Slashdot Mirror
Halloween Document Revisited
GroundBounce writes: "The front page of LWN has an interesting three-year-after analysis of the predictions in the Halloween document, which was "leaked" from Microsoft around Halloween of 1998. It's interesting to see how their predictions have/have not panned out."
How Linux saved Amazon millions
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
As the memo says, they only way to "eliminate" OSS is to understand a process. Ironically enough, the entity searching for this "process" will in the end, find itself.
This is much like the ancient greek story OEdipus Rex, where he searches for a murderer and finds himself to be the person for whom he was searching. IMO, Microsoft in itself is the type of thing that drives OSS projects. The desire for non-corporate software, because of their greediness in terms of money, and inefficency of their products, and the desire to re-invent the wheel to be better than the current one, with input from all parties interested.
In order to combat the fees, the source code must be free and open, such that nobody will ever be able to claim it as their own and stop reproduction of it. And with OSS, anybody that sees a better way to do something, can contribute it. Whereas with the corporate model, you must write your programs to your manager's specifications, making innovation difficult at the developer level.
So in the end, the drive for OSS is to get away from the monolithic corporate model, which Microsoft ultimately represents. To destroy OSS, they must truly make their products more efficient and cause people to desire to migrate back to their software despite licensing fees.
Just some thoughts on the statments contained in the memo... maybe they're right, maybe they're not.
This article is very poor. There could be way better answers to most of the claimed quoted from these Halloween memo's and though the author has made a substantial effort during writting of the article, it feels like he got tired and didn't think many of his arguments through.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
For many, Mozilla or its derivatives (Galeon, Skipstone, etc.) are the browser of choice.
Sure, the many reading that article.
Fact is, Microsoft continues its market dominance and the vast majority of OSS projects are stillborn or far behind their original schedules (take a look at how active most SourceForge projects are). While Linux users are crowing about how new and improved their latest kernel version is (which was released within 2 weeks of their previous version), Microsoft is loudly proclaiming XP as the messiah of operating systems. OSS users are patting each other on the back for the latest version of Mozilla, but Microsoft is telling the world about the newest changes to MSN. Linux is taking marketshare in the server market, but so is Windows, and they are taking it from the traditional big Unix companies Sun and IBM.
Microsoft has found that they don't have to compete with OSS because OSS poses no credible threat at this time. They have effectively neutralized the movement by waiting until the remaining members were shown to be drooling zealots who could talk a good game but failed to deliver on the OSS promise.
OSS has been shown for what it is: a non-commercial hobby. Because of the restrictions placed on it by the GPL, none of the software can become a commercial success (ask GNAT how well they're doing).
No one wishes the programmer hobbyists harm, but those hobbyists who think they can beat Microsoft at its own game while wearing "Free" handcuffs are going to be disappointed everytime.
Well, maybe not. As long as they only wear their OSS blinders and get their news from Slashdot.
Quoting from the Halloween doc : "The biggest roadblock for OSS projects is dealing with exponential growth of management costs as a project is scaled up in terms of rate of innovation and size. This implies a limit to the rate at which an OSS project can innovate." To this, LWN responds in a totally tangentially way that is more commonly used by politicians ducking the question.
Indeed, Microsoft has made a spot on judgment of the management problem in open source : things eventually happen in open source projects, but not at a pace that anyone can control. Indeed, the management techniques that can be applied to closed source projects can allow people to define deadlines - whereas no such deadlines can be imposed (if one is honest) in the open source world.
LWN has attempted to distract one from this fact by throwing in the red herring that closed source project management is not perfect and can have problems meeting deadlines. (1) The Halloween document is not addressing deadlines - just the rate at which a project can be planned to proceed at (2) While I have observed the slippage of deadlines first hand in closed source projects, mostly they arent very serious slippages. Maybe a few days here or there, but hardly the three month delay quoted by LWN ("2.5 will ...").
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
This reminder of halloween document more than shows us that the ONLY important remedy in the M$-DOJ case is to force open protocols and open data exchange formats. Everything else is just a bonus or bogus. Even restrictive OEM contracts would not uphold long, but proprietary protocols and data formats might have the potential to break neck to OSS development
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Did you write the above diatribe three years ago?
