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Bob Young Blasts Recent Anti-Open Source Article
buzzcutbuddha writes "Bob Young from Red Hat issued his rebuttal to John Taschek's Anti-Open Source Article on ZDNet. Well written and articulate, and to the point ... He shoots, he scores!" Check out the original article blasting the open-source idea. Good rebuttal, Bob.
Am I the only person that's sick of seeing and hearing all of this under-educated anti-OSS bullsh*t? Sure, it has its downsides. But there are SO many people that are flying off the cuff, trying to give it a bad rep. If you want to TRY to argue against open-source, go right ahead. Just pull your head out of your ass and get your facts straight BEFORE you speak.
Good job, Bob.
"It compiles, SHIP IT!" -Overheard at Microsoft's development lab
Though I would strongly suggest against using Windows if that source code was ever released. The problems with MS are bad enough ... just imagine the exploits that would come if the source was released.
I think commercial vendors are afraid of being embarassed more-so than having their software copied illegally.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
There is a pole on the page. Unfortunately, the lUs3Rz at ZDNet didn't give a Cowboy Neal option. I propose we Slashdot the poll. At the very least it shows that most of the readers of ZDNet.com feel that Open source is "John Taschek's worst nightmare."
A side effect is that it gives them a little more ad revenue, but that's not that big of a deal. Right? They're still losing money anyway, aren't they?
This is the kind of response I like to see in the Open Source world. It is calm, well thought out, and backed by fact. I think that the Open Source community, and Linux in particular, often gets a bad rap for being a movement of fanatics and funcamentalists. Articles like Bob's posted on a very public forum (and one frequented by Wintel users) provide some substance to the movement.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Maybe these journalists are concentrating a bit too much on applications for the 'normal end user'; OpenSource apps aren't really big in this domain (yet). All the examples mentioned by Bob (sendmail, Apache) are more or less 'background' applications, outside the realm of lusers.
How to make a sig
without having an idea
Companies need to realize that the dominant business model for the future will be geared towards the need and wants of the consumer. We see this already in small things such as increased availability of *designer* styles for home products. Even the most basic of items can be had in any style, shape, or color based on an individual's preference. The individual can make the choice of what they want.
In the same way the Internet and the Web does this for information. Almost anything you could possibly want to know is available and free.
Open-source does the same. It allows us to choose what functionality we want, how we want it, what it looks like, and so on. It lets us do what we want, which ultimately is where the appeal lies. As soon as mainstream media, and companies realize and begin to capitalize on it, the computing world will become a better place for all.
Perhaps he just wrote the article as he knew how the community would respond. We've seen it before, flame Linux people a little and your site surely receives an abundance of hits in the week that follows.
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
--
After reading the Slashdot comments, I dedided not to run the story on GeekPress because I didn't want to give such silliness any more readers.
Nevertheless, the rebuttal was good, a worthwhile article in its own right.
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
Well done and have a good party with all that
money coming from your precious banner-ads. Quite
a money making formula, eh?
Seems that every time we have some major piece of anti-free software FUD, we almost immediately have somebody who is "famous" within the community weigh in on the issue with some form of rebuttal to let everyone know what their stance on it is.
:)
It seems to me that sometimes, it's probably just better to let the FUD bury itself, and not even give it the honor of being discussed. Now, there are some times when this is NOT the case, but other times, you have to just let the FUD go, because there's already tons of it out there, and there's going to be more.
remember the "Linux Myths" thingy that MS put up? I can't remember if it was mandrake or somebody else who wrote some multipage rebuttal to MS' "Linux Myths". Guess what? You're preaching to the choir. The only case in which a rebuttal like that would be effective is if it was posted next to the linux myths column on microsoft.com, and if you think that's going to happen, think again.
Well, Bob young's article on ZDNet is a little bit better, since it stands to be seen by people other than those who already know that the article was full of untruths to begin with, but at the same time, I don't understand the motivation to write rebuttals like this. Sure, the original column that he's talking about was bullshit, but everybody knew that.
I'm trying not to be cynical, but all I can come up with in terms of the motivations for writing these rebuttals would be to demonstrate to the community that you are "pure of heart", or just to promote the popularity of linux.
IMHO, linux doesn't need either.
