Barry's retirement from 'Puppy

[SirDuncan]

Barry,
Though your leadership may have been ad-hoc, the product of your leadership has been (and will continue to be) one of the best Linux distributions - maybe even operating systems - available. Your leadership has also fostered a strong, eclectic, and loyal community.

It is because of this community that I have no fear of Puppy's death, although it won't be the same without you holding the reins (even if it was only a loose grip). As others have said, if you would be willing to continue with a slower release cycle (perhaps something closer to once a year as some other distros do), it would make many of us happy. If not, your constant contribution will be missed. I wish you luck in your new endeavors.

[john biles]

Hello Barry K,
I fully understand why you want to take a break as developement of any projector over such along time takes it toll.

What I'm only suggesting is that before you leave that the base libs like glibc etc and the kernel are as late a version as you feel would be reliable.

With ever changing standards and updates to packages and the newer versions of Adobe Flash requiring newer libs it would be nice if compatabillty of the last Barry K version of Puppy could and would be usable in its last form for years to come.

I see no reason why Puppy in one form or another won't continue to be used by all who love it.

Lastly can you please put back "Dougal's enhanced remastering script" from the later Puppy 2 series iso's which allowed far more personal mods to be transfered to a users customized iso than your own script.

Thanks for creating Puppy.

[ttuuxxx]

Lastly can you please put back "Dougal's enhanced remastering script" from the later Puppy 2 series iso's which allowed far more personal mods to be transfered to a users customized iso than your own script.

"Dougal's enhanced remastering script" was great in puppy 2 series but in series 3.0 it would kill Xvesa, made it none functional. So it was removed. Basically it has a few bugs that has to fixed before it could be put back into puppy 4.0
I'll have a look at it and see if I could incorporate its features in the latest Puppy remaster script. It might take some time. I'm working on other bugs right now.
ttuuxxx

[cb88]

@john biles one reason i believe it was removed is that people were making derivatives with it and there personal info was getting included they should be warned that it is only for personal use and either editing the sfs files manually or unleashed is the prefered method for building derivatives

at least i am pretty sure that is correct

[BarryK]

On the Other side he has allways said that he dont want to earn money from the Puppy Linux work, becouse he is fearing to loose the Money that he is getting from the Australian State.

That's disgusting! An outright lie.

I do not receive any Government assistance.

I can swear that i have read this here on the forum.
However after your clarification it could be that i have missunderstood the text highly becouse the text was not related to you but to a another main developer of puppy linux.

Yeah ok, idle gossip on can lead to all sorts of misconceptions. And yes, it may have been another developer who mentioned something about Govt assistance.

On the other side you dont write and sell a complete Book where you exactly write all the complie options and all the tweaks for compiling puppy linux from scratch.

At this stage I don't want to write a book. I have been through the book-writing stage. I have 4 books published, including one that I self-published and which sold very successfully through Dick Smith stores in Australia and New Zealand. One got published by a UK publisher, and other by a USA publisher -- a few royalties are still trickling in from the latter, even though the book was published in 1995 and is way out of date.

Writing a book is basically 6 months very solid work.

Regarding royalties, if published by an international publisher, it is only a small percentage of the retail price. I can't remember exactly, but retailers take about 60%, the publisher about 30%, the author only gets about 10%. It is not a money-spinner unless you write the next great novel that sells in the millions.

However, I won't rule it out entirely. Will reconsider towards the end of this year.

[raffy]

@aran:

i have read this here on the forum.
However after your clarification it could be that i have missunderstood the text highly becouse the text was not related to you but to a another main developer of puppy linux

Yes, right, that was Mark Ulrich before he worked for Minisys.

@gopup: Welcome to the forum. So that members of the community will know you more, why don't you register at puppylinux.org and start posting there in your own blog? This way, members can comment under your blog discussion.

@quasimodal: - same suggestion -

(Of course you can start discussion topics in this forum, but I suggested puppylinux.org for your proposals because it is the official community affairs site.)

[ttuuxxx]

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[cb88]

@ttuxxx you may very well make a good puppy leader but in your haste to become it i believe you show you are not the one... even barry takes the role reluctantly ...gopup's ideas aren't that bad and actually are good although perhaps not in puppy style up till now but it doesn't mean that working on puppy wouldn't be fun anymore just different and new which is what puppy is all about

what i would like to see is a repo where anyone can download every bit of code to build a puppy distro currently this is almost possible but it still needs work.... this would probably defeat gopups idea but in fact it would be better since there would be one base puppy and we would just add programs from T2 I think gopup's idea is in the right direction but still overkill

I don't think there should ever be a leader persay perhaps a developer dedicated to building the official releases but not a leader

why have past efforts at SVN or CVS etc... failed? people don't understand how to use it... it really isn't that hard we would just need a wiki page telling how to use it then any developer could fix bugs in the official puppy... and since the idea would be to have the build completely automated we could finally have a way to conceivably have bug fixes for older releases and reduce the likelihood of recurring bugs

up till now puppylinux has been barry's project for all intents ans purposes now it will become the community's project ..... the only way i see to do that is similar to the way the wiki works a puppy developer will download all the source for puppy and edit it then send back the updates how much simpler can it get?

