Establishing a formal community

[01micko]

I may have conveyed an incorrect message there; payment of moneys by the user is not the issue. Cost of production is more the issue, ie, lawyers, government fees etc, which, in any business model, have to be covered. Now, the end user may not be asked to pay, but, if not, will advertising and such cover these costs?

[ttuuxxx]

To Caneri/Eric

Your servers are just that, Your servers, You do one of the best thing for puppy and I for one think you do an excellent job

ttuuxxx

[Caneri]

@01micko

The simple answer is no..ads will not cover costs. Sponsors will be needed to supply high speed servers and bandwidth. At least that's my opinion so far.

Best,
Eric

[Caneri]

Thanks Jeff...

Eric

[ttuuxxx]

Hi Jeff,

Well there are some issues that don't involve development.

Hey..I'm glad all is moving forward..but there are still things to be worked out that involve "behind the scenes" activities.

I think it's all just part of the growing aspect of Puppy..

Best,
Eric

Well if a Coop has absolutely no role in the actual development eg.
building, releases, people involved with the actual distro, And sticks to basic administrator task. Then Fine I'll be happy with it, if not. Scrap it!
No offense buddy
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

P.s sometimes when I read what I actually type, I laugh really hard
ttuuxxx

[technosaurus]

I just wanted to touch on an often avoided topic here and that is revenue.

1. Amazon's Honor System makes it easy to donate using 1-click. I would make it a menu entry such that it is not a blatant adware eyesore

2. Affiliates - almost half of the webapps on the Puppy Web Desktop have affiliate programs. I have avoided setting any up because I am too lazy to do all the work of getting a tax id and figuring out how to get it back to the foundation which should already have a tax id. These are not adds - they simply add a tag to the url of the page that says "Hey! I support Puppy Linux" (actually its more likely something like "&url=234598&" but thats what it translates to)
2b. I could add some additional links to the favorites section such as a shopping category in favorites. These almost always have affiliate programs with fairly high payouts. If you have ever used the web desktop you'll know that you would not see any ads since the links don't come up until you hover over their category and even then it would just be a normal menu entry.

(If this goes I will keep an affiliate free version for the paranoid among us)

Yes - I have figured out how to get ad revenue without "ads".

[HairyWill]

I will not spend hundreds of hours for some so called Coop to give me my walking papers without reason!!!

chillout mate

I believe that is partly what this formalised community is trying to protect against. You may be "going for it" and that is great. But currently Barry holds the rights to the puppylinux name and is not going to give this up. You are not going to be releasing an official puppy without his say so and there is nothing stopping him from pulling the plug after you have done the work.

Please don't anybody misunderstand me I have a great respect for what Barry has achieved with puppy but the model for future development is far from clear and seems very unlikely to appeal to the type of person that wants to make genuinely innovative improvements. I think Tom used the "cake and eat it" phrase earlier. I can't see how Barry expects puppy to improve if he does not want to do the work himself but still expects to hold onto the name and by implication the right to control the release of an official version.

Should Barry get eaten by a croc tomorrow, nobody has the right to release an official version. This is an ideal time to convert puppy to a shared development model but he seems to be avoiding the opportunity.

[Caneri]

@Caneri: I may have misunderstood. I thought you had .ca on a host plus the offer of a box with admin rights separately. Maybe you are planning to move .ca onto this. I do not think an iso/svn repository should be on the same box as a general software repository.

Does anyone know what the performance implications of calling svn update on a 1GB largely binary repository would be?

Hi Will,

At the moment there are 3 separate servers, and 2 with root access. My whole point is to find the best use of the available space/bandwidth. I am finding it harder than I thought to get a good direction going so the work doesn't need to be done twice.

Yes the repo should be totally separate from the dev files.

And the hunt continues...lol

Eric

[Eyes-Only]

HairyWill wrote:

"Should Barry get eaten by a croc tomorrow, nobody has the right to release an official version. This is an ideal time to convert puppy to a shared development model but he seems to be avoiding the opportunity."

My only comment? I was wondering when someone was going to notice this. Good job Will.

Let's hope there are no crocs anywhere within 1 000km of Barry's little homestead, eh?

Amicalement/Cheers!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

[ttuuxxx]

chillout mate

You are not going to be releasing an official puppy without his say so and there is nothing stopping him from pulling the plug after you have done the work.

