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Is there a need for more than just devs, e.g. UX designers, project managers, QA and the like that put some checks and balances on wild devs?

This is actually a large part of the problem. Gnome used to have a lot of happy users back in the 1.x series. Then Sun came along, they got into usability studies, and that put them on the path they're on now, first with the 2.x series which "simplified" things a lot, and now with 3.x which dumbs things down even more.

Bruce Byfield wrote an article on it here:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3933061/Are-Usability-Studies-Hurting-the-Free-Desktop.htm

Linux users seemed to be a lot happier with their DEs way back before anyone started talking about "usability" or doing any studies about it.

KDE, incidentally, never got into the "usability" craze at all, and their failure was really in management. For one, they bit off more than they could chew, trying to do a giant rewrite and introducing all kinds of new subsystems and such; it sounded good, but then they rushed the result out the door way too early with the "4.0" moniker, and the distros didn't do their job either, and just assumed it was ready for prime-time when it wasn't, making it the only KDE version available and removing 3.5.

So maybe some project management and QA would be helpful, but UX designers would absolutely not be, because they all want us to adopt smartphone interfaces.

The Bruce Perens' article on relationship between Microsoft and Apache published in 2008 is even more timely today.

Apache distribute their Java implementation under permissive non-copyleft license, thus making Java vulnerable to EEE (Embrace, extend and extinguish). And they are payed for that by Microsoft and Google.

This has been discussed already. If you want it in a straight talk article rather than this dramatized fluff piece, I recommend an article that appeared in Datamation back in 2008 called "Hard Work is Dead. Call It 'Work Ethic 2.0'" in which Mike Elgan asserts that the ability to focus on a task and avoid distractions is now a more important skill than the ability to simply work hard. It's a good read.

Are you sure they would want to?

And yes, I happen to think that the whole RMS Sexism debacle was blown a little out of proportion, but it damaged his reputation as a speaker wherever gender-neutrality is desired.

Interestingly, another response pointed out a blog post from Bruce Perens, where he (independenly) came up with the exact same taxonomy I listed above.

We really only differed in the licenses we picked for the three types of projects. We both picked GPL for our most tied down license. For what he called "gift code", he (like the FSF) picked the Apache license, where I use Public Domain (CC0). From a legal liability standpoint, I'm willing to admit that he and the FSF have a good point on that one. I'm hardly someone worth suing, but they certianly are, and probably need the extra protection.

For the intermediate level, he picked LGPL, whereas I use GPL with exceptions. On this one, I'm pretty sure Bruce has it wrong. LGPL works OK for this purpose if your library is written in C, with no macros in its client header files. However, if your library has client-included macros, or is written in a language that supports generic programming (eg: C++ templates or Ada generics), then LGPL is no different that GPL. With either, some of the facility's code gets "included" in the client code, rendering the whole program LGPL. This is why the FSF version of the Ada compiler uses GPL with exceptions instead of LGPL. Bruce, if you are reading this, I'm curious about your opinon on it.

Don't tell me you already forgot the TomTom lawsuit. Microsoft is basically saying you can't release a product based on the Linux kernel without getting sued. You either have to pay royalties and violate the GPL, or get sued by MS over patent issues.

Also, look at all those lawsuits by BedRock Technologies LLC over their Linux kernel patents. They just won their patent suit against Google earlier this month; Google's use of the Linux kernel containing infringing methods was found to make Google liable for infringement.

For-Those-Without-an-iPhone

Well, I'm not necessarily claiming it's the best. But it does allow you to inspect the code to look for a backdoor.

Some might find this handy:

59 Open Source Tools That Can Replace Popular Security Software

Also by the same guy: "Nine Current Flame Wars in Open Source", "FOSS, Business, and Psychopathy" and "Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?" (which IIRC was recently featured on Slashdot and described as bullshit as pretty much everyone who bothered to RTFA).

No thanks, I think I'll wait for an actual review.

