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Zero-Knowledge Ceases Linux Support
My brief experience with Freedom's software - I attempted to run their first version, on Windows. It didn't work on my machine, and totally killed networking when I uninstalled it.
Fine, I said. I'll wait, because the concept here is great, and obviously what they're doing is pretty technically challenging.
So when version 2 came out I tried again, this time on my Debian GNU/Linux system. (I had defenestrated myself in the meantime.) They only offered support and downloads for Red Hat systems. However, if I compiled from source, including a "kernel shim" and some modules and a half-dozen other knick-knacks inserted into the system at various places, it should theoretically work, they said. (Zero Knowledge described the process as "non-trivial", hah-hah.) I tried. I think I almost got it working. I asked for help. Couldn't get any. I gave up.
Oh, and while I'm at it, they never made it easy for broadband users to use their system either - it was (I'm not entirely sure this is still true, so I'm hedging a bit) geared entirely toward dial-up users. Hmmm, they have a product which is attractive to technically-inclined people, and they're limiting it to inferior operating systems and slow internet connections. What is wrong with this picture?
So, that's my story of attempting to use Freedom. The Zero Knowledge people badgered Slashdot for a while, asking if we would do a review of their software. See above for why we never did. Frankly, I'm not at all surprised that the population of Red Hat Linux users is much smaller than the number of Windows users using their service. Linux users probably would have been a bigger chunk if they had ever reached out to people not using Red Hat. I suppose it's a pretty good thing that I didn't end up actually using their system, because they would be cutting me off with this decision - I'm obviously not going to "upgrade" to Windows.
Cryptobox has been in the news recently. They're another project trying to do roughly what Zero Knowledge is trying. Secure, anonymous communications over the internet is obviously a nice target, but just as obviously a very hard one to hit. I'm still waiting. I'm willing to pay. Here's my optimum criteria:
- Easy installation packages for both client and server (apt-get install foo)
- Must not fsck up the the machine upon installation or removal
- Both client and server source available
- Reasonably low service fee, if there's a fee (ideally, the server cloud would be provided by volunteers, I'd be happy to be one)
- Best possible anonymity and security
These are in rough order of priority. A system which offers a significant improvement in anonymity but perhaps has various attacks which could be made against it, BUT is easy to install and meets all the other criteria, is far far better than a system which is theoretically invulnerable but impossible to install, or worse, not deployed at all. Everyone building these types of systems keeps attempting to get it perfect on the first try, and as a result, there is nothing.
It's a shame. This means I'll never end up using their software, and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me.
Yeah, right. You and all the other self-righteous linux zealots. You claim you want privacy, but when a company offers it, you don't buy their service. Instead, you wait until they've stopped supporting your pet platform, and then start bitching, and talking about how you'd have used it. Save it for someone who cares.
Ummm... pro-Windows, anti-Linux trolling on Slashdot is not new, no.
But since when the hell did it deserve +5, Insightful???
Offtopic, maybe (or maybe not, I can see it being peripherally relevent to the topic). Troll and/or flamebait, definitely, given the forum. Funny, ok, you could make a case for it. Interesting, probably not, although again I'll give the moderators the benefit of the doubt and conceded that he may have raised an interesting point here (I doubt it, but I'm trying not to let my personal pro- or anti- Windows sentiments cloud the issue here). Redundant. Hell yeah. How many of these do we see every day?
But Insightful??!!?!?!?
Since when is posting comments inflammatory to the general population's political leanings (comments that we've all heard a zillion times, and say nothing new) insightful???
And since when did it deserve a +5?
Please, someone, tell me this is your idea of a practical joke.
This is fantastic news. I'm one of those paranoid people who signed up with the Freedom network the first day they would take my money. It installed perfectly on my Windows machine, and Zero-Knowledge's support board gave clear instructions on how to set up my firewall software to permit Freedom to tunnel through properly. I've only had one problem with installing their numerous updates since then, and their support staff had the answer for me within a couple of hours.
I've been worried about them since I heard they had layoffs. You see, I use Freedom every single day. When discussing various topics online that certain governments really don't want you to discuss, it pays to be as anonymous as possible. And while Freedom isn't the only thing I use to protect myself, it's a very strong component of the process I've set up to handle being online.
Unlike the Linux zealots here at Slashdot, I want the Zero-Knowledge company to continue to exist, period. If casting off Linux makes the company more able to survive, so be it. If casting off Windows and keeping Linux would make them more able to survive, so be it. For me, Freedom is my "killer app", and I would migrate to whatever platform they support.
If the mindless drones of Slashdot are going to flood Zero-Knowledge with protests about this, I think I'll buy more tokens from them today, just as a way to thank them.
This means I'll never end up using their software, and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me
Why didn't you pay for it while they were serving you? If you and many more linux users did perhaps they wouldn't discontinue supporting it.
I am currently running the latest Freedom software on two of my linux machines (Debian and Linux). Apart from having to do involved recompile, I didn't find any problems with the installation or running the program. Freedom runs stable for me on both Linux and Windows, and I use it every day.
The above is anecdotal reporting. A story of how it worked or didn't for one person doesn't give you any valid information on the product. It just shows that slashdot is a soapbox for biased opinions and people who love to see themselves type to a large audience of the converted.
Zero Knowledge has created a great product thats especially valuable in an atmosphere where companies are selling out their customers to the government, RIAA and anybody else willing to pay for violations of privacy. Now the linux crowd is whining that it doesn't pay for a small innovative company to support a community conditioned to expect most of their services for free (as in beer!).
BTW: I was working at ZKS for a year in systems SQA, prior to their march layoffs due to the tech market crash...
First off, I won't even bother to rant on the many uninformed opinions I've read recently. In truth ZKS's marketing failed to hype the real value of Freedom (ie the Freedom network & telescope encryption) & so I'm not really surprised if so many users post without knowing what they're talking about.
I did want to say a couple of things:
1. Zero-Knowledge is a for-profit corporation, and they have to account to VC investors (who are quite edgy for ROI these days).
2. The Freedom product is no longer available for free (as in money), regardless of platform - if you want to know why see in (1) above. IMHO this is a bad move because it makes it difficult to achieve critical mass.
3. However, The market for personal privacy is nothing compared to the potential for enterprise privacy services. In that context, Freedom is no longer a "flagship" product but serves to assert ZKS's technical dominance in the privacy space.
4. ZKS is still a startup and can simply not afford to keep developping Freedom clients for more than one platform. I say Freedom "clients" because I think many miss the point that the entire Freedom network and backend is linux-based. The win32 client is a very thin part of the whole Freedom network architecture. & I find posts referring to ZKS as a windows shop especially humerous considering the Unix/Linux (& even Open-Source) braintrust that ZKS has had.
5. Incidentally, the previous open-sourced and linux packages will still work until the next Major release. IMHO slashdot users who had trouble getting it to work are just lazy. Yes, It does mean you have to recompile the kernel shim if you don't run a stock kernel. Also the old 2.1 clients were ipchains-based, and won't work on kernel 2.4. They also won't coexist w/ stuff like ipsec but will work quite happily with DSL/Cable including most PPPoE implementations (except for the caveats above; besides, if you can't run "make config", I can't help you...)
6. The idea of proposing to ZKS to "open-source" their current 2.2 developping tree for linux is a really good idea - go ahead and propose it. Though should ZKS not agree (and they don't have to) there's always the previously open-sourced 2.1 version.
Just about everybody I know who still works at or was working a ZKS thinks dropping linux client-support is a shame. But the costs of supporting multiple distros/ v.s. ROI, while ressources are needed on enterprise solutions just did not make business sense in the eyes of the decision makers.
Cheers,
Yes you are absolutely correct when you say that small companies usually support only one OS. The economic reason for this has several parts. First the cost for a small company (less than 100 people or so) to maintain two forked branches of their software with different development staff and separate resources is enormous. Hence the common developer quible: "why won't the forking code compile!" :D
Incidentally a small company is lucky to have at least 10 software developers at an average cost of $1,000,000 per year just for the development staff salary. Not to mention the QA staff, Network Admins, and people to actually run the company while these people are working on the products. Clearly the demand in the market for system A (read Windows) far exceeds the demand for system B (read Linux,Unix,other...). So...
You can complain all you want. You can cry out "This is unjust!". But the simple fact of the matter is that it all boils down to cold hard cash and the reality of this situation is that there is just not enough cash to support system B. The real world sucks huh?
Does coversation run on linux?
It's called a proof because it involves proving you know something. A Zero Knowledge proof means you prove you have certain knowledge without divulging any information about what it is you know (Zero knowledge is what you're giving out).
A good example of this is password verification. To verify a password you only need to provide a hashed value of the password and it can be compared to the correct hash. Thus you can prove to someone you know the password (you could not have generated the hash otherwise) without giving any information (an ideal hash function cannot be reversed to provide the original pw).
The example you gave about the guys in the bar is not really a ZK proof, but it is associated with them because it is a cryptographic problem that uses similar protocols for a solution.
As an aside, true ZK proofs are not known to be possible. Normally they achieve 'proof' with sufficiently high probability, but never absolute. It's sort of like asking yes or no questions: you have a 50% probability of guessing the right answer. But repeating the protocol, say, 10 times, will provide (1/2)^10 chance of guessing all correctly (or 1 in 1024). At that point you can be pretty sure the person really knows. This is, of course, somewhat simplified. Pick your favourite Crypto book for a better explanation (I think the Vanstone, Menezes & Oorschot book, The Handbook of Applied Cryptography, has some good stuff on this).
In the case of ZeroKnowledge's Freedom, there's no need to duplicate the functionality, they've released the source over yonder.
While the code they've written is no doubt super groovy (and, indeed it is - i've paid for their top level of service), what they're actually selling is the service. They have a network servers scattered around the globe shifting, I suspect, not insignificant amounts of traffic around. Someone has to pay for that...
The previously free version of their software and service was worth having in itself. Their ad-blocking and password/form management stuff is super-neato. The privacy stuff (what you pay for) is even sweeter.
Now, if someone wants to tell me how to get Freedom on a Windoze box to work behind a twice masquaraded connection, i'll be a happy bunny (yes, I could, and should, ask their support people, but it's not that high a priority for me right now. Aren't I a good customer, paying for their service, and then not using it for a couple of months?)
...j
"Even if it "required a little hacking," ZeroKnowledge is closed source."
Or, to rephrase that, it's open source.
Freedom is open source!
I, and a few others, have stated this elsewhere, but i'm going to make this real simple for those with a short attention span.
Go to their open source page, grab the code for the client (dated April 30, 2001) and server (27 October, 2000), and hack away. Form your own Freedom-esque network. Go crazy.
What I think the real message is here is the number of people who are saying "What/Who is Zero Knowledge, and what is their product". I know about it, but I am in that community that goes to conferences like "Computers, Freedom and Privacy".
ZKS is taking it on the chin for cancelling their Linux client, but in reality, I think it might have been their marketing people who screwed things up by not doing more to get the word out in Linux Land.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
2. You falsely assume that the only reason these companies can't make profit on their product is because Linux people don't pay. That's bull. The problem is that the market is so small that even if all those who use it pay, with zero piracy, that's still sometimes not enough money to keep the product afloat. Especially if the port was a monumental effort because Unix was never in the design plans at the start. (In general, companies that already produce some sort of Unix software to begin with (like Oracle) can roll out a Linux port with a lot less effort than someone who does not. Then even if the market is small, there's still profit to be made because the development effort was small. From the sound of things, this wasn't the case here.)
3. I will gladly pay for a product I *like*, but I'm not going to go out and buy every damn thing that comes out for Linux just to up the numbers. Some things I have paid for include: Civ:CTP from Lokisoft, Xess from (can't remember right now), Applixware, and of course the Linux distros themselves.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I bought ApplixWare for Linux. I've also bought several Loki game titles. There are Linux users who will buy things that they believe to be worthwhile - I for one just don't think Windows happens to be worthwhile. :)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Regarding "...and no download managers...": You just didn't look very hard. This is simply an example of someone inventing their own statistic and then "cooking" it to generate the result they want rather than something meaningful.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No. Linux still competes well with actual Windows "sales" and has for awhile now. What Linux has a hard time "competing" with is OEM preloads.
This is where most versions of WinDOS have been "sold" and continue to be "sold".
Also, when you do actually hand out free Linux CD-ROMS you do infact tend to get long lines and shortage of product.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
One anecdote is as good as another, and it only takes one to refute "stable". At that point, the system degrades into a crap shoot. It may hold up under an arbitrary end user's combination of hardware and software, or it might not.
With Win2K, it really doesn't take much. A bookpc and and office suite will do. Or it could be some 2D game (like Redalert 2) that suddenly makes the system remarkably more fragile.
Even an Atari ST will stay up indefinitely if you don't stress it. (this I know firsthand)
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Most people's jobs don't involve applications that are quite so vertical. At worst, you aren't complaining about "quality" but "availability". Either way, you've not given any indication regarding what is "not available" or why something isn't "good enough".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Like what?
Really, what is there to worry about besides the minor library versions? This is pretty much the same problem as you have between two arbitrary WinDOS machines OF THE SAME VERSION. Filesystem quirks between unixen can be handled by abstractions available in the enviroment and by simply not mucking up the rest of the system.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bad psycho-linguistics is still bad psycho-linguistics no matter how much more about the company you know. You don't really want to turn people off with your Trademark.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your rant does not counter his position. The question remains "who cares" and "who would bother" except the exceptionally paranoid?
This is less a story about "Linux failing on the desktop" than it is about a company with a questionable business plan.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The R&D costs should not be a problem. If they did their engineering homework right, then the problem that you allude to simply wouldn't be significant.
Infact, their product suffers from the fact that their potential target market is quite often saavy enough to achieve most of their product's functionality by other means.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, the platform is about having something better than MS-DOS or Windows.
Gratis is just an added bonus.
Quite simply, if people expect to get paid for a product it needs to have significant percieved value. It needs to be significantly BETTER than what some undergrad can toss together.
You're doing nothing but perpetuating unsubstantiated FUD.
I would have gladly paid the $400 for Solaris or NextStep had they actually bothered to support a common users's hardware (mine) and that was when I was a student and didn't really have it to squander.
We don't use Linux merely because we're "cheap".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If they can't promote themselves out of a wet paper bag, then this isn't a Linux issue. It's a story about poor business practices being dressed up as a "Linux desktop is crumbling" panic piece.
It's kinda like the dot-com bubble. 9 out of 10 new business ventures will fold. Put them on the web and they become much more visible. They become really spectacular when they fail. However, nothing has really changed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, most of those already have versions of GNU available for them. Also, most of those platforms are just Unixen for which adding another platform is a relatively trivial undertaking.
That is a list of 5 OSes, not 15.
BTW, adding another Unix to your collection can actually be a net benefit as the QA process for that port will likely find bugs not found during QA for your primary platform.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To be fair, documented instance of Netscape killing xfree would also be suitable to actually support his point.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The "complexity" of a VPN client isn't relevant. You simply aren't addressing the relevant part of the project.
The real question is what part of a VPN client is necessarily tied to a particular OS?
Is it the networking? Well, the proliferation of Sockets was supposed to make that less problematic.
Is it the user interface? That is addressed by multiple gui libraries not win32.
Is it the computational aspects? That really should be the least platform dependent part of the whole project.
One can steer away from uncessary platform dependence. It just takes a little foresight.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Whining about the lack of availability of WordPro or Dune Emperor would make considerably more sense.
This is a fine example of "marginal product". It is something that may only survive under WinDOS due to the HUGE size of it's market. That market is large enough that there might be a few in it interested in this product.
This is infact the class of software that is most problematic for any Alternative OS. There's enough interest in things like Games or Spreadsheets on ANY platform to make them a viable concern.
This is where cross-platform development can be really beneficial. Only support one codebase but do QA against several. This aspect of Unix is why Linux currently has the commercial server applications it does.