Course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Call me stupid but its in the poll - "more interesting to VCs than IT." Its not on everything2 and I haven't heard it before.
...but the ZDNet marketing people must be laughing all the way to the bank.
First, an article gets linked to from Slashdot that is so controversial (to us), that it's bound to get everyone reading it, generating lots of hits on the ads.
Now, the same site posts what is sure to be an equally-popular rebuttal, and (naturally) gets it linked to from Slashdot.
That's an awful lot of free hits and ad revenue we've just earned them, all because of an insignificant journalist who doesn't seem to be living on the same planet as the rest of us...
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
the moronic rantings of the original article speak to the fact that, while everyone here understands both the theoretical advantages and the actual successes of various co-operative open software efforts, the vast, vast, vast (99+ percent?) of software buyers don't.
the paranoid part of my mind conjects that perhaps the author is deeply invested in MS or something, a subcionsciously-controlled FUD factory, but at the end of the day i suspect that it's nothing so interesting. Young's response, true as it was, is neccessary in larger quantity, and in more high-profile spaces, because most people just don't get it. they don't see the parallel between welding your hood shut and entrusting a software company to do the right thing, even if they won't let you or anyone else look inside.
for my part, i'm going down to the corner of broadway and vesey with a bullhorn. gonna stand in the sun and scream about open source to passers-by. aw, yeah.
god is just pretend.
I think he did a Great job. Straight and to the point. He presented plenty of facts to back up his statements--unlike the tech journalist. I wasn't aware of some of the figures he quoted, but I am glad to see the figures for open source are positive. I wonder if there will be a rebutle(sp?) to this article? I would love to see the tech journalists' face when he reads this. It might be interesting.
It is good to see someone wrote a good answer to that joke of an article. The real question is, how many people will people outside the open source, programmer, and admin environments understand and believe what Mr. Young said?
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
We demand the ability to open the hood of our cars because it gives us, the consumer, control over the product... But if he overcharges us, won't fix the problem we are having or refuses to install that musical horn we always wanted -- well, there are 10,000 other car-repair companies that would be happy to have our business.
This is a great analogy...
I can see it now, soon there will be thousands upon thousands of software "mechanic" shops, where software owners who do not know much about what they own can take their stuff to have bugs fixed.
I just hope that such establishments do not treat their clients in a similar manner of many auto shops, with the attitude "they don't know anything about this, so let's take them to the cleaners."
-ShelbyCobra
Living life in the right side of the s-plane
Matthew Rothenberg, also from ZDNet has a co lumn basically highlighting the same key points of the argument against Taschek's article except from posters to the article.
Or a vote -
Rob, kids, I'd like to propose that nothing presented on ZDNET or C|Net ever get posted to slashdot again. (C|Net for very different reasons from ZD, of course)
ZD is trolling us, and we're feeding them. As any longtime usenet dork will tell you -
Don't feed the troll!
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Kudos to them for publishing this article.
Especially given the treatment they got from Slashdotters when John Taschek's article was linked here.
--
"You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
- CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.
"Chiswick! Fresh horses!"
This isn't meant as flamebait, but is it my imagination or are a lot of people here on /. more fanatical about pushing Linux than the actual people who write it and/or make money from it? The tone of Bob Young's article is extremely reasonable, and that in itself makes a good statement about the open source "community", but there are a lot of very extreme viewpoints pushed in this forum which do give rise to the opinion that all Linux users are zealots.
Personally I think that as Linux enters a new phase in which it becomes more widely known and used and is seen less as a hobbyist's OS it will require more people who are seen to be sensible and open-minded than those who already know the "truth". And on /. I see a lot of zealots doing this, which makes it harder for those posters trying to make a good point (and there are a lot) to be heard.
Oh come on...
didn't we dismiss this as advertising hype for zdnet when the inflammatory article was first posted here? And now when Bob Young responds ON ZDNET, the story gets posted again??? Does Bob's article state anything we didn't already know?? Most of his points could have been lifted directly from this forum for God's sake (I wonder if Bob Young reads slashdot).
This might provide a reasonable counter argument for the original article, but it would only be worthwhile reading for non-geeks who might not know this already. Hardly worth a posting on Slashdot.
I'm sure Zdnet are lapping this up. Slashdot effect twice in as many days. I don't know what advertising on Zd costs but I'm sure they'll be making a killing off this. Don't do them the favour.
