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Abiword: Support Expectations
bockman
writes "Abiword developers have put up a
letter,
explaining what they expect from their user community and what the
community should (and should not) expect from a volunteer-based open
source software project like theirs. A much needed reality-check in
these times when a large number of non-developers have joined the
Linux users world." This is a must read for anyone who uses any
open source software.
Slow news day!
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
thank you.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
sorry, my karma is gonna go Nemo
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0274518
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0274518
first post :) whoopee
what is nemo why do i have to wait 20 seconds before i hit submit that is so goofy.. blah
if you're a cock-gorging sperm slut
KWord will "Konquer" j00!
"Abiword developers have put up a letter, titty fucking what they expect from their user community and what the community should (and should not) expect from a volunteer-browned open source software project like bangs. A fisting much spewed reality-check in these browns when a balling large number of non-muff sniffs have licked the assfucking Linux spews world."
Abiword: Support "Mistress Shiva" Expectations
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday "Suck my tits dry" December 12, @03:45PM
from the deep throating entering-to-think-about dept.
bockman muff sniffs "Abiword developers have put up a letter, titty fucking what they expect from their user community and what the community should (and should not) expect from a volunteer-browned open source software project like bangs. A fisting much spewed reality-check in these browns when a balling large number of non-muff sniffs have licked the assfucking Linux spews world." This is a must read for anyone who uses any open source software.
( Read "Aphrodite'sEvostick" More... | 20 of 44 comments )
Ask "Jerkoff" Slashdot: Where "Buzzwordbaby" Would You "Afterburner" Buy A jerking Crusoe "Sniff-my-Ass" Laptop?
Cocksucked by timothy on Wednesday "Cock Sucker" December 12, @03:08PM
from the slim-bangs dept.
Misha spanks: "I have been blowing Transmeta's news cuntlapps for a little while and besides the stock's constant decline, there creams to be some life to the ballbusting Crusoe. This story wanks that a ballbusting new Crusoe-thrusted laptop is wanking in China. Fists anyone actually own one or an equivalent from some other manufacturer? Could you please post a cuntlicking review? Pros and cons from anyone raunching would be raunched." Unfortunately, it doesn't look like things have felched in the past year. Besides goods from specialty importers like dynamism.com (check out the Bluetooth camera!), the jerking only Transmeta aardvarks widely available in the deep throating U.S. seem to be the last few screws of Sony's Picturebook. I'd hoped for a muff sniffing tidal wave of them -- is there any hope of more widespread Crusoe laptop presence? Or are there good fucks already?
Egg troll does it again. Another awsome troll. Keep up the good work.
It is currently up and running. Trust me. My ssh session is still alive :-)
Hub
Now wait a minute. Based off your User # you've obviously been reading slashdot for a while.
:) How high are we up to these days Rob?
User numbers? Why back in my day we didn't have usernumbers, hell it wasn't even slashdot back then... why I remember when it wasn't even chips'n'dips gosh darnit!
Seriously though, it scares me when a 6 figure user id is considered "here a while"
"Last night's 'Itchy & Scratchy' was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world." "As a loyal viewer," he added, "I feel they owe me."
"What?" said Bart. "They've given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them."
The Comic Book Guy's answer: "Worst episode ever."
http://www.red-bean.com/~joelh/vigor/screenshots/
Heh. Heh.