Submitted for your approval: White paper draft

[Ralf Flaxa]

Dear Evan,

On Wed, Apr 05, 2000 at 11:17:42AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> 
> One could easily suggest that Linux ISVs already have had a "standard"
> with which to work -- the Red Hat way of doing things. If LSB fails to
> deliver -- and indeed what's happening by those who can't wait -- without
> a mutually-agreed standard, ISVs (and many free-software developers too)
> are simply targeting Red Hat and letting other distros figure out how to
> cope with being Red Hat compatible.

Well, this is partially true only. Other distros have also brought products
to Linux, first on their platform, where RedHat then had to figure out how
to make that work. I don't think this has been done intentionally. I rather
think every distro just tried to help to bring more software to the Linux
platform. But I agree with you that it is bad anyway if it works on some
distros only and thus only some Linux users can benefit from it and not all.

The goal should be to bring as many apps to Linux as possible and make them
run on any distro available.

That is the reason why LSB is so important and why all distros are supporting
it. Even though many people out there try to spread the "it does not move
fast enough, so it will not work" message I can tell you that there is a
great deal of commitment from all distros now trying to make it happen.

Caldera has now 4 people working fulltime on that and other distros have
agreed to also put more engineering resources behind it.

Maybe someone from SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake or Turbo could comment on that
to make people see, that this is really the case ;-)

You will see the fruits of it soon, so if you want to help then do rather
play the advocate for it than questioning it publically. I appreciate your
input and comments, but I feel they have an "undertone" of pessimism.

> > In addition, LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software
> > vendors to port and write products for Linux.
> 
> Pardon? Since when is LSB taking a co-ordinating an ISV advocacy role? I
> don't recall that being determnined, ever. It certainly wasn't part of the
> original endorsement by LI.

Look at the mission statement at www.linuxbase.org. This message is there
for a long time already.

Regards

	Ralf

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