LWCE Bits and Pieces

Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.

Comments

Clarify the charges

[battery841]

"Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point."

Ximian's charges for Red Carpet aren't mandatory. They give users who are willing to pay for it much better bandwidth. Don't want to pay? That's cool. You don't need to. Just use the free service, and you'll be fine!

Recognition

[bribecka]

The article says that people get involved in open source with recognition as one of the primary motives. It even has a quote from a panelist: Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word? But everyone knows Linus,this is part of why you do open source.

This is a terrible analogy, and IMHO it is even worse for the point of open source. First off, comparing the creator of linux to the creator of the Word paper clip is a bit off. The significance of the development of a free OS and an animated piece of metal are totally different. Besides Linus, there are 1000s of people who do open source that don't get nor seek any recognition. For example, who is the guy who wrote the Gnome Calculator? Can you name the members of the Mozilla team?

More importantly though, this panelist (Dirk Hohndel, former CTO of SuSE) makes a very disconcerting assertion that if you get into open source, you are going to get tons of recognition from the endeavor. This is certainly not that case. I think that most of the benefits of open source come from collaboration between diverse groups, and the vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained just by *looking* at someone elses code. The idea that open source will get you a lot of recognition is ludicrous. True, people may say "X application is great!", but they will probably not know the person behind it or ever send a thank-you note. A lot of people say the same about commercial software.

Just a rant, but open source should never be about recognition--if it becomes about that, the movement will fade rather fast.

Red Carpet vs. apt-get

[SyntheticTruth]

I think it's easy for us geeks to forget why such things as Red Carpet are needed.

I will always argue that apt-get has to be one of the best linux app installers, but a huge part of apt-get is command-line oriented. Red Carpet, although using rpm's, is graphical and is much easier for a gui-oriented linux user to handle. I've used Red Carpet and I like what I see so far, it goes a long way of making linux newbie-friendly. (...and all you CLI die-hards, please just hush. ;)

As long as they price it right, I think a service like Red Carpet would be worth the money, just for ease of use, point-n-click, user-friendliness of installing new software and updates -- something that will bring *nix further along, because right now, I see two things holding us back: a really kick-ass office suite (coming along nicely, really) and ease-of-use software installation.

I, for one, am willing to pay money for *good* software and services...

"Why not just use apt-get?"

[AJSchu]

Hard as this may be to believe, not everyone uses Debian. If Linux is ever going to make inroads against MS, it's got to have pretty graphical frontends. Sure, apt-get is nice for the hardcore Linux fans, but Joe Average experimenting with Linux doesn't want to fool with the command line; he wants his point and click.

AJS

Re:"Why not just use apt-get?"

[GauteL]

And it simply does not provide everything that Red-Carpet does.
Very nice things about Red Carpet:
1. Easy access to different channels.
2. Very nice and professional updating.
3. Automatic cryptographic validation.
4. No hunting for usable mirrors.

apt-get is not the beginning or end of everything. It is a very nice tool, but for Joe Average, Red Carpet is quite simply amazing, and it'll get even better with more 3rd-party channels, and easy access to commercial applications.
Btw. Red Carpet is also available for Debian.

The rule is: don't use it if you don't need it or want it.

Re:Why call it a "tax"?

[simong]

The FUD point is very clear here: what if, with a little bit of manipulation, it becomes difficult not to use Hailstorm/Passport/.NET for secure or sensitive transactions? What if Microsoft could secure trust in enough governments and major financial organisations to make a majority of Internet transactions use it? Of the current MS innovations I think it is the most dangerous, because it has the potential to concentrate a lot of responsibility in one private organisation. It really shouldn't be scorned just yet.

KDE lessons

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats to KDE on the award.

I think its time to analyze why KDE manages to sustain such a high quality open source product. I dont have much knowledge of the modus-operandi of KDE developers, so I am not sure what contributing factors lead to such success.

Is it:
- A commitment to a good core design, and core API's. ie, solid foundation.
- A willingness to throw away a component that doesnt work to expectations (not matter how big or ingrained the components\ is). eg CORBA for inter process communication.- Perform more testing than other projects ?
- Some unique development process/philosophy ?
- Better desingers?
- Better coders ?

What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful.

Re:KDE lessons

[Roblimo]

"What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful."

KDE has always respected "Joe Blow" users instead of sneering at us. KDE developers have worked very hard to make things easier for people who are not computer professionals. I have never heard a KDE developer say, "Well, it only takes five minutes to figure out [function], and if you can't, you're too lame to use our software."

Rather, KDE people ask, "How can we make it easier and more intuitive? What suggestions do you have?"

Because of this pleasant attitude, non-coders are more likely to submit bug reports and feature requests to KDE than to projects that have a snobbish attitude toward people who have things to do in their lives besides messing with computers all day.

The funny thing is, some of the "Joe Blow" people others cold off, but KDE encourages and nurtures, go on to learn enough that they can't be sneered at any more by even the apt-gettingest, self-declared l33t hax0r, so KDE gets fresh debug developer blood that can help the next generation of Joe and Joanne Blows figure things out, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

If all Open Source projects had KDE's attitude toward their users, I believe we'd see a lot fewer "start" buttons on computer monitors than we do.

- Robin

RE: Linus's thoughts on .NET and Hailstorm

[Carnage4Life]

Ok, this is a pet peeve of mine so I'm just going to get it off my chest. .NET isn't Hailstorm. Everytime I see some Open Source person talk about .NET or Hailstorm all I see is a case of Not Invented Here Syndrome.