Well, we know that isn't true. Try this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/google-android-microsoft/. According to that, an MS rep said, "Microsoft has taken these actions against Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec because they are commercializing products that infringe our patented innovations.” That pretty much shows your "only defending against patent trolls" to be patently (pardon the pun) false. Microsoft historically has not been quick to sue for patent infringement, but in recent years has been much more likely to go to court. How about this one: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3807801/Bruce-Perens-Analyzing-Microsofts-TomTom-Lawsuit.htm where they went after Tom-Tom for the patent on FAT32 of all things. You can no longer just claim that Microsoft doesn't go after patent infringement and doesn't attack other companies.

Now, your statement that MS isn't a patent troll is, of course, true. MS hasn't sued people over patents that MS isn't using in devices of their own. They aren't just an "IP holding company" like your normal patent troll. But they have clearly gone beyond the days of holding patents merely for defense.

Apache is the most notable example. Microsoft fight copyleft (GPL) by supporting projects that use permissive licenses, open-source software distributed under permissive license could not compete with corporations.

Bruce Perence explained this two years ago: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3762786/Bruce-Perens-Microsoft-and-Apache---Whats-the-Angle.htm

Fail:http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/datbus/article.php/3895226/Googles-Government-Deal-Shows-Cloud-Promise-Challenges.htm

I'm surprised at the amount of posts supporting these ideas? Are any of the supporting posters university/college trained programmers? I'm not going to rant too much about the subject, it has been discussed by many others much better than I could. There is a reason why the Software development industry is in crisis (in terms of quality) Bjarne Stroustrup has an excellent interview on the subject: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3789981/Bjarne+Stroustrup+on+Educating+Software+Developers.htm Ideas like this of taking high school graduates and give them developers positions without the proper education is taking steps backwards. There is a reason why Google produces some of the best software in the world (starting by the algorithms behind their search engine), their employees have all the required education credentials to go with their experience.

There are two different objectives here [...]

I can think of a third objective.

Imagine Microsoft and RSA, the security division of EMC seeing the Cloud as the latest cache of IT gold, and imagine those players identifying security (particularly security compliance) as the only real barrier to that gold. Now its easy to see the third objective - those players doing their utmost to remove that barrier.

There is a full interview with Surman about some of the specific drumbeat projects at: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3857436/Mozilla-Drumbeat-Aims-to-Expand-Web-Participation.htm There is an open p2p university and an open web privacy logo initiative that are kinda cool. An od ya Mozilla is investing $1 million into this too.

Book publishers face different challenges than the record industry. E-Books might be freely shared, but most people still prefer to read their books in dead-tree format. (I don't think that Kindles and the like will replace printed books anytime soon.) Printed books are hard to share out/copy the way that CDs/MP3s can be shared/copied. The challenge here is with self-publishing/on-demand publishing authors taking off. I think Mike Elgan outlined the threat book publishers face quite well in Book Publishers: You Can't Beat Amazon -- So Join 'Em.

The summary should have included a link to Byfield's original post, which explains the basis for his claim of sexism in FOSS:

In other words, women's participation in FOSS development is over seventeen times lower than it is in proprietary software development.

Now, isn't that by itself enough to get you thinking?

It gets me thinking that you just like all the rest of us don't know how to properly interpret that number. If you want me to take that number seriously as an indicator of sexism, you better have some research to pin down such a slippery claim.

How about Richard Stallman's completely bizarre behaviour at GCDS this year -- and his even more bizarre response (completely avoiding the key question -- twice!) to the complainer:

http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-stallman.html
http://www.osnews.com/story/21803
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3830651/Richard-Stallman-Leadership-and-Sexism.htm (Slashdot got a mention here, ha ha ha)

Possibly Stallman needs to revamp his Free Software Song to include his behaviour.

In other words, women's participation in FOSS development is over seventeen times lower than it is in proprietary software development.

Now, isn't that by itself enough to get you thinking?

