[luau] MPLUG Status 11/23/2002

Warren Togami warren at togami.com
Tue Nov 26 18:22:59 PST 2002


W. Wayne Liauh wrote:
> Hi Warren-
> 
> Sorry that I have not been visiting LUAU for quite some time.  About 
> quitting school, even for just one semester, I really think you should 
> give it very careful thoughts.   I remember Michael Dell told us (at 
> Exxon) exactly the same thing, that he was going to quit University of 
> Texas for just one semester.  But he never returned to school.  There 
> are, of course, big differences between Dell and yourself.  Michael Dell 
> had a very definitive goal and eventually became a multi-billionaire. 
> Working on Linux (ha!), particularly on the kind of "pro bono" projects 
> that you mentioned, will get you nowhere. Between my wife and I, we are 
> probably one of the most educated pairs on earth (I have BS, MS, PhD in 
> chemical engineering and JD, and my wife has BS, MS in electrical 
> engineering and MD).  I always hated schools.  And because I hated 
> schools, may goal had always been to study as hard as possible while in 
> school so that I could get the degree and get out of school as quickly 
> as possible.

I understand your concern but don't worry about me, I have every 
intention of continuing school.  Next semester I will be part-time with 
maybe 3-6 credits, 3 will be for ICS499 independent study projects. 
Here's my project:

http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/~warren/fedora.html
It needs updating because a lot more ideas have been discussed on the 
Fedora mailing lists since this day, but this is the basic idea: 
Debian-like community developed add-on software for Red Hat, using 
apt-get.  When this goal is reached, NOBODY should go through manual 
installation of 99% of the software they use.

(Eventaully Fedora packages will be crafted to be more vendor neutral, 
perhaps with trees for compatibility with Mandrake, SuSE, PLD, Conectiva 
and other RPM based distributions.)

> 
> The technology world, however, represents a very different story.  If 
> you really plan to take one semester off, you should try to formulate a 
> much grander goal--more particularly, trying to work on something that 
> has a much broader reach and more permanent impact.  For example, 
> instead of working on the project(s) yourself, perhaps you should think 
> about the possibility of working on a "handbook" (or "cookbook"), so 
> others can do the dirty work for you. That's how technology and 
> experience can best propagate and grow local roots.  By doing this, you 
> and our other LUAU "guys" (gender-neutral) will acquire a strong 
> leadership, and Hawaii will produce an army of willing and able Linux 
> advocates.
> 
> As I mentioned earlier, I will be more than happy to sponsor you 
> project, if you can articulate its worthy goals and demonstrate its 
> long-term self-sustainability (the key word is "self").  Hawaii is a 
> very difficult place to do business, and I have drastically cut down my 
> expenses, including moving my office to my basement, to compensate for 
> my drastically reduced revenue.  However, I believe I will still be able 
> to absorb at least part of the hardware cost to develop a "Linux lab". 
> In order to promote Linux in Hawaii, I really believe we should shelf 
> the idea of using used PCs at least for a while.  My idea is to build a 
> number of powerful (and cheap) new LInux and Windows PCs networked 
> together, which can be duplicated by business concerns.  One of those 
> PCs should be a new Athlon-64 machine.  :-)

Fedora itself is an ambitious project, but it only serves to make all of 
our jobs easier as we approach the even tougher problems.  Everything we 
do from this point on will be quicker and easier simply because software 
installation is automated and painless.  With all of this time saved, we 
can devote far more time to:

1) Workshops, meetings, conferences, expos
2) Education outreach (LTSP in schools, mentorship, etc.)
3) Business community education

My plan for the next semester includes the following in order of priority:
1) Build Mid-Pac into a Linux technology showcase for the state of 
Hawaii, especially with the new $10 million dollar 
Math/Science/Technology complex opening Fall 2003.
2) Build the Fedora community in order to make Linux software management 
quicker and easier for everyone.  Newbies no longer need to learn 
tarball compilation until much later.
3) Education and Government advocacy, demonstrations, conferences, etc.
4) Production of advocacy short videos

Warren




More information about the LUAU mailing list