Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

[Thomas Lord]

On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 13:18 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> So there's no longer room for proof-of-concept implementations, and
> that's all that Arch ever was to Tom Lord, at least that's what he
> said when he was busking for (financial) contributions.  He even
> regrets many of the UI and feature concessions he made to the crew of
> developers who later became the nucleus of the Bazaar project.  Making
> Arch into a contender again will require a genius (or, to be specific,
> Tom).  But Tom, too, has moved on I think.  While there are many ideas
> in Arch that haven't made it into other VCSes even today, the
> value-add to implementing them in Yet Another DVCS probably isn't that
> high.


I have not "moved on" I've been slain.  I'm
left with no career or career prospects, no
savings, no resources to invest in much by way
of software development and a damaged reputation
as I enter my 44th year.  'Tis not so deep as a 
well nor wide as a church door but 'tis enough;
'twill serve.

I spend a decent amount of time, these days,
observing a couple of trees and some birds
that live nearby.  Oh, and, today I saw a cat
do something surprising.  This appears to be about
what's left for me.

Were it otherwise I might say:

I don't care about the "GNU project" per se,
anymore, because I don't think that there is 
any such project other than in name only.  There
is no coherently expressed organizing set of goals.
There is no true strategy.   There is no project
there, no matter what it's called.   I'd argue
that there once was a GNU project and that it
was killed deliberately by Cygnus and Cygnus'
friends although I must also give due credit 
to RMS for folding like a house of cards under
their pressure.

I do care about the progress of software in
society.   I do think software freedom is important.
I do think there is a social policy need for 
something worthy of the name "GNU project" but
as I say: no such thing exists.  It got killed
and I would say it got killed to make way for 
the Open Source Industrial Complex.

Were there a GNU project I think there is much
from the Arch project that would be worth
contemplating.   For example, much in Arch is
applicable to the challenge of developing a 
distributed, decentralized, transactional file
system and I would also argue that such a bit of
technology would help considerably to promote
software freedom.  But there is no GNU project or
anything like it and so why go into such matters?

I think that one thing that was and remains 
under-appreciated about Arch is that it was
an attack on the business models of the GNU/Linux
vendors and the "large, well funded, famous 
projects".   It was a technological attack
on the necessity of those firms in their present 
form.

We, as a generally free-wheeling, crazy chaotic,
catch-as-catch can community of free software
developers *can* -- *without painful effort* -- 
displace the need for big, centralized, lock-in
GNU/Linux vendors and create stable distributions
and support that is *more reliable* than the current
vendors.  We can do all that and capture their 
revenue streams into a process that democratically
distributes the money among contributors.  We
can do all of that in a decentralized way so that
the arising of those replacement products is 
an emergent property of our community practices --
that is, we can "distribute control".

Arch was *by design* a first step in that direction
and so *naturally* it "had" to be rudely treated
by capital.  Had Arch succeeded, Canonical, Red Hat,
Linus, Collabnet, et al. would all have had to radically
change business models sooner rather than later.

And so I am slain....

-t