Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

Xyne · 2009-09-13 05:57:25

Hello,

I'm an experienced IT administrator currently developing new server software for a large multinational corporation. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the support that 8layertech currently provides for Kahel OS Enterprise Linux (Server Edition).

As for the issue of "rebranding", removing the copyright notices appears to be a clear violation of the GPL which stipulates that copyright notices remain intact. Putting aside the legal issues of what you have done, there is also the social aspects of it. You present your "distribution" as "Do IT Right", which implies that Arch does it wrong. This is a ludicrous way to present it as you yourself have stated that "Kahel OS is simply GNOME + ArchLinux". It is also equally ludicrous to claim that Kahel OS is the first rolling-release distro, especially considering that you are using Arch Linux's rolling release repositories.

As you have obviously placed more effort into creating an image for Kahel OS than you have into creating Kahel OS itself, it seems fair to assume that the image is very important to you. You should therefore reconsider your current approach to giving proper credit to those who have done the actual work as you are likely to generate considerable negative publicity if you do not.

There is also the legal issue to consider as well.

*edit*
@devs/others
Would it be a good idea to somehow "brand" packages in the official repos to show where they come from during installation, e.g. "upgrading foo from <distro|repo|whatever>" or something similar? If it were in the package itself it would encourage leechers to download all of the packages, edit them and then redistribute them themselves, thus achieving the purpose. That is, if they don't hack pacman instead or use some other package manager to hide the output.

Bah, nevermind... the further you follow that idea the further you get into scummy DRM territory.

Last edited by Xyne (2009-09-13 06:18:21)

cool8 · 2009-09-13 06:16:29

Xyne wrote:

Hello,
I'm an experienced IT administrator currently developing new server software for a large multinational corporation. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the support that 8layertech currently provides for Kahel OS Enterprise Linux (Server Edition).

As for the issue of "rebranding", removing the copyright notices appears to be a clear violation of the GPL which stipulates that copyright notices remain intact. Putting aside the legal issues of what you have done, there is also the social aspects of it. You present your "distribution" as "Do IT Right", which implies that Arch does it wrong. This is a ludicrous way to present it as you yourself have stated that "Kahel OS is simply GNOME + ArchLinux". It is also equally ludicrous to claim that Kahel OS is the first rolling-release distro, especially considering that you are using Arch Linux's rolling release repositories.
As you have obviously placed more effort into creating an image for Kahel OS than you have into creating Kahel OS itself, it seems fair to assume that the image is very important to you. You should therefore reconsider your current approach to giving proper credit to those who have done the actual work as you are likely to generate considerable negative publicity if you do not.
There is also the legal issue to consider as well.

Hi Xyne:

1. If you ought to need assistance or information on the services our team can provide and how to's, please do contact me at info@8layertech.com and we will respond to you.

2. We do not at all intend to be violators or in any way infringe on copyrights. As for the legalities and legal issues, we will largely look into this concern and we will rectify if there are incorrect information / malpractices that we have unintentionally done.

3. The DO IT Right phrase has been clarified earlier, that if we didn't think and feel that Arch LInux is not doing it right... then we could have not based our values and the way we do things from it. IT was more appropriately conveyed to non-linux users, implying that Open Source is the way to go, Thus the article as it goes.

4. Thank you for the comments and we will surely take note of this... The WebSite is just almost four days old and we agree ourselves that we have a long way to go to polish its contents and information.

Again, thank you and good day.

schuay · 2009-09-13 10:41:55

Maybe these issues should be addressed before distributing free KahelOS install CDs with the help of Intel/IBM Partners on September 19th?

This year also marks the launch of 8layer's 8ix Zenith CE, and Operating System for Desktop and Server, KAHEL OS. of which the CD Installers of the latter will be distributed for free with the
generous help from our Partners, IBM Philippines, Inc, INTEL Philippines and PLDT Bizsol.

http://www.8layertech.com/sfd/

V for Vivian · 2009-09-13 10:47:41

cool8 wrote:

1. If you ought to need assistance or information on the services our team can provide and how to's, please do contact me at info@8layertech.com and we will respond to you.

This non-public way of handling queries makes it even more obscure, you know.

cool8 wrote:

... to polish its contents and information.

You're doing it (or IT.. whatever) wrong! At least I have no hope for your project if this is what you are going to do based on our comments.

ngoonee · 2009-09-13 10:50:22

Would it be possible, from a technical perspective, to differentiate Kahel OS machines from Arch Linux/Chakra machines when accessing the Arch servers. Seeing as how almost all the software is the same, I doubt so, but of course I'm not sure on this.