The cost is minimal.
The "marginal product" vendors will likely have to switch to cross-platform development enviroments before ANY altOS is percieved as viable with respect to such a product.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I would use a cross-platform development enviroment to begin with. "Linux blinders" simply would never be an issue. The possibility of BeOS and MacOS support would be considered from day one, nevermind Win32 support.
Did you know that Chilliware released their shiny happy little Apache configuration tool for Solaris as well? For them, it's probably just another "make" away.
Build it right from the beginning.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In response to my e-mail to support@freedom.net, in which I layed out the many logical business reasons I felt they should continue support, here's the cookie-cutter response I received. Unfortunate, to say the least.
maestro
--------
Hello,
Thank you for contacting the Zero-Knowledge Customer Service department.
As you know, Zero-Knowledge has decided to discontinue development of the Freedom Internet Privacy Suite Linux version. This decision was taken in response to the number of people purchasing the Linux version as compared to the number purchasing the Windows version. While many of us at Zero-Knowledge are Linux enthusiasts, the number of interested Linux users downloading Freedom simply didn't warrant continued development efforts, and we have chosen instead to apply our development resources in a way that will maximize value to our customers.
Once again, thank you for expressing your concerns.
Regards,
[Name removed]
Freedom Support Team
---------
It could mean, ``migrate to a security platform supported on Linux''. ;)
If you don't vote, your voice doesn't count. If you don't buy software, you give up your voice on the direction of the software industry. Imagine Zero Knowledge getting 1500 emails tomorrow, only 3 of which come from paying customers. Make any sense?
The "Free Software" and "Open Source" arguments are NOT against paying for software. (Although I admit that the verbage often used by both camps seems to imply this.) Free software is simply about having the freedom to do what ever you want with the software. ("Open source" masqerades as a business friendly front end to roughly the same ideas.)
With that in mind, many GNU/Linux users BUY their distributions, and many of those who don't buy the distributions make contributions in other ways. I think that the FreedomNet people should release the source code for their client under the GPL and let the community start doing the development for them. They could probably get their GNU/Linux client entirely built and supported for the cost of one or two engineers that act as project managers. Much of the GNU/Linux code (if done well) could be ported over to clients on other platforms saving work for the company all the way around. ZK could then concentrate on selling the windows clients, with a certain level of support, to the 90% of their user base who simply wants their windows machine to work and isn't saavy enough to use a tarball.
In short, in a system like the one descibed above, many of the more technical GNU/Linux users will be getting the freedom they desire and they will also likely "pay" for the software by contributing in a non-trivial way to its development. I also expect that this more technically inclined crowd will also help by running a lot of the server nodes. However, the vast majority of people will continue to pay for their software and expect it to be supported in a traditional manner.
-Derek
Michael makes it sound like he was just waiting to send in his money. Mike, they've been around for two years plus. If you wanted to slap down the cash and support the Linux portion of this application, before now would have been a good time.
Obviously this leaves Linux users somewhat out in the cold when it comes to using Zero Knowledge, but I mean don't act like saying "if only they had kept Linux support, they would have had one more customer" is going to suddenly make them come around. Especially if if you have no intention to actually dole out cash.
They're dropping Linux support because it's an expensive endevour to keep multiple threads of a commercial proprietary software package going revision after revision, especially if nearly all thier customers (assumably) use Windows.
What this means is there's an opening for competition for people with open source operating systems (and OS-X etc). If there's money in it, I say why not.
-- The unsig...
See InfoAnarchy.org for a discussion of CryptoBox. It isn't clear what exactly it is trying to accomplish and the cryptography doesn't seem very thoroughly worked out.
Zero Knowledge has failed on engineering grounds (efficiency, compatibility, etc. etc.) and on grounds of marketing, business, user interface, etc., but their cryptography was always real strong cryptography from the beginning. They employed many of the best cryptographers and crypto hackers of the world (including Ian Goldberg, Stefan Brands, Adam Back, Adam Shostack...), and they tried to design a system that would strongly protect users even in the face of a very sophisticated, expensive attack such as could be launched by a government or by organized crime.
CryptoBox does not have the same cryptographic pedigree. On the other hand, there is a project still in the design stages called "Free Haven" that is staffed by experienced crypto hackers. (No, I'm not a part of that project, although I would consider joining it in the future...).
Regards,
Zooko
I don't believe the question was ever that there are not some sales of commercial product on Linux.
But the other guy is correct, as a whole Linux users are unwilling to spend money on software.
I don't believe this is an assertion that can be proved simply by counter example. You would have to show 51% of Linux users buying product from Loki, not just one person.
For the record, this was the same problem the Amiga world faced. The lack of market sales eventually drove stores and producers away from the OS.
I had an Amiga as well, and had probably spent close to $2k on commercial software. I had WordPerfect, several editors(TurboText comes to mind as one really good one, Cygnus Ed another), etc.
But A lot of people I knew had games, software, etc. that was not purchased. Again there were a few who did, but overwhelmingly most did not.
The Amiga community lobbied the stores hard to get them to carry software. I recall Software Etc. being an example, they carried Amiga then dropped it, and then we lobbied them hard to carry it again.
But even after lobbying them, nobody bought product and it languished on the shelves.
Now on the C-64 there was a tremendous amount of piracy as well. Today with the PC the same is true. But the difference is/was that the userbase is so tremendously large that companies can still make enough money to survive without worrying too much about those problems.
When the userbase is drastically small, if you want to grow the support the piracy cannot be tolerated.
Now I don't know about this articles example. It could be that their product was just poor. If so, they die, that's part of the evolution of the business.
But how many Linux users have copies of Loki games they did not pay for? I don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect that might be quite a high figure.
Don't you think that this companies developers probably lobbied management "Let us release under Linux, please!?"
Finally management relented and said yes.
Then reality set in.
Screw 'em...
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Having inspected their site, I don't need their software.
No big loss.
Deleted
At the 1999 Ottawa Linux Symposium, Ian Goldberg, Zero Knowledge's Chief Technical Officer, gave a talk about their system (using xdvi as his presentation software, amusingly). Basically it applies the principles of an anonymous remailer network to individual IP packets. It's a really nifty hack, but given the general population's indifference to security and anonymity, it's hard to see how a business can be built through providing it.
I hate to say it - but -
WHINER.
Mark this as a troll if you must, but the
entire universe *doesent* revolve around
Linux and other "free" OSes. If a company
isnt making money selling one product, they're
free to DROP that product - its what
capitalism is all about. Dont start a jihad
because a company is making sound business
decisions based upon customer demand and
sales.
Sounds like they made a reasonable business decision to me. It didn't seem like the company was promoting and supporting the Linux product well anyway.
Besides, it looks like the features of Freedom are similar to those available in free software packages. Why should I pay $40 more for bad support?
-Kevin
I was.
I have several ZKS Freedom nyms. Now I am going to have to ask them about a refund. They'll be happy, I'm sure.
--
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I don't understand your problem w/a GPL'd version being released. Why shouldn't someone compete w/a commercial piece of software?
You do NOT need to have a tech support staff that is knowledgable w/every window manager ever. Pretty much GNOME and KDE is all that ia ncessary (people who don't use either probably can figure the rest out on their own).
I agree that Linux probably needs more direction towards some sort of "standard" but at this point it really doesn't matter.
No, programs that ran on Win95 do not always run in Win2k. So that's bull. I really haven't had a problem w/a program not being able to run under more recent Linux distros/versions (except for libc linked glquake).
For a company to support Linux there has to be a market for it, and honestly, there just isn't. That's the fact, plain and simple.
Hardly any user-land software should be messing with your init scripts. And don't all the distros use sysvinit now? (Slackware used to use BSD init but I thought they switched over...)
and just about everything in /etc with exception of some "high level" files
Again, applications shouldn't be messin' with your /etc. (Hell, even you probably don't need to go playing around in your /etc directory too much. And I don't think there's *that* much difference between the essential conf files.)
Another thing, every distro comes with different versions of libs which makes nearly impossible to release dynamically linked apps.
That's why you always have various versions of glibc on your system. Even libc5. If nothing else, you just offer a binary for the different main glibc releases. This is done quite often. Most other libraries are stable enough for binary consistency. And don't tell me you've never seen a Windows proggie that doesn't require a certain version of the Visual Basic runtime?
In addition to all this, the wide distribution of source code makes binary compatibility a very minor issue. You could say that source code is the cure that fixes the binary compatibility disease.
Compared to linux Win32 binary compatibility is a heaven.
There's a reason for that: Microsoft never fixes their architecture, no matter how badly it needs it. This is the primary problem with the Windows series: the original architecture was very poorly designed but they couldn't fix it because of all the binary-only applications out there. With Free Software, we don't have to worry about this so much since the source code is available. Just recompile and you're set! And if you don't feel comfortable doing this, just wait for someone to do it for you (like Red Hat, Debian, or SuSE).
If you prefer Windows or Mac OS, go for it! MOSX is especially nice and has a great set of devlopment frameworks (Cocoa) and a fantastic object oriented language (Objective C).
Of course, people might start writing Free Software for MOSX and then you'd have to use something else. Kinda sucks, doesn't it?
Isn't that where Mike Shaver works now? Is he still there?
Lots of biat in here, but Im hyped up on tea!
1) Someone else already said it, make your program GUI independant. While not quite that simple if you have to use a toolkit there are really only two to support.
2) Bad problem with lunix. Every distro thinks they know it better than the others... unfortunately this has gotten to the BSDs as well. I don't know how may times over the course of FreeBSD 2-4 the rc files changes format and places (4? 5?).
3) Simply isn't true. Almost every old program written to be portable in unix (like a program written to be portable in windows) still compiles and works to do. Hell most every basic utility you use is old, check it.
4) I don't agree. FreeOSs strive to be free, so of course they are going to try and make copies of the good useful commerical programs. In some cases the make damn good ones and in many others, they fall a bit short. But hey this is free stuff right?
Your overall sentiment is of course right. Who thinks it would be easy to run a business supporting linux products? Raise your hands. Now list me all the companies still around or doing well supporting SCO, UnixWare, insert UNIX-like product here? There aren't many and those other unix clones (even though they suck ass) were at least standardized across installations.
But everyone needs to remember the free unix don't need commercial support. Never have and never will, sure it might make some things nicer and give us some more enterprise level programs but how does that help you personally? I choose to learn unix because I felt the power of my machine was being wasted. Why did you?
--- I do not moderate.
This confusion is all Stallman's fault. ;-)
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Your friend does not know how to search the internet. A search for
On google.com turned up several hits. As for why bother with Linux, I've installed and used open BSD, and Linux is simply more pleasent to use overall. The configuration is made very simple. All the interesting open source packages make linux binaries available. The Linux community have been more aggressive about making the platform usable than their BSD counterparts. Linux tends to enjoy better hardware support, and while FreeBSD supports SMP, OpenBSD does not.I'm curious -- what platforms have you actually installed and used on your own machine ? I admin a bunch of Linux boxes, I used to run an OpenBSD box. I also had to work with a Solaris box for a while. The Linux machines where the most usable of the bunch, by a long way.
SHHHHH! Keep saying stuff like that and you'll undermine all the various "Linux is for 31337 haxors! Windows is for 14 year old MCSEs!" messages.
Sorry make that SP6a. All the talk about SP7 contaminated my brain.
P.S. Regarding metrics the point is that there is neither a gain in resources (including memory, disk usage, queue depth, CPU usage. The standard bogus "it slowed down" claims) over time, so coupled with the fact that it runs perfectly under load for a reasonable test sample that could be extrapolated out to infinity.
Those are the metrics....beeeaaaoootttchhhh!
They weren't called "Zero Knowledge" for nothing I guess.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Yea.. it's strange. Here's an email I got back from Freedom Support (names and email addresses removed):
Subject: Ref: HD0000000034496 Support Linux!
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 09:29:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: FreedomSupport@freedom.net
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,
Thank you for your interest in Freedom.
While we have every intention to continue our efforts with Linux in the future, at this time, this is not possible. We have not had as much interest as expected, so we are following the market tendencies until these prove otherwise.
We are compiling this feedback, and will make it available to our Product Managers, which are responsible for these decisions.
Regards,
xxxxxxxxx
Freedom Support Team
I don't know whether that's marketting snow or if they really do want to support Linux, maybe we'll see in the future..
--
Delphis
Delphis
I really have to question their claim that so many of their users are running Windows that there's no benefit to porting their product to any other platform whatsoever. I mean, by looking at "Freedom", I can't imagine their users, who are overwhelmingly concerned with privacy and anonimity, would all choose to run this app on a platform that consistantly flies in the face of those concerns. I'd really have to take a close look at their numbers before I swallow this tall tale.
Damn, where are those moderator points when I need them. I've got to admit, MY first thought was "Oh, well, if Zero Knowledge's stuff is something Free Software users (Gnu/Linux, BSD, etc.) want, somebody will start up a free implementation of the same sort of thing eventually."
Hey, it worked for OpenSSH, and SSH didn't even drop support, they just proprietized it...
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
Or, even better, DON'T pick one.
Pardon me if I rant a bit more:
Make your program GUI-independant. Write the guts as a command-line tool, and if you find you really need a flashy GUI, you can always wrap one around the core program.
There are already too many Linux apps hopelessly tied to a particular GUI, likely to break when the GUI undergoes the next major change (*cough* GTK).
I often find myself saying "Gee that looks like a great app... too bad I'd have to install all of KDE in order to use it!"
First off, you need to do your homework. Dreamweaver and UltraDev are available on Macs (all the web designers where I work use them). I've never heard of Databeacon, so I can't comment. What I can say tho, is that I feel *really* sorry for your customers if you hand them the output of Dreamweaver. It takes me hours to clean up the output of Dreamweaver before I can put it into the PHP to actually generate the page. Dreamweaver has the worst output of any HTML generator I've ever seen.
> All in all, I'll say I've put about a hundred hours into making the car work the way I like it.
That's a bit different then what we're talking about. You spent that time to take something that worked and then make it work exactly the way you want it too. We're talking about purchasing something, then spending that hundred hours just getting the car to start.
I can write a program that will *only* run on Windows NT 4.0. Most people don't, but you could. The fact that they made it easy to install on Redhat (and that is debatable unless someone wants to say that they did it) doesn't mean that the company made it even remotely easy to install on any other distribution.
The difference between distributions is mostly in where they put stuff. All the software and libraries installed is the same. This is not fragmentation (at least no more then the fragmentation between versions of Windows).
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
All right, I admit that was an exaggeration and somewhat of a cheap shot. No insult was intended, I assure you. Hopefully that assuages the knob that moderated my post as a troll (if anything, the parent post of this thread is the troll).
I still feel that the horizons of computing are unlimited on Linux, and sharply bounded on Windows by the limits that Microsoft has put in place in the interests of so-called ease of use as well as Microsoft's business ambitions. You can learn something everyday on Windows, probably for the rest of your life, but you can't necessarily learn and do what you really want to do. The whole attitude of Windows is that it's both Microsoft's beachhead and puppet string into your home, your life, and your business. I've used Windows in the past, and I can no longer live with the thought of providing anyone with that level of control over me, no matter how convenient it is. YMMV - I don't really intend to convince anyone with these arguments, but the question was raised and I thought I would explain my personal feelings on the topic a little.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
For me personally, it's all about control and the long-term point of view. Microsoft has a very arrogant attitude about what I can do on my computer, and Linux doesn't. Each subsequent Microsoft OS has gone further down the path of removing user control and substituting control by Microsoft; and now they're embarking down the path of allowing control by large media interests. I also have some reservations about Microsoft's business practices, so if I were to use Windows I would be implicitly supporting them which I don't want to do. I guess it's a "superior" platform if you're just another bump-on-the-log in front of a monitor, writing email to Mom and playing Tribes, but I prefer to really use my computer, and Linux lets me and in fact encourages me to do so.