There goes my theory that timothy and emmett are the source of all the crap stories on here lately too.
hummer
Yep, I have to agree: I hate uneducated highly paid writers as much as the rest person.
:).
If you'd care to throw money at me for ranting at the triple initial squad, I'd gladly do it. However, I don't have very many of those offers kicking about so:
Do you truly think it's OSS against closed source? I think it is in the server market, because that's where key developments happen, and happen fast. That's where patches need to be made on the fly. That's the key security and integrity issue coming up.
However, there are some programs that, while they may benefit from being open source, are just fine and dandy as closed source. I could care less if they were free or not. Example: Opera Software's Opera browser. I love that thing, and it's closed source (but being ported to several OSes, so they probably had decent coding techniques when they first started it
Open Source has it's places, but as a reason to pay some guy 60K US a year just to rant about it? I don't think so. Do you?
The original article was intended as flamebait, simply for site traffic. This is simply an official response to that flamebait. I'm not sure it even justified a response. However, I guess if it didn't get one, the clueless masses would think that the article had some validity.
Anyhow....
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
You see, source code is, for anyone reading this, eternal. With dead democratic congressman Sonny Bono's (we gotta send more 'crats skiing) latest passed amendment to copyrights law, US copyrights now last for the life of the author and then 100 years beyond that! Is this even remotely reasonable? So yes, open source be a GREAT WHACKING HUGE issue because it means that new ideas in coding can be reused and built upon by anyone to improve all software in general, rather than [cool new algorithm] not being widely used because its owners demand rediculous royalties and threaten lawsuits on it use (GIF, RSA, LZW compression, MPEG1/2 video encoders, MP3 encoders, QuickTime, etc.) Proprietary for a while (to let creativity be rewarded) and then free to all to use any what they see fit (to improve society) is the way copyrights should work. They do not. OSS is a way around this. So when lies are spread about OSS, the only possible purpose of those lies to stifle and lock up ideas for a century and a half to milk the public and slow innovation and maintain the greedy corporate status quo. So yeah, OSS supporters will respond with great ferocity to such attacks. And this is not "wrong" behaviour in any way. All phaser banks to full. Arm photon torpedos. Maximum yield. Minimum spread. Fire!
Just last night I started read Stephenson's book _Snow Crash_ in which he makes the assertion that programmers are nothing more than factory workers. Today, I see Bob Young compare programmers to auto mechanics.
Will open-source turn programming into a blue collar job?
I knew the author of the original article was off when I read this a few days ago.
.com site. It's all about the .org and .net
Everyone knows that "It's a dot-org or a dot-net."
I rarely look for info about linux an a
He was just throwing around a buzz-word (dot-com) without researching his topic.
By the way, is "buzz-word" becoming a buzz-word?
--
Yes Zdnet will probably have more banner hits. :-) )
But people who don't know anything about Linux and open source, have probably read John Tasheki article and they don't know what its true(whats is truth anyway
Its good to have someone like Bob to raise his voice!(although its of Bob and RH interest...)
I've read the "car with the hood welded shut" mantra before, but this is the first I saw about the follow-up question about how much the typical driver knows about internal combustion engines. Did he just come up with that analogy for this article or have I just not been paying attention?
--
Rob Carlson
And was it just me or was their talkback not working?
The problem that I see here is that they are both arguing different points. What I got out of this is:
John says: "Open source sucks because it's not making any money."
Bob says: "Open source is successful because it has produced so many highly useful and popular applications."
They really aren't talking about the same thing at all. Both are mostly correct. There are not very many financially successful "open source only" companies. Maybe ten to twenty at most. Compare that to thousands of successful traditional closed source companies. On the other hand there are countless successful(not in money but in user share or useability or function) open source projects and applications. Bob's list is just the tip of the iceberg. It is just a matter of time before a large open source company becomes truly profitable. Open source really is changing the world, but slowly. It is just a matter of time before we see many more successful open source companies. In the mean time this sort of "not the same point" argument tends to needlessly fan the flames.
Hello! Sonny Bono was a Republican. The significance of this is that it is important for us average schmuck voters to start realizing that the best way of countering all this corporate crap coming down the pike is to NEVER vote Republican!
Anything NOT worth doing is NOT worth doing well...