What part of three-year-after do you not understand?
If the document was published deliberately a more realistic motive would be to signal that MSFT does not consider Sun to be a threat because OSS is going to kill it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Also, Linux/Open source cannot sue!! How can you show anti-competitive behaviour on an entity that has no legal existence? Especially one which makes no profit?
Linux cannot sue. However RedHat, VA and other CAN sue. They probably won't, but they still can. For instance, if Microsoft uses illegal tactics (how suprising!) to get a contract instead of RedHat, they could be sued and it could be possible to prove that some damage has been done.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This comment is more Usenet plagiarism from spootnik.
In the memo there is a pretty graph of the differnt flavors of "Open Source". They list "BSD-Style". The interesting there is that the "All Derivatives Must Be Free" column is not checked.
M$'s TCP/IP stack is directly from BSD.
Windows isn't "free".
Interesting...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Seems as though (*MAYBE*) you stole your comment?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I can't remember where I read it (it might have been slashdot) but somebody recently was comparing Microsoft currently to IBM in it's last years of domination in the industry.
There are a lot of things in this article that support that theory too. Particularly Microsoft's concentration on proprietary protocols. Like the IBM of old Microsoft are trying to suck everything into their evil empire and proprietize (if that's a word) everything they can... including the internet.
Now, if I said to any Slashdot readers (and some preschool picture book readers) that I thought somebody could control the internet for their own benefit, and be truly successful at it you'd probably just point at me and laugh. And that would be quite fair I think. But not Microsoft. They're still trying to tame this internet thing.
You'd think after the success [sarcasm] of Push internet technology (remember active channels) and the microsoft network in it's original incarnation (now reduced to virtually an MS owned webring and AOL ripoff) and, speak of the devil; AOL's attempts to make the internet branded with AOL for anyone that uses it.
After all this has anyone ever come out on top of the internet? No. Of course there have been plenty of successes, but the internet still remains a global brand-name-independant network.
As the internet grows more it's that very size and reach that prevents it from becoming the MICROSOFT-InterNETWORK.
IMHO, this quest for making everything proprietary is just Microsoft going out of their way to piss people off. And much like the IBM keeping everything IBM attitude of past decades they risk screwing themselves royally because of it.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"Ease of use must be engineered from the ground up. Linux's hacker orientation will never provide the ease-of-use requirements of the average desktop user."
"The desktop projects _are_ being engineered from the ground up. It remains true that ease of use is not always at the top of many hackers' priorities, however."
Sorry folks, but this isn't really true at all. All those flashy new GUIs are doing is putting a prettier, more easily configured face onto X and have a whole bunch of standalone applications that look and feel the same. To engineer "from the ground up", they need a _complete package_ that handles _all aspects_ of using and managing the machine.
For example (with KDE on FreeBSD):
* Where do I partition disks ?
* Where do I mount and unmount things ?
* Where do I set the colour depth and resolution of my display (on the fly is even better) ?
* Where do I load and unload kernel modules ?
* Where do I start and stop runnig daemons ?
* Where do I share things ?
* Where do I reconfigure my network settings ?
* Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?
* Etc.
You can just put a bunch of pretty pictures in front of a few things and call it "user friendly". The whole thing has to look and feel integrated as a single package. That means I should be able to do pretty much anything a normal person would want to do without ever having to
a) leave the GUI and use a commandline
b) use software with a different GUI (like gtk apps under KDE), or
c) install the software myself.
*That* is what they mean by "engineer from the ground up". Everything has to be doable with "user friendly" tools, not just a few things and not just things to do with the GUI itself.
Projects like KDE and GNOME, for all the good work they've done, still really haven't looked past creating Yet Another Window Manager. They still haven't really delved into the guts of the underlying operating system to try and make them easier to use.
I certainly hope these projects are working towards this sort of "complete product" integration. Until they do, you'll _never_ get the "ease of use" of Windows, MacOS, OS/2 etc because at the end of the day the OS still looks like a patchwork quilt.
