Forum Woes

[Sage]

I am placing this item here deliberately - PLEASE DO NOT MOVE TO THE USUAL LOCATION FOR BOARD ISSUES.

This morning, I have sent the following comments to BK's blog. However, not all readers of the Forum visit that site, so, in order to have the widest distribution and feedback, I am it repeating it here:

Posted on 3 Apr 2009, 15:39 by Sage
For - um?
The board has just come back up this morning (evening in Oz?).

The hiatus is utterly unsatisfactory. And that is not necessarily an indictment of John (but it might be).

Any idea just how much IPR on the breed resides up there?! Who does it belong to? And lots of other questions needing hyper-urgent consideration by everybody with a interest in the mutt and his progeny.

With Puppy still resting at No.2 in Ladislav's table, any glitch like this is unacceptable.

Answers? Not many. But if I were in BK's/ WD's, and all the other heavyweights with so much of their efforts invested, shoes I'd want to stop ALL cosy coding hobbies and address the future of the project's intercourse arrangements TODAY.

Only one man's opinion, but I'd want to resurrect and make the old BK Forum the main source of wisdom with the entire archives of the Murga board ceded to it, at least for reference. A tele-conference amongst the key Oz proponents, perhaps?

For some of us, The Murga Forum is the only point of contact with d/l links for derivatives, contact with notable personalities, historical records, discussions, disputes, trouble-shooting, etc. If all this were lost, it would be a mini tsunami. Ironically, there is a bunch of advice that transcends the distro, itself. The value of the resource is considerable.

Now is the time to avoid potential meltdown. Things have, with the best of intentions, been allowed to drift.

Go on - ignore me, again! I don't speak the coding language of most visitors to this blog, but I've seen a lot of things this last half century, so I know what's what in information dissemination.

[ecomoney]

The board glitch was caused by a change in the "whois" record for domain name, I checked last night while the board was down. This morning I checked again and the DNS record was updated.

http://www.domaincheck.co.uk/search_res ... bmit=Check

Today, the above page reads:-

Code: Select all

Last update of whois database: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:01:33 EST

Yesterday when the board was down, it read

Code: Select all

Last update of whois database: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 at 18:40:07 EST

These roughly correspond with the times the forum went down, and I assume when it became available again.

I sent a pleading email to GoDaddy technical support, asking for a temporary extention (attached) while we sorted this out, but I have not received a reply from them. All of the other puppy support forums and points of contact were down also. Im not sure what happened make the board available again (apart from a whois database being changed)..but it seems to be back at least for the time being.

I also emailed the address on the domain record and this morning received a reply from John Murga thanking me for letting him know

Sage, I do share your concerns on these issues. Puppy, while being a "cosy programming hobby" to some (and so it should be) has also become a very powerful tool for the prevention of electronic waste and the contamination of land with the many dangerous chemicals used in the construction of computers. Its also a powerful tool for people of limited means to access the free media, communication, knowledge and facilities of the world wide web. It is used by many charities, NGO's and individuals who would otherwise not have access to these facilities. Puppy Linux like any Linux is an alternative to *other* operating systems that would have no financial deterrents to planned obsolescence (adding to the waste problem), and who's corporate overseers are not adverse to anti-competitive practices and suspicious political donations.

Considering the worlds current problems, this makes Puppy Linux a worthy project indeed, deserving of only the best care, attention to detail and production quality, and support facilities.

[Sage]

Good on yer, eco. Clearly you speak the lingo, whereas I am a virgin in these matters.

You are correct in every syllable.

Not sure how valuable navel gazing is at this stage. Shades of the oldest Irish joke about not starting from here.

Barry may not have realised (but then, maybe he did, should've?) back then that his hobby might become a cult, a movement, an indispensable tool, an anti-landfill strategy, a planet-wide release from bondage, etc.
When you're at No.2 in the world, it's time to reassess life, the universe and everything.

I think he is wrong. Time to climb out of retirement, take back chief-of-project and build up the team of co-developers that work with him for the next few years, learning his inner thoughts & workings (!) so that he can retire to the outback at a later time. For the convenience of both location/communication as well as avoiding the Mickey Mouse of the US patent system re. codecs, DRM and all that nonsense - this team might be an all-Oz affair, hopefully so that they can meet at least annually for a beer-and-sandwiches brainstorm.

Time to DO something. Nothing's forever.

[ecomoney]

You may be a virgin in matters of binary and business correspondence Sage, but a cunning linguist when it comes to higher forms of communication

If Puppy is to be an answer to worldwide problems then any team should also be worldwide should it not? Some people will always have to stay up late to participate.

[Sage]

team should also be worldwide

No problem there, eco. MU is doing a fine job with NYP, nutts4 & yourself over here, so the derivatives would benefit from centralised coherency of a well-integrated, frequently communicating team. Folks like Dougal, HW, raffy & co will always be able to input expertise as and when they can or the mood takes them, ie a more informal collaboration. My concern was for coordination of the core activity.