Good luck, devs.

wonder · 2009-09-13 10:54:26

i see that they respond only on those posts that they agree. this is not a nice discussion and because of this behavior personally i don't like you

litemotiv · 2009-09-13 12:31:24

Allan wrote:

joelbryan wrote:
Again to reiterate "We did not modify, and replace your initscript that contain the copyright information."
So the changes Pierre pointed out do not actually occur in your distribution... and the screenshot in the pdf available on your documentation page (top of page 4) is not showing Arch initscripts without our copyright info?

classic

P.s., preinstalling gnome on a completely do-it-youself base is just ridiculous imho. also, 'rolling release' brings no benefit whatsoever to the intended target audience, on the contrary even. stuff like this can really negatively influence new linux users' impressions, since they're not going to get what is claimed (the idea probably is that they pay the kind people at 8layertech the appropriate amount of cash to fix/install/upgrade things).

Last edited by litemotiv (2009-09-13 12:50:30)

Duologic · 2009-09-13 15:45:25

The 'Do IT Right' sentence just has to go, if the end user is more important than your code provider (Arch Linux here), then you are doing IT not right (eg. wrong).

On the 8Layer website: 'Nonetheless, we would like to commend the projects Arch Linux and Gnome whose contributions surpass appreciation and where Kahel is mostly based on.'
This doesn't really gives the impression that Kahel OS couldn't exist without Arch Linux. Kahel OS is a contribution to Arch Linux, not the other way around.

All the benefits mentioned on 8Layer and KahelOS.org are just Arch's benefits. Maybe put 'Arch Linux Powered' in as the main benefit for using Kahel OS. I do like the concept of Arch Linux for the end-user, but I don't think it is build for them. Just give them an *buntu and/or an Linux geek, that mostly solves the problem.

Btw, it took me at least 10 minutes to find out where I could download it. On second thought, I even don't want to download it. And please put up a forum or something like that so people can ask for support instant and in public!

Last edited by Duologic (2009-09-13 15:46:54)

Gen2ly · 2009-09-13 16:05:10

fukawi2 wrote:

joelbryan wrote:
Again to reiterate "We did not modify, and replace your initscript that contain the copyright information."
Thank You.
You are replacing the display of copyright information, obscuring the displaying of it from any users you may have.
The spirit of GPL and open source in general is the freedom to take someone else's work and build it into what you want, and be free to pass that on to others in turn.
What is not a valid use of open source is taking someone else's work, rebranding it and then passing it off as your own without giving appropriate credit.
And what is definitely not appropriate is utilising the resources and infrastructure of another project in the process of the above actions. This is what you are doing by using the Arch repositories.
So to conclude:
- You've taken many years of work by Arch devs, and rebranded it as your own without any appropriate acknowledgement in the finished "product".
- You're stealing the resources of Arch Linux's server which is paid for by Arch Devs, and Arch Linux users through donations. I hope you've made a significant donation to Arch Linux to contribute to the running of the servers so Arch Linux isn't financially supporting your rebranding as well.

Just have to add: it is so much more beneficial if you get the blessing from the project, alot of people put in a lot of good work. Hope this can be talked though.

deej · 2009-09-13 16:17:24

The whole thing feels like rape, to me.

Deej

Mardoct · 2009-09-13 16:29:46

I think the company could do far more good working with Canonical to distrubute Ubuntu than it will by attempting to make Arch easy to use. Ubuntu lets you have all the fun of FOSS without all the fun - or hassle depending on target audience - of configuring the crap out of it or setting it up.

I think distrubuting Arch, or a derivative that is more or less the same, by CD/DVD or with OEM installs isn't a good idea. Arch is made for the kind of people that are redy, willing and able to do something like download an .iso and install their OS personally. Distributing Arch to the general public butchers the ideas it stands for, as most people want something that 'just works', and Arch Linux doesn't 'just work' for anything but the CLI unless you are willing to do some work yourself.

The majority of people want what Ubuntu stands for. Install it, everything magically works.

Pierre · 2009-09-13 16:38:59

At least they started modifyng their site and mention Arch now.

Netsu · 2009-09-13 16:54:41

Yep, much better, but it feels weird that Gnome gets so much credit, as it's a bunch of applications that are still all branded by Gnome. The reason why it is so important to mention Arch is the fact that Kahel OS is basically developed and maintained by the Arch developers, the ones that keep the repositories up to date, but it's served as something completely different.

techprophet · 2009-09-13 17:05:23

I say we sue them to hell...oh wait, that won't work since they live in the Philippines. Meaning that next to no legal action can be taken unless their site is hosted in the USA, in which case we could have it taken down.

DISCLAIMER: The views of those represented in this post are not necessarily the views of the Arch Developers, Forum Moderators, or Copyright Holders.