Ah, mods... this is a factual and informative post about Debian policy.

The controversy over Mono in Debian is hardly offtopic and the viewpoint expressed here is quite rational, given that we are still in the midst of a massive Microsoft-backed anti-free-software lawsuit and FUD campaign (SCO, tomtom, etc).

References:

• http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/23/mono-controversial/
• http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/1251228/Mono-Squeezed-Into-Debian-Default-Installation?from=rss
• http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7392358109.html
• http://boycottnovell.com/2009/06/16/debian-not-including-mono/
• http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3828231/Lets-Settle-the-Mono-Debate.htm

Are you honestly claiming to have read every review ever?
Those are all reviews with praise OTHER than "It's better than vista".

In other words: [citation needed].

Oh dear, with twitter down i need to amuse myself through acts of googlecise;
Interviews with Ray Tomlinson

Interview 1: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3525110.ece

Interview 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/06/technology/looking-back-in-the-beginning-a-note-to-himself.html

Interview 3: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/1408411

Well, I doubt they were shot right way. The shark was just seeing no ROI.

Instead of one central purchasing order they will go after each state/county and government organisation parallely and independently.

And they'll say "Whoa, you're thinking of using what filthy hippy app? ...

The 1990's called, they want their talking points back. Notice that after all these years, the best MSFTers can do to counter RMS is to call him names? Can't handle any of the ideas or technologies, can they?

We've known for decades that FOSS is about making money. Some discussions which might make the point that FOSS concepts dovetail with that:

• Open Source Means Business
• Open Source and Capitalism
• Capitalist view of Open Source
• Is Open Source capitalist or communist?
• • Open Distribution vs Open Source
  • Open source is a capitalist's game
  • It's about capitalism, not freebies

and so on...

most of them come formatted with patent encumbered FAT16/32 file system. Most users would never bother formatting to something else, and expect any device or computer in which they plug it to be able to use this filesystem. Want to change the file system and reformat? Ok, you may pick NTFS, which is probably worse of a patent risk and will also fasten the death of your flash drive... You may also choose exFat, but besides of being another patent risk, it will only work in two MS OS - the latest ones -

Not all is lost, you can go FLOSS and pick a file system from outside MS, of course, those will not work anywhere else outside of a FLOSS OS/Device.

Many a truth is spoken in jest:

The elephant in the room is "games." If you buy a computer for fun, you probably want to play games on it, and you'll quickly learn that most halfway decent games don't run on OS X.

Apple also seems to be addressing the wrong end of the market. It's producing multi-thousand dollar machines when it's the bottom end of the market -- filled with low cost laptops and netbooks that cost a few hundred dollars -- that's on fire at the moment.

Apple's sales proposition seems to come down to this:

* Windows is for boring business people, while OS X is for everyone else. Unless they want to play games. Or they don't want to pay inflated prices. Or they notice that there are far, far more applications to choose from on a PC than there are on a Mac.

* OS X can do business too -- but not as well as a PC. But don't worry, you can buy Windows and run it on your Mac. Then it's just as good as a PC, just much more expensive.

* OS X is really secure, although actually it turns out that it's not ...

So it's not really that surprising Reuters reported unit sales of computers running OS X fell 16 percent in February, according to research group NPD, while Windows PC sales leaped 22 percent. Within that overall figure, MacBook laptops dropped 7 percent, while Windows laptops rose 16 percent. Windows desktops had a hard time in February, with sales down 10 percent, but OS X suffered even more with unit sales down a staggering 36 percent.

Apple's Challenges: Gaming to Security [April 8, 2009]

I think the problem is that "Josh" is two issues rolled into one. ONE of those issues is well worth working around. That's the one Jim had and your suggestion is well worth while for that case. Jim may be quirky as far as a typical corporate workgroup was concerned, but he evidently was personable enough for you to have conversed with him.