CS
2.5 isn't out yet, and maybe it should be, but look- you have 2.4.1, 2.4.2... what are we at now, 2.4.13? You can use all of these if you want, and most of them will be (fairly) minor improvements upon the last. Who cares if .14 isn't here yet, run the version before.
With closed-source, however, you're waiting for the next version which bundles all those subversions into one- Wind95... Wind98- three years with no major changes. That's why Linus can miss a target with no major repercussions, while the wait for the next version of Windows can seriously mess up plans.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Personally, I think that there has been a fundamental change in the marketplace during the last three years that Microsoft didn't anticipate. Three years ago, they were trying to figure out the best way to protect their interests from the likes of Linux and the rest of OSS. However, while they were concentrating on the external enemy, they missed the internal one. With Windows and Office 2K, Microsoft developed a product that is good enough for most people. That, combined with the subsequent major falloff in PC sales that accompanied the tech bust, meant that people had no reason to buy their software in the huge numbers they had previously been buying them in, and they certainly didn't see much need for further updates. Why pay for more software when what you have works. I would argue that OSS software is superior in most ways to CSS, but the simple fact is that most of Microsofts recent sales falloffs have not been attributable to OSS. Rather, we are seeing a general falloff in sales, mostly due to the fact that people don't need to buy more MS software. Thus, we have seen many of the recent (scared sh*tless) tactics that MS has been using. I'm sure Linux is still on Microsofts radar, but their real worry right now is how to get people to pay for something they really don't want or need, because their current business model is unsustainable long term. Therefore, they are making stupid moves that just serve to make people mad (licensing, Passport, copy protection). This is both good and bad news for Linux. It's good news because Linux has an opportunity to move in and usurp the reigning king. On the other hand, it could be very dangerous for OSS in general. There are few things deadlier than a cornered animal, and right now Microsoft has been backed into a pretty tight corner.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
You are oversimplyfing.
When most people talk about open source projects the preclude the idea of Commercial but Open source projects, they may not be the majority but they do exist.
If a project is both commercial and open (rather than commercial and propriatary) it is inevitable that the will have set deadlines and one can _honestly_ say that these deadlines exist.
Of course they may be an increased likehood that developers get distracted by tangetial features or helping out less skilled volunteer programmers (Brooks Law, adding more programmers to a late project only makes it later).
do you think the Open Office/Star Office Developers being paid for by Sun Microsystems or the Mozilla/Netscape developers being paid for by AOL/Netscape/TimeWarner/whoever are not forced to meet deadlines?
Mmm, Fud, makes me think of that simpsons episode where Homer cant get Duff Beer and has to settle for Fud (or was that FFUD?).
It is true that closed-source projects can make one sort of deadline and stick to it. That's the "we'll ship by" sort of deadline. That's not the kind of deadline that knowledgeable users generally need.
The sort of deadline that open-source projects can generally meet is the "we'll get a nightly build up every night" and the "we won't call it version 1.0 until we're ready" sorts. These will do just fine for knowledgeable users. No closed-source company can meet this kind of commitment.
Notice that the one thing that for-profit, closed-source developers cannot do no matter how hard they try is ship bugfree software on a hard schedule. No one can. What they can do is ship version 1.0 when they said they would, and charge you for the service pack, and then charge you again when version 2.0 comes out with the features that you paid for in version 1.0 actually working.
Here's where the libre software is so wonderful. The total cost of ownership may be higher, lower or just the same as the closed source stuff, but the total benefits of ownership are generally much higher.
Folks like to say that you get what you pay for, and that's almost true: when you buy something you won't get any more than you pay for. The payment makes an upper bound on what you get. That isn't true when someone gives you something. The initial cost of $0.0 makes a lower bound on the value.
With libre software you get what the developers claim they're delivering, and sometimes a lot more. You don't have to wait for a deadline or an official release to start using the latest version of GNUfoo; you can keep trying it and start using it when you say it's ready.
Ask yourself: is it really an advantage for the closed-source companies to ship buggy crap that isn't ready, so they can meet a deadline? It is for them; it lets them gouge you and make a payroll. Is making a deadline that way really good for the customer?
See what I've been reading.