The pain of dealing with Linux isn't enough to overcome the disadvantages (both current and expected to arise in the future) of using a Microsoft platform. And with each passing year, Linux gets easier to use, Windows becomes more restrictive, and Microsoft exerts more and more power over the software industry. I don't have a lot of faith that if I "upgrade" to Windows, Microsoft will look out for my best interests in the same way that the like-minded global community of free software hackers has done.
...well, you asked :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I sent them this comment, directly to their marketing service, trying to be as polite as possible... ;-)
<br>
Nearly everything is true... We just didn't think about using their services at all
<br>
<hr>
I work as system admin in this school.
<br>
As we found out that Microsoft produts are strongly inherently insecure (Active X, VBScript, insecure Java VM,...), we made the switch to Linux to have a beter security in our main infrastructure (servers/gateways).
<br>
As we can't impose any control on some aspects of our network (many restrictions need to be dropped because they interfere with lessons contents), we are looking for advanced security tools...
<br>
But we are in NO WAY planning to switch back to Microsoft Windows in our core system as the step to Linux has opened many doors in what we can SECURELY do...
<br>
We were planning several solutions, from GPL'd one to commercial one, among other, using your system...
<br>
Your step made you barred from the list (even if you begin to work again with Linux platform as we can't accept the possibility of a later step back as this one)
<br>
I know that Linux platform is not as well represented as the Microsoft one (same for Apple Macintosh). I just must tell you that here, in Europe, there are more and more steps to use Linux and other non Microsoft products in Education.
<br>
<hr>
I don't hope them to switch back to Linux... I just hope that the word "there is a potential use for Linux products... but if you join the ship then leave it, you'll lose the confiance of the linux users"... be spread among marketing services...
- AmigaOS
- BeOS
- Solaris/x86
- FreeBSD
- SCO
- OpenDOS
- HURD
- QNX
- MacOS
- Linux
- DyNIX
- IRIX
- AIX
- Novell Netware
- ...
So, you hope that ALL ENTERPRISES will have to support more than 15 OS ??? Only a few (among them, Microsoft) could do so... that would really be allowing those megacorps to control the computer world !!!BTW, don't forget that all GPL'd software would also have to support all these platforms, as would other like blender (whith already support some of them), sophos (AV available under both Linux and MS),...
I don't complain when a download is "too big"... I often download several CD images (Debian (3 CD), Mandrake (2 CD), ...). I even downloaded my copy of Anarchy Online (I'm betatester so I somehow work for them helping them to find bugs/glitches/...).
I agree that sending E-Mails complaining is by no way serving any cause...
But sending mails with bug-reports (complete and precise), with constructive comments/remarks,... can help them.
These comppanies can't know everything... If the users are pissed off by some bug but only complain by telling "there are big bugs in your program", how could they know where to look... They need feedback...
When taking some action (like stopping Linux AND Mac support), they see cashflow numbers... but are they taking into account the trust they got from the user base ? Would you place your confidence in a company supporting, not supporting, supporting again,... your OS ? By acting like they did, they lost more than the few Mac/Linux users that they could have had... They closed the door for future Mac/Linux developments !!!
If such development would cost them too much, why didn't they use a scheme such
If you want to use our products under Mac/Linux, you've to use the old version (Available for free) but don't forget that access to our network (for the anonymous part) is to be paid.
So did users that use a pirated version of MS Windows, pay for pirated versions of games (or download them).
There are perhaps more freeloaders in the Linux world... But here are an infinite number more people contributing to Linux kernel than to MS Windows (as people CAN'T help the MS Windows dev).
I use a lot of linux programs as a freeloader (the OS itself to begin)... And at first, I did not contribute anything... Then, I began to help newbies... Then I came to contributing code...
There is something that must be taken in account... freeloader are potential contributors.
There is ONE thing that push people to go from freeloader to contributors : the will to leave one owns marks... People want to be part of some groups, people want to leave something behind them... Contributing in free software is a way to do both...
But contribution means knowledge... And you can't ask to all these new users to start to program under Linux...
But the facts that programs are often to be compiled (./configure ; make ; make install most of the time) will sollicitate the curiosity of many users which will have a look in the sources... And the most curious will then try to learn...
AFAIK, I know more user using pirated versions of MS Windows than people lawfully using it... In fact, in my surrounding, I'm perhaps the only one to have a legal version of MS DOS 5.0/MS Windows 3.1 and of MS Windows 95. Don't use the other one as MS Windows 95 is enough for the games I play... All the other one use pirated versions of MS windows 98... So where is the difference except that doing such under Linux is not unlawful ?
Kernels are a very bad example as these are in no way a "commercially available product", unlike distributions.
Anyway, when I send some contribution, I don't expect to get something in exchange as I already got that (Linux, gcc, Emacs, XFree86, WindowMaker,... and of course the app for which I sent a patch). And that way of doing is beter than Commercial way of doing where they have to add unfonctionnalities only to increase the version number and sell the new version to the so many basic lemmings^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HUsers.
This is the first time, and I hope the last, I will waste bandwidth on a "Slashdot moderation sucks because..." post. My apologies, go ahead and mod me down, blah blah blah.
I suspect that I got the flamebait point because someone didn't like my assertion that ZK offers a service that you can't replicate using 100% free software.
That's a shame, because you can't, and no amount of bitching or whining about it will alter that fact. That's not because Linux sucks: it's because ZK has a whole VPN which anonymizes IP traffic, and makes it impossible to tell from where you're logging in.
In other words, Linux has some cool features, but you can't make yourself an entire VPN with co-located anonymizing nodes with a single computer sitting under your desk. So get over it, people.
Sorry - this is blatantly false.
Among its other services, ZK provides a "Freedom Internet Privacy Suite," which is essentially a large VPN. WHen you use their "Freedom Network," you're sending the data through a 128-bit encrypted network prior to hitting the internet at large. All the rest of the Internet can tell is that you're coming from Zero Knowledge.
I've been involved in the Freedom project since the very beginning. I'm one of the original beta server operators, and the part that I find amusing is that all the servers run on linux. So, even if they drop the client support, they'll never get away from Linux.
And no, I've never used the client, for many of the reasons listed elsewhere on this site and others.
OpenBSD makes a great server and firewall for my DSL broadband connection. But as a workstation, it'd be a bit too limiting for what I tend to use it for (not that it's impossible, plenty of people do so).
MS Windows 2000 is a huge improvement over the other Microsoft operating systems, but too accomplish some of the things that I use the Linux box for, it seems sluggish and bloated in comparison at those tasks. And even when I've had to use it, I tend to use open source tools (Apache, Gimp, etc) that work just as well on the alternatives. So, for the most part, it gets used for those programs that simply don't have a suitable *nix compatible alternative (free or otherwise).
I could use FreeBSD, but don't for a small number of reasons. The first being that support for my nvidia TNT2 Ultra is much better under Linux than FreeBSD (it's not a great reason, but still a reason).
Add to that the fact that I'm simply more comfortable finding the information I need about running something under X than FreeBSD (and this is more to do with how individuals search, and less to do with the available resources).
Anyway, it boils down to the fact that Linux has nearly all of the advantages of the other alternative operating systems, while not suffering some of the disadvantages that would plague my individual hardware and tasks.
It's not a "superior OS", but it's "superior in exactly what this individual needs to do". The others maybe superior hammers, but right now I need a screwdriver. ... or something like that.
Lots of people are reporting that their Linux version sucked. Mind explaining why that is?
There are a lot of companies I never hear of. I don't go around looking for stuff I don't need. At least they never spammed me.
I find CVS to be of excellent quality. But Bugzilla, I don't find that to be very good at all. I really haven't used the professional versions. Are they as portable?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When you start with a programming staff that is clueless about making a product portable from the outset, and then try to retrofit it to a single distribution of Linux, instead of trying to make it portable to all of Unix during the Unix porting, or even during the original development, then I can fully understand why the product must have been crap (even for Windows).
By the way, their marketing must have sucked, too, because I never heard of them. I'm not opposed to buying software for Linux, even if it is binary only. I have done so in the past. The only exception is I won't load a binary only module into my kernel. But these guys simply missed the boat, in both development and marketing, it seems.
This is often the problem with products which start out for Windows and later get retrofitted to Linux. The original developer(s) only know Windows and probably never wrote portable code in their lives. And then when they think Linux might be something to market for, they make the second mistake of choosing a particular distribution, and again screw up the whole idea of portable software, making something that doesn't work on other distributions, or other Unix(-like) systems which lots of people do use.
Of course, there is also one issue to consider. Competition in the open source free software community is tough. The price can't be beat, the quality of a lot of it is superior to anything you can get commercially (usually because it's not released until it's really ready, after lots of smart people beta test it), and the support comes from people who in the community who are real programmers and actually use it, instead of someone who couldn't get a job doing programming.
So I say "bye bye" to FREEDOM Internet Privacy Suite. Obviously I didn't need ya, and you've finally realized that yourselves.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
4 years ago I migrated to Linux, and enjoyed it.
Now I currently have several linux servers in my house, but for my desktop systems I have migrated back to Windows. There is just more software that I use on windows than there is enjoyment in running linux desktops.
Oh well. When Adobe develops for Linux, I might migrate back.
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
You're confusing different characteristics of the "community" so that it works out best for your argument. First, Michael only said that he would have gladly paid for their service if "they would serve me."
They don't. They didn't. What Michael said was completely reasonable. Even if it "required a little hacking," ZeroKnowledge is closed source. His choice to not purchase their software is *entirely* unrelated to the tendency of Linux people to want their software for free (that is, for zero cash.)
You also briefly refer to the GNU hardliners, who refuse to run code that isn't Free (as in speech):
"This never would have stopped you if it was GNU licensed software with a Makefile or an rpm and available on every street corner distro ftp."
Well, maybe it wouldn't have stopped him. Why not? Perhaps he'd be willing to purchase the software if he would be able to port/improve it. This follows directly. Your point makes no sense.
You begin to finish with a salient point: Of course, it's Zero Knowledge's prerogative to not release on our platform. However, their motivation has nothing to do with the demand for source or that it "should be unhackable by design." The whole point of ZeroKnowledge's client is that even if nodes are compromised, the whole system retains integrity. There's no technical reason that the client, or even the server, shouldn't be GPLed.
And, last of all, people don't support Macs for very very concrete reasons. There's less cash in it than for Wintel programs. Comparing the Macintosh's dilemma to the Linux user's dilemma isn't really fair.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I didn't see a mention at +3 and I'm curious why... Seems like a much more general solution. One we can supply to ourselves without concerns about the spinelessness and greed of commerce.
Now, I don't really know ZeroKnowledge, so I won't pretend to.
But those of you, who, like me, aren't so familiar with them, are you so surprised by yet another setback like this to the community?
It's just another good idea that is going to have to spend some time figuring out if it ever had a chance in a market driven by money - to see if people were as aware of the value of the privacy that they are giving away with every mouse click. But most importantly, if people are willing to *pay* for the luxury of not being a demographic.
I truly think this says less about the viability of Linux, or what did they call it, the "Strong customer preference for Windows", that it does about a fringe market product trying to stay afloat on the edges of tough times.
As much as their tech staff might rest their hearts with Linux, (and I'm guessing that that is the case, since they ever had a Linux client at all,) they have just got to see if they can weather out this draught, just like the rest of us. (Best of luck to them and thanks for thinking of us.)
But, even if their product disappears, is it a true, permanent loss for the community?
If there is a need, won't the need be filled? (Hasn't every need been fulfilled...eventually?)
Don't forget that the most important Linux development was *never* done as a business.
It never had venture capital.
It never had a viable business model.
It never had an Annual Report with a heavy gloss cover and and rich earth-friendly soy-based ink gracing its pages.
All it had was stubborn devotion and outdated hardware.
Yet it worked. And it works still.
The real key players in anything that had ever mattered to Linux were never concerned with the money - they would do it for free and, I would venture, most of them always have.
You see, the real innovation of linux happenned in basements and dorm rooms across the planet.
It happened after hours, on borrowed time, by people who knew that they could maybe make a working driver for their video card, or write a script that would help the next guy get X working.
So, if there is a good idea in what they were doing - something the old farts in this game would call a 'Good Thing' - don't worry, it will be there for us, (and *by* us,) the Linux users.
Though some of us may wonder if we will ever get rich at this, who among us has ever had a fear that it won't somehow continue?
Even here on Slashdot, as we filter the signal from the noise, who among us hasn't been occasionally astounded by the amazing pool of insight among this group; Given any highly technical posting on some obscure aspect of some obscure field, within minutes, there are intelligent postings clarifying, obfuscating, correcting, adding insight.
Yet we're merely the shadow of that thing that really matters to Linux.
Those people are probably too busy to waste their time here writing long, rambling, self-congratulatory posts like this one.
So if you want to make a difference to Linux and want to see it continue, you don't have to be a brilliant coder or technical visionary - Maybe you just need to spend a couple of weekends helping someone get Linux running. Maybe that person will be the next Kernighan or Wall or Stallman, or {countless others who have mattered to this community in one way or another}. (Or, maybe you will surprise yourself and *be* that next great coder...)
Oh well, I've probably wasted enough of your time -
Thanks for reading this far down.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
Part of the deal with Linux is that... while there is money to be made, the majority of the user base (well, the ones who use it on their desktop, and not as part of some device maintained by a company) is the informed minority. There are a lot of programmers and sysadmins and such running it. When most of your market is probably better knowledged that most 3rd party tech support would be, there isn't much market for phone in tech support. On top of that, you have to provide suport for a product that you have no control over, so if someone calls you with a problem with *cough cough* a snapshot of GCC that they got through apt, you're kind of at a loss as to what went wrong. The best way to distribute linux programs is as source code, well, if these people are running make config make this make that, building their own kernel and such... they are probably also qualified to support themselves, and additionally, have little desire for prepacked "seal the asscracks on my machine" software, especially if they can get better, more well known documented software, for free, by typing apt-get <firewall> and so forth. A market is probably coming for linux desktops, but people usually call M$ to support M$ products... and sysadmins would usually rather patch bugs and put up system protection themselves. The margin of the market that would use such a product for linux just doesn't exist, and it's not even that large for windows.
None of this is true for the Linux community!
Rather than spending our time and effort whining to one or another closed-minded, short-sighted, software vendor "that there are also preferences for other operating systems," we should be working to either make the products from those vendors irrelevant (as this product already seems to be, for the most part) or to duplicate the functionality in an open or free product.
In the few cases where some piece of software can't be duplicated, and where you really like or need the product, go out and plunk down some cash: you'll have slightly more influence with most companies as a paying client than as joe-random-whiner who is just has an axe to grind, and, by increasing the income stream for the Linux version, you'll make it more likely that the company will see the Linux market as profitable.
Rememeber, we don't need their products, they need our business. If they don't want to let us play ball in their little yard, we can go play in the public park, without them. By the time these bozo's wake up and realize which way the wind is blowing, it will be too late.
sure, but this also means that people don't put a price on their time. to configure a system like you describe involves reading HOWTOs, FAQs, and installing stuff that you might not already have. and blowing a week of time testing, etc. needless to say, my mom isn't going to do this.
theoretically, 0knowledge can do all this with one install, magically. that's worth some $.
if not, start a project to do it, and make a few $ off the linux market who wants/needs this product.
Linux is NOT inherently honest, linux does not have strong beliefs in the teachings of Christ. Linux is ANARCHY. Linux isn't the beliefs on one idea or one concept.
You my friend, are misleed. Put the fear of life back in, take out the fear of god and then you will see reason.
Zero Knowledge Systems (and its personnel) are quite well known in crypto circles, and have received attention on Slashdot. Ian Goldberg, their Chief Scientist, most recently received attention as a co-author of the paper on cracking WEP. Stefan Brands, who has done a whole lot of digital cash work, works there. The corporate advisory board is a Monsters of Cryptography tour lineup. Their "media coverage" page is chock full of quotes from their many brilliant people.
