Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

Friday 20 January 2006

Distros news bulletin

Some may have noticed the announcement, but Mandriva and HP are going to spread Linux in latin America. That is a first step in the good direction.

An uncommon target for Linux: writers. It is the target of Ghostwriter. Surprisingly, the word processor they provide is LyX. Back in the day, I used it, and I liked it.

Quote of the day

We can't separate the software from the hardware, we would be breaking the Microsoft - IBM agreement. -- IBM/Lenovo Canada Customer Relation representative when I requested the refund of the Windows operating system that came with my computer, software I don't agree the licence of.

That is not suprising, nor hot news, but that gives ammunition for the fight. I wish I had a recorder.

Another one bites the dust...

Konica-Monilta drops photography activity

Now the question: what will happen to all these undocumented devices (cameras) and and file formats (MRW raw files)? It is in the argument of most if not all the manufacturers to not document these because they claim they'll support them (even is the don't support more than 2 proprietary OS).

Polaroid, Agfa, Ilford, Konica-Minolta, etc. All of these have either closed, stopped photo activities, or went so much in downsizing in that area that they just have become a name in the history of photography. This is the living proof that even the biggest and oldest company can disappear suddenly one day. Who knows what Sony will do with the assets they purchased, what they will phase out. And who knows what will be lost in the limbs of business, be it this documentation probably worth thousands of hours of reverse engineering, and these photographic memories that might stay as a bunch of unused megabytes, maybe forever.

It just explain why relying on the manufacturer to support undocumented protocols and file format is not a good idea for the customer.