On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 03:28 -0800, Julius Papz wrote: > Hey all, > > We need people who can create us a linux distro were > planning to bring to the market! we need anyone who wants to help out > > we attached a document regarding our project! And we will have a > website about this project in a matter of weeks
Below is what I sent to Julius off list when he emailed me the document directly yesterday afternoon my time. I think many people have made similar points on this list. I hope linux distros don't become the new "ecommerce platform". From time to time I get contacted by potential clients who have a great idea for building the ultimate ecommerce platform. They usually have some design ideas which are on a par with Julius' MS Paint "wireframe", they often have only bought 1 or 2 things online (linux equivalent of booting a live cd?), they have no budget or business plan and unrealistic time frames. If Julius, as a potential paying client, emailed this out of the blue and asked for a meeting, he would be lucky to get more than a 1 paragraph response explaining that I wasn't interested. As I said in my email to him, I might be completely wrong and we are all throwing away a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the next uber distro - people can then refer to this message as an example of how sometimes I get things wrong :) Cheers Dave ------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------ Here is a list of issues which I came up with in the 2 minutes it took me to read the doc. Firstly it is in MS docx format - not a very popular format in free software circles. Given the content a plain text email with image/s attached would have been enough. You admit using MS paint for a wireframe. Why not inkscape or the gimp? It sounds like this is a commercial operation, but you want people to contribute their "spare time" to your project. There is no mention of payment or budgets. You start with designing a distro from how the desktop will look? I would start by identifying a target market, what are their needs, what will they use the distro for. What technologies will be suitable? What platforms will they be using? Then you get to what applications will they need. What will the user experience be like? The look and feel is a long way down the road. I have never found running an OS off a usb key (let along a portable HDD) very useful. It could be handy if I didn't travel with a laptop and smartphone. I feel that with the popularity of netbooks, usb key based distros are a thing of the past. Building a website for your distro is pretty easy to do, once you know what you are doing and you can pay a competent designer. The objective doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the document. Maybe you will build the most awesome distro that ever existed, but at this stage I just don't see it. I have a serious business to run and family to support, I don't see how your project can contribute to that. Good luck Dave -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