sure barry didn't find that convenient since it was his project and he made the design decisions but now it is more than that it is a cooperative effort and personally i think just one main dev doing it all is a bad idea (barry did it because he wanted to but now there is absolutely no reason to continue that)

[ttuuxxx]

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[cb88]

yes i too share your concern about it falling into the wrong hands...

my point wasn't that you would be a bad leader but that there shouldn't be a leader

i must admit that the only community project i have seen succeed is 2.15ce... and that was because of whodoo at least IMO

What i propose is that there be a base system built from T2 with a T2 profile to build it. then we can add packages to it from there we wouldn't need to build cut down versions anymore since the base from T2 would be the cut down version (with vesa only jwm and package manager and whatever apps would take up less than a meg total like rxvt and rubix....and no gui toolkits in the base that way it can go QT or GTK)

perhaps i was a little too apprehensive of there being a new leader ... I must say that if you do become leader PLEASE cut the bloat LOL meanpup FTW!

perhaps we could start by heavily modifying the t2 livecd for puppy boot scripts?

[JB4x4]

First off, thanks Barry!! You made Linux quick and usable for me (and others). I wish you well in whatever you do.

Secondly, I too was thinking about the Community Editions that fizzled out. I hope all those wanting or wishing for the lead role think long and hard about it. Remember Barry's full time job is Puppy.

Regards,
JB

[ttuuxxx]

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[cb88]

ttuuxxx i believe that puppy could run in that space as an HD install... as far as that goes debian + icewm runs in 40 a course not with firefox

[ttuuxxx]

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[alienjeff]

Well Guys, after reading "gopup" disturbing Ideas on puppy Linux's future, I feel I should share with the community What I've done.

Yesterday I submitted to Barry my offer to take over as the next Leader of Puppy Linux.<huge snip>

The last thing Puppy Linux needs is an egomaniac to head the project. Your choice of the words "take over" and capitalization of "Leader" are all telling. IMHO, you're the last person in the world who should "take over," to borrow your words.

I'm biting down hard on my tongue right now, though I will say that I'm both shocked and appalled by your pompous nerve.

I believe you know how I'll vote ...

[ttuuxxx]

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[MU]

@aran:

i have read this here on the forum.
However after your clarification it could be that i have missunderstood the text highly becouse the text was not related to you but to a another main developer of puppy linux

Yes, right, that was Mark Ulrich before he worked for Minisys.

Yes, when I added the donation option to dotpups.de, I had to take care, to get not more than 50Euro/month, as I lived from social wellfare.

But that is germany, and different from getting a rent in australia.
Mark

[cb88]

personally i never did really take up on the 3.xx series though i did try it never matched 2.14 IMO

in the future whatever happens there should be a base puppy that does as described above by me.... that way there is enough flexibility to meet most any need thus you avoid issues with the more demanding puppy users

puppy isn't just a noobie distro you know it has to be easy to hack run lightweight and be fast and easy to use that is a tall order but far from impossible

[MU]

what is a Puppy-leader?
Or better: what was Barry doing as "leader"?
He worked like crazy, forming a system, that inspired other people.
He always refused to do organisitoric issues.
He once tried, when there was the debate about the puppy-foundation, but he stated clearly, that he just felt pressured to do that.

having a project-manager now, that organizes developers, is completely different.
People will feel like being in a job.
There will be disputes, because ttuuxx does'nt like AJs nose (just an example).

I would not like to work "contracted" by tasks, if I would not get money for it.
If I'd be a unpaied developer, I just would do, what I like.

A bugtracker is no bad idea, but there were already one or two attemps in the past, and they failed. I remember one set up by JS Marsden.

I still like, what the "foundation" is doing: working on the wiki, organizing information and news.
It is a way to organize things without a project manger, but by some volounteers, that take over responsibility for certain issues (like keeping the server running etc.).

Mark

[cb88]

@mu and obviously that model is rather slow (the current ce project is still percolating as far as i know....) and also wiki fails as a bug tracker (believe me i know).... barry's model of working on it full time was pretty fast and got the job done


that is THE reason i want some sort of versioned repo .... each version can be a new cloned branch and anybody can work on anything they like as long as they are polite and don't mess in others projects much like a wiki.... even if stuff did get messed with it is VERSIONED... meaning we just revert the changes

would you support that idea mu? anyway the only thing in the repo would be like a T2 profile the boot scripts and maybe things like hotpup.... bootsplashes etc... mostly extensions to T2

to sum that up we need a model that people can work on whatever they want and it still work (puppy that is).... which in the current community way of doing things it rather difficult as for the most part only one or two people ever actually work on the core of puppy in a CE