'Since then Red Hat has become a global company, with a very strong balance sheet and $42 million of revenue, and continues to grow rapidly.' However, from their financial statements :
'For the nine months ended 11/30/99, revenues rose 77% to $12.6 million. Net loss applicable to Common totaled $8.9 million vs. an income of $184 thousand. Results reflect an increase in training revenue, offset by increased advertising costs.' Also :
'Recent Earnings Announcement For the 3months ended 02/29/2000, revenues were 13,108; after tax earnings were -24,609. (Preliminary; reported in thousands of dollars.)'
I should also point out that the $184,000 in training income is nothing compared to Bob Youngs 228K Salary.
I would also point out that the only sucessful OS products he mentioned were apache, and sendmail. How long ago were they written?
I think one point missed by all this is that Mozilla is the most widely known project. Regardless of whether Open Source was sucessful in this case, I think one thing should be considered.
Would the Mozilla case study encourage companies to open their otherwise closed source?
I realize there are a number of sucessful projects, but from the point of Mozilla, I'm just playing Devils Advocate
Sorry, CT, but Sonny was a Republican. The Democrats aren't the only asses in Congress.
Wow, Bob has a great nugget in there!
:)
Ever been asked "Why should I care if I can get the source code to [insert OSS program here]? I'm not capable of hacking it!" ?
Bob has a great answer in his rebuttal.
People would not buy a car with the hood (bonnet for the Brits) locked shut, even though most people haven't a clue about how the motor works.
Why? They're not going to fix the motor themselves.
But by being able to open the hood, people can take to the car to _whoever they want_ to get it fixed. They have choice. They're not locked-in to a single provider of mechanical services.
Wow! Simple, concise, and easy to understand!
Perhaps ol' Bob should get a job as a journalist.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The best rebuttal, is to smile quietly, and continue to use and specify Free software wherever it is appropriate.
... and if proprietary software is the only viable solution to your needs, go with that instead.
If I can do my work using only (or even mostly) Free Software, then as far as I personally am concerned, Free Software has succeeded. "I got mine; don't worry 'bout his".
--
"[Linux] is the kernel of the operating systems that engineers that Red Hat and others, including the Debian team, build". He might have mentioned GNU. I seem to remember that they had something to do with it as well. Not that I want to be fanatical about it...
And no, I could not get a reply on ZDNet either.
Blasphemy? Maybe to some. But it is a valid choice to keep source closed. Sure, there are benefits to be had by opening it. But that isn't in itself why some places have a poor reputation.
If a program does what I need without being clunky, slow, or buggy I really don't care whether the source is open or not. Some closed source programs are even good enough I'll pay for them. Most are not. Maybe they do have something to hide.
If a program, open or closed source, is bloated, slow and buggy I avoid it if I can. Microsoft, for example, has a bad reputation as the software is just good enough to get accepted by managers and purchasing types but not good enough that it doesn't thoroughly irk the people who must use it. Nevermind monopoly, if the software was as great as the advertising lead some to believe, there'd be less antagonism toward its producer.
Open source may swing my opinion some, but it isn't a 'go - no go' criterion. Does the software do the job I want without causing frustration? That is the number one criterion. The rest is details.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Read the comments to this ZDnet article and the other one. Everyone claims to be an "IT expert" and has such informed things to say as "the solutions coming out of Microsoft are tested, not in someone's spare bedroom..." Right. Amazing displays of complete cluelessness. Are these people really making more money than me?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Name: Rick Location: Boston Occupation: Systems Manager If you say it long enough and loud enough, does that make it true? Open Source is a great idea, but, let's face it, it's only for the losers or the botton-feeders. ^^^^^ Oh-kaaaaay... I give up. NT for everyone! Long live King Gates.
"This is Hammerfist, and this is the famous Ox. There is not a man alive that can defeat.. either of them." -Raustum
If you want to twiddle with engines, there are two easy answers:
Vintage racing. Drag racing, circle track, AutoX, etc. Pick your era, pick your machine and go. Or, build older cars (Camaros, Mustangs, Escorts (GB version), BMWs, etc.) and hit the street.
