[Sussex] Distros

[Paul Tansom]

On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 13:21 +0100, Geoffrey J. Teale wrote:
> Paul Tansom <paul at aptanet.com> writes:
<snip>
> > Suggest that they take a look at Gimpshop. Initially a Mac modification
> > for Gimp to rearrange the menus to be familiar to Photoshop users, this
> > has now been ported to Linux. There's definitely a Fedora RPM around,
> > which I think has been tested with success on SuSe too. Windows has been
> > mentioned, but I've not read of a binary package yet - although source
> > is available. Personally I was a Photopaint user prior to Gimp (and
> > Photo Impact before that because it was included with my scanner!), so
> > the project has little impact on me - I'm pretty happy to get more
> > familiar with the Gimp menus :)
> 
> I saw this on slashdot on April 1st - I assumed it was a joke.

You had me worried there for a moment. I saw details on it yesterday
iirc and none of them were dated, most had discussions relating to
installing, compiling or porting so April fool didn't even cross my
mind. I've checked back though just in case - the Slashdot article was
dated 31st March as well, although I rarely actually read Slashdot
having got a little bored with the number of articles that simply point
to other sites or are largely insignificant and accompanied by long
ranting comments below. I get more than enough news from other sources
now :)

<snip>

> Really the point is that games don't have an real social value so the
> FSF is somewhat less concerned about them, though we would love them
> to be Free Software it's not a fight that its worth our while to
> fight in the short term.

So the FSF is more interested in the corporate/business user than the
home user? Games are probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks to
many home users migrating across, these and things like genealogy
software (not software to put data into, but the databases of
information that are Windows based or use Excel spreadsheets with
macros) and gardening software. You can argue that these have not real
social value depending on your definition, but without addressing them
in some form (either free versions or encouraging commercial versions on
a free OS) you will be leaving a large section of potential users behind
- perhaps they are the last likely to move across, but do dismiss a key
'application' that is used by a significant group of computer users
seems a little short sighted.

I must stop playing devils advocate, I can feel the horns poking through
my hair now ;)

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/