some.

Personally I preferred 4.2 to 4.1 and prefer 4.3.1 to both of them

WhoDo · #22 Post by **WhoDo** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 07:55

Pizzasgood wrote:4.2 on the other hand was not developed with that attitude. It was a much more serious effort. WhoDo realized that the point was to carry on in Barry's place, not to throw a party.

Yes. In fact 4.2 and 4.2.1 were designed to be Official Releases built by the community and not Community Editions as such - there was no effort to please the community in terms of content. On the contrary, the effort was to show the wider Linux community that Puppy could and would survive the retirement of its creator.

Unfortunately there were a number of "purists" who couldn't or wouldn't grasp the vision and focused instead on the so-called "bling"; despite the fact that it was literally more frugal to provide that than Barry's favourite Notecase application among other things.

My greatest regret is that good people like yourself made personal sacrifices to help meet the objective of solidifying Puppy's future, only to have that effort denigrated and disparaged on the face of a few bits of visual glamour intended to encourage disgruntled Vista users away from the dark side. That too was in keeping with Barry's philosophy - 1.x series based around Win95/98 style interface, 2.x series based around Win2K/XP style interface and 4.x looking to provide familiarity with the current M$ Vista offering.

Whatever the reason Barry chose to revert to 4.1.x binaries, the 4.2.x versions and the relevant scripts WERE most definitely available to him. It was his choice and he made it. The consequence was a number of regressions, including those mentioned in your post. That is a loss to Puppy and a wasted sacrifice to the developers IMHO. Not only the things mentioned but also the root link to the disk outside the pup_save file, HairyWill's RoxRightClicks options menu additions, ttuuxxx's mime-type fixes ... the list goes on and on.

Like the raven in King Lear, I'm left to croak "Never more ... never more". It is my fondest hope that the same fate does NOT befall Technosaurus' 4.4 project. That also has been labeled a CE version, BUT in fact it is the natural successor to 4.2.1 in many ways - an official release that just happens to have been built by the community without Barry at the helm. Support that effort as never before or Puppy will be "Never more ..." IMHO.

aragon · #23 Post by **aragon** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 08:11

@whodo

nice to see you're around

aragon

#24 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 08:51

Hi Whodo it is a shame that most of the work I did for 4.2 was tossed when 4.3 happened but hey I still have 2.14X and well I learned a lot with 4.2 and that knowledge went into 2.14X. Also I do consider 2.14X a community edition, because it does have a few loyal contributors that greatly helped out

At this point in time if 2.14X works fine on your older pc, I would go as far as to say then you have the most advanced, user friendly, stable version of puppy ever made, for older computers.
And if I was to compare 4.3 vs 2.14X, I would pick 2.14X. The reason, Its more refined, you have right click options for burning, erasing cdrws etc, lots of extra mimes, updated icons, 24x24 jwm menu's, almost 600MB more memory running live, latest rox, gtk, FF3, Flash, takes less memory like 35MB bootup. Heck it even has BMP media player with ladspa which I think is a first for puppy

Next release which will be released maybe tonight will have a FF3 fix that allows printing, which FF3 doesn't do out of the box etc. Anyays WhoDo its nice to see you around, maybe join our little 2.14X thread that will be superseded by puppy 2.20 in the future. But first I have a couple RC releases for 2.14x, Also I'm working on the XO olpc project.
take care
ttuuxxx

01micko · #25 Post by **01micko** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 08:53

Hello people.

mulrah, some more clarification..

BarryK had been the "Benevolent Dictator" (search for term

) since Puppy-0.0.0 until Puppy-4.1.2.

WhoDo was nominated by BarryK to be the "Benevolent Dictator" (call it "BV") of Puppy-4.2 and beyond. Due to unforseen circumstances WhoDo decided to step down from his role after he released the Puppy-4.21 bugfix of 4.2.

Barry decided to once again be "BV" of 4.3, with renewed enthusiasm due to the success of his new "woof" build system.

At the moment forum member 'technosaurus' is the current "BV".. he is in charge of development of Puppy-4.4. (as I see it anyway)

Development is underway for Puppy-5, with 'gposil' heading a 'dpup' branch, 'kirk' heading a 'tpup' branch, possibly an 'spup' branch in the mix (iguleder I believe you are involved, don't know if there is a leader or not) and BarryK interested in upup. (For definitions of the *pups, do a search

)

Now I agree that 4.2, while with much community input, certainly was not a "CE" version of Puppy, and I think the same can be said for 4.4.

