Ben Reser wrote: > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 09:24:33PM -0500, CyberCFO wrote: > >>You also further insinuate that the Mandrake community is planning for the >>demise of MandrakeSoft, which it was not. Some in the community, Ben Reser >>for example, may think that is true, but many do not, and Ben Reser certainly >>does not speak for MandrakeSoft, and he did not even participate in the >>discussion. His post from 1-28-2003 that you reference was on a thread >>completely unrelated to the discussion in question. > > > Hate to tell you this but many people are indeed planning for the demise > of Mandrakesoft. Personally I think it's pretty probable that it will > happen. However, I did not personally participate in the thread because > I personally don't think it had a place here. My participation was a > response explaining what happened to something I was working on. Warly > responded knowing some of the frustrations that lead me to that post. >>From there on out it indeed had nothing to do with my post.
Of course, there are many people planning for the prevention of the demise of Mandrakesoft ... including people here. > > At any rate sometime in the next few days I intend to post a follow up > to my original "article" that clarifies my current position and explains > in detail how I really feel and why. The post that inspired that > thread most definitely is not the entirety of my opinion on the matter. > > I have some mixed feelings about Mandrakesoft right now. I don't think > they are being forthright and open with us about what is really going on > (I'm not going to get into the details of why I think that on this > list). However, I very much like the people here, I like the product, > and I appreciate the hard work of many of the employees and > contributors. It may also be that they are not totally able to be totally open and forthright. I would request that you consider carefully before damaging your relationship with the people here in favour of attempting to force Mandrakesoft to release information they need not disclose to the public. > > Ultimately my view is if Mandrakesoft can be saved great. But I'm > rather skeptical as to if that is possible. If it is possible it's > certainly going to require some significant changes at Mandrakesoft. If > not, I want to preserve the community and the product that Mandrakesoft > produced. > > So really. Please do not try to speak for me. My feelings on that > matter are rather complex. I even find it difficult at times to express > them clearly. > That works both ways. Please make absolutely clear (on your site) that you don't represent other non-Mandrakesoft contributors (which many people, possibly including the Debain folk who posted here, may have assumed) unless you do, and list those who feel you represent them. BTW, you may want to update your rant, since some of your statements are no longer true: For example: "Finally, Mandrake has produced MNF and appears to be hinting that they will be charging for security updates for it. That's right folks. They will be charging you for updates to a firewall. This is exactly the type "security for sale" policy that Vincent complained about on his website with regards to ISC's BIND (the DNS server that most everyone runs). Yet here is Mandrake engaging in it. This is terribly unfortunate. Attempts to clarify this issue were simply ignored." ftp://ftp.sun.ac.za/mandrake/mandrake/updates/mnf8.2/ Also, on the matter of signing ISOs, you don't provide any suggestions as to how to accomplish this easily enough that users (that currently have trouble verifying the md5sums) would be able to verify. It would of course probably be more contructive to post each of your issues on this list rather than publish your rants on your webpage. Regards, Buchan -- |--------------Another happy Mandrake Club member--------------| Buchan Milne Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work +27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x121 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7
