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LinuxWorld: Business, Business and More Business
Clarkson University wins a server from IBM. Sun is bringing embedded Linux to its UltraSparc IIe processors. Wired has an overview of LinuxWorld, talking about how it's all business and the joy is gone; and so does Internet.com; and so does Newsforge, which also has a story about LinuxWorld in Paris. The Register has a lengthy interview with Miguel de Icaza, in which he notes "Gnome 4.0 should be based on .NET".
Hey,
I thought that's what everyone wanted? To be taken serious as opposed to hey look at the nice kids playing with Linux?
What's wrong with this?
Sent from your iPad.
And yet the naysayers still proclaim that Linux died with the rest of the dot coms a couple years ago. They say it can't win on the desktop. Yet thousands and thousands of people do just that -- use it, and quite frankly, enjoy it. Linux is in the realm of education, it's running government computers, and it's even running corporate servers in the private sector.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I'm sorry, but someone throw some cold water on me.
GNOME 3.0 could perhaps be using APIs by the traditionally evil folks at Microsoft? Now, see if you have as much trouble imagining this as I do -- a long-haired, super-smart, (sexy, even) traditional Linux user who has used GNOME for years now embracing a Microsoft-ish manipulation of his GUI. Ever more far-fetched would be SUN Microsystems, who hate Microsoft more than all of us do, ditching their CDE GUI for GNOME, which in turn gets hooked into Microsoft
I'm skeptical, but it'll sure be fun to see how this all plays out.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I'm gonna sound like a troll here, but why should huge a free software project like gnome depend on something owned by a single company. It is a lot less problematic if something is owned by GNU since they're a non-profit organisation. Ximian are reqired by law to do what is most profitable for their shareholders, even if that means making stuff proprietary.
Miguel sounds out of his mind. Despite .NET being an rather open standard, it was created by the biggest, baddest, and meanest software company in the world. You cannot get around the fact that Microsoft owns .NET. When you endorse .NET, you endorse Microsoft. I, for one, will not just forget the years of horrible software and put my trust in a shady development platform based on central Microsoft databases.
I really like Gnome, and I don't want it to be tied-in to a major Microsoft project.
I love the idea of a common runtime environment that supports C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc., runs on all platforms, etc. etc. etc., but I DON'T want that platform in any way controlled by Microsoft (or by Sun, or RedHat, or me!) If any one entity controls the platform, that one entity has entirely too much power - we've simply traded one monopolist for another.
Considering that C# and the CLI are ECMA standards exactly how does Microsoft control the Mono platform? However Java is very much still entirely controlled by Sun which hasn't stopped a vibrant Free Software community to grow around Java? So even if C# and the CLI were completely controlled by MSFT (which they aren't) there is no reason why Free Software cannot benefit from it. Now, if Miquel wishes to create such an environment under GPL, with no patents held by any organization, then I'm all for it - that way no one organization can embrace and extend the spec.
According to miguel the Mono runtime is released under the LGPL, the compiler is released under the GPL, and the class libraries are released under the X11 license..
From where I sit that is all FREE SOFTWARE unless you are one of those GPL zealots that believes that if it isn't GPL it isn't Free Software even though we all know that Apache, BSD, Kerberos, BIND, etc aren't GPL.
I am not a linux world attendee, so I have not experienced the letdown that these people are describing, but it reminds me of people lamenting the loss of the "cool" internet when it was just a bunch of random people putting up sites, before mass commercialization came in and "ruined everything".
I say the same thing to this as I do to that. There are still plenty of cool sites put up by random people. You still have to look for them just like you used to have to in the early days. YOU DON"T HAVE TO DO WHAT THE MASSES DO. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THEIR TV SHOWS OR LISTEN TO THEIR MUSIC.
Getting depressed about what the masses do with a new concept is silly and counterproductive. All that does is shows how much you are buying into what Madison Avenue is trying to sell. You get irked because some knockoff is getting all the attention. Well, why do you care who all the masses are being told to pay attention to? Why are you letting them tell YOU what to pay attention to?
Britney Spears does not annoy me--that may be because I never see her or hear her music. If I want to hear edgy, innovative, gutsy music I know where to look--off the beaten track. Lamenting the fact that it isn't on the radio is a waste of a lament.
Enterprise stuff may be getting all the industry/press/expo attention right now, but that doesn't stop a single GPL/open source product from getting done, nor should it have any bearing on our passion for the freedom, quality, and community of open source/free software.
Personally, I am thrilled to see people there to make money. And an important part of that is just the "to see people there" part. With this economy we should totally expect that a lot of the fun, innovative, exciting, and cutting edge stuff would be gone. A lot of that was funded by the pre-bubble-burst wild-eyed investment community. The fact that ANYBODY showed up this year is wonderful. And if IBM and HP are not only there, but completely bullish on linux's future, well, I'm ecstatic. It's a huge victory for us that they are there at all, and that they are as enthusiastic as they seem to be.
Linux in the enterprise might not be what excites you about Linux, but it is still an exciting possibility.
These may well be the people that create your next Linux using job--I say we welcome them with hearty handshakes and reciprocal enthusiasm.
Liberty uber alles.
To be fair, he did distinguish between the NT security policy and the new .NET security policy, which he compared much more to a sandbox system.
That's kind of bordering on trollness...
If some meteor hits the earth, and Linux really does become the desktop of ubiquity, something will be lost.