And...so what?
You are entirely correct that no one has ever heard of them. Most of their "advertising" comes from sound-bites in the media from their staff, often commenting on issues not specific to their Freedom product.
They seem to have forgotten that star-power in a relatively obscure field and a cool corporate name do not a successful company make. (A product that doesn't suck is also a nice bonus, but seems to be entirely optional these days.)
Of course few people pay for Linux software, because few companies make anything better than the freeware alternatives.
I saw a GUI ping program for Windows 95, it was 1.2MB and didn't do anything other than repeatedly ping an IP. But it was shareware, the author wanted $10.
Now, in an OS with a lack of real utils you can get away with charging for ping, grep, etc.
In unix, that's standard.
Linux users buy a lot of games (at least, compared to how many other things they buy) and I know a lot of people who bough WP8. Games like Q3-Arena, SoF, etc, and huge apps like WP8 are things for which freeware clones are rare.
If companies want to sell software, maybe they should write something that can't be cloned in six months by a bunch of geeks in their parents' basements.
There's a whole different spin on it if you look at it from that angle. People with proprietary OSes are like people with proprietary hardware... stuck buying overpriced crud from a few large companies. There's a reason DDR SDRAM is catching on and RDRAM isn't, one's an open commodity which you can buy from anyone cheaply, the other is hideously overpriced and comes from select companies only.
Now, RAMBUS could whine about how PC users are unwilling to pay for RAM, but the truth would be that PC users are unwilling to pay more for crap.
The real reason most privacy and encryption systems don't sell is that GPG is free, a few tweaks on IP Chains and you've got a box dropping all incoming packets from IPs it doesn't know, etc. Who needs BlackIce or ZoneAlarm?
When developers develop useful applications which can't be hacked together in a few minutes, they might sell them.
Has anyone thought to ask Zero Knowledge (politely) if since they will no longer be supporting linux, would they be willing to open the linux source code for at least previous versions? This may be a good oppurtunity to keep a good project alive with open source.
The thing about this news is that I just don't see what niche linux should fill.
You mentioned the server niche (too big to call a niche!) but there's the hobbyist niche, for starters. All of us like to tinker, and it's more fun to tinker with Linux than it is to tinker with Win2k. You can't mod the source code to 2k. Even if you could, it's more fun to play with a 70's Chevy than it is a 2001, because it's easier to understand the workings of the 70's Chevy. Win2k is pretty darned big, and none of us would want to go rebuilding that thing.
Windows has good office software, games, and stability.
No, Windows has GREAT office software, games, and stability. My boss is even more daring than I am - at the end of the day, the guy simply pulls out his network card puts the laptop in his briefcase, and hits the road without powering down. He just goes into suspend. He doesn't reboot for weeks at a time, and he complains loudly when he has to reboot. Me, I power down my laptop when I leave the office, but other than that, I don't reboot anymore with Win2k.
Did Win3/95/98/NT suck? Absolutely. How about the early versions of the Linux kernal? Anybody want to talk about those? We didn't even have plug & play, let alone USB support. It's time we stop comparing Linux to Win95/NT, and compare it to 2k. It's not as easy to call this guy a troll, because the stuff really does work.
I just don't see why people should bother with linux at all. It seems like a strange anomoly.
Well, the price of the OS, for starters. I have $400 tied up in licensing for the two machines in front of me, and that would buy stronger hardware. Then there's the price of the office software, whammo, another $500. You're talking real money here.
So why am I using Win2k? Because the money it costs is offset by the things I can do. There's no equivalent to Dreamweaver Ultradev or to Databeacon for Linux. Using these RAD (not the coolness term, I mean Rapid App Dev) tools, in a week, I can build a site that sells for $50k or more, but I can't do that in Linux. Sure, I could hand-code for weeks, but there's no RAD tool that will do OLAP/SQL/web stuff quicker than Ultradev & Databeacon. I know I'm a special case, but I see how my coworkers experience the same problems.
So, as an end result, the licensing costs and the stability just pay off in terms of my productivity. Is MS expensive and unfriendly? Yep. Does it let me pull down a great salary? Yep. Do I complain? Nope. If Ultradev and Databeacon worked on a Mac and not a PC, well then, I'd buy a Mac. Ditto with Linux. I'm not a software zealot, a license zealot, or a hardware zealot - I'm a productivity zealot, and let's face it, Bgates and crew has the app market nailed down solid.
What's your damage, Heather?
Ultradev is available for the Mac, but it can't connect to most databases - no ODBC. So in practical terms, it's not really relevant.
What's your damage, Heather?
This is why the concept of `supporting a linux distro' is bogus.
;^)
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Release the sources, let people install it on their own boxes, sell them fluffy hats or something. Or just get a support department with a CLUE!
Maybe that's what's happened; all the linux users are too clueful to need this rather misnamed `Freedom' thing anyway, and disable cookies in our browsers and block doubleclick.net in our proxies? Naaaaaah, no way
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I would gladly pay for an AppleWorks for OS-X that didn't explode violently destroying my work. Oh wait, I already paid...
As much as the AppleWorks dev group iritates me for leaving me without a decent office suite for OS-X, I feel only pity for them. Remember, these poor coders f*cked up Steve Job's big rollout during a time when his stock options are down. That can't be healthy.
(For the non-Mac folk, Apple writes AppleWorks, their office suite. It doesn't have the feature list of Microsoft Office, but does most everything many people need and is quite simple. Unfortunately the dev group dropped the ball on OS-X. The software was late and then only barely works. It is prone to random and non-random instant death. Stupid things that should never have gotten out the door. e.g. in a spreadsheet when you select the `number format' menu item BAAAAAM, your process is dead. How could that get by testing?)
Your friend was incompetent. KWebGet is a download manager (and a pretty spiffy one at that). It is listed on freshmeat. So is GTM a Gnome/Gtk download manager. They are both frontends to the excelent wget commandline utility.
I encourage the rest of you to give in to the American consumerist way. Drown your sorrow at this linux product folding with credit card receipts from companies that still support linux.
Or, more succinctly, put your money where your mouth is.
--
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Well I see two problems:
1. Most people commenting think this software is a ZoneAlarm clone. They don't understand the anonymity aspect.
2. This is something we will have to be used to when there are so few Linux users compared to Windows, and such an overwhelming number of the Linux users seem to think it's taboo to pay for anything. I've seen this in discussion threads for many different software packages. "Why should I pay for {softwareX}, when {softwareY & Z} will do the same thing for free. Then when someone wants to save the software they ask for a petition or emails sent in to save it. 80% of the people writing in haven't bought any software in years.
It's just like when you write to your senator and he throws away your letter when he sees that you are not on his list of registered voters. If you don't vote, your voice doesn't count. If you don't buy software, you give up your voice on the direction of the software industry. Imagine Zero Knowledge getting 1500 emails tomorrow, only 3 of which come from paying customers. Make any sense?
Peace, K1
It's a really blatant troll, but I'll bite:
Flooding this firm with e-mails is a waste of time. They made a business decision based on actual sales, support costs, and so forth.
Well, you had a level-headed, good post going...
Face it: Linux is harder to support than Windows. Moderate this down if you want, but it won't change that fact.
Yep, the reverse-psychology martyr comment. Knew this one was coming, just not so early...
How many times have you seen a product released for one distribution of Linux that won't run on some other? Your support staff has to be familiar with Gnome, KDE, IceWM, and every other GUI that's been pasted on Linux.
Ummmmm.....I'm thinking. Aside from DeadHat 7's binary incompatibility (and that hasn't lasted long, it seems), releasing a program for one distro should work, or be able to work, on all, unless the company limits itself to a certain package manager format - and even that's not a complete barrier, thanks to certain software meant to translate one package management format to another.
1. Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
No thanks. I happen to like knowing that I can run apps "coded" for one desktop without problems in another, as long as the libraries are installed. What's more important is agreeing on a common component communication protocol - KParts, Bonobo, something. Getting programs to work cleanly with one another across several desktops may be far more important than "standardizing" on one desktop. There's no need to limit desktop preferences when the two main ones are fairly similar in function, and the main problem is interoperability.
2. Standardize where files go, a minimum file set in any standard install, and so forth.
This is actually being worked on...Linux Standards Base.
[Windows retains compatibility...] Compare that to the dismal compatability between different versions and distributions of Linux.
Ummmm...I fail to see this in software designated as "release", aside from Freedom. Beta and development software, yeah, but that's why it's beta. Windows isn't exactly perfect for forward compatibility and compatibility between the 9x and NT streams, the former of which is being mercy-killed.
4. Stop competing with every company that releases a commercial linux product. If a company invests 5 man-years creating an innovative commercial product for Linux, within six months of its release, there will be a GPL copycat program to perform the same function for free.
And as soon as you can point out an example of this, the GPL developers might listen to you. Or, they might continue working on their own products anyway. "Stop competing"... sounds like what Microsoft wants Linux and other GPL'd software to do. Welcome to the free market.
There are commercial Linux products I considered buying - WordPerfect 8, for example. Thing is, it lacked something offered by free(r) software; MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint compatibility. StarOffice has this, to some extent, KWord supports Word97 to some extent, and work is being put into increasing compatibility all the time.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I was refering to all Linux support - not supporting one distro vs. another - in reply to someone saying "why do they have drop Linux, if they had done it right to begin with, it would be cross platform" - which is silly since kernel space code can't be the same for Linux and Windows. Remember, the original topic is ZK dropping Linux but keeping Win - NOT ZK dropping Debian and keeping Red Hat.
- bridgette
The real question is what part of a VPN client is necessarily tied to a particular OS?
... which is below the TCP/IP stack and very OS dependendent.
Is it the networking? Well, the proliferation of Sockets was supposed to make that less problematic.
The it probably has some really low level network access, like driver level stuff
In order to work seamlessly, your VPN would have to be kernel level, living in or below your TCP IP stack so that other applications automatically get VPN communications when they do normal network access calls.
You should note that this is not a trivial and easily a major part of ZKs development time.
One can steer away from uncessary platform dependence. It just takes a little foresight.
Not when you're writing code that runs in kernel space.
- bridgette
Hmm. Sad, but not surprising, to hear this. I'm on their 'e-mail me if you ever get a Mac version going' list, and so far they haven't sent me anything. It sounds to me like they jumped the gun. I think the smart business decision would have been to make NO decision until OSX is more fully "out there," and then release a version that (hopefully) works with both that and BSD without too much trouble, and any version of Linux that happens to also work. The Mac user base, while small, is intensely loyal and is willing to pay for stuff. OTOH, our experience with the company was like Michael's -- it wants you to be a non-networked, dialup Windoze user, and if you're not it breaks things or just doesn't work, so maybe my "without too much trouble" is wishful thinking.
Paying for it via a means that retains the right to sell customer information (plastic) was also a bit unpleasant (go ahead, mod me down, but it WAS!). At that point, it's not a matter of trusting ZKS (who are some nice guys, BTW) but "trusting" a credit card company...
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
I thought an important paradigma in security was transparency, 100 clear audit trail and all that. Thats why USA's NSA likes linux right? No foreign terrorist trojans in there..
Now Zero is claiming they TRUST windows? How odd.
Zero is dead, long live real security.
Gr Richard
" Troll or Flamebait -- Any comment on /. that is less than wildly enthusiastic about any Linux-related product."
/. Your post got moderated up to 5 because it attacks linux. The easiest way to get moderated up to 5 is either to attack linux (even if like your post it makes no sense and has no rhyme or reason) or praise Microsoft.
your signature is the biggest lie ever told on
Post something about how great IE is or hos nice the kind folks at MS are and you'll hit 50 karma in no time. Try defending linux against astro turfers like yourself and you'll get beat down in a hurry.
War is necrophilia.
competition is competition. Who cares where it comes from. Besides if a bunch of volunteers can code something in 6 months that took 5 man years to do it must mean the company was pretty damn incompetent in the first place.
War is necrophilia.
The window manager, only part of a GUI environment for Linux, has little to do with it. Take a look at what KDE, GNOME, and other toolkits offer. There are common conventions amoung them. Often very simular conventions to Windows, as well as other OS' GUIs.
"Standardization" as a point of weakness in Linux is a red herring. There is already Linux commercial software that doesn't seem to have these issues with standards - StarOffice, Real Player, and Adobe Acrobat Reader as examples. Furthermore, when a company decides it wants to go down the path of "support", they tend to pick a distribution. RedHat seems to be the most popular. Does that mean my Mandrake, Suse, or Debian distro won't run the software? No - but the hack is mine to make and the company doesn't have to spin support cycles on my stuburness.
The only reason this would seem to have merrit is because IT business types often have a hard time understanding the political issues of Open Source (and/or Free) software. The fact that someone would develop competing Free/free software confuses them. That is - unless locking a market and eventual profit is the motive.Its not unheard of for competing products being developed - for a cost. The software industry is littered with companies that were, at one point, innovative in their field. They put out a product that broke new ground. And then the competition took notice and developed competing products. And either because of more savvy marketing, faster innovation, or cost cutting won, leaving the origional innovator an irrevelent part of industry history.
Sometimes that competition came from the very vendor of the same OS the ground-breaking software was developed, and marketed, towards.
That's usually referred to as "competition". One person has even been noted for calling it "innovation".
Linux already does these things.
ipchains/iptables && squid && junkbuster will accomplish everything that they want you to pay for. The problem was not a "preference for the Windows platform," but "Linux does this for free, why is nobody giving us money."
You miss the point. The point isn't to get commercial software on Linux, or make Linux into a commercial item, it's to make commercial software obsolete. All the *other* industries besides software are the ones to benefit from software creation. This is only possible now because of the near-zero cost of distribution. The free copycat versions of relatively simple commercial software will ensure the demise of most of the software industry. It might be that vertical apps or very complex apps will still have a market.
Standardization, fwiw, will happen when there is a clearly superior competitor. With Gnome and KDE, that hasn't happened yet.
LSB is working on the dir and file name/location issues. This is a bit of standardization where there *is* a superior version. That is to say, almost everyone will prefer these to be standard across distros -- even if everyone disagrees with some part of the standard. It's easier to create software when you don't have to worry about this; and that's what Linux and FS is all about.
If you had any knowledge of crypto, you'd understand how dumb you just sounded.
...that the software sucks, they dumped on you from support, and they discontinued the product you were eagerly expecting to be the best thing since ext3?
:) In this situation you do what everyone else does, bite the bullet. As a company they dont have to cater to you specifically.
Pardon me for saying so, but that's not our problem
And please, can we stop the ignorant Windows bashing? If you have something bad to say about software of any kind, back it up with some direct evidence instead of just whining about it.
So in closing, keep your problems to yourself, this doesn't concern the Slashdot community.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Amen Brother Dan, amen.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Everyone is discovering that the linux 'boom' only happened in the server/infrastructure arena. Zero Knowledge software is end user software. And so long as linux is not being used widely as a desktop platform at home (and I mean .. more than 1% of the windows home desktop user base), it doesn't make much sense for Zero Knowledge to support it. If anything, I think companies are discovering how it doesn't pay to 'jump on an OS bandwagon'. The overhead costs of supporting a particular OS are very high, so without a significant user base, I'm not surprised to see them go back to Windows only.
.. if it helps the folks working at Zero Knowledge keep their jobs, and keeps Zero Knowledge in business, then it was the right decision.
... can't we have a real discussion here, instead of the same old repetative rhetoric?
Hell, as someone pointed out, you can accomplish most of what Zero Knowledge software accomplishes with free tools anyhow, so whats all the kerfuffle about? We live in a capitalist world
As for all the folks who think they are the cat's pajamas with all the 'zero knowledge' jokes
"Old man yells at systemd"
but I couldn't find a version of Windows that ctually was an upgrade from my existing Linux system .... all the ones I check out seemed to be unreliable, expensive, insecure and the worst part, you won't believe this, they don't let you fix the bugs when you find them ... a truely bizarre way to make system software ....