Such a person might "masquerade" as Josh like Tyler (referenced in TFA), but with a little patient instruction can work out fine. Perhaps they just need a translator who can codify enough of the social rules for them from a utilitarian viewpoint rather than "because that's what nice people do". Even if it comes down to nothing more than "it's an arbitrary social signal/convention that people respond to by being more cooperative". Some people are like that because they are unable to pick up on social cues.

In other cases, a brilliant coder may seem antisocial because others unintentionally needle them. Being knocked out of your groove too often is quite frustrating and may even be painful in some sense. Anyone might behave poorly to others if they get obliviously kicked in the shins a few times a day (by people who don't often or ever get "in the flow" in the first place).

However, it the person really is like "Josh", they may be more liability than asset. That is, if they won't directly help out, and won't even work with another person enough to get their work documented so it can be maintained AND they will just walk and leave you a bunch of unmaintainable code the first time they don't get their way, they are truly a liability. In that case, it might be best to get a backup plan in order and then try to approach them about the problem. Perhaps you just THINK they're unreachable and they'll respond well to proper instruction in social interaction and a genuine attempt to accommodate them (without being walked over by them). Or they'll leave in a tantrum and you go to the backup plan.

Maybe he had red Do Nice Engineers Finish Last in Tough Times? by the same author http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3796861/Do-Nice-Engineers-Finish-Last-in-Tough-Times.htm and chose not to be too nice, uh?

This TFA? I'm pretty sure Bruce is a party member.

Bruce Perens: How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need?

Doesn't Lotus Symphony use forked code from an older release of OpenOffice?

Yes

..is here.

page 1: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/3762786
page 2: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/12068_3762786_2

page 1: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/3762786
page 2: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/12068_3762786_2

My brother-in-law recently had to change jobs as a result of workplace bullying himself, and the common thread is that the bully themselves might be surmountable, but if the employer consistently enables the bully it makes the situation impossible to deal with. For him too, walking was the only feasible option. So from that perspective, I thought the article rang true. And sadly, sometimes it's hard to make the distinction between someone whose social issues are a result of having no interpersonal skills and someone who's simply antisocial.

However, I took a look at one of Mr Spiegel's other articles (this one), which made me wonder whether he might have been reaping what he sowed. That article ends with the line "Now I wonder if Susan will come back to my team? Would you?" - and having read it, my answer would have to be "Not a chance in hell!". Admittedly, I'm biased - a night-owl myself, I'm habitually hours, rather than minutes, late for work - and yes, the expectations of a public-facing role are of necessity a little different. But someone who is unprepared to make small compromises to a rule they believe to be bad anyway in order to keep an exceptional team member is someone whose own priorities could use some work... and the fact that there were other parts of the company in which Susan's timekeeping wasn't an issue suggests that his insistence upon the rules was frankly pointless, soul-sucking pettifoggery.

(If you want to argue about that, go for it. I don't care, and I won't be responding - I simply don't understand people who put arbitrary rules above individual differences, I never will, and I don't even want to.)

The main reason for Microsoft's imploding cash reserves and flat stock price is an abundance of zero cost alternatives to their flagship money makers. Only a fool would pay Microsoft sized money for an Office suit anymore and vendors like Asus have discovered the joy of free software.

Google's rise is just the wedge end of the rise of Linux, so you can say that we have had The Decade of Linux already.

I won't make a dime off these electrons but preservation and promotion of software freedom is priceless. While you are apparently infatuated with karma, and might consider it an expensive commodity purchased by gaming Slashdot, it means nothing to me.

One could say we in the free software business are our own enemies. We shoot ourselves in the feet all the time. Imagine...after all this time, with the [free] availability of specs of every kind, there is no decent ODF application beyond OpenOffice.org...which at version 2.4, still sucks bigtime by the way! Do not think I blindly support KDE because KDE's KOffice is a joke!