Last edited by techprophet (2009-09-13 17:06:15)

XFire · 2009-09-13 17:14:20

So what happens when something is released like the Xorg update which broke quite a lot or even the Hal update, which requires all the users to manually edit files - then the Arch we know will shine and make their lives fun

The dishonesty annoys me, even though they have rectified some of the issues, it is still wrong.

Xyne · 2009-09-13 17:17:40

techprophet wrote:

I say we sue them to hell...oh wait, that won't work since they live in the Philippines. Meaning that next to no legal action can be taken unless their site is hosted in the USA, in which case we could have it taken down.
DISCLAIMER: The views of those represented in this post are not necessarily the views of the Arch Developers, Forum Moderators, or Copyright Holders.

I'm sorry, this is the open source community. You're looking for commercial software development. That's down the hall, third door on your left, just after soulless shareholders and corporate patent trolls.

*edit*
There's an aspect of Kahel OS that may have been slightly missed in this thread. Considering that it's being promoted as a perfect solution for your IT needs and ready for corporate deployment (Enterprise Edition etc), there might be a backlash when it doesn't live up to its alleged stability and robustness. That might spill over to resentment of Arch if "Arch Linux" is plastered all over it.

It should be made clear that Kahel OS is a modified version of Arch (and not yet a separate distro) but that it is entirely the responsibility of the Kahel OS team and not the Arch Linux team if it fails to live up to the expectations created by the Kahel OS team.

Last edited by Xyne (2009-09-13 17:27:40)

Dusty · 2009-09-13 19:17:42

Given the nature of the changes, I highly doubt this new OS will be very popular; I expect it will quickly fade into obscurity. If it doesn't, that's great! When people start saying "how can we fix problem ex in Kahel," they'll find either that they have to fix it in Arch and send us the patches, or they will have to make copies and post their customizations there. Either way, it will benefit anyone who uses it.

I think most of the complaints that came up here were actually language barriers. Always give ESL people the benefit of the doubt.

Dusty

jelly · 2009-09-13 19:31:58

Xyne wrote:

techprophet wrote:
I say we sue them to hell...oh wait, that won't work since they live in the Philippines. Meaning that next to no legal action can be taken unless their site is hosted in the USA, in which case we could have it taken down.
DISCLAIMER: The views of those represented in this post are not necessarily the views of the Arch Developers, Forum Moderators, or Copyright Holders.
I'm sorry, this is the open source community. You're looking for commercial software development. That's down the hall, third door on your left, just after soulless shareholders and corporate patent trolls.

*edit*
There's an aspect of Kahel OS that may have been slightly missed in this thread. Considering that it's being promoted as a perfect solution for your IT needs and ready for corporate deployment (Enterprise Edition etc), there might be a backlash when it doesn't live up to its alleged stability and robustness. That might spill over to resentment of Arch if "Arch Linux" is plastered all over it.
It should be made clear that Kahel OS is a modified version of Arch (and not yet a separate distro) but that it is entirely the responsibility of the Kahel OS team and not the Arch Linux team if it fails to live up to the expectations created by the Kahel OS team.

Agreed, the problem would be that if it get's popular it would break somethimes and then if they know archlinux maintains it we get the bad publicity. If he made just a chakra clone or gnomeMod it would be much nicer.

zodmaner · 2009-09-13 19:56:11

Dusty wrote:

I think most of the complaints that came up here were actually language barriers. Always give ESL people the benefit of the doubt.
Dusty

Indeed. Marketing speech and less then perfect command of English, both in the announcement on this thread and on the official site, have give many people a rather poor impression of this project.

But still, they did announced their derived-distro on our forum (and not just silently re-branded Arch and release it) and seems to have listen to (some of) our complaints. That should count for something, at least.

Runiq · 2009-09-13 20:09:44

zodmaner wrote:

Dusty wrote:
I think most of the complaints that came up here were actually language barriers. Always give ESL people the benefit of the doubt.
Dusty
Indeed. Marketing speech and less then perfect command of English, both in the announcement on this thread and on the official site, have give many people a rather poor impression of this project.
But still, they did announced their derived-distro on our forum (and not just silently re-branded Arch and release it) and seems to have listen to (some of) our complaints. That should count for something, at least.

Yep, the Features page looks better now. I'd rework the description of the rolling release model, though – it does have some disadvantages that really should be mentioned if you want your (unexperienced) users to stay with you.

There's still some way to go, though. Please, Kahel OS people, work out the rebranding issue and either get your own repos or stop marketing Kahel OS as a distro of its own. As soon as that is taken care of, you will find the people here will be much friendlier.

garagumu · 2009-09-13 22:44:36

r3d3ye and joelbryan,

What exactly are you trying to do, guys? I'm also a Filipino and this whole thread leaves a bad taste in my mouth. There are few FOSS contributions from our country as it is, and then you announce this superficial rebranding of ArchLinux with self-serving marketing copy, talking like it's the next big thing.