Is not for the standard *nix person.
Protect your PC from malicious hackers Prevent Websites from tracking your activities Secure your passwords and personal information Block unwanted ads and speed up browsing
can i say iptables/ipchains any number of filtering proxys and simple admin.Get a free ipod.
This seems to be drifting rather far off-topic. After all, very little of this message or it's parent has to do with the Zero Knowledge product.
My comment here, is really on the moderation. While the first one may have been a mild troll, and may have deserved the rating, calling the above "4: Interesting" is actually an insult to the intelligence.
Personally, tossing in the "OS of all good, honest God-fearing people" and "strong belief in the teachings of Christ" puts this firmly in the "Off-Topic: preaching" category.
Moderators: You're way off base here.
And, to put this at least momentarily BACK on-topic, abandoning a software product for religious reasons may be personally valid, but it's not a useful reason to give. If the product doesn't work, or doesn't support your OS of choice, then look elsewhere. Simple.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I agree that as a desktop OS win2k prof is easier to admin and use than the typical linux distro. However, I've spent all day yesterday setting up win2k advanced server for some testing purposes. The thing is more complicated that linux. No two ways about it. I can set up a basic/utility linux server in less than 20 minutes. That win2k box is still in lalaland.
Someone you trust is one of us.
They don't want your email, idiot. They want you to buy their stupid software. I never heard of Zero*, and from what it sounds like, Linux users think that their software is crap.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Gee, here I thought most Linux users migrated from Windows. I haven't met one yet that actually migrated to it.
Maybe that's because once a Linux user migrates to Windows, he/she is not longer a Linux user.
The shareholder is always right.
Please mod the above post up. I checked their site and came to the same conclusion. I bet that why their software didn't sell for Linux is that it was all based on stuff you could to _without_ buying their software.
Actually my Win2000 box I'm using right now has been up for months, and the Linux box I have in my office crashes several times a day.
Of course there's a good reason for this. I'm testing the device drivers we write on the Linux box, while the Win2000 machine is running nice stable drivers.
Either system is only as stable as the drivers you have running on it. There's a lot of hardware, available with device drivers for Windows. If you consider the number of people using Windows, and the number of hardware vendors that don't thoroughly test their drivers, it's not surprising that you end up with a lot of people complaining loudly about the stability of Windows. Linux does seem to do a better job of seperating the different parts of the OS/distribution, so that one part crashing doesn't make the system unusable, such as when IE crashes on Windows. However, most of the people using windows aren't using a lot of different applications at once, so the difference between crashing the OS and crashing a particular appliction isn't that great for them.
My oppinion is use whatever works best for you. I'll write drivers for whatever OS marketing tells me we need to develop. Though a binary driver interface for Linux would really make my job a lot easier when it comes to supporting Linux. It really sucks when APIs change with ever point release.
You should apply, you already know the basics of how to spin the truth.
I have worked with a lot of different OS's. I can see that most of them have applications where they excel, and yes I know how to point out the strengths of the OS which best serves my purposes. You are justified in calling that spin. However, in my previous post I wasn't advocating either Windows or Linux as the perfect OS for every occasion. We typically support around 6 OSs with our drivers, and work hard to make our software as cross platform as possible. If you're telling me that advocating choice is spinning the facts, then I may as well accuse you of zealotry. Sorry you had a bad experience working at Microsoft. Sorry that the inherrant instabilities in some of Microsoft's design choices don't make it appropriate to you. Don't use their software. For some people it's still a good choice.
...because all companies care about is revenue and profits. If they can't move enough product for the Linux OS, then it doesn't make financial sense for them to make or sell such a product.
Quit bitching about it. If you want more companies to support your beloved OS, then do something concrete about it, such as making Linux much easier to install and use, so that more people will use it.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
This is obviously a troll. But I'll say two things in reply.
1: Windows costs alot of money. Around $200 for win2k. Not only that, but the EULA is very burdensome for businesses and home users alike, and offers no route for custom modification.
2: The performance difference between BSD and Linux is marginal at best, and is highly dependant on what application you are running. If you point me to the byte.com tests, those were obviously crippled machines (64MB ram) that accentuated FreeBSD's VM subsystem. Not exactly fair to linux2.4. I can point you to a website that shows linux beating FreeBSD by a very large margin. Check it out.
(As far as security is concerned, a skilled admin can secure linux as tight as most any of the *BSD's. OpenBSD is thoroughly vetted for security holes, so I dont know, and it also has a very limited, feature-wise, default install, which helps.)
HAhaha, I hope that religious stuff was meant to be humorous. :)
I always laugh when I see "God fearing". If god means tornados, Car accidents, and cancer, then I guess I fear god as well.
these are the kinds of comments that make slashdot suck. you can't even whisper here without somebody chipping in that you've really put your foot in your mouth this time.
can you imagine? just by mentioning freedom in a trivial manner you have basically shat on the graves of our forefathers. (i dare you! 'say don't forget the foremothers!')
get a grip. the legacy of the dead will march on regardless of the humour mods on slashdot.
as a side note, i thought that the original comment was one of the funniest i have read in some time. too bad not everyone is as chipper this morning.
to me, the flavour of this story underlines the arrogance of the linux-mad crowd here at slashdot (not everyone, of course). why is the story slanted this way?
they pulled support because they couldn't make it work financially. is that linux's fault? partly. is it our fault? not at all. so i don't think that we should take personal offense. it most certainly wasn't that they were raking it in on the linux version and then decided that linux stinks and pulled the plug.
in my opinion, the news stories here should be reported in more of an informational manner and the opinions below the story flesh out the consensus. we can see that not everyone agrees with the bias in this piece.
You can find many more apps to run on Linux than you can *BSD. Yes, FreeBSD can run a lot of Linux binaries, but the fact of the matter is that Linux is the most coded-for UNIX out there (although MacOS X will be soon, I'm sure).
But OS X is a member of the BSD family, which by your reckoning would eventually make *BSD the most coded-for UNIX.
Anyway, most apps (especially the free/open ones) seem to run on a variety of unixen, so while it might require some compilation as oppossed to installing an RPM, I doubt it matters much which UNIX variant you choose. More a matter of personal taste and/or available hardware.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
I think you'll find that OS X sits on top of Darwin, which is a port of BSD to the Mach microkernal.
Which means it is a BSD (the same way mkLinux is still Linux even though that runs on a Mach microkernal).
Anyway, Win 9X is related to CP/M - same family, different generation. Not a particualry outrageous statement if you think about it - might even explain why it's not a very good OS.
A 32 bit extension to a 16 bit clone of an 8 bit OS is asking for trouble.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
. . . from a company named "Zero Knowledge"?
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Freedom makes money for Zero Knowledge because people subscribe to their Freedom Network service. The product is only the means to this end.
I think a business case can be made to convince ZN to release their source code for Freedom Client into open source.
This would allow interested parties (like myself) to create clients that support their Freedom Network infrastructure, while ZN focuses on the network itself.
Instead of emailing customer support and complaining (to fall on deaf ears), perhaps we should email their marketing department and pitch them getting Freedom subscriptions from those who most appreciate it (us) by releasing Freedom Client into open source.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Linux does not (and cannot) address the single most important (and non-free) feature of Freedom: the ability to access the Internet anonymously.
The Freedom Network provides this by allowing your system to cryptographically and transparently communicate with its network, having your requests "pop out" of their network at a random point to reach its destination.
This makes your use of the Internet untraceable, unless you identify yourself and allow session management facilities to take hold.
I too tried to get Freedom client to work on my Debian GNU/Linux system, to no avail. I had hoped that it would work someday.
Freedom is a service I would paid for, if it were to work on my platform (which now seems more doubtful than ever).
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
"and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me."
Forgive me for trolling, but I somehow doubt that a guy who makes his living extolling the virtues of Napster, free software, and open source would pay for Linux software/services.
Maybe if Linux users like Michael HAD been paying for the product/services offered by Zero-Knowledge, they would have been making money off of it and not discontinued it!
This is the downside to free software and open source: Do not expect commercial support. Get used to surfing old newsgroup postings or scouring IRC, because if someone is not making money from the users, he will not have money to provide support with!!!
Users that previously used the free Linux version will need to purchase Freedom and upgrade their operating system to Windows 98, 2000, or ME...
I tried to upgrade but I couldnt find a Windows.rpm anywhere. Pity, I really wanted an OS that's stable flexible powerful and free instead of this Linux crap....
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Freedom is no longer available for free.
I need more coffee to fully comprehend that.
Well... think about it for a second man. Your ISP knows exactly where your traffic is going to - in other words, they know source, content and destination.
With freedom, there isn't a single entity (except for you) that knows both the source and destination. And the destination web site (or ftp site, irc server or whatever) doesn't know your true IP. The proxies that redirect your traffic only know who they receive data from (the previous proxy on the route) and who they are sending it to (the next proxy on the route).
For people working at zero-knowledge, it must really be hard to continuously see people that haven't got the slightest idea on what freedom is actually all about.
Read the white papers, it's worth it.
Let's pass a law that says people have to support every platform, no matter how unprofitable.
The phrase "zero knowledge" will no longer be associated in any way with the Linux community. So, what's the problem?
Some management software that lets people look at the VPN as we know would be cool to have but not absolutely necessary. That'd allow people to contact node owners and request linkages into the network through them. This software could just be an SQL database somewhere and some web-based forms into it. Node owners would be responsible for updating link information for their nodes.
You could grab an unused class A for addressing, or a hunk of IPv6 address space. I'd be surprised if the network ever hit a million users so that should be plenty. I happen to know that 9.0.0.0 never routes to the internet, so you could easily grab that address space for your own nefarious purposes.
Linux implements everything you need to do this already, and it could easily be set up for free.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It was a mediocre product, at best. Completely inconsistent user interface, interferes with TCP/IP behaviour in unintended ways, didn't really work well at all, etc.
The most frustrating part was trying to impart my opinions (mostly technical) to the poor market research phone droid who interviewed me after the focus group trial... She had to type it all in and probably didn't understand a word I said.
Windows has good office software, games, and stability.
Stability? Windows? My Linux (and other unix) boxes stay up for months at a time running just fine. I have to reboot my Windows box 2 or 3 times a week because it starts running slowly or locks up.
I'll give you office software and games. Hell, those two things are all I use my Windows box for, and mostly the latter. But I can't give you stability.
--Tyor was anyone elses' first thought after reading the headline "wow, those zdnet guys have finally decided to shut the hell up"?
http://www.freebsd.org
Now, I'm no fan of business, but I would do the exact same thing if I were in their position. Saying "fuck them, they can't do this to us!" doesn't accomplish anything. Write your own clone if you don't like it.
-Legion
When there is a large number of non-technical Linux users on the home desktop (and I don't mean large number as in "I know a few non-techies that run linux". I mean dominante desktop market share), then we will see people buying software for linux. This will only happen after people can purchase machines loaded with linux from retail outlets. Even if we make linux installers easy to use, the majority of Windows users don't even install their operating system.
-no broken link
There's an awful lot of counterspin and uninformed opinions being shot around here. I feel ZeroKnowledge doesn't deserve some of this off-topic criticism. Criticise for dropping linux, which is tragic, but please don't start making assumptions about the software, the network, or the system without understanding it. firstly the name ZeroKnoledge is a play-on-words on both zero-knowledge proofs in math, and the fact that the company feels you should never have to trust them with your privacy (the system is impervious to subpeona because it has zero-knowledge of your activties). It's a trust-no-one system. the Freedom network is more than just a proxy tunnel. It's a blind proxy tunnel in that ZKS itself can't tell who you are, where you're coming from, and where you're going. It's also not under ZKS control alone, a huge portion of the nodes are run by idependent operators, who control their own private keys. thus a paranoid individual can even select to make routes entirely through these if they still don't trust ZKS to be doing their job. It's much harder to compromise systems and the network that way. While michael's experience installing the software on linux was a disaster, I have to point out that he tried it on debian, not redhat, which was the supported linux platform. the zkshim is a kernel module with very kernel-specific requirements. What was described as non-trivial was installing from source, and oddly enouhg there's probably a good techincal reason redhat was used, otherwise the company would have packaged it for other distros as well. BTW some ignoratus writes that it would be nice to open-source the client-code late... It already is, or did you think your could compile without it? this is the only privacy-company with the integrity to have released code to both the client and the anonymizing shim, and their white papers include protocol and crypto specs for review. Most importantly they provide a threat-model which clearly explains what the system is designed to counter. personally I have used Freedom both on windows and linux daily, both at the office an at home from behind a linux firewall with DSL hookup, without any major glitches. While it really sucks that linux is being abandonned, the product was quite functional, so this is probably a result of a business decision. The loss for the linux comunity is great; the loss for ZKS could be greater. But please remember that all is not dead for linux. the source-code still lives, should anyone want to re-implement it.
Your email has been returned due to insufficient voltage.
--William L. Dye
willdye at willdye dot com
There actually was a link in the story, that actually pointed to a site which contains the following words:
Mac
Due to strong customer preference for the Windows platform, there are no longer any plans to release Freedom Internet Privacy Suite for Macintosh.
---
Slagborr
Ok, but can we atleast agree on one thing? The fact that you said "Linux users never pay for anything" makes you a blatant liar. Right?
---
Slagborr
Yes, I see that now, but my initial reaction was to that he claimed that I never pay for anything.
And BTW. I actually have an old Amiga sitting here with some commercial, paid for, software.
---
Slagborr
I don't see the problem here. The company is a software vendor, not a not-for-profit privacy advocate... so why should they support a platform that's not profitable to them? It's very nice to say, "yeah, well, they need to be idealistic," but why? Companies exist today to make money. Foundations exist to be idealistic. Let RMS or the EFF write a nonprofitable linux version... they don't need to make money. Zero Knowledge does. Perhaps, (although I doubt this), if they become big and successful, they'll release a money-losing linux version... but for now... why should we expect them to try and make us happy, if it doesn't help them?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
It's a shame. This means I'll never end up using their software, and I would gladly pay for their service, if they would serve me.
When I read that I automatically assumed that the editor who posted this was CmdrTaco. That is until I clicked thru and read the rest of the editorial. That's the difference. Taco flippantly writes one-liners without any real thought or anything to back up his "opinion". Michael generally supports his statements with well-thoughtout ideas. I don't always agree with them, but at least I see he puts the effort in. I've been getting fairly aggravated by Taco's latest editorial snippets where it's obvious he put no thought or even read the corresponding article before posting. Thank you Michael for keeping me sane!!
No download managers? Hmmm. I did the simplest of searches on freshmeat and found plenty.
:)
Not sure how his friend searched - maybe he typed in "mownload danager" or something
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
Did they name the comapny after their "experts"?
Actually, I switched to Linux because I don't have time to fuck about windows and m$ applications. No time to wait for 5 minutes or so every time the machine needs a reboot, which is very often. No time to search the menu tree every time I need a perfectly trivial function performed. No time to look after an expert to tell me I need to turn off the "float over text" button in order to make pictures behave sensibly in a m$-word document. No time to go out and buy a "utility program" every time I need to perform some very basic system function. No time to click on every directory and write down the contents' size when I need to find why my disk has so little space available. No time to fuck around the binary registry files.
In contrast to all that, Linux and other Unices are a breeze to operate. You just have to invest a little bit beforehand, learning some basic skills, just like in driving a car, or dancing, or cooking, for instance.
I know, my company has contracted some consultants to develop something using RAD tools (Centura and Delphi). It's all OK, until you need just the smallest change that deviates from what the RAD tools were meant to do. Then, those $50k or more are gone down the drain. In our experience, if it costs $50k to do 99% of the job using RAD, it will cost $500k or more to do the last 1%.
I guess it's a "superior" platform if you're just another bump-on-the-log in front of a monitor, writing email to Mom and playing Tribes, but I prefer to really use my computer, and Linux lets me and in fact encourages me to do so.
