The final death rattle

This site dies at midnight tonight and is replaced very soon by a new blog of sorts with multiple authors as promised many moons ago.

Thanks for the ride !

Kudos

Richard

Lance Davis / CentOS debarcle rolls on

About nine years ago I got into a confrontation with a chap called Lance Davis at UKLinux, I’d met him at several OpenSource conferences and he’d been involved with Jason Clifford / DefiniteLinux for some time in a business venture that I think eventually turned sour. Jason had been kicking me for some time acting the troll (something he’s been extremely prolific at in the past).  The amusing thing at the time was we were in startup mode and they were much bigger than us. Not sure that they gave us any credibility. Amusingly we turned over probably 700% more revenue and profit than UKLinux did – at the end of the day bottom line revenue talks.

I found Lance deeply disturbing from a control perspective personally, very very abrupt and I could never get my head around some of the claims behind UKLinux, they just never stacked up. They did, however, stop using our trademarked property but then if they hadn’t I doubt that the resulting court action could have been responded to.

Lance Davis and CentOS seem to be at loggerheads. The community element seems to be entirely lost and reading between the lines (follow your own conclusions) you have a development team working hard in the community who are being banjaxed.

An Open Letter from the CentOS team to Lance Davis has been posted today.

Makes interesting reading – and now it’s public gives him little room for apathy.

I just hope CentOS can make a break – and cleanly. If not a simple fork and rename isn’t rocket science. Without developers you have zero way forward and Lance could find this out very quickly.

Heartfelt condolences

I work in the military. I don’t ever talk about what I do for obvious reasons because frankly it’s nothing to do with anyone and I don’t talk about my job or my career since 2007. I also live a few minutes from the village which comes to a standstill every week (sometimes twice a week) when members of our armed services killed in action are repatriated. So when I wake up to the news that eight British servicemen are killed in a 24 hour period in seperate incidents in Afghanistan I feel particularly saddened.

I am more than likely to face active service in the months ahead and I do so with no less trepidation than I felt the moment I volunteered to do so.

I forsee hundreds more situations before we leave Afghanistan before the people of Wootton Bassett come to a silent standstill to honour those that have fallen.

The price we pay is often one we can’t measure and the impact of those losses is to be felt for generations to come.

I genuinely felt sick to the pit of my stomach reading the news this morning.

Tony Morrell – RIP

Twelve years ago almost to the minute my father collapsed and died while I tried in vain to keep him breathing. He was sixteen years older than I am now, a thought that festers. I keep busy on the 6th July and the 29th July each year (two of my best friends from my childhood both died on the 29th July).

I do miss him a lot. I found a video from the mid 80s the other day that we’d shot on holiday in Europe and it was the first time I’d heard his voice and seen him smile for twelve years. It really knocked me for six that he’s now been dead 1/3rd of my life.

Going to go and have an early night.