for once Harry you must be behind in reading up on Barrys Blog, He has said publicly in his blog. and I Quote
"ttuuxx has asked can he coordinate the next Puppy3? Why not? I'm not stopping you, go for it. also.
If someone wants to rebuild Unleashed 4.1 with the latest Slackware packages, then call it 5.0, why not? Go for it. "
http://puppylinux.com/blog/?viewDetailed=00416
To me Hairy clear enough for a go ahead, and for Barry to rescind on that statement would hurt puppy a great deal. Kind of a trust thing and if anything Barry is a man of his words. So I think its safe to say its ok for a start today. That is why I don't think we need a coop, plus whodo is coordinating 4.2 which was decided on that blog.
Hence the reason why I don't think a coop is viable, Maybe some simple rules, Like Eric must spend maybe $60+ a month in server cost, which we all do owe him some gratitude, If we had maybe google ads etc, something to pay for what he is out of pocket every month, I think that would be excellent, Also I think he's having a bit of trouble maintaining all 3 servers and could probably use someone with some php & scripting background.
But do we actually need a coop for that?
I feel more trust & secure in Barry saying "Go for it" then if a coop would say so. I think most would also. He's still the man in charge and really the only thing he isn't doing is building newer releases, he's keeping control of everything else, well I think he is letting us use his software user account account at http://www.ibiblio.org/. but I'm not sure on this one, Really if we are building releases, should we have the server account to publish the releases and packages?

So we can use the official "Puppy Linux" in a release and thats about it. Thats what I get from his sparse comments, But at least for once he was clear about one thing. I can coordinated the Slackware version and it can be called 5.0
ttuuxxx

[cthisbear]

HairyWill:
Have to agree with ttuuxx here mate.

But as usual you are reasoned in your opinions as always.


" Thats what I get from his sparse comments,
But at least for once he was clear about one thing.
I can coordinated the Slackware version and it can be called 5.0 "

That's what I read too.

Chris.

[raffy]

ttuuxxx: Originally when I started off trying to organise things, Nobody else was trying to take his place for everything other than a University. Which made me jump into something I wasn't prepared for,but was the only one with enough guts to do it!
I was willing at all cost to keep the puppy project alive, unlike any of you.

ttuuxxx: Well if a Coop has absolutely no role in the actual development eg. building, releases, people involved with the actual distro, And sticks to basic administrator task. Then Fine I'll be happy with it, if not. Scrap it!

No offense there, Jeff, but that seems to translate to "If it has nothing to do with ttuuxxx, then scrap it."

I've been your admirer for a long time, but please do not get/create the impression that the community's only choices are (1) you and (2) nothing else.

I guess you owe the community an apology for that statement of yours (the last line in the first quote).

[ttuuxxx]

ttuuxxx: Originally when I started off trying to organise things, Nobody else was trying to take his place for everything other than a University. Which made me jump into something I wasn't prepared for,but was the only one with enough guts to do it!
I was willing at all cost to keep the puppy project alive, unlike any of you.

ttuuxxx: Well if a Coop has absolutely no role in the actual development eg. building, releases, people involved with the actual distro, And sticks to basic administrator task. Then Fine I'll be happy with it, if not. Scrap it!

No offense there, Jeff, but that seems to translate to "If it has nothing to do with ttuuxxx, then scrap it."

I've been your admirer for a long time, but please do not get/create the impression that the community's only choices are (1) you and (2) nothing else.

I guess you owe the community an apology for that statement of yours (the last line in the first quote).

Hi raffy I was talking about 2-3 months back when we officially found out about Barry's retirement and the other Threads were made about it and at the time we only had one option which was that crazy University idea, Which made me somewhat sick to think that puppy could be moved over to that sort of venue, So I jumped in and asked to take over, just to stop that sort of transfer dead in its tracks, Then we let all the ttuuxxx bashing began for a noble cause. Anyways that was then, its all behind me now, I'm happy and excited to see that 4.2 &5.0 are moving now and that we managed to come out with our heads up high.
If I did say something that offended anyone, by all means I do apologise andI'm sorry for any hard feeling and I'll try to voice my opinions with a bit of restraint in the future.

I do put a lot of feelings into my words when talking about puppy's future, I just think a coop is not needed, We have 2 new releases in planning stages, and we can move forward without it. Which we are doing at the moment and its working fine.
ttuuxxx

[alienjeff]

P.s sometimes when I read what I actually type, I laugh really hard
ttuuxxx

We laugh, too, ttuuxxx ... but for different reasons than you do.

[Pizzasgood]

Just to clarify what I think HairyWill's point was: Barry gave you permission, for now. Doesn't mean it has to stay that way. If for some reason he decided to give the reigns to somebody else, there is little you could do but wail and gnash your teeth.

Now, please get this next point through your head: The whole idea here is that no single person is in charge, and nobody is "assigned" or "unassigned" to a task.

No, you wouldn't get to make all the decisions. But unless I misunderstand you, you don't want to make them all anyways. You want to run it all by the community first. This would be the same thing. (And yes, IMHO the coop would be a way for decisions affecting Puppy, but mainly the large decisions. Smaller stuff could be handled informally, as I described earlier.)

With no single person in charge, we don't have to worry if they turn evil, or get eaten, etc, and we don't have to worry about taking Puppy away from them.

Everybody can work on it (as long as they meet good enough standards - don't want Puppy getting sloppy). And they can work on it for as long as they want.

The community itself will have a say over things. But that is as it should be!



@Caneri: Please don't feel like we're demanding anything of you. If it turns out you can't, or would rather not, do the SVN, we can set it up elsewhere. And we don't need it immediately. It would be nice to have it up and running by 4.3 though, I think.