The "BV" has supreme control. He decides what's in and what's out. What you may not realise is that 4.3 owes a great deal to 4.2's legacy. Forum member 'trio', who started off making crappy code in 'Pwidgets' (along with myself

) put a mountain of work into 4.3 and has no less than four apps included by default. A similar story with 'tasmod', who (re)cut his teeth in the 'Pwidgets' thread. He created Psync, in 4.3 by default. Not forgetting 'zigbert ' who created Pwidgets, and Pmusic, Ptimer, Pstopwatch, Pburn... and numerous other Puppy apps, of course not all his apps are in 4.3 by default, but they live on and through constant development support 4.3 (and will support 4.4). I must mention 'ttuuxxx' too, who was tireless in 4.2 development with icewm, seamonkey, ..no I won't list them! The page is too short! BarryK takes his advice because he picks up on details many of us just plain miss. Of course there are many more, HairyWill, (I have a feeling we might see a return of roxrightclicks one day), aragon, coolpup, technosaurus, pizzasgood, and many many more, and just as many in the development of 4.3.

Really, it doesn't matter what default apps are in or out. They are all in the official repo and a bunch more on the Puppy Pet Store, puppylinux.asia and dotpups,de and many other reputable Puppy repos.

What matters is that Puppy will always remain light and easy to use..

Cheers

ICPUG · #26 Post by **ICPUG** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 13:28

Thank you mulrah for raising your point and confirming how I perceived it as well.

As usual Pizzasgood comes up with most well thought out response.

Welcome to WhoDo for defending his pitch. You're missed here mate!

When I suggested what Mulrah did in Barry blog here:
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00997
I got a curt response from Barry.

I still think that the development method (woof or previous) was not the point under discussion - it was the base. The 4.2.1 could and should have been used as the base (for the reasons Pizzasgood has made clear) and the woof development method applied to it rather than applied to 4.1. I was extremely annoyed that WhoDo's (and Ttuuxxx's) hard work was being discarded, by Barry of all people, almost immediately after he finally got it done!

People have been gradually rewriting history by saying 4.2.1 was a CE, in order to defend Barry's decision. 4.2.1 wasn't a CE. WhoDo was our leader, (and a very good one), appointed by Barry to create the next official Puppy after 4.1.2. The next leader, whoever it was, should have taken WhoDo's official puppy as the base for the next version.

I'm disappointed that Barry did not choose to call 4.3 as 5.x, which I thought was where woof development was going to be. Being a new series he could have done what he liked and 4.2.1 might have been the last of the 4 series - a fitting monument to WhoDo's work and pain.

Irrespective of the argument we are not going to change anything now. 4.3.1 exists - but there are bugs in it that are fixed by 4.2.1 and there are some features in 4.2.1 that are not in 4.3.1 and vice versa.

I just hope that 4.4 can unify the best of both. Until then I use Puppy 4.2.1, Puppy 4.2 no bling and 4.3.1, whichever is most suitable for the job and hardware.

mulrah · #27 Post by **mulrah** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 18:28

First of all, thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies that have been added since Pizzasgood's message. This was the kind of discussion I had been looking for when I initially posted.

To clarify one of my own comments, I recognize the distinction between 4.2 and a "Community Edition;" I was just stating that 4.3 treats 4.2 like nothing more than a CE, and I agree that the argument that 4.2 was "just" a CE seems to have been used to justify the direction 4.3 has taken.

Personally, I'm just going to mentally append 4.3 with "Barry Edition" and wait to upgrade until the next "real" release.

One final note: Developers of 4.4, please please just pick one calculator--maybe two. As with anyone who wants more "bling," we can roll our eyes and point them to a web site dedicated to dozens of calculator pets.

mulrah · #28 Post by **mulrah** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 18:39

mulrah wrote:Personally, I'm just going to mentally append 4.3 with "Barry Edition" and wait to upgrade until the next "real" release.

One final note: Developers of 4.4, please please just pick one calculator--maybe two. As with anyone who wants more "bling," we can roll our eyes and point them to a web site dedicated to dozens of calculator pets.