.NET
.NET the technology (versus .NET, the brand name) is a fairly decent idea. From what I've seen it borrows a lot from the Java platform but improves on it by adding a lot of features that Java should have that Sun has been slow to add plus having better cross language support than Java ever could. After being a Java programmer for about 2 years I think that both platforms are roughly equal in the functionality they bring with them since .NET has some features I think suck and Java has a few I think suck as well. (I'm probably going to write about this and submit to slashdot). Where the .NET platform outshines Java is how XML support is a lot more built into the platform and the tools than anything Java has to offer for now but I'm sure the Java folk will wake up once .NET actually ships.

The way I see it competition is always good. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

The main issues with the .NET platform are probably the fact that it'll only run on MSFT OSes while Java is a multi-OS development platform. But if you are doing development on MSFT OSes, I think the .NET platform would be a better in a bunch of places than Java although there are a few places I'd probably still stick with Java. If you don't believe this, download .NET and give it a shot.

Hailstorm
The main idea behind Hailstorm is a good one and the devil is in the details. I actually would pay money if I could be guaranteed a safe, central repository of all my user information currently floating around on the web especially for two reasons.

1. A while ago CD Now announced that they may be going out of business. This filled me with dread because they had my credit card info which would probably have been sold along with my CD listening preferences to the highest bidder as part of the liquidation process. At that time I would have loved it if there was some central place where CD Now got my credit card info from that I could just tell, "Hey, no longer share my credit card info with CD Now."
   
   
2. Also after the above incident I stopped shopping at CD Now and started shopping at Amazon. This meant that all the music preferences I had built up from rating over a hundred CDs at CDNow were lost and the only way to rebuild that relationship with Amazon would be to rate X amount of music or hope Amazon could do similar things with less info (which they have surprisingly enough). Again, some central repository which I could tell,"Stop sharing my music preferences with CD Now and share them with Amazon" would have been ideal.

The way I see it, the Hailstorm idea has merit. The problems I see are

• Guaranteeing security and reliability will be a bitch and a half.
• Websites may resist adopting it since customer info is the one valuable thing they have.
• Without motivation (i.e. marketing blitz) and an easy way to sign up, consumers won't flock to it.
• Entrusting all that information to a single entity would make some peole nervous.

All of the above problems can be tackled one way or the other either socially or technologically. Secondly, I think the time foir this kind of technology has come, whether it will be Microsoft's Hailstorm, the product of some competitor or an Open Source alternative is all that remains to be seen.

DISCLAIMER: I'm an ex-Microsoft emploee (former intern).

If I'm going to pay for Red Carpet...

[TomatoMan]

...I'd be more interested in them keeping their packages current than giving me a fatter download pipe. Mozilla is still at 0.9.1 in Red Carpet; I chatted with some team members and they advised against maually installing 0.9.3 over the Red Carpet install because it would break things, and 0.9.3 isn't on the current radar for packaging according to the folks I taked to..

For minor updates, that's not such a big deal, but Moz users know that 0.9.3 is a quantum leap ahead of anything before it in terms of usability and stability, and it's a pretty huge piece of software in the desktop Linux world. I'm stuck at 0.9.1 until they put a package together. I know the guys are busy and doing it for nothing (so far), but take my money and pay someone to keep the packages as current as possible, please, if you want to take it.

Re:Why call it a "tax"?

[Rob Mac K]

Of the current MS innovations I think it is the most dangerous, because it has the potential to concentrate a lot of responsibility in one private organisation.

And this isn't just *any* "private organization", either. Let's not lose sight of who we're talking about here.

The big question with .Net is how widely it is adopted by online merchants. Currently, Visa/MasterCard/Discover/AmEx take a few percent of each transaction as a fee, which is how they make their money (well, that and charging huge interest rates and outrageous late fees, but I digress...). If I were Billy and his minions, I'd undercut the CC companies (ever wonder why AmEx is "less accepted" than Visa/MC? They charge a higher percentage of each sale, which is paid by the merchant.), and give the merchant an even *better* deal if they agreed to *only* accept transactions using Passport.

MS can afford it as a loss leader - they're rich. It's the same old story out of Redmond - essentially give away a product to develop a huge market penetration, then once you've eliminated the competition, raise prices out the ying-yang.

Gates' wife wrote the paper clip

[Wee]

Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word?.

Bill Gates' wife was responsible for the paper clip. Really, it's true. Melinda French Gates was a project lead on MS Bob (you have to remember MicroSoft Bob -- it was that cartoony software that slowed your machine to a crawl and insulted you while balancing your checkbook or reading email). When Bob was revealed to be the complete and utter turkey that it was always destined to be, guess what got some of the "usability and human interface" stuff? Office. Guess who happened to also be, ah, "seeing" The Boss? Melinda. Why wasn't Bob just canned, like any other project that wastes millions and failed completely? You have to wonder if Bill G wasn't getting pillow-talked into something. In fact, MS Bob was the first consumer product Bill Gates released personally. People do the strangest things for love.

Anyway, a lot of what Bob had to offer didn't get canned (as it should have). It got repuposed and wound up in other MS products. Take a look at the screenshot on this page. See that dog in the lower corner? That was Bob's dog Rex. (I wish they had a picture of the dragon named "Java"; I wonder if McNealy every knew about that?) Looks like that paper clip, eh? Bob's ghost is in other stuff, too. MS Agent had a re-incarnation.

Well this is all way OT. But I think the Bob fiasco sheds some light on what goes on at MS. There's really no reason to wonder about the pape clip. I'm sure Melinda will insist on touchy-feely stuff being included in every MS product. I love it when someone thinks for me...

-B