Motorcycles. Still only a handful are injected. Either buy a new one (and bet that you can't tweak even a new carburetted bike) or buy an older one (Honda V45, Harley of any sort, Kawi Z1) and get to work.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Anyway, they've never been anything but prolific Microsoft whores. I'm assuming that their recent Slashdot trolling is nothing more than a series of experiments geared toward boosting ad revenue in the event that MS should be broken up and become a little less free with the purse strings.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
all I can come up with in terms of the motivations for writing these rebuttals would be to demonstrate to the community that you are "pure of heart", or just to promote the popularity of linux.
I try to think in terms of the basics. Uncertainty and Doubt frequently disappear when the light is turned on. If a simple rebuttal sheds some light on the issue, the damage from their FUD is minimized.
I agree that it's a great rebuttal (and the correct one). But there's also a flaw: ever try to find a good mechanic? When I first started my current job, I watched two MCSE's waste a day trying to solve a problem. After they left, I solved it in about 10 minutes.
What does this mean? ASE certified, RHCE, MCSE, are all nice, but let's not tell the general public that it might be tough to find a good software 'mechanic', despite their fancy certifications; let's get the code opened first (burn one bridge at a time as an old friend of mine used to put it)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
LINUX - musical horns for the
The reason is that each and every one of these claims is bogus at best ( unless you walk everywhere ).
Mechanics go wherever they need to inside an engine. Sometimes that means "tampering" with a seal unit and other time it means replacing that unit with a compatible one. Clueless drivers just don't know how the car was fixed.
Next time you get on a bus talk to the driver. Most of the bus drivers I know are second rate mechanics. They fix little things themselves and some other person in the office fixes big things. Maybe it's different in your side of the world but Bus companies around here NEVER buy support from the dealer.
uhm... You do know that a Commercial Pilot is required to know a little about how a plane works right ? In an emergency the pilot may be required to make repairs. I.e. What do you do when the landing gear on a 747 is jammed ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Stop reading they're site. I don't care if they're they're the only ones covering the second coming of Jesus...just don't go there.
They only post stories and articles/opinions to stir up the controversy. They want people pissed off and incensed to read and write back to them...all the while getting thousands and thousands of hits to their web pages.
Besides, there is NOTHING on that site or any of their sister-sites that has any info that I can't get from somewhere else (like here at Slashdot).
Stop feeding the troll and stop making money for the troll!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Don't assume someone who bought RHAT @ $200 is now about to go on a shooting spree because its dropped to $25.
More likely they bought at $200 and sold at $190 and then that person sold at $185, etc...
I'm sure there's more. That's all I can think of at the moment. But if you truly see no difference between Bob Young/Red Hat and Bill Gates/Microsoft, you either: 1) Need new glasses or 2) are a Microsoft shill.
"I am not a crook" - U.S. President Richard Nixon, Nov. 17, 1973 ..." - Microsoft President Bill Gates, June 10, 1999
"... Microsoft's actions and innovations were fair and legal
url here
9 ,2560429,00.html?chkpt=zdnntbtop
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,585
Free Software is an exclusive thing. It's exclusive similar to the way that much of the art world is exclusive. Art (and Free Software) can only be understood and appreciated by people in the know. Everyone else that walks by that painting in the mueseum (or looks at all the ballyhoo of the Free Software movement) just scratches their head and continues on to the next piece. No matter how much you explain it, they just don't get it. They are excluded from understanding/appreciating the piece (or the movement), ie THEY WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND OR APPRECIATE IT. Simple as that. Call it snobbery; call it exclusion; call it what you will, but these people just aren't worth expending our energy trying to bring into the fold.
Just my $0.02
-gordon
Ok, fine article, good answer. But it is scaring the way it avoids the word GNU while correctly identifies Linux as the kernel, not the full OS.
"Open Source" may be successful in some ways, but they tend to be geeky and underground in the same way that someone in the US would say "Oh, band XXX is very big in Malaysia." Try to explain to the person using Word and Outlook on a laptop next to you on the plane about sendmail and Apache and Linux. Those applications are outside the realm of most computer users, just as telephone switching systems and embedded apps are outside the realm of most Linux zealots. In fact, this is the same trouble that lots of underdog systems have run into in the past, such as the Amiga/Video Toaster combo being good for television production and Forth or Smalltalk being good programming languages. Forth has been used to run airports and is inside those FedEx tracking wands--huge, huge applications--but you can't name a popular game or desktop application written in Forth, therefor it is branded unsuccessful. Almost all open source applications tend to fit the same mold. You can rant all you like about Gnome and so on, but they're oddities.