To be clear, these kind of snarky comments are meant in no way to disparage the hard work that Barry or anyone else has done on Puppy 4.3 or any other release. I started with Puppy before 4.2 and promote it as the best lightweight distro out there, bar none. As with a small business or a start-up non-profit, none of this would have been possible without Barry's vision and dedication.

technosaurus · #29 Post by **technosaurus** » Mon 26 Oct 2009, 20:12

It is a very difficult task to track the changes made in the community editions vice just opening your /mnt/sdaX/sources folder and refreshing your memory. Sources/patches aren't uploaded to a central spot and many changes aren't documented anywhere but a stray forum thread.

Since starting 4.4 CE I have had to make a concious effort to track all of this down, which meant downloading 100s of pet packages converting them to tarballs and extracting the "puppy extras" to an add on folder/pet so that they can be more easily tracked from version to version. I have started Pcompile (Gedrean has helped immensely to it lately) to build the packages in a default way so that all you have to do after the build is add the "puppy extras" (as long as upstream doesn't drastically change the format or something)

It works the other way as well. Barry patched Homebank to use png vs. svg. I figured it out and sent it upstream so that hopefully we don't have to keep patching it. (Actually I just used sed to replace .svg with .png in all of the .c and .h files and used Barry's icons)

On the plus side I will be uploading all of my "puppy extras" folders and build scripts as well as Notes, patches and "source code" for any Puppy programs to the SVN on our google code page so that this work does not need to be duplicated.

Lobster · #30 Post by **Lobster** » Tue 27 Oct 2009, 02:05

Yes. In fact 4.2 and 4.2.1 were designed to be Official Releases built by the community and not Community Editions as such - there was no effort to please the community in terms of content. On the contrary, the effort was to show the wider Linux community that Puppy could and would survive the retirement of its creator.

Thanks for stepping in Warren

You are quite right 4.2 was very much turned into a CE effort after the event.

All those involved with 4.2 'Deep Thought' deserve to be proud.
Warren and Ttuuxxx in particular.
4.3.1 is very much the result (even if coding has been left)
of what happened in 4.2.1
What a developer does
is dependent on their inclinations
and judgement at the time.

We are organic. Things change very fast.
We have come a long way from 'Meaty'
http://pupweb.org/wikka/Puppy2xxCE
http://tmxxine.com/buddha/ce.html - never used in Meaty

I hope Warren (WhoDo) will be around more.

His contributions make Puppy a better place to be and grow.

Technosaurus is now providing the impetus for 4.4CE
Something we can all look forward to

brymway · #31 Post by **brymway** » Tue 27 Oct 2009, 16:27

I rarely question Barrys decision of what he puts in an official distro. In my eyes he has the right to go back to dotmatrix style if he wants. This is his bag, and if it wasn't for his choices we would all be using something else. (oh the horror!)

In my opinion as far as feel goes 4.12, 4.2 and 4.3 are all different. I've used them all and 4.12 works and feels the best on my rig. When I used 4.2 I changed the things I didn't like to make it operate the way I like. But inside hardware issues prefered 4.12 so I've gone back to that.

I've always wondered about the multiple calculators. In my personal distro I did away with them and stuck in galculator like the rest. To date I've never heard Barry respond to why he puts so many of the same things in his distro. I like to think its his Alfred Hitchcock cameo thing. For all I know, after he releases the distro to the public and goes to bed, it gives him something to snicker about.

It might be a sense of humor. Everytime I get a new release that's one of the first things I check and it's a source of humor to me.

Throughout the 4.xx series with both leaders in charge, I always have fun looking thru the new distro. Every one is fantastic.

Nice to see you again WhoDo.

mulrah · #32 Post by **mulrah** » Tue 27 Oct 2009, 19:34

brymway wrote:I rarely question Barrys decision of what he puts in an official distro. In my eyes he has the right to go back to dotmatrix style if he wants. This is his bag, and if it wasn't for his choices we would all be using something else. (oh the horror!)

I suppose this is exactly my point. I thought he'd retired and that Puppy was now purely a community-driven distro, even with Barry coming out of retirement to lead 4.3. Handing a project over to new leadership is always tricky, especially when you started it.

Having read the replies to this thread, Barry's blog, and other threads, it is now clear to me that Puppy really remains Barry's distro and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Knowing this, I'll probably end up switching to 4.3, because 5 will probably be more like it than like 4.2, as will 5.1 and so on. 4.2 works for me now, but, if I want to gain the benefits of future releases, I might as well get used to the Five Calculators and other quirks all over again.

