Slashdot Mirror
Attacking Open Source
Paul Bristow writes: "John Taschek of ZDNET has written a superbly under-informed criticism of the entire open source movement, based on the fact that Mozilla isn't offically released yet. Look at the article here to see him completely ignore apache, the kernel, fetchmail, KDE/Gnome and all the other great open source projects that make the internet possible and livable in. " Remember: If you are going to e-mail them, or respond in here, respond in a calm, intelligent manner, refuting the points they make without flaming - we all represent the Open Source Community.
An article of this sort generally falls into the category of "punditry". The gentleman in question probably had a deadline and was a few hundred words short of a real article.
The solution in these cases is to put on one's pundit hat and literally pull a story out of one's [CENSORED]. Symptoms of such stories include:
What should be your reaction, O Gentle Reader? Ignore it. As others have pointed out, ZDNet will soon learn that anti-OSS/Freedomware stories = /. effect = page impressions = dollars.
People who receive attention tend to repeat the attention-getting action. It's just one of those things :)
be well.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
OK, I'm sick of /.ers assuming that everyone who reads /. must be some kind of American, white, male Linux user without a life.
I am a white, male, American, Linux user. And I have a life. I know there are others on /. who have different attributes, either they're not white, or not male, or not American. You aren't a Linux user.
And as the title says, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". There's nothing about open source in there at all.
So what matters to you? How come you haven't submitted any stories about it? I occasionally submit a story I think people on here will be interested in. And I maybe read 1/3 or less of the articles that do get posted. Not everything on here is going to appeal to everybody. The idea is you can choose what you're interested in!
I do not represent the open source community. I do not run Linux. In fact, I was curious about it before I came here, but a year's worth of zealotry and bigoted postings have pretty much put me off of ever running Linux at all. Why should I associate myself with such a narrow-minded group of people? Trust me, zealots do nothing but put people off. Linux could do without them, and /. certainly could.
If you were curious about Linux, /. is the wrong place to go. Nobody here knows anything about Linux. :) All joking aside, there are lots of compelling reasons to take a good hard look at Linux besides the zealots, trolls, and OOG THE CAVEMAN.
- It's a rapidly developing yet stable Unix-like platform easily competitive with Windows NT (2000).
- It runs on cheap commodity PC (and Macintosh, and lots of other) hardware like the box that you're probably using right now.
- You don't have to reboot every time you change a setting or install some software.
- The graphic user interfaces are a lot nicer than Windows.
- You can actually get work done with it.
- It pours 48% hotter grits down your pants than Windows.
That said, there are a few reasons you might not want to use it exclusively: for instance, incomplete hardware support for such things a nVIDIA cards, incomplete applications and file format support for such things as MS Office documents. But these things are being worked on with all deliberate speed.So if you want to be ahead of the game when Linux emerges as a REAL market force, and have no doubt that it will (yeah, I'm one of the zealots, I guess), then you'd do well to learn your way around it now.
In fact, I'm sick of every single "open source" project getting a whole story here with every release, even when it's 2.999a 0.6pre3 or some other incomprehensible version number.
I think you're confusing /. with freshmeat.net.
This isn't a hardware site is it?
Yes and no. Sure there's a place for hardware. But there's also a place for: (take your pick) The Almighty Buck, AMD, Amiga, Announcements, America Online, Apache, Apple, Be, Beanies, BSD, Bugs, Caldera, CDA, Censorship, Christmas Cheer, Comdex, Compaq, Corel, Debian, Digital, Department of Justice, Education, Encryption, Enlightenment, ePlus, Games, The Gimp, GNOME, GNU is Not Unix, GNUStep, Graphics, Hardware, It's funny. Laugh., IBM, Internet Explorer, Intel, The Internet, Java, KDE, Links, Linux, Linux Business, Linuxcare, Linux Mandrake, The Media, Microsoft, Movies, Mozilla, Music, Netscape, News, Patents, Perl, PalmPilot, Privacy, Programming, Quake, Quickies, Red Hat Software, Science, Silicon Graphics, Slashdot.org, Space, Spam, Star Wars Prequels, Sun Microsystems, SuSE, Technology, Toys, Transmeta, Television, Unix, Upgrades, United States, VA, Wine, and X. So if you don't like what you see, quit whining and submit a story.