Also, with respect to the connections things, it was only the ban part that bothered me. If that's what it takes to keep it up, then go for it. I just wanted to make sure that you took that other stuff into account, in case you hadn't thought about them. One other aspect I missed was wireless access points, hotel rooms, etc. Just food for thought. But I see no real problems with simply blocking extra connections, nor temporarily banning IPs that make excessive attempts to connect.



I plan to play around with GIT and SVN with the full Unleashed tree in the very near future. Possibly tomorrow. I want to see if I can set up some test repositories on my second computer, then use tor on my main computer to connect to it. That way it will route my connection around the web to give me speeds comparable to what I'd have if it was a remote box, instead of right under my bed.


I suspect that in general, the SVN/GIT repository will not get very much use.



@Tombh: good stuff.

[ttuuxxx]

P.s sometimes when I read what I actually type, I laugh really hard
ttuuxxx

We laugh, too, ttuuxxx ... but for different reasons than you do.

Always count on you to find an opportunity to have a dig at someone. Your like a snake hiding in the bushes, just waiting to strike given the opportunity.
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

Just to clarify what I think HairyWill's point was: Barry gave you permission, for now. Doesn't mean it has to stay that way. If for some reason he decided to give the reigns to somebody else, there is little you could do but wail and gnash your teeth.

Now, please get this next point through your head: The whole idea here is that no single person is in charge, and nobody is "assigned" or "unassigned" to a task.

No, you wouldn't get to make all the decisions. But unless I misunderstand you, you don't want to make them all anyways. You want to run it all by the community first. This would be the same thing. (And yes, IMHO the coop would be a way for decisions affecting Puppy, but mainly the large decisions. Smaller stuff could be handled informally, as I described earlier.)

With no single person in charge, we don't have to worry if they turn evil, or get eaten, etc, and we don't have to worry about taking Puppy away from them.

Everybody can work on it (as long as they meet good enough standards - don't want Puppy getting sloppy). And they can work on it for as long as they want.

The community itself will have a say over things. But that is as it should be!

Well the last thing I am is evil, nobody really has joined 5..0 yet,But its still really early. so I'm starting off by myself. So really I have nobody to answer to other than the people who respond to this thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 77#240977. If you want to join I would be more than happy, to discuss issues with you. But really if I have to ask for every little thing I do and how I do it, its a bit drawn-out. Actually more than a bit. I'm just discussing idea's with a few developers and then I report my findings, and as for Barry handing it over to someone else, Well I have my own ibiblio account http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... s/ttuuxxx/ and since I don't have keys to Barry's account, I'll use mine, now that would be hard to take away and give to somebody else.
like I said before, Once I start it today, I'm not looking back. and the people I answer to is Barry and anyone who wants to a take a positive part/role in 5.0. I'm sick of the "what could be" red tape already, enough with the speculation and time for some momentum.
ttuuxxx

[Pizzasgood]

Should Barry get eaten by a croc tomorrow, nobody has the right to release an official version. This is an ideal time to convert puppy to a shared development model but he seems to be avoiding the opportunity.

Puppy is Barry's brainchild. Key-word: child. I don't have a kid of my own, but I do have two cats. Even if I promised somebody in advance that I was going to give them Ms. Kitty, when it came time to do it, I would be very slow and reluctant, and stressed and pained.

Give him time.

But really if I have to ask for every little thing I do and how I do it, its a bit drawn-out.

My model doesn't involve asking for every little thing. Big things would need it, but not little things. Little things would only need asking if somebody takes issue with them. In general, they will not.

and as for Barry handing it over to someone else, Well I have my own ibiblio account http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... s/ttuuxxx/ and since I don't have keys to Barry's account, I'll use mine, now that would be hard to take away and give to somebody else.

Nobody can take away the tools to build a custom Puppy. That is the whole point of open source. However, if Barry maintains ownership of the name, he can take away the privilege of calling your creation "Puppy", and then sue you if you continue using it.

If you really don't care about the official Puppy name, then you have nothing to worry about, neither from Barry nor the coop and other ideas. In the hypothetical situation where you were kicked out, just change the name and roll on.

Assuming everybody else followed you.

Similarly, even if you had the official name, nobody would have to bother with you. We could all decide to just go elsewhere and produce our own Doggy Linux. You'd be left with the name, but little else.


This obviously applies as much to the Coop idea as it does to your more dictatorship-esq method. Thus why we're discussing, so that we can find a solution that is least likely to suffer from people dropping it and going elsewhere.


Meanwhile, it is good that people are continuing Puppy development regardless. This community structure thing is important, but it isn't an immediate thing. It can be implemented over time.


But to have this become a long term, and community driven project, it is a necessary eventuality.

[alienjeff]

Everybody can work on it (as long as they meet good enough standards - don't want Puppy getting sloppy).

An example of sloppy:

I had reported this fixed after 4.1beta, however neglected to verify that it was actually fixed.

Reference: I dare you!