Live in southern Ontario? Attending dinner meetings is free.

PegaSoft's March Dinner Meeting

Date: March 24, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Location: Orwell's Pub
                                                                                
Attendance

Ken B, Mel W, Robert B, Mike H, Alex B
Chris Jz is not attending due to conflict of interest.
William P had last-minute obligations.


Meeting Business


Annual Membership Renewals

PegaSoft memberships are $45.00 per year.  Although you don't need to be a
member in order to join the mailing lists or attend our monthly dinner
meetings, membership entitles you to discounts on PegaSoft events and the
opportunity to participate in PegaSoft projects and teach in our workshops.
Membership also allows you to attend our annual PegaSoft Summer Retreat.
Members must sign the PegaSoft Employee Conduct Policy/NDA.

Membership renewals were deferred from last month.  Deferred again until
Lease-Rentals project confirmed.


April Meeting Location

Jeff D offered to hold the March PegaSoft dinner at the White Oaks conference
center just outside of St. Catharines where he would demo his current
software.  He was unable to do so.  He would like to hold the April PegaSoft
dinner at White Oaks instead.


Open Forum - Linux in the News


Microsoft Longhorn delayed to 2006 at the earliest [eWeek]

Ken commented that only Debian is slower to get out.  Debian maintainers
insist that the wait of several years between releases is due to the many
ports of Debian onto rare platforms (e.g. DEC Alpha).  Why is it that Debian
cannot "kiddy-corner" their releases?

Red Hat promises Fedora improvements, holds forum to air "early adopter"
complaints.  [ZDNet UK]

Red Hat have put the wrong label on Fedora users: they are not users wanting
to toy with the latest technology but are the developers who support and make
Red Hat Enterprise possible.  Red Hat has crippled the people who create the
content on their CD-ROMs.

It was also pointed out that Linux, by its nature, could be labelled an "early
adopter" operating system.  That is, all Linux users are early adopters.


LinuxWorld Canada will be on April 18-20.

There is free access to the LinuxWorld floor.  OLS, the biggest Linux event in
Canada, is being held in July.


PegaSoft Member Projects
 
Business Shell (BUSH) (Ken B)

The BUSH graphing package is in progress.  This module takes the best features
of several drawing environments, including BeOS.  Draws lines, ellipses,
rectangles, JPEG/PNG/GIF images in a variety of drawing modes and patterns.
Transparency and true type font support planned.


Lease and Rentals (Room Booking) Project

The proposals for the Lease-Rentals project were due.


Jeff D confirmed that the contract with the client has been signed and they are
waiting only for the proposals to proceed.

Jeff pushed back work on core software rewrite until mid-April at the earliest.
Since Lease-Rentals starts on April 1, It is not clear whether or not it will
interface with the existing eBase 3 or the proposed eBase 4.

Also, it is not clear which company would be hiring the contractor(s) for
this project.  This will be determined before the proposal is awarded.

Because of the meeting delay, notice of who is awarded the Lease-Rentals
project will be given on Thursday, March 31.

 
Discussion: Art Interface Project (Mel Wilson)
 
Deferred.


Next Dinner

Unless otherwise notified, the next dinner meeting is Thursday, April 21, 2005
at the White Oaks conference centre in St. Catharines.  Jeff D will be
demonstrating his current Linux-based work order software.