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
In the Slashdot parody, Suckdot, the leading headline was "Linux possibly defamed somewhere." More and more I'm realizing how dead on that parody was. Somebody says something misinformed or critical of Open Source or Linux (or more and more, the Athlon or GeForce), and raving lunatics get all bent out of shape. Yikes. I've been through two bad computer scenes--the Amiga and the Mac--and this is just as idiotic.
It was kind of like the interview with Jon Benet Ramsey's mother on TV a few weeks ago. All of the ads show the reporter asking if she killed her daughter. Right, like she's been denying it to the police for the last 2 years but she's going to break down and admit it in front of 12 million people on international TV. So why did they play it? Because people want it.
The only thing I can say is, I hope that most people that are interested in Open Source would be a little bit more intelligent than to trust a ZDNET article. But then again, maybe people are more gullible than I thought.
Anyone that believes that ZDNET article, I have a nice list of e-mail addresses to sell you ;)
kwsNI
He just doesn't know it. He probably thinks he's written a provocative article to generate flame and hits, but (without reading the article intensely) I think he's right.
Open Source has created good products, but it has yet to complete "The Project." And "The Project" is not necessarily a single product.
Linux (feel free to substitute *BSD in this argument, or any other OS) has been in development for 10+ years. It gained fringe popularity 5+ years ago, and has achieved cult popularity in the last 2 years. There are thousands of developers working on Open Source projects for Linux in addition to Linux itself. However Linux still hasn't released a product capable of competing with Microsoft Windows on all levels. And I'm not talking about Windoes interoperability. I'm talking about ease of use, features for dummies, consistency among apps, and interoperability among other Linux systems. Linux is an incomplete piece of software. It's functional beta (very functional).
Sure, linux competes quite well on the server side as far as pure performance, but all over Linux is lacking. Linux is still a long way from competing in the desktop world.
Livable, yes..but comfortable? For all?
This might be the most insightful (+1) paragraph in the whole article. "Open source is not geared to create but critique" I think that phrase is half right. Open source is geared to create...but the people in Open Source are geared to critique. The fragmentation in Linux is amazing, instead of helping to improve an existing WM people would rather write their own. I'm surprised everyone has settled on one Web Server. "It's best at tearing apart the establishment..." The establishment, I believe, is more than just Wintel or Proprietary software. The establishment is anything that's "established." The problem with having a bunch of hacker type people working on Open Source is that you get the individuality and righteous indignation of hackers. "I can do it better" or "my way is better."
Now, granted, not all projects suffer this problem. Gimp, from what I've seen, appears to a very nice image manipulation program. Well done. But come on, BeOS managed to eclipse you all with a well-polished desktop OS in only a handful of years.
Can Open Source beat Microsoft? I think so. Will it do it anytime soon? Probably not. But it's definately not going to do it with the current Open Source mindset.
And you should all fear the capitalistic involvement with Open Source. Because if you think the lone wolf, righteous indignation of hackers is bad, then you haven't seen just what capitalism can do. All your precious Linux companies will be releasing competing apps, all vying for the title of best Linux company. APT, PKG, etc.. Want to see what I'm talking about? Just imagine what would happen if Microsoft decided to Embrace and Extend Linux. Released their own distribution then started slowly moving everyone to their apps, then slowly changing the playing field. Like the frog in a pot that doesn't realize the water is getting hot until he's cooked. Now once you've got that image in your head then realize that your Linux comapnie are already doing that.
In closing I would like to say that I do not "represent the Open Source Community" (Hemos). In fact I'm a former Microsoft employee. I left my job 2 months ago, because I wanted to do something different, and for no other reason. I've watched the Open Source Community, and have even participated in select OSS projects. What I have written does not apply to all OSS projects, by far, there are some that are very effective and are not plagued by such problems, but I see a trend, and it's based int he same religious OS war that makes you hate Microsoft with a passion.
Collaborate, cooperate, and create.
-Joe
This is the kind of irrensponsible journalism that has led to the mantra "We're just giving the public what they want" in traditional media. The argument being that people WANT to see crime and death and human misery, since that's what they seem to be watching. The truth is, people watch it because a) they're not given any choice, and b) they feel socially and morally obligated to watch it. We live in a society where it can be embarrassing to not know what's going on in the news, while everyone else is talking about it. We also feel the need to know what the "dangers" of the real world are so we can protect our loved ones from them - the dangers having been generated and hyped by the media.
