May 26, 2008
freesoftware, maemo
6 Comments
I received my copy of Big Buck Bunny today, and I’m leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning for LinuxTag.
I’d like to be able toshow BBB on my Nokia N810, but when I copy the AVI file from the DVD onto the tablet, it doesn’t load (“File format not supported” it says). Same goes for “Elephants Dream”. The same also goes for the Nokia N800 (although there I just get a message the there is no application that can manage the file format).
Can anyone point me towards the codecs I’ll need to get this working tonight, please? I’d hunt myself (really I would) if I wasn’t packing a bag and putting kids to bed.
Thanks Lazyweb!
May 14, 2008
gnome
8 Comments
Select All: Ctrl A: Selects all content in the current document.
GNOME HIG v2
Whose bright idea was it to have Ctrl-A close the current note in the version of Tomboy shipping with Ubuntu 8.04? This was a really bad idea.
Update: Owen Taylor on #gnome-hackers, and 5 minutes later Vincent Untz in a comment, hit on the answer: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162726
The upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 had installed the US layout on me, even though I have an AZERTY keyboard (which was the layout selected). So when I hit Ctrl-A, GNOME was helpfully saying that I must have really meant Ctrl-Q. This is really useful if you’re using a non-latin layout, since you can still use Latin shortcuts by installing a US keyboard layout, but if you have another Latin keyboard layout, this sucks big-time.
So, in fact, Tomboy wasn’t closing the current note, it was closing all notes (it just happens that I only ever had one note open at the time).
May 12, 2008
freesoftware
1 Comment
I was interested to read the exchange around Matt Asay’s “dealing with system integrators” post last week.
What it comes down to is when you’re a free software producer, if you want third parties installing and commercially supporting your software to partner with you, you need to offer something in return.
If my company wants to have some free software commercially supported, I would laugh any integrator who suggested buying a subscription to the commercial version, and who refused to start working on integration until I’d purchased if there were no benefit in that for me. I would insist that the integrator installed & supported the Free version, unless there were very compelling features I needed in the commercial version.
If Alfresco had tied the hands of the guy in front of me behind his back, I would go find someone with no such constraints to support the software.
So for the three people involved in an official integration partner deal (Alfresco, the integrator, and the client), all three parties must have some interest for the deal to happen.
The client wants cheaper, high-quality software. If the commercial offering gives compelling features, he may pay for it. If it doesn’t, he’s not an idiot.
The integrator wants to make some money on the support deal. If being an Alfresco partner gets him more leads, more deals, more clients, more money, then he’ll go for that, and will pay an annual partnership fee, your annual training seminars and any other costs you associate with being a partner. If partnership is a mill-stone around his neck restricting what he can offer his clients to keep them happy, he won’t.
Finally, Alfresco, the software producer, wants as many copies of their software installed worldwide, and they want to ensure high quality local support (so they have an interest in having a high-quality partners network). They also want to maximise the number of installations of commercial versions, and thus have an incentive to ensure that the commercial offering is compelling for people who will be paying for support.
Forcing integrators to sell commercial copies of the software before doing integration doesn’t in itself make those versions compelling. In fact, if you force extra conditions like the ones Matt outlined, you run the risk of helping a renegade unofficial Alfresco support network to spring up. You’re selling free software, they’re free to support it without going through you. If that happens, you have a short-term gain for a long-term loss.