Ok, I use my Linux box to write email to my Dad, *and* to play Tribes. I also learn some new programming, or system administration trick every day. So I'm confused, am I a bump-on-a-log or not?
When a preacher says he'll move a mountain, no one believes him. When a scientist says so, noone doubts him.
That does make sense. One of the problems that a lot of companies who try to make things easier for the user start at the easiest fixes. Unfortunately, they will probably not make money in the *NIX field at all if they stay at the minimum. Most of the people using a *NIX based system have already graduated from 'how do I turn off remote access' and the ones just learning also learn fast that the newsgroups will help them out faster, cheaper, and with a more complete solution than places like zero knowledge.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
With all the cut backs in the tech industry, it doesn't pay for smaller companies to support more than one OS. Do the math, if you have enough people to only support one, which one will bring the most clients?
On the more paranoid note, could it be possible for them to have received a 'consulting fee' to only support WIN based products?
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
This sounds like it's been planned. First, they look like a great company when their product has Linux support. The catch is that it doesn't work (if what's said here is true), and then they blame it on the users (who can't "support" a product that doesn't work). That way, they don't have to do any work on the Linux version after all.
Marketing strategy?
One of the primary reasons that Linux users give for using Linux is that they dont have to shell out a few hundred dollars on operating systems and other apps.
So how many Linux users actually spend money on Linux Applications?
END COMMUNICATION
By the way, Linux is a strange anomoly. It was created because at the time what would become (Free|Open|Net)BSD (386BSD I believe is what it was called) was under assault from AT&T - they were sueing the kernel hackers because they believed that since the people working on the 386BSD had seen the Bell Labs UNIX source, they were "tainted" with IP and could not legally create a clone.
A lot of developers misunderstood the trial and instead moved to this fledgling UNIX clone called "Linux." If AT&T hadn't sued the BSD developers, BSD would have reigned supreme. It was only by a fluke, AT&T sueing, that Linux ever survived at all. (AT&T lost, but they did succeed in damaging the BSDs start.)
Anyway, why not upgrade to Win2K? I've upgraded from Mandrake 8.0 to Win2K - now I can run the software I need to *gasp* do my job. I still have the linux drive, but unless the quality of desktop software under Linux improves dramatically in the next few years I'm going to stay with Win2K - does everything I need it to do, and is relatively stable. (StarCraft manages to kill it on exit after playing a multiplayer game, I think that's because of some weird interaction between the IPX drivers and the network adapter drivers.)
That's not to say that I don't still have a spare box in the corner running Linux, but it's being used for an MP3 server via Samba. Of course, it could also be running any of the BSDs and it would work just as well. Only reason it's running Linux is because I had the CD. Linux works nicely as a server. I wouldn't want to use it as my desktop though.
--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Lincoln Elementary as in Olympia, Washington?
I question how a company can make software run on:
/w USB support
- Windows 95 A
- Windows 95 B
- Windows 95 OSR 2.0
- Windows 95 OSR 2.0
- Windows 98
- Windows 98 SE
- Windows ME
- Windows XP
- Windows NT 3.5
- (Windows NT 4.0) * (Number of Service Packs + 1)
- (Windows 2000) * (Number of Service Packs + 1)
yet they can't get it to run on 1 or 2 major Linux distributions.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Only problem: Only supported platform now is Windows.
They have Mac support in the works too. At least, I assume so, because a few months back they were posting on comp.sys.mac.programmer.* and there was a job with them posted on the usual Mac job sites. Since it hasn't shown up lately, I presume they filled it.
i have zero knowledge of Zero-Knowledge so i don't care.
You are right. We should put all files in one single directory, just like the system32 directory in Windows.
It hides your ip and gives you 1 click access to different "personas" with varying degrees of privacy. The idea being if you want to shop online you enable a medium privacy setting so that you reveal just enough info necessary to get the job done. Then when you want to flame your boss on the company website you turn on full anonymity and fire away.
Its an interesting concept and no, using junkbuster does not accomplish the same thing. Banner ads are the least of my worries, my static IP however points right back to me.
- Toby
It's just as much a service as it is a product. How is little johnny coder sitting in his basement going to provide redundant servers and a commercial grade pipe to redirect (read: anonymize) tcp traffic?
- Toby
I don't use freedom or any sort of identity shielding software, I just read the article.
fucking idiot.
grow some balls and reply with your real account.
- Toby
Hang on ... is Michael trying to tell us that programs which work with one distro don't work with another ... wouldn't that be the same thing as Linux "fragmenting into a myriad of incompatible forks", which is exactly what we were told couldn't happen due to Open Source Magic?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
...but it certainly appears to be DUMB.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Here here. Well said, if I only I had the mod points... I'm glad I'm not the only one to refuse to buy commercial software and provide the company free debugging. Using Oracle comes to mind.....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
This story was posted "from the take-aim-at-foot,-fire dept." I'd like to know why.
This is a commercial company. They need to make more money than they spend on product development. How are they shooting themselves in the foot by cutting their losses?
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. - Jacques Bènigne Bossuet
Before even reading the article I could figure out what most of the comments were going to be like. "Linux doesn't need this anyways!!" "Windows users are so dumb that they'll actually pay for this!!!" or better yet "Write your support in!!!" Here's a clue, they don't care if you e-mail them. If you really want to impress them have every one go out and *buy* the current version which is still supported. Now I realize that the notion of actually buying software just made several script kiddies pass out, but real companies need money. If you want to support something toss them a bone once in a while.
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
I will pay for a given piece of software with money. I will pay for a given piece of software with time and effort. Very rarely will I do both.
I never bought a congressman... Should I cry when they don't support my interests?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Desktop OS diversity is important and it depends strongly on the availability of software for each platform in question. I guess they just don't see the Linux community as profitable. Maybe they'll change their minds if their site gets slashdotted... But they probably have some M$ shill whispering in their ear: "These guys paid nothing for their OS. How much do you think they're going to want to pay you for your products?"
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The open source community doesn't put up with sh**. If something like this is important enough, there'll be an OpenZeroKnowledge from the OpenBSD project soon enough (since it is security related software, sorta). OpenSSL is a brilliant product. OpenSSH is a brilliant product. IPSec support is there. There's no reason why OpenZeroKnowledge couldn't be created. ZeroKnowledge are digging their own graves by this silly move. Anyone remember the SSH commercial/non-commercial fiasco ?
Cedric Balthazar Rotherwood
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform +
System Admin. for Solaris
Yep, except that you still have to go through someone else's servers to get this anonymity. I know that they claim that it's totally secure and not even they can read it, but we're all missing a more obvious way of ensuring anonymity. Nemesis is a brilliant product that allows packet injection. It can be automated using scripting. Wouldn't it make more sense to create an internet gateway package based on something like this to allow you to automatically change the packet headers of every packet that goes through ? Just a thought.
Cedric Balthazar Rotherwood
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform +
System Admin. for Solaris
>> 1. Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
it doesnot matter whatever you choose. kde or other programs run in gnome, and vice versa
>> 2. Standardize where files go, a minimum file set in any standard install, and so forth.
it is already standardized. include files in /usr/include. libraries in /usr/lib. other stuff in /usr/share. docs in /usr/share/doc etc.
>> 3. Stop releasing distros that break things. If company X produced a product for Windows 95, six years later, it probably runs on Windows Me and probably ran on every version in-between (Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition). There's a very good chance that it runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, too. Compare that to the dismal compatability between different versions and distributions of Linux.
binaries do run mostly. what examples do you have of binaries compiled for previous versions which stop working in later versions. and same is for distributions. i can easily run redhat redhat rpms in my debian system. the only problem which occurs sometimes is for system software like daemons because of location of their configuration files, and if you have enough knowledge of running system daemons, you can easily tweak those to adapt to your system. moreever, this situation is also changing rapidly with increasing adaptation of FHS filesystem standard
>> 4. Stop competing with every company that releases a commercial linux product. If a company invests 5 man-years creating an innovative commercial product for Linux, within six months of its release, there will be a GPL copycat program to perform the same function for free.
This is called competition. i would give you two examples - Windows 95 (remember Macs in 84), Internet Explorer (remember Netscape)
..be sure to read Blum, De Santis, Micali, and Persiano's Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge research index.
The anonymous web and email will have to wait for a large p2p system to support all that proxying about the net...
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
From reading other replies, it's clear that at least half of posters have no idea what makes this software unique, and why you can't do what it does with freely available tools for Linux. I blame bad promotion on their part.
When you go to their website at www.zeroknowledge.com, you see a list of the "Standard Services," all of which can be provided by various free tools. It's the company's "Premium Services" that are worth paying for, and those are hidden a minimum of two clicks in. If you actually go to www.freedom.net, the Premium Services are mentioned right up front, but highlighted in gray instead of red and not clearly explained.
If you use the Premium Services, all of your Web, email, and IRC traffic is encrypted and bounced through their "Freedom Network." It's like a big VPN that entirely masks your location and identity from the outside Internet.
They ought to be advertising the hell out of a capability like that. The only other service that comes close is Anonymizer.com, and that runs all your traffic through a single relay point--meaning a single set of logs to be subpoenaed and parsed.
The only reason I can think of not to loudly promote such a service is to stay below the radar of various regulating bodies who may be concerned about the proliferation of untraceable Internet connections. Safe, but not a good way to convince people your product is worth buying.
Ned Flanders, I mock your value system. You also appear foolish to the eyes of others.
Although KDE has no download managers, it does a greater range of religious software than is available for another platform, including a handy bible study program and a biblical quote generator. Therefore, rather than being the OS of "1337 h4x0rs", Linux is the OS of all good, honest God-fearing people. Rather than being a "strange anomoly", Linux is an operating system with impeccable moral credentials and is the obvious choice for all good citizens. And, as we all know, the only people who need privacy and products such as Zero-Knowledge are those evil scoundrels who have something to hide. Therefore, the fact that the Linux community, with its inherent honesty and strong belief in the teachings of Christ, shunned Zero-Knowledge is no real surprise.
--
--
Donald "Don Juan" Kerr
Even older titles will often run fine if you can work around brain-dead installers that refuse to start on version of Windows they don't recognize and which offer no user override.
"Gee, here I thought most Linux users migrated from Windows. I haven't met one yet that actually migrated to it."
Duh. That's because the user wouldn't be a linux user anymore.
placido - being pedantic since 1977
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
I believe that one of the real reasons that ZeroKnowledge won't be supporting anything but Windows is that they just don't have the people. I live in Montreal and I have applied to them for work a couple of times over the last year and have been told that they just aren't looking for people right now. What they don't tell you is that they have let a number of people go like so many companies since the great drop in tech stocks. Also, I heard from some people in the know that they brought in some hard ass from Silicon Valley to manage them and make them profitable(god forbid) and one of first things anybody in that situation does is to fire some people so that they know you're serious and cut back on expenses. Like everyone they're just trying to survive in this uncertain market, and can you really blame them?
Not because of a small and possibly shrinking company like zero knowledge - which recently laid off staff however got a largish infusion of new capital - but because proprietary OS specific "shopping extensions" and "wallet protocols" can proliferate when unchecked by alternatives.
It would be nice if IP6 IPsec and standards based security and encryption could prevent this sort of development but it remains potential silent and sneaky "decommodifying" force on open networks. Once everyone needs a certain platform to do relatively mundane things like banking and shopping the game's over.
As others have pointed out, Zero Knowledge made a business decision, it did not initiate a war against linux (as opposed to a certain Redmond, WA company). So, getting upset about it is, well, silly. However, if you must get emotional about, do it productively and start an open source equivalent project. The phrase "don't get mad, get even" comes to mind for some reason.
"4. Stop competing with every company that releases a commercial linux product. If a company invests 5 man-years creating an innovative commercial product for Linux, within six months of its release, there will be a GPL copycat program to perform the same function for free. " Does that mean some company won't copy features from a free software program to a commercial one also? Remember that this is the free market... there is supposed to be competition. If they don't want that then maybe they should move to cuba or something.
What you're missing is that it's more than just personal information being protected, it's your IP.
If I recall correctly, the way it works is that you have a local software proxy (box #1) that encrypts all internet traffic and sends it to a ZK server (box #2) that doesn't know how to decrypt your traffic, but it knows who you are, then it sends your request to another ZK server (box #3) that doesn't know who you are, but knows how to decrypt your traffic and send it on to its intended recipient.
When the reply comes, box #3 encrypts it and sends it back to box #2 (who can't decrypt it, but knows where box #1 is) who sends it back to box #1 that decrypts it and passes it along to the program owning the socket.
I'm sure I've missed something here, but the idea is that nobody who knows what you're doing on the internet knows who you are, and nobody that knows who you are knows what you're doing. Hence, privacy.
I think I'm being punished by laziness here. I've been interested in their product since I discovered it at OLS last year. Never got around to buying it, and now I can't. Bummer. Canadian company and everything...
I know it's really personal information. I'm sure a few hundred other people have purchased the same version from the same store. While you are there looking up the ISBN or UPC to see what software I use, pick up a copy for yourself. Hints; Cauldra Systems, Sun Microsystems and Osborne. An OC38 isn't too uncommon to some of the larger employers. Therfore you may correctly assume I am one of several thousand employees at one of the hundreds of megacorporations. So it's not too personal.
The truth shall set you free!
Just to show it, My Linux UPC is 761480502506 and it's ISBN number is 0-9672852-3-2. My office suite UPC is 614647624897 and it's ISBN number is 1-892488-06-X. My Linux Manual is UPC 783254035027 and it's ISBN number is 0-07-212940-9. Many Slashdot users are not leeches. Don't stereotype us. We are individuals, not a collective. I know I could have downloaded all of that for free. My desk at work is tied into an OC38 line. (I checked a DSL speed check site and clocked 40 MEG at my desk) It wouldn't have taken long to download, but I support getting this stuff on the shelf out to the masses, hence supporting the retail distro's.
The truth shall set you free!
But seriously I don't think they will be missed too much.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Naw, there's no danger of Linux fracturing into incompatible forks. Anyone who raises any such issue is obviously a FUD-spewing Microsoft astroturfer telling outrageous lies.
Seriously, could some of the folks who so furiously denounce and rebut Craig Mundie explain how this fits into their world view? I mean, here you have an app with source available and a well-connected (and somewhat knowledgeable) VA Systems employee is unable to get it running on non-Red Hat.
As a LinuxPPC user, believe that I've been around this block a few times...
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Out of curiosity, why did you then write a "review" of Myst III that consisted entirely of "I couldn't get it to install"?
Come to think of it, what were you trying to run it on, given that you have "defenestrated" yourself? Is there a Linux port that doesn't appear on UBI's site? Or is it just more of the magical ability of Slashdot editors to play Windows-only games while being full-time Linux users?
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
These are core to the reasons I only have one windows machine, a laptop, at home. The begining of this trend probably coincided with the disappearance of a development language, which you now have to shell out biggy bucks for.
So as they gear product to work best with their partners, what happens when these greate add-ins are hijacked by crackers (and you know they will, sure as the sun rises) You need protection. Beauty of Linux, or non-dominant "operating systems" is they are less attractive to the kind of malicious buggers, as they have big egos and would prefer their work to be performed on a big stage. Still, I'm not all that worried about Freedom not being supported for Linux. I can disable services until I get them fixed, not such an easy undertaking with Windows, as it seems to crack up pretty easily. Too many octopi in the pie.
IMHO Windows "OS" is an oxymoron, yes there's an OS in there, but the rest is the backend for all of their products, its more of a "Bunch of Stuff", but no one in M$ marketing would probably recommend putting that on the package while their execs continue to bad mouth Linux.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm going to submit them to www.fuckedcompany.com.
Should be in the hall of fame soon.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
How childish to post a company's support e-mail address on the front page of SlashDot... Would someone mind telling me what will be accomplished by flooding Zero Knowledge's support staff with thousands of complaints by people who mostly have never used Freedom and never will?
