I don't want Arch to become popular.

i3839 · 2005-04-21 16:07:48

As I said: I don't think that will happen.

Why not? Because I have faith in Judd. ;-) Point is, Arch has a clear and simple philosophy, and it really doesn't care much about how many users it has (except for the server bandwidth I guess). Its main goal isn't to be popular, or to grow, the devs won't do things just because users want it.

And if Arch becomes very popular anyway, perhaps that just confirms that how they're doing is good and thus even less reason to change the philosophy.

Perhaps some Arch users who want more or something slightly different will join eachother and work on an Arch fork, or do other things, but that won't change Arch.

Perhaps in 5 years you'll be right, or not. We'll see.

As for smaller communities: There are language specific forums already, or you could open a local Arch forum yourself. :-)

d3c3it · 2005-04-22 09:25:41

personally I installed arch linux due to the recent buzz about it, with the ammount of linux news sites raving about it, I wanted to give it another go and I have to say from a year ago when I first tried it Arch has developed in leaps and bounds.

Regarding the multimedia front and licensing, I personally don't think it is wise to just ignore the licenses because you dont like them. When the whole mp3 license came about i swapped my music over to ogg (i have all the orignal cds anyway so it made no difference to me), libdvdcss and xvid/ffmpeg is a grey area thou. There has to be a balanced met somewhere, as it just takes 1 "capitalist-scum-fuck" (<<bill hicks) to bring a development down due to ignoring upstream licenses, ie patient holders etc etc.

Its something that cannot be ignored imho

i3839 · 2005-04-22 10:49:57

libdvdcss isn't gray, and xvid is a GPL implementation of MPEG4, which is an open standard without patents burdening it, like mp3. Please don't confuse licenses with patents, they are whole different kind of beasts.

d3c3it · 2005-04-22 14:13:16

And they are gray areas, im not confusing the 2. It all depends on the country from which the distro comes. A distro like fedora is US based and doesn't include such things as mp3 as the law doesn't permit or is to gray, therefore freeing there users any legal issues or problems.

Arch is different because canada doesnt have as restrictive laws as the US therefore can distrubute theses sources.

Its all about risk, patient or license. And its something that can not be ignored, i personally think disclaimers on pkgs, on any distro, warning users of such usage is a good way to go. But that is just my opinion. And again im not confusing the 2

EDIT: I didnt know that about xvid, i always thought they were affected by patients, they might not be yet but i bet they soon will be

Well everyone could just do what ive done, keep a copy of the source of all the "gray" software

i3839 · 2005-04-22 15:04:43

Licenses are only an issue for non-free software which requires it. And that is only for software with restrictive EULA's, not normal software you'd want to have on your pc. In the worst case the distribution of such software stops, if they will be provided by Arch at all.

Patents on the other hand are a potential nightmare. There the companies with the most money rule. The main problem is that any program doing X, may be sued by some random company who patented doing vague stuff like Y, where Y can be so vague that virtually anything falls under it. The problem isn't the patent Y itself, it won't be a valid patent anyway, the problem is that it costs a lot of money, time and energy to defend against such claims, and there are thousands of other patents like Y which can all be tried against you.

Patents aren't about usage or whatever, they can come from anywhere at anytime. They are always made as vague as possible, to be as useful as possible, and companies try to claim as many patents as they can, just in case. Disclaimers won't help a bit, that way lies madness. What disclaimer do you want anyway? "You may be forced to stop using this app because it may violate some unknown silly patents, sorry about that."?

The GPL disallows distribution of software which violates patents, so if a company can make it hard in court that a certain GPL program breaks its patent then it may not be distributed anyway.

The moment you accept that you're living in a gray area instead of fighting for your rights is the moment you lose.

d3c3it · 2005-04-22 17:23:24

I dont believe that, when you accept that a program maybe of a gray area it would, least in my own opinion, fight for it more. I was very pleased when dvd jon won in court, twice, this was great and when poland stood up for our rights...but anyway were going off the subject here, the point i was trying to make was due to these's restrictions of licenses and patients a distro is in flux of what to include within the distrubtion, like you said the gpl disallows software that does violates patents and alot of orignal closed licenses holders also dont like there software to be included for distrubtion (is that so for nvidia???) but what im saying is, i think it is good that distros like fedora dont include such things, they are protecting the users and there is options to enable to use of programs/software that might not comply. After all they have complyed with the licenses/patients.

But anyway going off the subject completely there, i do want arch to get more popular as hopefully this will bring more resources and more mirrors

(btw sorry if i dont seem to be able to get my point across, i was at work and hiding the fact i was surfing and not working )

darkcoder · 2005-04-29 04:24:40

MasonM wrote:

Sorry, Arch just gained another user.

:shock: they get out... :evil:

is a joke, welcome and enjoy Arch.

fatblueduck · 2005-04-29 04:54:57

case in point: this guy wants kde and gnome to be included on the installation cd.

ravster · 2005-04-30 00:16:41

You know, if things get a little uncomfortable, we could always ask the devs to 'mishandle' a major newbie-must-have prog, and this would generate bad publicity, and the rest of us could live happily ever after. :twisted: :twisted:

Evilly yours,
Dr. Evil.
PhD., with honours, Evil Medical Institute.

And if any of you have a problem with that, I've got a whole bag of 'sshh's with your name on them right next to me.

i3839 · 2005-04-30 00:35:57

Going for the dirty and easy solution, eh? What about a real fool prove method of getting rid of the unwanted noise in the background, the unholy bandwidth wasters, the zombi army of... something...

Hereby, the real solution:

Step 1) Announce that everyone should make daily backups, or otherwise they'll regret it one day.

Step 2) Announce that from now on Pacman -Su will do `rm -rf /` at random times, to bring that regretful day just that bit closer.

The l33t Arch users will think "great, now finally I can properly test my backup tools". The unwante garbage will think we went insane and will quickly use another distro. It will generate plenty of news too, so the wickedness of Arch would be spread around quickly enough, leaving us with eternal peace and crunching harddisks.

ravster · 2005-04-30 15:20:16

Hmm, this is obviously a better solution.
I retract my proposition and second i3839's solution to solve the newbie 'issue' (being politically correct here).
--Dr. Evil

P.S. - If this doesn't work, I'll blow up the core of the Earth with a vulcan nuclear thingy.

i3839 wrote:

Going for the dirty and easy solution, eh?

Hey, I've been frozen for the last 30 years, throw me a friggin' bone here people. :evil:

Arch Linux

#26 2005-04-21 16:07:48

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#27 2005-04-22 09:25:41

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#28 2005-04-22 10:49:57

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#29 2005-04-22 14:13:16

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#30 2005-04-22 15:04:43

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#31 2005-04-22 17:23:24

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#32 2005-04-29 04:24:40

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#33 2005-04-29 04:54:57

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#34 2005-04-30 00:16:41

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#35 2005-04-30 00:35:57

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#36 2005-04-30 15:20:16

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

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