My point is, this is the same kind of thing. /.ers feel socially and morally obligated to read this troll article so they can intelligently and accurately flame them for being such asses. They know it, so they're capitalizing on it. We feel a need to protect our "community" so we read about the "danger" facing it--namely Irresponsible Journalism.
If I didn't believe that people (like Carnage4Life) were intelligent enough to see through most of this BS, this might be enough to make me reconsider my position on the 1st Amendment. Fortunately, I think we're all smart enough that the ass who wrote the original piece isn't demagogue enough to actually sway anyone's opinions.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
As cynical as this sounds, this article was probably written specifically to get our (collective) goat. Pretty soon the site is going to be slashdotted, and most of you are going to read the Talk Backs and probably enter some of your own. Every single one of these page views is 2 banner ads they push out there! This is all about ad revenue, folks! They have to know that this article is flamebait -- the author may work for PC Week, but ZDNet is not stupid -- but flamebait draws flames, and each flame is half a dozen banner ads.
Whatever you do, view these pages with images off. Don't give them the satisfaction of the ad revenue.
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
Now that Mozilla has a 'only accept images from originating server' option you can easily browse without ads.
Ho, ho, how ironic.
OK, I'm sick of /.ers assuming that everyone who reads /. must be some kind of American, white, male Linux user without a life.
/. certainly could.
/. is not just for Linux, and people should try and remember that otherwise they will just alienate a large proportion of their user base, and *gasp* lose advertising money. And that's what'll hurt them.
True. However, if you think that the Open-Source community is composed entirely of while male Linux users without lives, you're as prejudiced as you claim other Slashdotters are.
I do not represent the open source community. I do not run Linux. In fact, I was curious about it before I came here, but a year's worth of zealotry and bigoted postings have pretty much put me off of ever running Linux at all. Why should I associate myself with such a narrow-minded group of people? Trust me, zealots do nothing but put people off. Linux could do without them, and
A question: what do you run? I'm sure I could find zealots for any OS you could possibly be running, even Windows. You're right, they don't do any good for a community. But they exist in all communities.
In fact, I'm sick of every single "open source" project getting a whole story here with every release, even when it's 2.999a 0.6pre3 or some other incomprehensible version number.
No need to be overdramatic. A quick look at Freshmeat will tell you that what you said simply is not the case; where was Slashdot when the Bubbling Load Monitor 1.0 was released?
The fact is, Slashdot tries to cover releases of the most important software to the Open-Source community (Linux, *BSD, Apache, etc). And occasionally if a piece of software looks interesting they'll throw that one in too, to get the word out. What's the matter with that?
And I'm sick of every third article being about graphics cards. So what about YAGCB (Yet Another Graphics Card Benchmark)? This isn't a hardware site is it?
Not entirely, but hardware is a part of it. As is software. As are most other aspects of computing. And graphics cards are in fact important to the Slashdot community; a community is best served by its journals if they contain things which are important to the community at large. Most Slashdotters run some kind of "alternative" OS, whatever that OS may be, and we've never had good graphics card support in any of these. So it's important to know what's going on.
In short,
You're correct. However, Linux is a part of Slashdot, and a rather large and important one. Perhaps you don't like it, but that's what the article filters are for. Use them if you don't like what Slashdot has to say.
There is an underabundance of open source products that the general public would care about.
Netscape 6 is the first product to come out that the general public would care about and the author was clearly not impressed by it.
Instead of attacking Open Source bashers with the same old arguments, prehaps the Open Source community should re-examine its priorities and posistions.
There are people out there who are not seeing the benefits of Open Source code as there hasn't been sufficient code written that would interest them. Most of the code to date has been written by Geeks for Geeks. This was fine until the Open Source community started pushing Open Source as THE WAY to publish software. Suddenly, non-Geeks started taking interest. But as most of the software is being written for Geeks, most non-Geeks only see an absence of software that would help them with their computing tasks.
Looks like they're duping us left and right with this baiting and FUD. :) Because, notice that they do not ever publish a retraction to something like this unless it is legally inaccurate or slanderous. If its inciteful yet within the bounds of the law, it doesn't matter if it's truth or a blatant lie.
Don't feel too bad about this; it's like letting a troll get your goat (troll? goat? Err, never mind).