Michael, I hope you are patting yourself on the back for giving a lot of support reps a major headache today, and for preventing people with real problems from getting the help that they need. If you have a problem with a company's business decisions, I strongly suggest that you go through proper channels and complain directly to management. Clogging up operations only makes supporting Linux MORE expensive to the company.Nope. I am a working homeowner who used a beerfree cd to install Red Hat on a PC a neighbor gave me, and I am using it.
than switching to a supported OS, I'd switch to a supporting company.
And we'd have got away with it, if it wasn't for those pesky/knowledgable Linux kids!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The reason this junk doesn't sell on linux is that there is no real need for it on that platform.
Kind of like trying to sell us a TCP/IP stack, ya know?
Heh. I know. Consider my post as more of a marginally-executed joke (due in part to this wonderful little fever I've been battling...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'm coming to corrupt your children! Mua-hahahahaha...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
lets see:
- Protect your PC from malicious hackers: Recompile the kernel with all security options, deactivate all unneccessary services like telnetd or ftpd.
- Prevent Websites from tracking your activities: Use mozilla or conqueror with cookies disabled, or set a per-site cookie policy. Use a proxy to disguise your IP if you have broadband with static IP.
- Secure your passwords and personal information: One word: Encription. Encript the data in your file system.
- Block unwanted ads and speed up browsing: Use mozilla with a per-syte image policy. reject everithing that comes from doubleclick.net.
As you can see this software can be replaced easily by a few minutes of work and good sense. After all, an average linux user has a litle more technicall knowlwdge than the average Windows user, and these tasks are not that dificult for us.
--
What ? Me, worry ?
Look like michael wathces Dark Angel ;)
seriously, that word comes from the defenestration of prauge, a historical tossing event, and about the only thing I remember from my AP european histroy class. I had never heard it in any context but that until the other night when they had master p of all people giving us a demonstration of the word on fox's Dark Angel. Now that I see it in michael's context I like it, good word for the move to linux from windows.
Why does linux need commercial software. As stated elsewhere, six months after something commercial comes out, a free copycat comes out that drives it off the market. This drives away commercial developers. Excuse me, but how is this such a bad thing?
And that is where the explanation starts smelling fishy. If the VPN code of ZK lives in kernel space, then distro differences don't play a role. AFAIK, a vanilla kernel runs the same on all distro's, so pointing to distro differences as an obstacle is a straw man.
Mart (posting late, so I won't be read unfortunately)"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Give me a break.
You whine about not being smart enough to compile the kernel patches, if that their fault too?
They provided prebuilt binaries for one platform, and source code for anyone else. I don't see why you expected anything more from them. I think that is pretty generous for a young fledgling commercial company to try and provide their "crown jewels" in open source. They at least tried to run a company with open source. Admitily you never paid them for anything.
I don't like sendmail, or LaTeX, yet you don't see me writing rants about it. If you don't like the software, the company, or their colour scheme, write your own free GNU or BSD licensed version then. Otherwise, just keep quiet.
Free software is about freedom, not about price. I think people got the two mixed up again.
No, programs that ran on Win95 do not always run in Win2k. So that's bull.
Why waste my time composing a thoughtful reply when you can't even read? What I said was: "There's a very good chance that it runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, too." Since when does "very good chance" mean "100% certainty"?
Yes it does matter! Quit being such a geek-with-blinders. Tech support people have to talk secretaries, office managers, and people who have very little computer experience through using their software. If the user interface is inconsistent, they can't do that. They can't print manuals with screen shots. Get a clue! Not everyone who uses a computer can recompile a Linux kernel or write a device driver.
> This is called competition.
Call it what you want, but it's driving away commercial vendors from Linux. Would you invest hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a commercial Linux software package if you thought there would be a GPL equivalent six months after you released it? Think about thise before you answer. People's abilities to support themselves and their families would ride on your decision.
I'll leave you with this thought: Suppose a Japanese steel company convinced its workers to volunteer 1 hour of time per day to make steel for export to the U.S. where it was to be given away. How long would it take before that "competition" was labelled "dumping" and the U.S. government put an end to it?
P.S. Your example of I.E. vs. Netscape was a poor one. Microsoft used it's OS monopoly to crush Netscape. Their actions were so heinous that the feds took action against them.
The "competition" is supposed to be other for-profit companies. The "competition" does not mean a bunch of volunteer zealots giving something away in an attempt to drive a commercial venture out of business.
If they don't want that then maybe they should move to cuba or something.
There is a much simpler solution: Stop producing products for the Linux market. And that's what Zero Knowledge just did.
You are an abusive f****** idiot, aren't you? You can't point to any errors in my logic or argument, so you resort to personal attacks. My post did not "attack" Linux. It pointed out the problems that Linux currently faces.
The company that is trying to pay people's salaries. You just don't get it. How can a company that has overhead, salaries, benefits, taxes, and other expenses "compete" with a bunch of geeks who donate their time?
The short answer is that they cannot. Which is why so many companies either abandon or never enter the Linux application market. If you like the status quo, then keep driving companies out by producing free equivalents to their software.
Besides if a bunch of volunteers can code something in 6 months that took 5 man years to do it must mean the company was pretty damn incompetent in the first place.
5 man-years is 10 programmers for six months. A good-sized GPL project attracts far more than 10 volunteers. A man-year is not the same as a calendar year. 12 people working one month is one man-year. Why am I having to explain concepts this simple?
As a professional software engineer, I am looking forward to a career in auto repair or lawn care. How can I help out to destroy the industry that supports me and millions of others? Retail computer stores can be driven out of business. Programmers can be unemployed. Whole software companies can go out of business, leading to everyone from the janitors to the accountants being laid off. If successful, this effort might even help fuel economic slumps worldwide. What a brilliant idea!
When I read shit like this, it actually makes me root for Microsoft!
Commercial software is supplied with manuals. Those manuals normally have screen shots. A company can't release a manual showing screen shots if they don't know what the GUI will look like. Tech support can't walk people through troubleshooting if they aren't familiar with the GUI on the person's machine.
Imagine the average tech support session:
support: "Click on the Start button"
user: "The what?"
support: "It should be a button in the corner of your screen."
user: "In the lower left?"
support: "Yes."
user: "Mine has a picture of a penguin in that corner."
support: "Try pressing that."
user: "Now the bar at the bottom of the screen went away"
support: "What GUI are you running?"
user: "I'm not running Gooey. I'm running Linux."
support: "The GUI is what controls the windows on your screen."
user: "I'm not running Windows..."
support: "What version of Linux are you running?"
user: "I don't know. My boss installed it and he's at a meeting."
Welcome to the real world.
Face it: Linux is harder to support than Windows. Moderate this down if you want, but it won't change that fact. How many times have you seen a product released for one distribution of Linux that won't run on some other? Your support staff has to be familiar with Gnome, KDE, IceWM, and every other GUI that's been pasted on Linux.
There is a Linux contingent that gleefully proclaims that the various distributions and the flexibility of Linux makes it superior to the one-size-fits-all installations of Windows. Well, those choices and the flexibility are what makes it so expensive and difficult for companies to support.
You want companies to support Linux? Then there has to be standardization:
1. Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
2. Standardize where files go, a minimum file set in any standard install, and so forth.
3. Stop releasing distros that break things. If company X produced a product for Windows 95, six years later, it probably runs on Windows Me and probably ran on every version in-between (Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition). There's a very good chance that it runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, too. Compare that to the dismal compatability between different versions and distributions of Linux.
4. Stop competing with every company that releases a commercial linux product. If a company invests 5 man-years creating an innovative commercial product for Linux, within six months of its release, there will be a GPL copycat program to perform the same function for free.
When you consider the limited market share that Linux has combined with the aforementioned problems and "herding cats" lack of standardization and it's no wonder that it does not enjoy a wealth of commercial titles.
I can see a business model based around free software and high-priced consistency like Arsdigita being a somewhat feasible business model, but generic products like office suites or firewall tools in a shrink wrap aren't going to get any market share on open platforms, because there are free alternatives.
The other problem is the mentality of people running GNULinux or *BSD just doesn't lend them to pay for stuff.
To contradict myself, I think that something like Oracle 8i is doing well on Linux, even if it is only being used for development or interim production while waiting for a Solaris or AIX box, I believe it will replace NT as the OS of choice to run Oracle on Intel. But that is the exception... and the reason for that is that anyone setting up an Oracle installation is a little passed the 'if-i-can't-click-it-it's-too-complicated-and-makI can't see the gaming market for the GNULinux desktop ever making anyone rich. Same goes for the office suites. Console gaming is console gaming, the market is totally different than desktop platform gaming. It really doesn't matter to the 12 year old kid what OS runs on his console, and he doesn't wanna be able to create Word documents on it.
Anyway... I think that as a Software Dude, that wants to make a living working on GNULinux or *BSD, the only companies that are going to survive are one's that:
- have a good chunk of open-source code that is better than other products out there
- have a high enough profile to use the existing installations of their open-source software as marketting
- have enough cash flow to completely write off the people that will just download their software that they paid employees to write, and never give them a cent
- generate that cash flow through customization and consulting
- hire smart enough people and train them on the product so that they get the consulting work implementing their product, because regardless of the price they charge the customer gets their money's worth
- have clients that believe enough in open-source that will be willing to pay a consultant to customize an application and release those changes as open-source
Which is prettymuch what Arsdigita does. I wish the company I work for did the same. We already give out all source to our clients with every project, the trick is convincing the brass that giving it out to the general population would increase our sales enough to compensate for the people that would just take it and use it.Whatcha doooo with those rollin' papers?
Make doooooobieees?
Oops, shit. I forgot I have to be Pro-Linux and Anti-Microsoft here or get modded down. God forbid I should share some positive experience that I've had with a Microsoft product. I'm so fucking tired of getting modded down because I disagree with some pasty Linux fucker. I pitty some of you knuckefucks who think the latest distro from Mandrake and a copy of MySQL could run a business better than Solaris and Oracle 8. Or dare I say NT and SQL Server? Go ahead and mod me a troll you sorry ass geeks.
'Same speed C but faster'
pop a cat in yo ass.
Meow?
Actually, there is probably one good reason for dropping Linux support: the Family Internet Access program from the Government of Québec (which finances the purchase of one computer per family) specificly requires people to purchase brand-new computers with either MacOS or Windows on them. The even go as far as specifying what hardware they expect to see on such a computer, namely a G3 or PIII and so much RAM, etc. Since Zero-K is in Québec, subject to all sorts of fascist laws from the PQ governement, those are likely the only two platforms they are even allowed to support, so Linux is out. Period. Blame Canada! Don't go there, it sucks!
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I tried their client in the past, a couple of versions. It totally hosed my networking; I couldn't talk to anything with their client installed. I emailed them, asking what the problem was, telling them what protocols/clients I was running. Turns out the problem was that they don't support the configuration I had, meaning the use of IPX/SPX and Client32, which I needed to be able to access a large number of the network resources where I worked. They still, to my knowledge, have yet to support a configuration for windows that has anything besides just pure (well, in Microsoft's definition) TCP/IP. They don't seem to think there's a problem with that either.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
"You, my dear sir, are wrong."
And you, sir, are pretty bitchy. Have trouble compiling your kernel this morning?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
So because you have "several commercial packages" installed, that means everything is okay?
Sorry chap, but i said "platform." And the scope of the Linux platform has increased beyond a kernel and basic set of file i/o services to include a series of advanced tools for serving files, web pages, a number of very nice compilers and GUIs and IDEs and mp3 players and version control services and word processing packages and graphics manipulation tools and web browsers and DVD software and hacking tools. All free. If you have a commercial package installed, you're probably using one that doubles some other functionality for which you didn't have to pay. And this is my point: Linux is about making as much free and part of the OS as possible. This is not an environment in which you make a mint preserving your "Freedom and security software"...it's an environment in which you can't possibly make money. It's like trying to sell Ferraris at a flea market.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
One user buying one package does nothing to change the fact that the platform is ABOUT not paying for software. And if you're buying Linux games, it's because games are a little different from standard software...hell, I own a copy of Tetris for five different machines, but I've never bought a browser or an MP3 player. "Freedom" is a software package that directly parellels free development work on Linux, and even if it is vastly superior, it's never going to make money when there's free, open source development work in the same arena.
And this is what MS is talking about when they consider open source a threat...open source programmers are doing the same work as MS' programmers and doing it for free. Ain't no company, no matter how big it is, that can compete with freedom (though Apple comes close with it's darling OS-X).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Add this to the list of things apple dropped the ball on for OS-X -- the ability to customize the os colours and activities, DVD support, a "conservation" mode for the processor, burner support, full screen support for iTunes, the goddamn volume keys on the powerbook...but it's all worth it for that beautiful fucking dock. I love my dock so goddamn much it isn't even funny.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I bought a Volkswagen Passat, it was $19000 after my trade-in. It was pretty quick, but could have been quicker. So I dropped $400 on a performance chip, $150 on a new blow off valve, $50 on a filter charger, quality oil, a fuel pressure regulator and put nothing but great gas into it.
All in all, I'll say I've put about a hundred hours into making the car work the way I like it. My freelance rate is $40.hr. Does Volkswagen of America owe me $4000?
Here's a picture: http://images.dasmegabyte.org/dasmb31337.jpg. It rocks.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It makes me a generalizer, but that's okay...i set up the generalization the sentance before with "predominate attitude among."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I argue that Linux users pride themselves in freedom in all things. Would the majority pay for my kernel mod's C++ source if another did the same in perl, slower, for free? Some might, but most would not...free as in beer comes as an afterthought of a lack of stinginess in free as in speech software.
By the way, that was a thesis statement, not just a generalization, which is why you can argue an opposing viewpoint and neither of us is necesarily wrong. Generalizations aren't inherently bad, because people understand they aren't meant to be true for everyone. If they were true for everyone, they wouldn't be genralizations, they would be facts. And the facts are in support of the generalization in this case -- companies that sell products for GNU-Linux operating systems that have "free" parrellels experience fewer units sold per capita that companies that sell similar products on the Windows side (look at the sales of any image viewer on PC...they're often quite profitable, despite the fact that freeware viewers such as IrfanView are as good if not better). In fact, I'd argue that the paradigms for software between the two platforms are almost completely opposite: PC users assume that free software can't be as good as for-pay software, and Linux users often assume the opposite (this is a thesis, too). This is one of the problems Windows oriented companies have when moving people to Linux...free software sounds like a shitty idea to somebody who paid $400 for a piece of software to write letters to grandma and be interrupted by an animated office supply.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I did that with my beetle :)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Congratulations...you've overcome the stereotype, and are managing to be one of the scant supporters of an OS that's as much a mindset as set of computer codes. But the problem is that many users do not follow your lead -- more, I'd argue, than users of BSD or Solaris or HPUX or MacOS or Windows or IRIX. GNU-Linux is GNU...it's all about freedom (of whatever). If you support it with money or dev time, and that's a big if, you're exercising your right to do so, but at the same time the guy who does nothing and pays nothing. Linux is the first OS designed to protect the rights of the freeloader, as an extension of extending the rights of the power user and patriotic programmer/professional.
Beleive me, I love the ideas of free software, and in fact have devoted some considerable time to porting Tomcat to OS-X. But if you were to breakdown the number of users of Linux who were in your demographic vs the ones who just wanted a great OS with everything available for free (or extremely cheap, I had a friend who bought a linux book for $5 that came with a CD with Red Hat 7.something on it rather than the $45 Red Hat 7.something package. Guess how much of the proceeds of that book went to Red Hat?), you'd no doubt discover the majority are in the latter area...maybe they paid for quake 3 or CnC, but they sure as heckfire didn't pay for the OS, the consecutive kernels, &tc.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"When there is a large number of non-technical Linux users on the home desktop..."
