Plan to write an app

I might release one more official Wary/Racy, and probably get the Raspberry Pi and Mele pups to release quality (or close to). After that I might not release any more puppies, but will keep working on Woof at a slow pace.

The reason is, I want a change, and want to work an a big application. I have got some ideas.

This means that someone in our community can take on the next Dpup, Upup, (or Arch-pup, Mageia-pup) as an "official" Puppy. I think that 01micko will be developing another Slacko, as time allows.

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Comments reactivated

It is not very practical to have comments disabled on this blog, there is too much going on.

What has happened is I have been getting heaps of emails, and replying to them is a lot of work, and many of them are of interest to others and really belong on this blog or the forum.

I'll think about implementing some kind of moderation later.

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Comments

I have received a lot of emails about the disabling of comments on this blog.

A few people have said that it is nice to read the blog without the "noise". Others have said that it is better if other developers can post immediate responses, rather than the very roundabout way of emailing me. Not just developers, often a user will have some useful item to report and it is convenient to be able to do it directly.

I am thinking of reinstating comments, but moderated.

As this is my personal blog, it is quite reasonable for me to only allow comments that I like. So, any that I don't, I should immediately delete, and even ban certain people.

However, there should be a page that explains what comments are acceptable. Basically anything that is positive, constructive. Anything that is targeting aggravating me, gets banned. Those who harp on in a negative vein, or dredge up old negativities that have already been put to bed, get banned.

This PPLOG blog is a very simple Perl script, a single file. It does have banning by IP address, but I have to edit the script and re-upload it, which is cumbersome. Also, I don't think there is any mechanism to associate a particular poster with their IP address. If I could somehow have a little display of usernames with their IP addresses, and an interactive way of banning by IP address, I will feel ok about reinstating comments.

Any Perl wiz reading this? -- and interested in beefing up PPLOG with extra functionality? Our PPLOG PET package is here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/pet_packages-woof/pplog-1.1.2-2.pet

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Read-only blog

I would like to give advance notice.

The comments by ICPUG and Jota here:

http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201003/ongoing-puppy-4x-series.html

...are just the most recent of on-going aggravation that I have to put up with.

A couple of years ago, I stated that in 2010 I will receive my pension and then I will wind down my involvement in the Puppy project. Well, I do now have my pension, and the wind-down will happen.

I'm retired, I don't want aggravation. One of the reasons that I started Quirky was to get away from the aggro.

I may put up a contender for Puppy 5.0, after that, Quirky will be my main thing. I will also work on Woof, but in a heavily moderated environment -- I might start a small moderated forum or maybe just a bugzilla for Woof.

I will probably create reference builds from Woof every now and then. Quirky will be one of those.

I probably won't be interacting on the main Puppy forum much.

This blog will become read-only in a couple of months.

An observation. Us developers put in considerable effort gratis, out of generosity of heart. Perhaps some might do it for fame, but my motivation is just to give something to the community, and I have a long-time desire to end the Microsoft monopoly.
There is a kind of mean-spiritedness in posts of many users, people who just take, who don't really appreciate what is done for them for free. Is this the "welfare mentality"?

Interesting, it is the aggro that actually has driven me to be more isolationist. So the critics will actually see their criticisms come true.

Actually, I can do whatever I like. I am the guy who owns the Puppy Linux name. If I decide one day to create a Puppy 6.0, I can do it. I'm in a pessimistic mood right now -- perhaps the idea of the community taking over, or even "community editions", was a bad idea. Perhaps I should remain in charge, bringing out a new Puppy occasionally.
After all, if one or more people are all that keen on creating their own Puppy, they can fork Puppy and do it.

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Thanks

Thanks for all the responses to my concern about the lack of an official Puppy release for sometime -- 5 months and 10 days.

I notice that we have slipped down the ranks at Distrowatch.

I understand the problems that the coordinators of 4.4 and proposed 5.0 puppies have -- the real-life demands. But, we do have an urgent need to get a new release "out there", a reference build.

Give me a couple more days, I think that I have a proposal for the next official Puppy, something interesting.

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Official 4.3.2?

Puppy 4.3.1 was released on October 17, 2009. That's five months since an official release! Too long.

The development of 4.4 has gone into hibernation, and we don't really know when that will pick up again.

Meanwhile, I keep rolling along developing Woof and adding so many goodies (like the improper shutdown handling just announced). Users of 431 are left on the sidelines watching this but not participating unless they try one of the recent builds such as Dpup, Tpup, or Quirky. There are also some specialised builds such as Jemimah's Puppeee.

Then there's the fact that newcomers will quite naturally choose to download the latest official Puppy, 4.3.1, but in reality they are getting something that we have moved way beyond.

So, I know that I am supposed to be retired from the frontline of releasing official puppies, but considering all of the above, should I come back in and bring out 4.3.2?

I did build an experimental 4.3.2 recently, which was reasonably sane. So, I could do another one then start a forum thread so we can thrash out the bugs, then it will become a gap-filler official release -- something to fill the void until 4.4 or even 5.0 comes along.

I would need to have considerable positive response to do this. I don't want to move back in stepping on toes. So if you don't want me to do it and would rather position some other build as the contender for next official release, please say so -- though note that I am talking about something that we can release soon, given that huge 5 month interval.

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Why do I bother?

I sometimes wonder why I bother. In my position, I deal with criticism on a daily basis. Some of it comes direct to me in emails and pm's.
Then there is negativity by some who lurk on the #puppylinux IRC channel.
Then there are those who post to the forum with superficial, mis-informed, nit-picking, and just plain wrong comments, like in this thread:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=48160

I really don't need the aggravation. The latest contribution on the forum has prompted me to think some more about my retirement.

My original plan was to retire from Puppy development early in 2010. I want to keep working on Woof and do some Genie coding, and that will likely continue into 2010, 2011.

The multi-user improvement -- yes that is a definite contender for incorporation into Woof. That's a short-term goal, I might do that soon.

Puppy 4.4 and 5.0 are now being developed by the community. That's good. I'll probably give the access to the ibiblio.org site to one or two community members soon.

I won't be bringing out another official Puppy release, so I am now retired in that regard.

What I might do is release a new distro sometime, which is something that I have mentioned before. It will be 100% personal, no irc, no forum, just my thing. In fact, I'm already working on it.
It is not intended to be a general purpose distro.

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