Gedrean · #33 Post by **Gedrean** » Tue 27 Oct 2009, 19:40

Now, now, let's not fuss. See, when I get to be prolific enough with Puppy Development (and masochistic enough), I'll take over as "BV" for 6.7 or whatever version, and you'll have 50 CALCULATORS! HAHAHAHA! You thought 5 was extravagant?!?! This thing'll need a Blu-Ray disc for all the damn calculators I put in!!! AND FOUR SPREADSHEETS! Think two or three simple text editors is enough? No! Let's have FOURTEEN! Exactly fourteen, no more, no less.

mulrah · #34 Post by **mulrah** » Tue 27 Oct 2009, 20:46

Gedrean wrote:Now, now, let's not fuss. See, when I get to be prolific enough with Puppy Development (and masochistic enough), I'll take over as "BV" for 6.7 or whatever version, and you'll have 50 CALCULATORS! HAHAHAHA! You thought 5 was extravagant?!?! This thing'll need a Blu-Ray disc for all the damn calculators I put in!!!

Why wait? Somebody should do a PuppyCalc puplet.

MinHundHettePerro · #35 Post by **MinHundHettePerro** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 00:17

mulrah wrote:...
Why wait? Somebody should do a PuppyCalc puplet.

It is hilarious (in a way).

Sad/true side of the story is that none of the offered calculatotors has ever been good enough, in some sense

.

fwiw/
MHHP

BarryK · #36 Post by **BarryK** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 01:03

Dear oh dear, gossip and misinformation!

Regarding those five calculators, I have repeated many times that I sometimes throw in extra choices when they are very small. Like, Xcalc is 23KB and Ycalc is 37KB uncompressed -- you want to figure out how much that adds to the size of the live-CD? -- probably about 20KB onto a 100MB ISO file.

"Someone else on the bug fix forum described 4.3 as "recompiled" from 4.1."
That "recompiled from 4.1" comment was nonsense. Puppy 4.2 uses the same base of 4.0/4.1 binary pet packages as does 4.3. Both 4.2 and 4.3 have upgaded many of those packages. If you had followed my blog you would know that I upgraded many packages, so they are not just 4.1 packages.

I explained the way 4.3 was developed and how 4.1 and 4.2 are related, on my blog:
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00823
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00997
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00805
...other posts on my blog report many more package upgrades.

So yes, I started from 4.1.2, then upgraded many many packages. I also looked at 4.21 and ported over whatever looked good. I was not interested in the bling of 4.21, also I considered the incorporation of tcl/tk into 4.2x to be a backward step so left that out (and whatever apps use tcl/tk).

There were some little details in 4.2x that I missed. In some cases, like the package manager, I had completely rewritten that for the Woof build system, so any improvements in that regard were not relevant. Pizzasgood made a valid point, I did overlook some scripts in 4.2x that had some useful bugfixes, the Xorg Wizard for example -- whatever I did miss, I needed to be informed of and I would have merged them. For example, when I was working on 4.3.1, when some people informed me of some fixes that were in 4.2x and not in 4.3, I applied those fixes. If I was not informed, then what can I do?

I do hope that any remaining fixes that are in 4.2x that are not in 4.3.1, will be reported to the 4.3.1 bugs feedback thread, with exact details how to apply the fix, and myself and the 4.4 developers can apply them.

In summary, it was a massive effort developing 4.3.x, involving many issues. The nit-pickers just see a few superficial details, like an app missing, or a little change in the menu (such as the shutdown menu), or some extra calculators, and then start criticizing. Or, they complain afterward, having not contributed solutions during the development phase.

mulrah wrote:
"If Puppy is going to evolve into anything other than Barry's distro, then the trust in a community-built release has to be there."

This is a valid point. In the case of 4.3.x, I followed my own vision and wound back what I didn't like in 4.2x. But I consider this to be a special situation, where I have the Woof build system and wanted to take control again while it is being introduced. Also there were leadership problems after 4.20 was released, which was another thing that prompted me to take the reins again.

My original intention was to retire from Puppy, or at least put it on the back-burner, early in 2010, and I'm still on-track to do that. My intention for 2010 is to focus on things like Woof itself, maybe learn more Genie coding, maybe also write an application. I think that the community will have got things sorted out regarding leadership (etc.) and can continue with developing and releasing future puppies.