[raffy]

Yes, Sage, it's good that a regular like you are starting to review the options and implications in Puppy's rise in popularity. But perhaps the younger folks will have more say - and action - on the future of the pup. These folks have worked hard on 4.2.

There is, no doubt, psychic reward: folks commenting at DW Weekly were praising Puppy for its recent community-released version (4.2). The community approach has attached silver lining to the clouds of doubt at DSL and PCLinuxOS.

(He heh, how do you like my attempt at copying your style?)

One thing is certain - the ARM architecture has England as its home. One day, Puppy might just be ported to an ARM board. It will be wonderful to see your fingerprint on the prototype.

[Sage]

Style isn't usually associated with this guy!
But you are right, raffy - I've seen over the mountain and it looks like this:
http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/home/index.htm
Everybody around here works hard and is truly dedicated. However, it's always necessary to take a step back and/or listen to your fan club occasionally. DSL & PCL may have their detractors. WhoDo and the gang worked hard but from what I read, packaging has been an unmitigated disaster requiring the return of the maestro. I really hope 4.2.x will do well, but it's not for me - beginning to bloat a bit, too much fancy stuff, etc. It will take a super-genius to cut it back down to size. Never take your eye off the ball, and, at present, Tiny Core is the one to beat.

[ecomoney]

This is very true...netbooks are what is coming. This is going to mean linux in the hands of a lot more "newb" users, and also a lot more focus on ease of use and an easy transition from windows...currently netbooks are getting a lot of returns. Puppy's low footprint is ideal for them, though I havnt heard of any that come with it pre-installed as yet...I wonder why?

[aarf]

Puppy's low footprint is ideal for them, though I havnt heard of any that come with it pre-installed as yet...I wonder why?

for the wheel barrow to cross the finish line it needs someone to push it. it wont get there by itself even if it is full of gold.
i suggest a ltd company that hold the copyrights with multiple interested shareholders for all the very many likely opportunities that puppy could spawn.

[Todd]

I just want to remind everyone, http://www.toddrichardson.com/forum/ is up and just waiting for people to use it.

Todd

[Lobster]

Thanks Tod for providing a potential solution.

Managing and maintaining a forum of this size is neither easy nor trouble free. I think John does an excellent job. Maybe John requires extra help/resources?


Would it be more feasible and practical to mirror this existing site?

[ecomoney]

Stats for ecomoney.eu

Today 388.92 GB
Thursday 82.76 GB
Wednesday 98.49 GB
Tuesday 13.54 GB
Monday 16.13 GB
Sunday 13.75 GB
Saturday 39.72 GB
Friday 9.49 GB
Total: 682.80 GB

My public fileserver at ecomoney.eu has just gone crazy. Servage have cut off all of my websites! The only thing I can think of is that the openoffice/firefox/abiword fixes I was hosting for 4.2 have caused it come the weekend when everyone wants to play puppy.

From what I understand Caneri's asian mirror is out of bandwidth too?

A bigger type of overseeing organisation with some financial status (i.e. not me) would be able to purchase the available bandwidth or run a server etc. Something got very popular very quickly. Must be the recession.

[Sage]

Being the second most popular distro in the world creates new problems.

The problems confronting John, and this board, haven't really changed; it's not that he isn't generous, it's not that he isn't very accomplished. We hear that there are issues about his choice of hosts, something I am totally ignorant about. Then there's his principal side-kick, who isn't in the best location, often makes mistakes, lacks common courtesy, doesn't have a background in managing technical publishing and probably has too great a remit? John seems unwilling to acknowledge that and is extremely reluctant to trust other willing helpers with the keys to the safe. What was OK at the beginning may no longer be sufficient.

John : you may be a lovable, cuddly guy, but some of us twice your age have seen disasters come around many times over. We wish you well, we want to help - some of us can only offer non-IT advice, others can help at the coalface. You had one possible option yourself a couple of years ago but don't seem to have the time and/or confidence to implement it? Time to check out a few very capable guys who really can help get to grips with the problems of being king, or heir apparent, perhaps. In this case, the answers probably lie mainly in Oz? You probably have to relinquish the stranglehold of control to improve the breed (and avoid personal abuse directed at you!). The IPR has substantial resource value; it has to be preserved and shared.

Let's discuss what needs to be done.

[aarf]

@ecomoney
this http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
comes pre-installed on my host. it tells you what files are being accessed among many other things. shouldn't you have better stats that remove the need to gues what is going on.?
.htaccess and pass word may be necessary to stymie the bot attacks

[aarf]

Let's discuss what needs to be done.

get bk to authorize the discussion and you then may have a chance of direction change, without it you mostly go nowhere mainly because key people wont see the need to participate.

[Sage]

aarf - thanks, well aware of all that and am continuing to contribute on BK's blog, where my original comments were inscribed. I think the principal movers & shakers are aware; not sure whether they are moved to do any shaking, though.