Terrasoft appears to be taking order for YDL 4.0 now

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Nix (et alia):

Respectfully, I must disagree with your position...

Ryan Nix wrote:
> Reply: Terrasoft doesn't work on that much. It's OSS.
> It's a community effort, of which, we who answer
> questions on this list are a part of.

While it is true that Yellow Dog Linux is Open Source Software, and 
(theoretically) a community effort, I don't think that implies that 
"Terrasoft doesn't work on that much." I believe that Terra Soft 
actually must do quite a lot of work to make YDL ready for public 
consumption: compilation, testing, refactoring, analyzing, bug fixing, 
programming, testing again, and so on. And, while the Fedora Core 
project from which YDL 4.0 is derived is the result of a very large 
community effort, I think that the Linux on PowerPC community is much 
smaller -- small enough that the lion's share of the *programming* work 
in bringing YDL to fruition is probably done by Terra Soft and its 
employees (I could be completely wrong here, by the way -- if you or 
someone reading this is an OSS programmer who has contributed to YDL 
4.0, please speak up!). (Just because software is open source does not 
mean that a programming community immediately springs forth to take over 
its maintenance. Just look at all the moribund projects on Sourceforge 
to rebut that notion.)

> The incentive is to sell service. My company sell
> services based on open source software, but we don't
> charge for the software itself.

Absolutely true, and you and your company are to be commended for that 
kind of behavior. In fact, the service sales model is probably the 
reason Terra Soft is so annoyingly silent on these mailing lists. Terra 
Soft desperately wants to *sell* their service advice, rather than give 
it away for free (and I hope that your company has a similar attitude, 
so that they can continue to pay your paycheck).

> You said:  They do allow people to d/l from a
> mirrored site, for free!
> [...]
> 
> Reply:
> They don't allow YDL 4 to be downloaded from the
> mirrors. Where is it? Why isn't it allowed?

In a message from yesterday (Wednesday, November 3, 2004):

<http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2004-November/000067.html>

"v4.0 ISOs will be made available via public mirrors in roughly two weeks."

> Can I upload it to, say, the Univeristy of Oregon
> servers? It's open source after all.

I think the answer is, yes, you can -- in two weeks. However, if you 
want it *now*, you must pay for the privilege. Be patient, grasshopper! 
Open source means the source code must be made available... eventually. 
I don't think there is a rule that says it has to be made available as 
soon as you (or I or anyone on this list) want it, it just has to be timely.

And, truth be told, no software is "free" (as in beer). There is some 
cost associated with every mechanism for software distribution, 
including downloading software from an archive. After all, you must pay 
your bandwidth and media costs (and for some people, those costs will be 
higher than the charges Terra Soft is asking for the boxed set).

> Knoppix is free and can be downloaded for free.
> Mandrake, Debian, etc are all downloadable for free.

That is true. However, Mandrake, I know, would prefer you purchased 
CD-ROM discs from their store. And, they would really, really prefer you 
became a paid member of the "Mandrake Club." They are, after all, trying 
to make money from a product they give away for free, just like Terra 
Soft. Also, I think that Mandrake embargoes their latest release, just 
like Terra Soft embargoes YDL (correct me if I am wrong about this).

> Reply:
> YDL 4 didn't work on my iBook G3 600mhz right out
> of the box.

Though distressing, that is an unfortunately common occurrence with any 
distribution of Linux on any platform. While it might be attributable to 
Terra Soft, it is just as likely Just Another Linux Gotcha (TM). As part 
of the community, you have as much responsibility to try to hunt down 
(and share) those problems as does anyone else.

<Off topic>

Here is my opinion (and only my opinion, so not worth much) on the Open 
Source Software business model's dirty little secret: there is not a lot 
of incentive for OSS businesses to make their software *too* good or 
*too* easy to use. If one's business model is to make money from selling 
services after delivery of the software, one has incentive to make 
software good enough to be compelling, but not so good as to not require 
support. If the software were perfect, one could never sell the support 
services, and one would go broke very quickly. I think Red Hat, 
Mandrake, and Terra Soft are (perhaps unconsciously) following this model.

Corollaries of this hypothesis are that the market leader of 
*commercial* software (i. e., Microsoft in the operating system market) 
has incentives to keep adding features in order to lock in sales and 
upgrades, which is where the money is, but not much incentive to fix 
bugs or change core foundations.

Meanwhile, the market trailer in commercial software (i. e., Apple) has 
a lot of incentive to make higher quality software (by whatever 
intangible measure) in order to differentiate itself in a smaller niche 
market.

The above opinions were unencumbered by any understanding of actual 
market or economic factors, so take them with several grains of salt!

</Off topic>

> I still haven't gotten a response out of them on
> this. I can't call them either.

You *can* call them -- it's just that you have to pay for the service. 
That's part of the scenario with OSS business models (again, I imagine 
that your own company has the same sorts of policies).

> Mandrake 10.1 PPC works fine and I'm probably going
> to switch.

Then, by all means, report your findings to this list! We all want to 
know how the different distros stack up against each other.

Good luck with all your Open Source ventures!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>