You forgot to mention that people should start there posts with "This may be a troll..." or "Mod me down if you want..." ... Gauranteed Karma points.
Sitting here, I know which model works better. I have several awsome window managers (each of which blows away the M$ GUI), dozens of good editors, three web browsers, great image manipulation software at my disposal. I can run it from any of my machines through secure shell to this laptop I have sitting on me here in bed. No, this is not just theory, I'm doing it now. Goodies are compiling on an Athlon while my P150 laptop with 24 megs of ram handles this silly post. A mailbox is dealing with DNS, FTP and mail behind a 486 firewall. Remote administration is secure and easy thanks to apt and friends. Most of these convinences run counter to the M$ business model. How well that has worked out is painfully obvious when I go to work.
Am I some sort of computer God? Far from it. I've got a little C and FORTRAN. Debian is taking care of the rest of things for me. Yes, it's all free. Yes, it's getting easy enough for a boneheaded engineer to get things done. Something is working well here, and I'm glad to help if I can.
The only thing that LWN got wrong was thinking that M$ has laid off the FUD. GPL virus? Naked PC? Information Anarcy? Make it stop! I laugh at it, but others are taken in all day long.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Ok, repeat after me...
"All your base are belong to us".
Excellent, I knew you could.
"It has been said that if 700 Monkeys typed for 700 years they would eventually produce the works of William Shakspear(sp?)...which, thanks to Usenet, has proven this hypothesis very wrong".
Hey...responding to usenet plagerism with usenet plagerism...woah, the mind boggles.
/me slaps self...wake up.
Just remember that line from ST:TNG
"When Conspiracies are suspected, they are almost never real. When the are real, they are almost never suspected".
Time to find a shiney object...I haven't said (kiki voice) OOooooo(/kiki off) in a while.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Microsoft missed out on what (IMHO) make open source truly great, It not a money or company issue , it's that OSS mimics two mechanisms found in nature:
First of all - I love FreeBSD for fileservers and OpenBSD for firewalls and VPN gateways. Increasingly Linux has been making great strides in file-system stability, and I imagine in a few years I'll be happily installing Linux fileservers instead of FreeBSD. And it doesn?t matter one bit if Linux or FreeBSD 'win' - because they are both evolving toward an optimum. Just like how sharks (a fish) and whales (a mammal) are evolving to an optimum underwater shape. In addition, if OpenBSD comes up with another security patch - Linux can quickly mimic the new behavior - just like one species of bacteria can swap genetic code with another species to quickly acquire a new resistance to a new threat.
This is the true two pronged advantage of open source - is that the development model mimics Darwinian style evolution, and that and gains in one piece of open source software can be rapidly assimilated in another.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
John Romero's birthday is also on Oct. 28. Sure explains Doom (though not Daikatana).
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
The FULL source code? I don't think so. Parts of it yes, under strict NDAs.
I agree with you. I bear no animus toward MS per se, though they've employed some some crummy marketing tactics at times. I don't like their licensing overmuch (in fact, I think it's horrible), nor some of (what I consider to be) their anti-user attitude (everything possible to get rid of MP3s), high prices, ever-shifting file formats, etc, but there's either nothing or little that *I* (speaking for myself, no one else) believe ought to be criminally liable or lead to government interference. However, I feel that way about most things, not just MS ;) I wish well for my friends who work or have worked there, and think MS has some very good aspects.
...") I like to argue for Free SW as being similar to blueprints -- would you want to hire an architect who refused to let you have a copy of the blueprints and other technical documents? If MS didn't exist, the argument remains.
... at a certain level, sure, one system's gain means other systems' loss. But naturally, not that simple -- the market for OSes isn't static, and won't ever be static. I prefer Free software philosophically (and because it's often outstanding, philosophy notwithstanding), but I'd rather people use multiple operating systems anyhow, even if some of them are proprietary. People learn that way, projects are cross pollinated with different ideas. (Also, this enourages universal file formats, my personal small utopian wish.) As you hint, the person computer relationship is complicated, not simple at all, and you can't just start subtracting "them" from "us" to get any meaningful numbers. Them is Us, and sometimes vice versa.