Just a note: my experience with technosaurus is he is a very knowledgeable guy, and is proving to have excellent management skills. It is also pleasing to see the initiative that Gposil is taking with Dpup. Consider my effort with 4.3 to be a temporary thing, from now on it will be the community developing the releases. I will probably still do experimental builds, like my recent "Karmic Puppy" ...and if at some future date I ever get the urge to bring out an official Puppy, well I won't, unless there is some disaster and Puppy finds itself leaderless and a majority of the established community want me to take the reins again. But then maybe I won't, it may be time for me to really retire. If I really want to bring out another distro, maybe I'll start again, new name, new URLs, new everything -- you never know!

#37 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 01:33

Coming 2012: Kitty Linux

For the record, I intend to take care of fixing xorgwizard myself later this week. So I didn't bother reporting it to the bugs thread yet.

Re the calculators, the thing I find funniest is how bent out of shape they get people, considering how negligible they are. I think that the vast majority of people using Puppy have no idea how little impact the majority of applications contribute. I was really surprised by the sizes back when I first started remastering.

mulrah · #38 Post by **mulrah** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 02:47

Pizzasgood wrote:Re the calculators, the thing I find funniest is how bent out of shape they get people, considering how negligible they are.

For me, it's not about the size but rather the menu clutter. I'd gotten used to "removing" them with PMenu and was glad to see them gone in 4.2.

I just upgraded to 4.3, grabbed PMenu removed them. Not a big deal.

mulrah · #39 Post by **mulrah** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 03:09

BarryK wrote:I explained the way 4.3 was developed and how 4.1 and 4.2 are related, on my blog:
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00823
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00997
http://www.puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00805
...other posts on my blog report many more package upgrades.

Thanks for these links. As someone who uses Puppy everyday but follows its development less frequently, these links are exactly the kind of information I was looking for when I first posted this thread. I just wanted to see the reasoning behind the decisions. I'll be sure to follow your blog more closely in the future.

BarryK wrote:In summary, it was a massive effort developing 4.3.x, involving many issues. The nit-pickers just see a few superficial details, like an app missing, or a little change in the menu (such as the shutdown menu), or some extra calculators, and then start criticizing. Or, they complain afterward, having not contributed solutions during the development phase.

I fully accept that groaning about the calculators is nit-picking, but I made the point to illustrate the larger topic of how Puppy is or is not being transferred from its original creator to the community. It was particularly important because initial responses to the thread were focused on bling vs no bling, which was not the point.

With a better understanding of how 4.3 came about, I went ahead and upgraded. It has taken me a couple hours to get everything the way I want it, but it feels faster, and I appreciate the new features. I added PMenu so I can "remove" what I perceive as clutter in the menu. Note that "Refresh Menu" does not work anymore in that Utility; you have to manually execute "fixmenus" and then restart JWM.

BarryK wrote:My original intention was to retire from Puppy, or at least put it on the back-burner, early in 2010, and I'm still on-track to do that. My intention for 2010 is to focus on things like Woof itself, maybe learn more Genie coding, maybe also write an application. I think that the community will have got things sorted out regarding leadership (etc.) and can continue with developing and releasing future puppies.

Just a note: my experience with technosaurus is he is a very knowledgeable guy, and is proving to have excellent management skills. It is also pleasing to see the initiative that Gposil is taking with Dpup. Consider my effort with 4.3 to be a temporary thing, from now on it will be the community developing the releases. I will probably still do experimental builds, like my recent "Karmic Puppy" ...and if at some future date I ever get the urge to bring out an official Puppy, well I won't, unless there is some disaster and Puppy finds itself leaderless and a majority of the established community want me to take the reins again. But then maybe I won't, it may be time for me to really retire. If I really want to bring out another distro, maybe I'll start again, new name, new URLs, new everything -- you never know!

Thanks so much for your incredible work on Puppy, past, present, and--let's be honest here--future! It's an incredible distro, and I appreciate all the work you and others have poured into it over the years.

WhoDo · #40 Post by **WhoDo** » Wed 28 Oct 2009, 08:08

BarryK wrote:So yes, I started from 4.1.2, then upgraded many many packages. I also looked at 4.21 and ported over whatever looked good. I was not interested in the bling of 4.21, also I considered the incorporation of tcl/tk into 4.2x to be a backward step so left that out (and whatever apps use tcl/tk).