I do appreciate your efforts in promoting linux, but please have some respect for the FOSS developers who actually did the real work. It seems that Kahel OS is part of your company's business strategy -- well, there's normally nothing wrong with that, but it does leave a bad impression when you didn't really add anything worthwhile on top of ArchLinux.

Why don't you direct your efforts to the Bayanihan Linux distro instead? There's also an Ubuntu Philippine community. Or perhaps you can start a group to promote ArchLinux in the Philippines.

Btw, I'm not an ArchLinux user (I used ubuntu/debian for some time). I only posted here because I saw this thread from reddit.

Last edited by garagumu (2009-09-13 22:46:15)

foutrelis · 2009-09-13 22:49:02

garagumu wrote:

I only posted here because I saw this thread from reddit.

Link to the thread on reddit.com for anyone who's interested.

Xyne · 2009-09-13 23:49:32

foutrelis wrote:

Link to the thread on reddit.com for anyone who's interested.

That made me laugh a bit.

joelbryan · 2009-09-14 02:13:18

We're making everything sure that we credit everyone that is related to our project. In fact, we have updated the initscript function to display all Arch Linux credits, website and the authors. And we have also updated our website to display the Arch Linux logo and the related credit information.

As an open source company, we feel that we have a great responsibility to contribute and help the mass to adopt and use open source software easily.

Kahel OS Desktop will be the base platform for our software contributions, in which we will be contributing in the next few months.

To give everyone an idea, here's some preview screenshots of what's currently in discussion of our team that we'll be developing and what's in store for Kahel OS Desktop.

1. Linux Welcome Center - We feel that Linux is in greater need for an introduction, thus we're in the process of creating a dynamic welcome center.

2. Live Help And Support - Instantly get help right from the desktop.

3. Gnome Desktop Preferences - A dynamic consolidated desktop preference tool that has server fetching capabilities.

Currently, those are all running on my desktop as I speak, but with your help, we can ripen enough our software then we can release it to the public for general use.

As for me, I truely believe that if you have the vision and talent to do it, you should use it, act on it, and express it on whatever means necessary to reach your vision.

Mardoct · 2009-09-14 02:52:59

Your goals really are more in line with Ubuntu. The ideal Arch user isn't interested in consolidated control from some GUI app. Ubuntu is. The Arch way more or less includes the idea that a GUI should only be used if it's conducive to productivity and that all you get out of the box is a Linux kernel + some tools + pacman.

Your goal is more or less the same as Ubuntu. Let the avaerage Joe use FOSS/Linux without any expertise or configuration. I think it would be far more conducive for your goals and for the FOSS community as a whole if you made an Ubuntu derivative much like mint; Ubuntu base, Ubuntu compatible more or less, but with even more tools to make it easier to use than a toaster.

Taking Arch, with wildly incompatible aims relative to yours, and trying to turn it into something that has already been done by Ubuntu will just cause further fragmentation of the greater open-source community and is done at a detriment to your users. Ubuntu already has documentation and forums in place geared towards the general public in more languages than I knew ever existed. It would best for all parties if you approached Canonical inc. and tried to come to an agreement. If you are competent, Canonical would surely allow you to use their trademarks and you can focus on doing any work needed to make it easier for Fillipinos to use and create some GUI tools to simplify it.

If you stay with an Arch base, you will have to do more or less everything Ubuntu has already done while contending with Ubuntu.

Arch Linux

#51 2009-09-13 05:57:25

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#52 2009-09-13 06:16:29

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#53 2009-09-13 10:41:55

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#54 2009-09-13 10:47:41

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#55 2009-09-13 10:50:22

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#56 2009-09-13 10:54:26

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#57 2009-09-13 12:31:24

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#58 2009-09-13 15:45:25

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#59 2009-09-13 16:05:10

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#60 2009-09-13 16:17:24

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#61 2009-09-13 16:29:46

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#62 2009-09-13 16:38:59

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#63 2009-09-13 16:54:41

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#64 2009-09-13 17:05:23

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#65 2009-09-13 17:14:20

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#66 2009-09-13 17:17:40

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#67 2009-09-13 19:17:42

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#68 2009-09-13 19:31:58

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#69 2009-09-13 19:56:11

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#70 2009-09-13 20:09:44

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#71 2009-09-13 22:44:36

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#72 2009-09-13 22:49:02

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#73 2009-09-13 23:49:32

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#74 2009-09-14 02:13:18

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

#75 2009-09-14 02:52:59

Re: Kahel OS. Do IT Right.

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