/. readers (80? 75? 85?) are reading with IE on a Windows machine, or [IE,Netscape] on a Mac running Mac OS. Sure, I hope they're at least somewhat intrigued by Free / free SW, but it's just not the case that most readers are MS free. A lot of people feel trapped, and say they "can't" get rid of it, even if they (otherwise) want to, because they have a certain game / piece of hardware / etc. that they want to continue to use. Hard to argue against, but then again, humans are always balancing wishes. If you don't want to use MS, it's still possible to live a relatively productive life, sleep at night etc.
:) That would perhaps make the box worth buying, take advantage of the MS name, etc.
My arguments for non-MS software aren't dependent on Microsoft (if it wasn't them being Microsoft, someone else would be the largest closed-source vvendor, of course), but it does serve as a convenient example sometimes. ("You'd rather have a proprietary WP format from a crash-worthy, bloated program? OK, give me $400
You wrote: "Now for the authors here, I can almost see a reason to want MS to lose market share. Their readership is made almost entirely of linux users and they are operating under the assumption that for there to be more linux users, there will have to be less MS users as if the number of potential computer users were a finite quantity of persons and organizations that will use MS *or* linux."
Well, there are a couple of statements in there
Speaking of which: I dunno current numbers, but I bet way more than 50% of
I'm writing from an iBook which is destined to hold Mandrake 8.1 (when it's ready for PPC) but in the meantime has an OS as proprietary as Windows, depending on who's counting*). Compared to my linux desktops, there are good and bad things -- one of the bad is that I can't just loan the OS to friends so they can, say, use the GIMP, which most people want to do after even a quick demo.
My personal hope, too, is that MS becomes the world's largest Free Software vendor. I can't say there's "no reason" they couldn't be that in 18 months from now (though I have said that on occasion), but it certainly would be posssible. Imagine MS-branded cross-platform free software, with certificates for limited MS support instead of an insane license agreement
Anyhow, just a small rant re: what the authors think (rather, what one of the thinks), and the conflict or imagagined conflict among various OSes and devpt systems. In sum, I like Free but respect closed source software as one way to organize things which is perfectly within the rights of the developers to choose. OTOH, speaking as a taxpayer, for anything the government buys, I think Open sure makes a better investment in the commonweal, encourages pursuit of happiness better, etc, discourages horrible code on teh taxpayer dime, etc.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
One could argue that future features in open source code could be more credible, not less. Features in Microsoft code are hidden from public view until they spring, fully developed, from the head of Bill. Until a product is released, nobody really knows how development is progressing
It should be pointed out that this (MS springing fully developed features on an unsuspecting public) is most likely more due to Microsoft's monopoly (and their own way of doing things) than due to any natural side effect of commercial, proprietary software development in general. Microsoft's monopoly means that they *don't have to give a damn* what customers *really* want, instead, they are free to put into their software whatever is in *their* best interests (a good example is the recent "smart links" fiasco). These features are not there because they are best for customers but because they are best for Microsoft, but the only reason Microsoft can get away with doing this is (1) the public usually doesn't *know* any better, and (2) the public has no alternatives. In a truly competitive environment, software features would probably align more closely to what customers want. Right now the public will simply swallow whatever is dished up onto their plates.
It's been mixed, actually. The posts have been moderated both ways, but I'm down overall because I started at the cap. He's down overall, which is I guess all I could hope for. And hopefully people will recognize his username now and deal with him appropriately.
This article would have been objective and well-argued, were it not for its ridiculously biased take on Mozilla. The Haloween document predicted that the Mozilla project would fail. In this, the Haloween document was right on. For the purposes of competing with IE, Mozilla is deader than the bird in the Monty Python skit.
Mozilla is not "going strong" in any sense that matters to Microsoft. Remeber that long-dead company Netscape? Wasn't the Mozilla project concieved to save it? And as for its browser, not only has Navigator dropped under 20% to IE's 80%, but most of those are the 4.x generation browsers. Hardly anyone has upgraded to Navigator 6.x, and no one could in good conscience recommed that the typical desktop user do so.
Mozilla is nice for the Linux niche -- it is my main browser -- but to claim that it is going strong in any sense that Microsoft cares about is laughable, and really makes one look about as reliable as the old Pravda.