Has anyone else noticed the "Talkback" comment list at the bottom of Bob Young's column? I notice that the comments with an anti-open-source slant seem clustered toward the top (especially the first six), and those comments expressing approval of Mr. Young's arguments don't appear
until later (the seventh comment is sympathetic, but unfortunately is punctuated with a childish "First Post?")
Does anyone know what algorithm determines the order in which ZDnet's "talkback" comments appear? (I don't have proof that anti-open-source commenters get better "ZDnet karma," but I do find it entertaining to harbor such suspicions... )
ZDNet have it all worked out. Generate Slashdot-traffic for the troll, and then do it again for the right of reply. Double the hits, double the fun.
Now, of course, they'll have satisfied their ad hits for the second quarter, so they'll ignore us again until July.
It's tabloid journalism, pure and simple. Ignore.
If I remember correctly MS has come out with a product called IIS.. Did the same company also not come out with Mail, File, DNS, and other software? These couldn't be aimed as competition could they? No company would do that...
Closed source companies have tried for a long time to dethrone Open Source packages.. the fact remains that they can't. Either because the Closed Source counterpart is much worse or because people like the fact that Open Source packages are inherently more secure because of the number of eyes that look at the source code. And many countries agree that Open Source packages are inherently more secure( China, France, USA, Canada, Astrailia, Russia, Britain, and many others )
Actually OSS can be profitable, I believe UT and Quake3 have opened their sources alot( though not completely ), and that software is still selling. People buy boxed Linux distributions, Apache, open-sourced firewall packages, and alot of other Open Source products.
And if a company does not want to credit me if they use my code, then they MUST remove it. That's like saying to MS, "We're gonna use your threading algorithms without you knowing, and, if you happen to find out, we won't give you credit for writing the algorithms," Your arguement there is absurd.
And I believe the reason Apache and Sendmail were ported to Windows was to REPLACE MS's mail, and web software.
So far I see that your statements are completely unfounded. If you really want to debate the matter, I invite you to.
I now see why people post as Anonymous Cowards.. Because they're too cowardous to put their name to what they say... I really think we need to get rid of the AC status.
Hey, how about that? Not only did he mention
the fact that Linux is only a kernel and not
the OS, but he actually mentioned a competing
distro. Given, it wasn't a *commercial* distro but
still pretty cool, IMHO.
Well, shows you ZDNet knows what they're doing because I wrote a talkback note there saying what I said here. That they were just being controversial to get web hits. They didn't post my reply. Gee, I wonder why?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Would it be worth debugging Micros~1 products for them even if they did open the source, especially Windows, since there are so many better OSS alternatives available already? It would be a big waste of peoples' time and effort.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
I don't mean to be redundant but it seems like everyone has to take sides with open source or they are evil. The same goes for people who use Windows. If they talk to someone who is pro open source, they think that you are a communist. It is all about the war now and not joining the darkside.
For instance, the guy writing the original article obviously didn't know much on the subject and when you consider it, there was no real purpose to the article but to do a little name-slinging.
On the other hand, it is understandable that Mr. Young would reply with all these stats about open source, etc when they also might not be a mirror of the real situation. "Linux-based OSs" seems to cover a lot of ground...
People also get riled up about "I just want software that doesn't suck." What the hell is wrong with that? Do we want software that sucks?? Also, just because something is open source does not mean it is stable. It has to be something that is open source and people are actually working on to improve it. There are a lot of programs out there that are open source and suck because they don't get enough attention. Just saying that sendmail is opensource and that is why it is used doesn't cover enough. It is opensource and damn good code too! It has to be good.
I guess my conclusion is that open source has a ton to offer by letting people improve their work in a community of programmers but just because something is open source doesn't mean it is good. Both articles seem like just an excuse to flame the other side a little more.
