中日韓 Linux 聯盟 何去何從
盛傳已久的中日韓(CJK) Linux 聯盟具體工作已經正式開始。昨天我突然收到通知，公司要我去中方的工作組開會。得悉日本和韓國已經提出了初步方案，中國之前則只是隨便的提到會做有關桌面的東西。對於這些會議我從來不感興趣，因為實際效益實在太低，對於我喜歡少說話多做事的就覺得是浪費時間。
會議第一階段是自由發言，大家各自就日本和韓國的方案發表意見。第二階段各人提出方案，特別是就桌面方面的想法提出意見。由於聯盟能做的絕對不是開發工作，因為協調不容易，不同公司有自身的利益，一個跨公司的開發團隊成功的機會很底。所以目標是放在研究和調查等方面。我提出我們可以從 desktop 的 usability 著手，對於現在流行的 Linux desktop 做 usability 的研究，制定測試的方法和準則，然後分別在中日韓三國建立實驗室，得出分析報告。結果可以給 Gnome 和 KDE 做參考，希望能有正面的影響，促進 Linux desktop 在 usability 的發展。
建議得到非常正面的反應，在座成員都表示這是一個很值得去做的事情，唯獨是那個擁有國家背景的Linux distro的代表強烈反對，就他一人提出了一大堆能不能做、會不會做的問題，但就是不去想怎麼才能做，是不是應該做。雖然主席和其他幾個人極力和他 argue，但最後也是因為得不到共識而得放棄。今天我終於看到他們醜陋的面目。原來由中國政府一手扶持的這家公司就是由一群什麼都不會幹的廢物所控制。中國政府只要一天繼續直接或間接的幫助這些企業，那就像向一頭永不吃飽的獅子餵飼事物一樣，到頭來只是把納稅人的錢白白的花光。在這個不倫不類的社會主義政權下實行的資本主義制度，所帶來的就是這些社會毒瘤。
雖然他們已是臭名遠播，大家都知道他們什麼事也不會做，但究竟為什麼還是會被邀請呢？如果這家公司沒有被邀請，事情又會怎麼發展呢？
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The thing is why you have to
The thing is why you have to get the unanimous support from the union members or whatever you guys call it. Maybe because everyone want everyone else to do the real job. Since no concrete products will be produced from this 'union', no one really want to pool in their own resources to it. The result? failure.
Besides, a vague idea is easy to come up with but what real matters is giving detail description of how to proceed with the idea. You might say, well, we should reach an agreement on the idea before we proceed to the detail parts. but it's not how the OSS world works. You get an idea, you work on it for awhile, and show initial result from your work before people starting to follow your idea. Sometime or most of the time, no one will follow you, so your effort was wasted, it's a shame. But this is the way how OSS work.
Anyway, since you think it's a waste of time to participate this thing, don't be upset when you get whatever you expected in the first place.
Putting you hope on some committee is similar than putting your hope on the government. The same thing happened to all the bloated, over budgetted projects in NASA. You either buy it or you don't. It seems like you want it the both ways.
Show us your work, not your idea!
Politic aside, I don't really
Politic aside, I don't really like your idea of study all the popular linux desktop usability, set rules... That work was repeated 100 times if not 1000 times already. You can just contact Redhat, suse, mandrake and let them send you a copy of it. You are recreating the wheel, not event reinventing it.
It's not the desktop, it's the applications that matters. And giving sugguestion to Gnome and KDE does not make sense. They have enough sugguestions they can handle. They need more labor or 3rd party applications. They are vastly under-manpowered long time ago.
I'd rather you study some windows application download sites like the tucows (does it still exist now aday?) found what want average user will like to use to make their life easier. Find out what features in the existing linux applications are lacking of. Then give suggestions to YOUR UNION MEMBERS. Let them decide what kind of applications they want to pool their resource to.
And testing? Well, Win3.1 and Win95 sold very well with tons of bugs. You have to deliver your products to the hands of users before they started notice bugs. A beautiful desktop wall paper can only sale as much as Macintosh can sale, i.e. not enough.
You have totally misunderstoo
You have totally misunderstood my position in the meeting. I was not there solely for getting support from anyone, I was there because I was representing the company that I'm working for, since we're one of the committee members. Unfortunately this is not an OSS project, it doesn't follow the 'code speaks louder' rule.
Why I was upset was not because of the outcome, but because of the attitude of the people.
You have some very interestin
You have some very interesting points, let me respond one by one:
Politic aside, I don't really like your idea of study all the popular linux desktop usability, set rules... That work was repeated 100 times if not 1000 times already. You can just contact Redhat, suse, mandrake and let them send you a copy of it. You are recreating the wheel, not event reinventing it.
Whether they have done extensive research on the usability, I'm not sure. Redhat or suse? Yes, probably. Mandrake, I don't think so. As you're confident that scientific research on GNU/Linux desktop usability has been done many many times, you would be doing us a great favour if you give us some pointers.
It's not the desktop, it's the applications that matters. And giving sugguestion to Gnome and KDE does not make sense. They have enough sugguestions they can handle. They need more labor or 3rd party applications. They are vastly under-manpowered long time ago.
If you think usability doesn't matter, and the developers don't value this kind of opinions and suggestions, you need to re-think. Usability exists in the whole lifecycle of a software, from requirements to implementation, so we actually should take it into account from the very beginning, not after applications are there and then see how we can fix it. This is more aligned to the Gnome mindset anyway, they tend to do the correct thing from the start.
I'd rather you study some windows application download sites like the tucows (does it still exist now aday?) found what want average user will like to use to make their life easier. Find out what features in the existing linux applications are lacking of. Then give suggestions to YOUR UNION MEMBERS. Let them decide what kind of applications they want to pool their resource to.
As I have already told you, it is not practical for us to do software development. Given the attitude of the man I described, do you think devoting their effort on development work is possible?
And testing? Well, Win3.1 and Win95 sold very well with tons of bugs. You have to deliver your products to the hands of users before they started notice bugs. A beautiful desktop wall paper can only sale as much as Macintosh can sale, i.e. not enough.
I begin to see your point. You think Linux on desktop is not popular because there are not enough applications. First, we are not a promotion organization, we are not here to promote Linux desktop to the world. Second, factors that make Windows sell so well include M$'s sales and marketing strategies, their monopoly on DOS and dirty tricks to kill other DOS variants, the Wintel 'alliance', the lower price of PC computers compared with Macintosh, etc. I'm very sorry to see that you relate a beautiful desktop wallpaper with usability, if that's the case I'll give you Enlightenment and then forget everything.
我是香港中文大學的學生，現正進行一項有關技客文化(Geek Culture)與華人社區自由軟體運動(Freeware Movement)的調查。希望閣下能抽空完成這份問卷。請根據每題的指示，並回答所有問題。是次調查所得的資料只會作學術之用，內容絕對保密，在此先感謝閣下的協助。
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看了你的帖子，又一
看了你的帖子，又一次感觉到自由软件在中国的可悲。