By the way, some author outlines ways for that other environment to improve.

trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else

We noticed

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007
http://gizmodo.com/340117/mac-os-x-market-share-at-731-and-rising
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 The #1 bug is being worked on as we speak.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3719096_1
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080104-evaluating-prospects-for-linux-growth-in-2008.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071205-microsoft-feeling-heat-from-linux-in-budget-flash-pc-market.html

For me, I am enjoying Ubuntu Studio.

to be fair he does look a bit retarded (byfield.jpg)

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.ph p/912301

It appears that most businesses won't install XP either...

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/36 87616

Doesn't really say anything, but here you go.

For me Datamations list was much more interesting since they spend time digging up new and upcoming projects I did not know about like kdenlive (kind of like the Diva video editor, but not a dead project). http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/ 3678071

I don't think it's wise to disregard malware regardless of the OS they're using, even if it's Linux or OSX. Choice quote from this article:

Remember that virus writers are a creative and persistent bunch and will continue to come up with new ways to do the "impossible," so computer users should never assume that any particular file type or OS is immune to malicious code.

Vista supposedly has better ways of blocking malware than previous versions of Windows, but I'll believe it when I see it and won't count on it.

I have personal experience with iMacs and Minis at my office in addition to using Linux and various flavors of Windows. Given the low costs of PCs I really don't see why people are willing to pay a premium for a Mini. If one cares about space, buy a laptop. They can now be purchased for as much as or even less than a Mini with equivalent specs.

Just because I'm stating 'I really have a hard time seeing why someone would want to buy a Mac Mini' doesn't mean I think they're wrong for buying it. It's just that I have a hard time imagining under what circumstances a person would want to purchase it. As I stated above, if they want a tiny computer get a laptop which obviously have the advantage of being portable in addition to taking little space. If they want performance buy a PC (or if they want OSX get an iMac). If they don't want performance, why are they spending so much on a computer just to browse the web or check e-mail when they could get a bargain-basement PC for much less? If you are worried about security put your computer behind a router or some other kind of firewall, install anti-virus software and use good habits when browsing the web (disabling ActiveX, javascript, etc.). This is good practice regardless of your OS (although the anti-virus S/W isn't needed for Linux of course).

Off-topic: interesting link in your signature. I knew about the Buran project but haven't read about it in a while. Your site seems to be down though.

Sharp's Actius MM10 notebook (review, run Gentoo on it) is about 6 years old now, and it's just as thin as the Intel prototype. It had one of the first Transmeta chips, the Crusoe at 933Mhz. I own one, and it still gets used to this day. It runs Linux now, because only that OS supports WPA2 with its wireless chipset (Prizm2). I love this thing so much that when it's display got damaged I payed for an out-of-warranty repair.

The newer MM20 model is slightly thicker, has a built-in optical drive, and runs a Transmeta Efficeon core.

Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees.

You don't persuade a business to do something by begging them to sell you something. You persuade them by buying that something from someone else who is quite happy to sell you that something.

Unlike Dell, which depends largely on the desktop and corporate markets for sales, HP is cashing in on high-growth areas, including emerging markets, the consumer area, and laptops.

In fiscal 2006, $25 million in hardware sales in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) were directly related to HP's Debian support.[...]HP support is set for the Debian Sarge release, which debuted in June 2005. Wade noted that HP is working toward certifying its hardware against the upcoming Debian Etch release, which is set for a 2007 rollout.

One word (term) for why he shouldn't - H1B

I wrote up a simple webapp for similar purposes a while ago:
http://dodgemail.com/

The main difference is that you get a javascript snippet that creates time-sensitive email aliases that forward to you. They are only good for an hour or so, so they are spam proof to all email spiders except those with immediate turnaround.

Brian Livingston did a much more comprehensive writeup on it here:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive _tech/print.php/3596436

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive _tech/article.php/3643691

Because, as we all know, IE 7 is an integral part of the OS

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive _tech/article.php/3643691

Because, as we all know, IE 7 is an integral part of the OS