A lot of times, the better trolls (like the Mindcraft study) uncover useful things to work on. Even if they don't, Free software cannot be damaged the way commercial software is by FUD. The typical FUD tactic is scare away customers, scare away investors, then revenues and capital flees and the product shrivels up and blows away. Free software doesn't work that way; as long as somebody with the requisite skills finds some tiny piece of a project useful, it will survive. You can slay a dragon with a sword, but not a slime-mold. While public battles noisily rage on, free software continues to qutiely creep into a million dark corners from which it can never be entirely eradicated, and from any one of which it can erupt with uncontrollable exponential growth.
In this context, there is no bad publicity. Even this kind of blatant troll serves the cause. I wish ZDNet and every other news organization on the planet published one of these every day. Nothing would suit me better than if the public were absolutely saturated with this kind of swill.
There's a Hindu story about a man who didn't believe in God. Every day he went about his business, he constantly said to himself "There is no God". When he died, he was surprised to find he was instantly united with God. Why? Because every waking moment of his life he thought about God.
To write in hot prose that something doesn't amount to much is to deny your words by your actions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
by Bero, Red Hat
Richard M. Stallman, the closest thing GNU has to a cult hero, calls Microsoft Windows a disruptive technology.
Microsoft Windows is not a disruptive technology. It's a wannabe operating system, and OSes aren't a thread to anyone - and if they were, it surely wouldn't be a good thing. Richard apparently is referring to the proprietary software movement and the sea change behind Microsoft products that has made them unsettling to more than one or two OS vendors.
What amazes me most is that proprietary software has gained so much momentum without showing any goods. It's a dot-com--all-hype and speculation and no fundamentals. It's like an onion in a bushel of apples. Someone might notice that it looks and tastes different, but peel away its layers, and there's nothing there.
In several years, one of the more high-profile proprietary software projects at its time - Microsoft Bob - has released exactly zero used copies of its interface. It won't be until Microsoft throws a copy into open source that anything usable will be released. And the result is a product that might have some good but not earth-shattering.
In fact, the best parts of Microsoft Bob have nothing to do with proprietaryness. The most important part of Microsoft Bob is that it runs on Windows - it's Microsoft's obvious attempt to tie in the product to a bunch of for-profit wannabe OS products.
Although Microsoft has had incredible stock market valuations at one time, it's very much down to earth right now. This means that they'll quickly have to expand beyond valuations centered on Windows.
Microsoft took the bait, creating MSN, an online service that, while fairly bad, had not much to do with Windows. Perhaps Microsoft needed to add another color to its spectrum. Maybe it will next buy AT&T to flesh out its all-American offerings.
It's clear that Windows has a future and that it's still attracting dumb people. Proprietary Software, on the other hand, appears to be struggling.
The reason is simple: People gravitate toward products, and proprietary software is not geared to create but to make money at the cost of freedom, stability and usability. It's best at tearing apart the establishment because it locks out valuable programmers who might want to improve the products.
But proprietary software advocates should face the facts: Put up some goods or your establishment will be ripped apart, too.
Are you a proprietary software advocate, or do you just not care? Let me know with the "Reply" button below.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Write a stupid story, you get thousands of hits from Slashdot, boosting the figures you give to advertisers. If advertisers pay per click rather than per view this won't work though.
ZDNET ought to have custom advertising for stories such as this, advertising which is aimed at the Slashdot hordes.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Sometimes columnists do just that. They write an article and put lots of provocative senences there in order to stir up a (fiercy?) discussion. After all, journalists feel happy if their products make people to react somehow.
I remember when the local newspaper had a column which sugested that fattening foods should carry extra taxes just like booze and cigarettes. The reasoning was, overweightness causes lots of diseases and is expensive to society in form of sick leaves and so on. You can guess the readers were not amused about the idea. But the columnist was rewarded - he (she? can't recall) made the readers to talk about the column in homes, offices and schools. Not bad.
-P
I hate people who quote
From the last paragraph of the article:
But open-source advocates should face the facts: Put up some goods or your establishment will be ripped apart, too.
Are you an open-source advocate, or do you just not care? Let me know in the talkback below.
ZDNet writes articles like this every once in a while that are blatantly false simply to generate traffic and comments (if you don't believe me look at the size of the Talkback and compare to other stories on ZDNet). To put it simply, there is no way that a reporter that is employed as a technical writer for a tech magazine cannot know of the successes of Open Source. Apache, *BSD, most of the important Unix tools (thanks to GNU), Perl, etc cannot be completely unknown to this writer or whoever he bothered to ask while researching this article. I wouldn't waste my time responding to this obvious troll either by posting to ZDNet or bothering to send him an email.