After reading some of the Talkbacks below Bob's article I don't know whether to laugh at or feel very sad for some of those people. While quite a few people commented on how well the response was written, the usual ZDNet crowd of MS apologists and seemingly brainwashed MCSE-types were out in force, displaying not only a stunning lack of knowledge in their Open Source competition, an almost childlike devotion to Bill Gates and everything MS, and most of all a very pitiable lack of manners. A lot of the posts resorted to useless namecalling, knocking Redhat's falling stock price (as if MSs stock has been riding high in recent days?), and left a very juvinile impression overall. Anyone who knocks the Linux community needs to see some of the hardcore Microsofties try to defend their position, they make even the most loudmouth adolescents in our community seem like William F. Buckley.
"Linux is not even an operating system. It is the kernel of the operating systems that engineers at Red Hat and others, including the Debian team, build."
I have nothing against Red Hat, but this statement unfair to people other than those that work for Red Hat or contribute to Debian. He could have said something like:
"Linux is the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system. Along with companies like Red Hat, people all around the world contribute to open source software. Such organizations as the Debian project and the Free Software foundation help maintain and conduct the development of open source software."
Instead of this, Bob Young decided that placing that little "other" inside the sentence, where most people wouldn't even notice it, would suffice to credit everyone other than Red Hat.
"Sometimes Truth... is stranger that Fiction." - Bad Religion
Never before has such incoherent babbling been heard outside of an Alzheimer's home. (and yes, my grandmother had it and it is very sad. I'm just trying to make a point.)
Free music from Jack Merlot.
... that's why they work so well. They aren't released until they really are ready. When you don't have media advertising for your product in the works, with everything set to a schedule months ahead of time, then what you do have is an opportunity to get it right, even if it does take a few months longer than expected. You might be steamed that Linux 2.4 or Debian 2.2 or whatever is next isn't really out yet. But you can appreciate it working well when it does come out, or go grab the beta copy to see if you can even make it crash.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Anonymous speech is a key component of free speech. In an environment hostile to contradictory viewpoints that may, in fact, be valid, sometimes the only way these views may be expressed is anonymously. Judging from the wisdom of the rest of your remarks, I'm betting that if you think about this last one a little bit longer, you'll realize the importance of this.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Bob Young's "open up the hood" argument is a very eloquent straw man.
The best analogy that illustrates this benefit is with the way we buy cars. Just ask the question, "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?" and we all answer an emphatic "No." So ask the follow-up question, "What do you know about modern internal-combustion engines?" and the answer for most of us is, "Not much."
Using closed source software is not analagous to buying a car where you can't open the hood. Using open source is more like requiring that the auto manufacturer hand over the blueprints. Many companies provide aftermarket parts for cars that replace standard parts, such as alloy wheels, seat covers, etc. Likewise, many companies sell software that replaces parts of closed source operating systems that were designed for replacement (biometric authentication companies routinely replace the GINA on Windows NT) or even parts that were not intended for replacement (Novell's NDS Client for Windows). You're not always limited to just the features a closed source vendor provides, and you don't always NEED the source to accomplish a change you want, especially if the closed source product exposes a modular design and mature API.
In my view, open source is not consumer-oriented, but rather hacker-oriented (in the good hacker sense). Many people buy a car and NEVER open the hood, and would probably be quite willing to buy a car with its hood welded shut (trusting trained professionals to do the maintenance for them). Many people are also content to buy computer software and use it as-is. Not everyone is car enthusiast interested in replacing the camshaft; likewise not everyone cares to be able to modify and recompile their kernel.
I just get tired of the endless dogma here. OSS is good. It's great if you're a hacker and want to play with the code. It's great if you can fix your own bugs. But the talent pool with those skills is relatively small, and the desire to hack through the kernel is relatively rare, especially since the average administrator has a million other things to do.
Here's my main point. Just because open source is good, doesn't mean that closed source is bad. Both have their places.
One last point: If you are not a programmer and can't afford to hire one, then there's probably no advantage to open source. You can choose open source and be at the mercy of the development community if you need a specific feature, or you can choose closed source and be at the mercy of the vendor. You're probably going to choose whichever product has the closest feature set to your needs, coupled with the lowest demand on your time for training, ramp-up, installation & configuration time, and ongoing support. It's not a clear-cut win for open source in many cases.
Taschek is probably a decent enough writer, but he couldn't fake the knowledge he didn't have. Nothing basic research -- taught in journalism class -- wouldn't have fixed.
Got a beef? Plug a name into the Bizarre Rumour Generator!