I hate to burst the community's bubble, but this will never happen. It SHOULDN'T...because a large nubmer of non technical users on your OS means that the OS each of them is using has become in some way homogenized, in some way become closed (because your non-technical user does not have the necesary abilities to run a truly open system...just as non-technical cooks need boxed cakes). The instant you introduce a "non-technical user" to GNU-Linux base OS, one of two things happens: either the user ceases to be non-technical, or the OS ceases to be GNU-Linux. The OS they would be using would have to be homogenized -- stuck to one kernel, one set of libraries, one make system, one rpm system, one processor, one UI (or UI concept) -- or it would be impossible to provide the support necessary to run applications on the OS. And homogenization is the precise opposite of the GNU concept -- it's closed possibilities, it's freedom only to hang yourself. And like you say, the OS would have to be a preinstall...and in this respect, people do use Linux, or will, in embedded platforms, but this won't help the Redhat/Gnome/KDE people in any way (it'll just seem like a fancy appliance, no GNUs neded).
Face it, you don't want this...you want an elite operating system with choices and power. Let people have their windows, their macos, and let them buy software that's well supported and stop complaining about your great, powerful free shit with no warranties implied.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Um, i've mentioned this in several dozen posts, including the one you responded to that you obviously didn't read, but I'm not a windows user -- I'm a Mac user, and Java developer. I use a Windows machine at work, and I think 2000 is installed on my webserver, and both of these came preinstalled -- no option to save money by deselecting them. I paid for Microsoft Office 2k1 and have been relatively satisfied with it, got one free service pack bug fix (apparently, all patches and service packs for Microsoft software are free now -- just like with your LINUX!) for it recently which allowed me a lot of cool new features in Access 2k1.
Congratulations on spending your paycheck on linux...did you know you didn't have to do so? Apparently they give these things away for free on FTP sites now...so your buying the software as opposed to just freeloading was entirely your choice. But of course, nobody twisted my arm to buy 2k1 (backwards compatible with every file format MS has used since the pre-web days, but then again my old copy of office 97 without access used the same exact file format as the new one so it's not so important), either...i could have gone with Star Office or Corel (and, FWIW, i have a copy of Corel 2000 for PC Windows somewhere).
So, in essence, what you're saying is that it's okay to spend money on free software, but spending it on software that isn't free is somehow in error. As a developer, this kind of pisses me off, becuase it doesn't make any fucking sense. If I want to give away software, that's my perogative -- but it's not yours to demand that nobody should give me money for them unless I give it away, or make my source code available under draconian license forbidding me from ever saying "no i want to sell this now because i'm poor and supporting it anyway" and closing it off again. If argument instead is that MS products are overpriced, I'm inclined to agree (though I got very sensible student discounts on much of mine before I left college).
Anyway, maybe you should read the post, and find out a little about my politics, before calling me an "M$ troll" -- I assure you that while I may play devil's advocate often enough, I do not do so solely to rouse, i do it because I am not sold on Free (as in Caffeine) software any more than I'm sold on the shitty x86 architecture.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
A troll is a poster who posts solely for the shock of his post, to rile other users. I, on the other hand, have taken great care to defend my position on the grounds that so many ./ers fit the model that my thesis mapped out. Sure, a lot of people took notice of the post -- and I wrote it in a callous manner to make it so -- but that has encouraged discussion, and is therefore important.
./ posters seem to take a similar stance whenever a company decides Linux development isn't for them. You have to admit -- it wasn't. The direction their product was going was opposite of where the Open Source / Linux community is going, and their product did what Linux users had already hacked their desktops into doing. So to say "I would have paid, if I hadn't already built it myself," is both stupid and defeatist -- it certainly doesn't encourage development in areas that Linux needs commercial apps (DVD, for example...you think you'll be able to get a license to decrypt CSS if you say you're going to open source your player, and let everybody see wossop?)
Linux, the operating system, is a subtle, full bodied server OS with traces of desktop OS and great ramifications for embedded use. I'm also a great fan of Solaris and have had great luck with Windows 2000 (seen 0 blue screens on my win box at work, and three kernel panics with OS-X. X also gets hit harder).
Sorry if it was a little less Zen than you're used to, but I didn't like the way the poster was bitching about a product closing its doors for lack of interest and saying he would have paid -- but didn't. Sounds pretty reactive to me, and so I brought up the fact that a lot of
I'm sorry you bought Myth II...I don't suppose THAT'S my fault, too.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Ha. This is my favorite phrase coming from most Linux users, because it is so typical of the predominate attitude in the community. Linux users never pay for anything -- they complain when a company goes pay-for-play with support, they complain about difficult to find cvs systems or when a download is too big (but available on CD for $30), they complain if an O'reilly book doesn't have a web parellel. And yet, whenever one of these "mostly for free" service goes under, somebody pulls out that line..."I would have paid."
Then goddamn it, why didn't you? Because the software was beta? Because it required a little hacking? This never would have stopped you if it was GNU licensed software with a Makefile or an rpm and available on every street corner distro ftp.
I'm an OS-X user, and I have to fight for nearly every piece of software I use -- fight x86 only binaries, Linux makefiles that are unfriendly to BSD at times and unfriendly to the G4 at others, and I have to fight against companies who think that, since Classic will run their software with 75% functionality and very slowly, they don't need to devote time to a rebuild. And though I complain, I never really let it bother me -- in the Mac world, I'm still in a very elite minority. I don't scream that I would pay for a version of AppleWorks, or a good build of instant messenger. I'm used to Apple getting the shaft from every company out there whose decision makers don't realise that though the market share is small, Apple users buy software like nobody's business. That's right, buy -- not compile or extend or pay for service. And yet, we get shafted by everybody...IBM (and they make our bloody processor, man), Corel, Microsoft, and even Adobe sometimes. It's a way of life for the mac user...you feel everything about your platform is superior, and yet nobody in the computer world will share your joy.
I guess what I'm saying is, if your platform prides itself on the freedom (as in beer) and hackability of most of its applications, you can't complain when a company decides that maybe this platform isn't the right space for them to devote their limited resources on a product which should be unhackable by design. It's more work with very low return, and ain't a CFO alive who will fight for that philosophy -- even if it does mean a free (as in love) society.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I'm a mac user, dummy, did you read the rest of the post?
Either way, i apologize for being so general as to use the term "Linux users never pay for anything"...but I was trying to be a bit reactive to what is essentially a complaint beyond the scope of Linux development. The OS is made free, and users -- at least, the class of users most vocal in the realm of Slashdot -- often complain when any development for their OS is closed, made available for fee only or stops production entirely. This is, you have to admit, a little silly under the paradigm that programmers should release everything free for modification and manipulation; if an app is closed, it was never GNU-Linux to begin with (the old Straight Edge philosophy that, if you aren't now, you never were). Freedom is a perfect example of a software company not understanding what Linux is -- a tremulous entity with no reliable reference installation and no absolute commonality of libraries. A windows company tried to bring their software, designed by programmers used to unhacked, straightforward platforms (so straightforward they apparently didn't account for advanced settings, advanced connections or advanced users), to a platform that is neither stragihtforward nor unhacked. And they gave up on it -- just like so many others have given up on the idea that Linux is a viable commercial platform, because it is so difficult to be sure what goes into it. Part of this is due to the lack of common libraries and APIs, something Linux users are proud of, and to a certain extent should be. Part of it is also that Linux users are too well informed to pay for a product that's already been built, for free, and requiring only a moderate amount of monkey wrenching before it works better than a commercial product with set abilities, set preferences and set failings.
If you buy commercial distros and don't hack them, if you rely on RedHat out of the box and never use Make or rpm or vi, you're a different type of user entirely (and, consequently, one who has no right to 'dis the windows crowd because you're essentially no different...same mindset, different OS).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
No download managers? If someone could confirm this, I'll make a start on one..
@ .
It makes sense, bussiness wise, to drop support on the OS where they don't have a cost-effective relationship.
If a lot of their users used Linux, they would've certainly supported it, as it is, apperantly only a minority uses their product from Linux, so it's not cost effective to maintain support.
--
Two witches watch two watches.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Ultradev does JSP and JDBC, so it can connect to almost any database.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Are you trolling or something? Ultradev is available for the Mac, with an OS X port coming soon, and I'd never heard of Databeacon before you mentioned it, so I looked it up. It's a Java app! It'll run on Mac or Linux, or anything else that supports java. There's no mention of Windows-only anywhere on their website. You're just propogating the "Windows-only" myth.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
HAHA stuff it all you Penguin lovin hippies!!! Closed source is here to stay!
"3. If company X produced a product for Windows 95, six years later, it probably runs on Windows Me and probably ran on every version in-between (Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition). There's a very good chance that it runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, too."
It depends on the software. A lot of games were written for 95/98; some don't work so well on ME and lots don't run on NT/2000. In fact, there are disclaimers that say the game will not run on NT/2000.
Other than that, I would agree with your other points, especially about standardization on one GUI.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
It's been said that "people who hate Windows use Linux - People that love UNIX use FreeBSD." Well, I use Linux because I love Linux. It was the first real operating system I was able to really get in to. Yes, I use Windows at work, and I'm extremely familiar with it. But I use Linux on all my home machines (except the iBook I bought yesterday, which will eventually have Linux loaded on it). I love Linux. Period.
"and so is not really a business/server or desktop OS due to lack of software" - You're contradicting yourself here. You can find many more apps to run on Linux than you can *BSD. Yes, FreeBSD can run a lot of Linux binaries, but the fact of the matter is that Linux is the most coded-for UNIX out there (although MacOS X will be soon, I'm sure). If you look in the right places, you *can* find a program to do *anything* on Linux.
The real battle is between UNIX and Microsoft. Once you side with UNIX for whatever reason, you tend to pick what you're most comfortable with, and what will allow you to be most productive. For me, that's Debian GNU/Linux - apt-get install package offers the easiest installation of programs I've ever encountered. I am able to do nearly everything I want to on Debian - but am not able to do so on MacOS 9.1 or my Windows machines here at work. Example - shell scripting. All these things that make my life easier at home? I can't do them on Windows or Mac. UNIX I can. Windows doesn't really have the "ease of use" advantage after you climb the learning curve. Once you have Linux set up, it's set up. Windows has all sorts of awful things to deal with (DLL Hell, missing vxd's, etc).
What it all boils down to is that people will use whatever is best for them. For me and home use, Linux is superior to FreeBSD. For a high-traffic server, FreeBSD is (in my opinion) superior to Linux. For playing Quake3, Linux is (to me) superior to Windows. It's all in the eye of the beholder.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Maybe I'm being too literal but isn't "Zeroknowledge" a bad name for a software development company. It reminds me of company names like "Fry's Electronic" or "Radio Shack".
----
Capt' Trips
grep >= ! == $your
For me, the reasons were obvious.
1) Years ago (up to 4 or 5 years?), participation in kernel and component development in the *BSD distributions seemed quite more closed (than it may be today). The linux OS groups may be clubby, but there are no barriers in place to discourage participation to the kernel mailing list (and thus Linux kernel development).
2) Linux has been available to the general public longer than the *BSD distributions. (In other words, it had a head start in distribution compared to *BSD.)
3) Greater accessibility tends to encourage more use by more people and the increased user base. This increases the availability of developers, and this increases available products for Linux.
The above reasons translate to the following advantages:
1) You're more likely to get a working driver for a piece of hardware sooner with Linux than *BSD.
2) More people developing for Linux means more packages I can plug in with no fuss.
3) The primary reason I lean towards using Linux is because I believe the above conditions will encourage mutation in Linux. Linux will add features more quickly than *BSD, and much like natural selection will become the predominant species of UNIX. *BSD guys like you will be wondering what niche Linux of 2001 is supposed to fill today, while Linux mutates to fill all niches in future years.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
This basically gives anyone trying to scan/etc you one hell of a time. I beta tested version 2, and I thought it was really good, personally.
I was just waiting on my new credit card to order a version myself. (SERIOUSLY)
Linux version wasn't so nice... I agree. But it had so much potential. They just needed more time. This is not cool.
Well under those circumstances, I'd spin the Windows version off as a separate product line, and sell it to Microsoft for millions.
Linux IS a real OS. Technically, an OS is simply software that enables the hardware it is installed on to function. Linux is obviously capable of this. What I think you mean to say is that Linux is not a truly marketable product. That is, the fact that Linux is freely distributable software really undermines any potential that the OS can be made profitable. Sure, people order RH 7.1 and pay the $39, but having the option to download it for free really puts a bite into the value of the marked product. In this sense, I'd have to agree that the whole Linux PRODUCT is not real, and sadly is not financially sustainable within today's business model. Having said that doesn't mean I think Linux will die either. The Linux community strongly stands for quality software, free information, sharing of ideas and technical experimentation. Since the Linux community is directly responsible for the OS's change and growth, Linux has become the representation of all these ideals. It is a project which many believe in, so as an OS Linux is real, superior and will never die. A product sells for profit, and once it becomes unprofitable it will vanish. A project built on ideals will always be ...well... whatever you want it to be. This is more true an OS than even the most profitable product.
this is my sig, be amazed.
OS- Operating System
machine boots - check
memory and storage usable - check
output display works - check
input devices work - check
meets criterion for OS - CHECK!
No blind statements please, always backup opinions with sound reason.
this is my sig, be amazed.
Welcome to the world we Mac users know all too well... This happens to us all the time. But at least you guys still have a nice large geek community which can just replace this product with something which is most likely even better. I only hope OS X draws enough to the Mac side to help jumpstart developement there. With luck someone will replace this product with an open source version which blows away the original. From what I read in the message body, doesn't look like that will be all too hard.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
1. I use Windows, I hate Linux, ha ha shut up Linux suckers.
2. Hee hee, isn't 'Zero Knowledge' a funny name for a company - bet I could cleverly use that in a comment somehow - hmmm, wonder if anyone else has thought of this.
My points are always snappy and crisp. The bullets are your browser's bailiwick.
Thoughts voiced by many over the years:
Synthesis: Discontinued support for Linux by this company/product is irrelevant. Does it suggest that Linux is -- or more precisely, non-windoze platforms are -- the wrong choice for security solutions? No. Quite the contrary. It suggests that a company focused on security products has little room to play in a space where security knowledge is preferred.
Who cares in the first place? I haven't met one person who even used their software! I'd be funny if everyone here emailed them telling then to shove the software up their a**es, and to contimue by saying that they're going to their compition. Then a couple of days later watch their shares drop! hehe
:-p) ...
(actually i have no clue about their software so don't start anything
Suppose you came up with a novel product/service for Linux. It turns out to be so good that Linux users are actually buying it. It runs on most distros. You're making making good money and a name for yourself in the community. People like you.
Now, you decide that you're going to branch off and do a Windows port. Hey, its a big market, right? So you hire on some Windows programmers and start up a Windows version...
What would you do? Simple - ditch the Windows product, and tell your existing Windows customers that if they want to keep using your product/service, you recommend they switch to Linux.
ZeroKnowledge is simply focusing on profits, and they'd be remiss as a company if they didn't. There is no conspiracy. They simply had the intelligence to realize that, "Hey - our Linux product sucks and we're losing money on it," and act accordingly.
the full linux sourcecode for version 2.1 is still avalaible at http://opensource.zero-knowledge.com. According to Zero's latest
Some caveats:
- The 2.1 client is ip-chains based, it won't run on kernels 2.4, etc...
- it comes w/ about 10 kernel shims for RH6.2, Mandrake, SuSE, Caldera, etc. If you don't run a "stock" kernel, you will have to compile the kernel shim, it's fairly simple, (ie make config)
- it won't run/coexist w/ stuff like ipsec, or VMWare - for obvious reasons.
- You must have the standard gtk libs installed, a better idea is to get Helix gnome.
- Freedom linux cannot be run as root, and it only anonymizes the current user (multiuser), if you su as someone else - you're in the clear.