Come on /. editors! You'd think that from yesterday's 10 page article by RMS you'd have learned to sort out Free Software from plane ole Open Source. Slashdot needs to take an active role in promoting the difference -- at the very least by using the appropriate label in a headline!
The commentary on ZD Net tells me I should make some comments on the current state of Linux.
As a _server_ operating system, Linux works great for workgroup to departmental data server and also as a small Web server. However, what I do find interesting is that many of the machines that run corporate-scale databases, major e-commerce sites (note I said _major_ e-commerce sites) and web portals run either Sun Solaris, IBM OS/390 or AIX, or FreeBSD. Hopefully, the upcoming Linux 2.4.x kernel will allow very-large-scale data transactions and this will allow Linux servers to run large-scale e-commerce sites (something on the scale of things like the big online bookstores).
As a _desktop_ operating system, Linux has improved quite a lot since the release of Red Hat Linux 5.0 some years ago, but the lack of true equivalents of ACPI Plug and Play and DirectX (though you can get around that with OpenGL), plus somewhat iffy printer support still indicates that Linux has still a ways to go. Hopefully, once these issues are resolved within the next 24 months, Linux will finally be a viable operating system even for first-time computer buyers, with ease of support for hardware changes as a customer upgrades the computer.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I see a rather large smoking gun at the scene of the crime....
ZDNet is running from.... an Apache Webserver.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'm an engineer that works in Italy, but I also often write on magazines (favoutite topic: Linux!); consequently, I know various journalists and reporters.
The thing is, there is a large number of them (should I say "us"?) who are requested to write on any subject without actually knowing anything about it, or just because they think they know enough. But I see that this is a common plague for all topics, not just computing... I do not consider Italian press to be valid, but I suppose this situation may occur in other countries.
How clever, never thought they'd post an April Fools article on the 30th of the month instead of the 1st.
numb
That column is a reflection of the outer world (and especially stock buyers) that open source for them doesn't work!
Geeks and stockbuyers have different priorities..
I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm sorry that you have been put off Linux or anything by "a year's worth of zealotry and bigoted postings". I'm not saying that you should use Linux - use whatever works for you. I run NT on one computer, 98 on another, and Linux on another box (and AIX at work). They all have their purposes, are useful for different tasks, and have advantages and disadvantages. You should try things for yourself, and see what you think. If you don't like linux, I personally don't care - it doesn't have any affect on my wallet, and I am not personally offended. There are zealots of every kind no matter where you are, both on the net and in real life. I've seen sites of MS zealots, BSD zealots, Linux zealots, nVidia zealots, 3Dfx zealots - whatever. Make up your mind for yourself based on the merits of a product, not what complete strangers claim they know.
/. even though you claim to be dissapointed with it. Why is that? You obviously see some worth in it, or at least enjoy it as entertainment.
/. since its inception - the site started with justa few people and their interests, and has grown significantly. The scope of the site has grown wider over time as a more diverse group has come to play, but there are some things that take a long time to change, and many people would rather that they don't.
You seem to still visit
Whether or not you represent the open-source community, that has been much of the focus of
The majority of the projects that are announced here are usually fairly important, though there have been some things I've seen that made me say, "huh? How'd that get on here?" Of course, I say that about a lot of reposted stories that aren't open-source related (see: Dropsquad or Furby Autopsy).
Remember - the only way to make change here is to submit stories that you think are of interest, and to comment on the ones we have. You can vote with your words or your silence.
I don't let zealots bother me any more than Barney, the Teletubbies, the WB, or other inane behavior. Think for yourself.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
No, some of represent the free software movement. Didn't anyone *read* the Stallman interview?
This article was on Linuxtoday.com yesterday. There were 29 comments when I read it.
The overall opinion was that it wasn't worth reading. A ton of people posted that they didn't read it after the first paragraph and the rest posted that they read it but wished they hadn't because the guy was so dumb.
aparently he's the same fellow who didn't apply the security patches in the hack the box contest between windows and linux. (it was too complicated to download them from redhat.com if you will remember.)
I say the people at linuxtoday are right.
this article is such obvious flame bait.
everyone knows zdnet sucks.
move along. nothing to see here.