Actually it's the vision of the journalist who has been given the promise of the OpenSource movement.
The rest of the very succesful free software that actually works and was not mentioned in the original article was written BEFORE any OpenSource certification was ever invented. Linux, BSD, GNU, X, Apahche, Perl and Sendmail are not OpenSource...everyone is its own verion of free software.
OpenSource has not delivered on its promises and instead has posed itself in a vulnerable position because of all the hype it has created...
Hugo
Screaming, sensationalistic headlines aside - "Article attacks Open Source!!!" - I'm with Taschek on this one. I think Slashdot is succumbing to yellow journalism in this case; the article isn't what it's represented to be.
Taschek doesn't address free software like Apache at all - he argues that Open Source software, as a commercial venture, has caught on but has yet to produce many results.
Free and Open Source commercial software are different things. To illustrate the distinction:
Now, free software's work powers half the Internet today; but commercial open-source software, though it's gotten many corporate commitments, is still in the process of getting a stable position from which to actually produce stuff.
That's what Taschek says, and he's right about it. Bob Young's "incisive" reply dodges blatantly and doesn't even address Taschek's criticisms.
There's a huge gap between what Taschek says and "open source is bad". Any new thing first needs to get resources, then apply them and become established; open source has the resources, and is in the process of applying them. Business customers know that having source and compiling it themselves, even if they're not allowed to make or redistribute changes, is important insurance against bugs, back-doors, and security flaws, so it's a better deal for them; and suppliers are rushing to offer it, because their customers know it's a better deal. Even savvy mass-market customers might catch on to the advantages of having their e-mail programs reviewable by people "in the know" outside the company - especially if agencies like Consumer Reports take up the cause.
So the commercial viability Taschek seeks is the next happening thing. People like Taschek will even help it happen, by pointing out the need for it.
I expect to see a day where most proprietary, commerically sold software is open source, and Taschek's article isn't incompatible with this future at all.
The attitude displayed by Bob Young, on the other hand, could harm or delay this future by discarding results in favor of hype. I hope other, larger companies (like IBM, SAP, and Microsoft) take a more pragmatic view of what open source is and has to offer them.
Bob Young's rebuttal is everything that the original is not. The rebuttal is well-reasoned and factual while the original is inflammatory, in-accurate and mostly pointless. In fact, Taschek's article is "like an onion ... peel away its layers, and there's nothing there.".
I haven't read "The Innovator's dilemma" yet (I should be getting it later this week) but Dr. John Mashey, chief scientist for SGI, gave a talk for the Vancouver Linux User's Group giving Linux as a specific example of a disruptive technology. Tascheck believes that just because Linux is an operating system it can't be a disruptive technology without ever giving a reason.
The key example that he gives for the failure of the open source movement is Mozilla while ignoring many successes that Young gives in his article. He then goes on to equate the opening up of Netscape's code with the poaching of free labour. The truth is the vast majority of Mozilla development is still done by Netscape's engineers.
The one valid point he does make in his article is about the origin of open source being from "underappreciated programmers" and that it is "not geared to create but critique". I would have used the term "disaffected" and this would descripe RMS's starting of free software quite well. And I would consider it "geared to critique" as well since many open source projects arise out of dissatisfaction with proprietary software. This can be a strength if we use criticism as the basis of our creations. This is similar to the approach that the Japanese took in the '80s when they ate our lunch. However, if all we are doing is bitching, we aren't going to accomplish much of anything.
He then goes on to criticize the purchase of Bluecurve, evidently simply because it has a colour in the name, and then predict that our "establisment will be ripped apart". This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of open source. It is not a centralized establishment and there is nothing to rip apart. It is a loose collective or community and decisions are made more or less by consensus rather than via some top-down approach.
The article is well worth reading, even if it does give the despised ZD another hit. The talkbacks he quotes will make you laugh, as will the results of the poll associated with the article.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Junkbuster is a simple little program that run on yout computer that you use a web proxy. With it you can filter out the URLs you do not want to see for exampl all those ads. Its a blessing to being able to stop all those irritating blinking gifs. http://www.junkbusters.com/
Just saying it like it are.
search for it on freshmeat. It runs on Windows and Linux, and filters out any banner ads and cookies you don't want. It is pretty damn cool. Just wish it would work with Mozilla...
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?