Linux may well win the war for the enterprise. With endurance, luck, and a hell of a lot of work it might even someday win the war for the desktop. But history has already given its verdict on the browser war, and the verdict is that MS won, hands-down. Period.
I don't have a link handy, but a while ago I read a very interesting essay where the author made the observation that the government doesn't have to legislate or force standards in order to affect a change. The government is such a large purchaser of computers and software that they could simply use their huge purchasing power to influence the market in the direction of open standards if they wanted to. If the government refused to buy into proprietary standards, many companies would support open standards rather than loose a customer that size.
[ With deepest apologies to Mark Knofler and Dire Straits ]
...
...
...
...
"Money for Microsoft" by Dire Warnings
Sung by Steve Ballmer, backing by Bill Gates
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
Now look at them bozo's that's the way you do it
You lock them always on the Win-XP
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Money for Microsoft from Dot Net usage fees
Now that ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Lemme tell ya them guys are dumb
Maybe get a licence on your little desktop
Maybe get a licence on everyone
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
Look at that, look at that
See the little Win-Troll who is spreading spin we makeup
Yeah buddy thats our own fear
That little Win-Troll got them always complain'
That little Win-Troll makes us billionares
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
They shoulda learned to use the Linux
They shoulda learned to use them Macs
Look at that user, we got it stickin' to the customer
Man we could have some fun
And their down there, whats that? Protesting noises?
Plannin' on me dancing like a chimpanzee
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Get the money for Microsoft get our usage fee
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
You lock them always on the Win-XP
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Money for Microsoft from the license fee
Money for Microsoft from subscription fee
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I suggest that people working on new distributions or new enhancement to Gnome/KDE-like desktop environments look at what Apple has done with the user interface of Mac OS X.
/etc are modifiable through a really nice GUI system (Netinfo Manager).
On top of what is basically BSD, they have created a wonderful system. What looks and feels like a regular old Mac cranked up to 11, with semitransparent windows and buttons, trilinearly-interpolated stuff flying all around, antialiased fonts and lines everywhere, OpenGL and PDF widgets, has all of the UNIX-like underpinnings. I can open up a terminal window, run my zsh, fire up ssh, launch emacs, and compile stuff with gcc. X11 runs seamlessly with the rest of the windows using OroborOSX, and that's just for the geeks. The people like my wife still have GUIs for all of the "other stuff" that people want to deal with: preference settings, launching commonly-used apps, network diagnostics, heck, even the files in
So check it out for inspiration!
True, most projects don't make it out of the gate, but they don't all have to. Just because most projects fail doesn't mean that others don't succeed. The fact is that there are projects to fulfill just about every desire you could have on a computer. Web browser, instant messaging, servers, office suites, some games, programming tools, etc. etc. Sure, lots of projects fail and die, but enough succeed to make the system viable. If you don't believe me, try running a linux system for a little while.
Straw men. What does this have to do with the previous argument, where you said OSS projects are all stillborn? Here you point out two that are actively in development and consistently improving, contradicting your earlier statement. Both Windows and Linux are moving targets, and just because both projects like to tout improvements with varying degrees of rhetoric doesn't mean that one is less viable than the other. Where's the argument here that says OSS is bad?
As far as I can tell, no such thing has been shown. Granted, OSS may not have lived up to all the Windows-killing hype, but that doesn't make it any less competitive. The availability of free tools that you have near total control of is a very powerful incentive for a lot of people, and will continue to be so in the future. The OSS promise isn't really "World Domination" as so many like to talk about, it's actually the opposite. It's about freedom from world domination by any one entity, and it's about personal empowerment. Linux, *BSD, et al. are still going strong, and in this sense they have completely delivered on the OSS promise.