Just to clarify why I took that "backward step", we had a number of developers who wanted to contribute to the first official release without you at the helm, but they weren't prepared to learn a new language (Vala/Genie) to do so. It was either give them tcl/tk or something much larger or less well known, so I chose the lesser of those evils. Out of that we gained, among other things, Remaster Express (ReMaX) which I still consider to be one of the best new features of 4.2.x for the ease with which it allowed new users to remaster their own Puppy.

BarryK wrote:There were some little details in 4.2x that I missed. In some cases, like the package manager, I had completely rewritten that for the Woof build system, so any improvements in that regard were not relevant. Pizzasgood made a valid point, I did overlook some scripts in 4.2x that had some useful bugfixes, the Xorg Wizard for example -- whatever I did miss, I needed to be informed of and I would have merged them.

In my absence I doubt there were too many who knew what all of the changes were, so you can blame me for that.

BarryK wrote:mulrah wrote:
"If Puppy is going to evolve into anything other than Barry's distro, then the trust in a community-built release has to be there."

This is a valid point. In the case of 4.3.x, I followed my own vision and wound back what I didn't like in 4.2x. But I consider this to be a special situation, where I have the Woof build system and wanted to take control again while it is being introduced.

And I was very careful to leave that particular door open so you could do precisely that.

BarryK wrote:Also there were leadership problems after 4.20 was released, which was another thing that prompted me to take the reins again.

Now this one puts a burr under my saddle. There weren't "leadership problems" as much as there was one single user who insisted on getting his own way no matter how annoying he had to be to achieve that. I don't think ANY of the core developers had a problem with my "leadership" of the 4.2x project. I suspect very few of the community had any such issues either. Still the squeaky wheel continued to groan and grind away, questioning my choices in ways that would NEVER have happened to you, Barry, and eventually I'd had enough ... which also goes to explain my subsequent absence from the forum and the lack of input from me regarding bug fixes and script updates implemented. Mea culpa. I'd have been happy to fill you in on the features if you'd asked, and of course the release notes and wiki pages were pretty comprehensive thanks to coolpup.

BarryK wrote:I think that the community will have got things sorted out regarding leadership (etc.) and can continue with developing and releasing future puppies.

Just a note: my experience with technosaurus is he is a very knowledgeable guy, and is proving to have excellent management skills. It is also pleasing to see the initiative that Gposil is taking with Dpup. Consider my effort with 4.3 to be a temporary thing, from now on it will be the community developing the releases.

There is little doubt that technosaurus is better equipped than me, technically, to run the development of the project. His management skills are evident but remain to be tested in the crucible of user reaction to the product of his labours. I wish him well and am happy to offer him whatever advice and assistance he needs.

That said, I took the reins of Puppy leadership with your imprimatur and that didn't stop the nay-sayers from tacking my carcass up all over the forum. In any community there will ALWAYS be that element and while ever the community leaves one individual to deal with that sort of harassment alone, there will continue to be "leadership problems". The Puppy community needs a body of trusted members providing policy direction, formally or informally, and defending those decisions as a body rather than leaving the figurehead as the only one exposed to all the flack. Like I said, Puppy is your creation so you haven't had to deal with that. I have. I sincerely hope technosaurus doesn't.

BarryK wrote:I will probably still do experimental builds, like my recent "Karmic Puppy" ...and if at some future date I ever get the urge to bring out an official Puppy, well I won't, unless there is some disaster and Puppy finds itself leaderless and a majority of the established community want me to take the reins again. But then maybe I won't, it may be time for me to really retire. If I really want to bring out another distro, maybe I'll start again, new name, new URLs, new everything -- you never know!

That looks pretty final but it does leave the door open for people to believe they can have the new leader (BD) "sacked" if they want you back and they're loud enough about it. That can't be a good thing. I know you've had little interest in the Puppy Foundation, but what other way is there to insulate the developers and their leadership from the unreasoned demands of the masses? And just in case anyone thinks I'm angling to be involved in that, no thanks. I'm quite comfortable on the outer fringe. I've given my pound of flesh and it didn't tickle, believe me.

Now I've said my bit, I'll withdraw back into the shadows again. Those that matter know how to get in touch with me if they really need me for anything, and I'll continue to check in here every once in a while to answer the occasional PM. Good luck with your future endeavours, Barry.

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