I've really never understood this argument. True, OSS is a non-commerical hobby for many, but for many others they have been hired to work on OSS as their job. Companies use what they create as "tools" to make money, not as money makers themselves. How many software companies make money off of MS Word sales? One. How many companies make money by using MS Word as a productivity tool? Countless. Paying someone to develop GPL software is like purchasing a bunch of MS Word licenses. You're paying for your software (which you get complete control over BTW) and you make your money actually using the thing rather than selling it. That's where the profit motive actually lies. And even then, how does this relate back to the overall premise of your post that OSS is bad? Just because someone makes something as a non-commercial hobby doesn't mean it's a bad piece of work, nor does something have to be a commercial success to be a good product.
Overall, your post is a load of shit troll-boy. There are plenty of disadvantages to OSS, but you sure didn't hit on any of them.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This seems to be common view amongst Open Source/Linux advocates. What people seem to ignore is that Microsoft can change its licensing at any time. Let's assume that an OSS desktop did begin to displace Windows in some significant way. Microsoft could switch back to a more reasonable licensing scheme to bring back those who were leaving, or at least stem the flow. Anyone who is ditching Windows because of the licensing - probably isn't very committed to OSS per se.
Displacing Microsoft as the dominant desktop will take more than bad licensing or even technically better alternatives. When you get to 90%+ (or whatever the actual figure is) - the only way you get replaced by the market is if there's a total paradigm shift. A lot of us thought initially that that shift had occurred with Proprietary vs Open Source. But whilst that's a paradigm shift for developers it doesn't appear to be perceived as such by users - so it fails to have the necessary effect.
So I believe the market itself will resist displacing Microsoft for a while yet. But hang on isn't that why we have Anti-Trust laws? Oh wait - for laws to be effective you have to enforce them in some meaningful way...
Did not notice this before in the Halloween memo:
"Who do you sue if the next version of Linux breaks some commitment?"
MS have in their EULA (?) made it clear that you can not sue MS over any damage resulting from use of their software.
Quite an odd thing to put in their FUD, since it expose a weakness in their own reliability and ways to deal with, or rather lack thereoff.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
- There are more that enough problems out there that will never spawn an Open Source projects to solve it. A big number of situations falls into the "Company A (and only company A) needs X done".
- There is also a need to integrate systems (even if they are made solely with open source components)
- Plus there is a need for customizing software for a specific use.
- Plus complex systems have to be designed, assembled, installed, tested and maintained.
So there is more than enough paid work out there (most of it boring), and even if in the future all Closed Source Software is substituited by Open Source Software, very specific needs will still employ most if not all of IT developers.Look at the Halloween Documents again. The strategy outlined there is to "Embrace and Extend". As long as Microsoft owns 95% or more of the desktop market, it remains a fairly simple matter for them to force their way into the server marketplace. Once they own both sides of the client/server equation, they have a blank check to extend previously open standards, creating an infrastructure where only they know all the "secret codes". The end result is that all competitors (including Open Source) are religated to a sort of software getto.
If Microsoft loses some portion of its market share, it also loses the assurance that it can force standards to do its bidding, and customers in general end up with more choices.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Yes. Standard MS strategy: open up proiprietary protocols dominated by others, then extend them with MS proprietary stuff once they become standard.
sulli
RTFJ.
An LWN link for this issue does exist already, so people in the future can find the column which we are talking about.
Since when is a Sysadmin responsible for everthing? What kind of corporate kindom stand statement is that.
It's the way things are done in every other area. Indeed you'd probably be worried if you saw the pilot of a commercial airliner delving into an engine...
users are discouraged by sysadmins from doing things on their own and actually learning something as they make their computers more productive for themselves because sysadmins want to be in control and king of the pie.
Except that 99.9% of the time these users tinkering has the result of making machines less productive (you can't get much lower than zero). Then they expect the sysadmin to fix it (so they can just break it again.)
No-one would attempt to argue that bus drivers should be tuning engines (because they might make them run more efficently)
Then you get the daft term "power users". Whereas "power drivers" or "power pilots" would be just a sad joke.
What kind of business model requires all employees to be sysadmins, in addition to whatever their proper job is?
And, this statement ONLY covers corporate desktops and doesn't even approach the home user (many home users have to use their corporate desktops too).
All that might be is the beginnings of an argument for a neice system for home users. But where are people lobbying Ford/GM/etc to make "home cars" which can be maintained by the driver. No other domestic appliance works this way, why should computers.