The geek qualities of linux will never be lost as long as there are alternative distributions. As long as someone wants Linux to be a geek toy- it will be. use Debian.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
I understand from what I've read over at Wired that many an old attendee of Linuxworld are dissapointed with the new business-sponsored Linuxworld.
.NET into GNOME or the fact that IBM, HP, Compaq and other major hardware vendors are embracing Linux?
I've read comments on it 'not being fun' any more. I've also seen comments here stating that the Opensource-ness of Linux is being attacked by the close-sourced monsters. I was wondering if that comment was referring to just the spastic comment aout including
I think IBM doesn't sit up all day thinking of somehow 'stealing' linux for themselves. They see it as a viable, important alternative to the closed and controlled Microsoft, and probably even Intel regime. They see the gartner charts that show with current trends that Intel servers running MS OSes are going to account for 85% of the money spent on IT infrastructure in the server market.
The reason I think they're even against Intel is that all of their big-ticket-lots-o-press-with-linux in it adds are about the zSeries or the iSeries products. There is hardly a mention about Linux running on Intel based systems (xSeries).
I think IBM sees Linux as a way to sell more of their 'big iron' high margin systems and to not have to continue to fight the idiots at Dell who try to commodotize the server market when they see the server market as more than just a commodity...
Just My $0.02. I may be wrong.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
To those giving MS praise for coming up with .NET (including Miguel): Face it, there isn't a significant difference between CLR-type functionality and the JVM. Getting the JVM was a much bigger step than going from JVM -> CLR. In MS's defense, though, since it's an incremental and obivous step, WHOEVER had made that step would be embracing and extending the innovation of the JVM work at Sun (and the efforts to bring other languages to the JVM).
.NET software that people will think can run on any .NET platform that actually only runs on MS's .NET. Sure, it's an ECMA standard, but that doesn't keep MS from introducting their own "extensions" to it which lock users into MS.NET while still giving the illusion of not being MS-specific.
I'll leave the discussion of Java (the language) vs C# out of this.
The real difference is that with Java/JVM, when MS deviated from the spec (de facto, governed by Sun) Sun was able to get them to stop. Sun put the smack down on MS for trying to make MS-specific changes to MS's implementation of Java. This would have resulted in people developing for MS-Java thinking they were developing for Java, and then having issues when trying to get their code to "run anywhere" besides MS OSs.
With CLR/.NET there's no one to sue Microsoft when they go and take what is touted as being an open spec and change their implementation of it. That will lead to
Or am I wrong? Is there any legal way to punish MS for the type of mischief they tried with Java/JVM and that I predict they will try with CLR/.NET?
I for one am fed up of seeing so many anti-.Net posts by people who cant seem to see beyond "it's Microsoft, therefore it must be evil". The software industry, as I see it, is moving more and more towards web-services and Internet-connected programs, and it seems to me quite possible that in 5 years time, a large portion of the programs people run and use on a daily basis will be managed (CLR, JVM etc.) programs.
.Net is probably going to become vital if Linux/Open Source wants to remain a serious competitor to Microsoft. Will companies continue running their servers on Linux if they can't run .Net servlets on it? Will the relatively few Desktop Linux users continue using it if they cant access the sites that run on .Net?
I see a lot of posts here in this article by people who seem convinced that Ximian/Mono/GNOME is now evil because it has a vague link to Microsoft, but it seems to me that support for
Consider also, that the Microsoft CLR _is_ a managed bytecode system in exactly the same way that the Java JVM is. If companies start migrating to writing managed programs rather than native ones, it instantly solves one of the key problems that Linux faces - the lack of Applications available.
Ximian isnt evil. They're making something which is quite possibly vital for the future of Open Source Software.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Why is it so easy to hate members of the "Linux community"? Is it because they are the whiniest bunch of computer users ever? Is it because they kick and scream like the children they are when they don't get their way? Is it because they are just fucking stupid? I don't really know which one to pick. Two years ago Linux geeks were complaining about not getting corporate support. Now they are complaining about actually having corporate support. Now when somebody suggests they have a method to interact with the rest of the world they kick and scream because the great satan was the one who came up with the buzz words. What the fuck?
.NET system is based around stateless XML based RPC methods. This is a GOOD THING for interoperability. As long as you conform to the SOAP your program can talk with another program not matter what sort of machine it is running on or where it is running. A common runtime for languages isn't so bad either. You can write a program on any architecture and run it on any other architecture that has a compliant runtime environment and bytecode translator. Don't use the CLR if you wahnt to preserve certain functionality for a given language. It would be cool though to be able to write apps for GNOME that would run on any OS and architecture that has the CLR compliant GNOME libraries. No recompiling required. A house that does all C/C++ development doesn't need to learn Java in order to write a program they can sell to just about anybody running just about any computer. Just because the idea proposed by microsoft doesn't make it evil. In fact I'd say Miguel is doing the GNU thing by writing a free implimentation of non-free software. This is what the whole GNU crap is about. Slashdotters seem too fucking stupid to understand this point.
Miguel de Icaza wanting to add real functionality to Linux is not a damning offence. Half the fucking posts on this thread seem to think Miguel is off his rocker or Bill Gates' bitch or something. That is just fucking retarded. He's a damn good programmer who knows Linux is way behind the times when it comes to interacting with the real business world. Stateful RPC methods need to hit the road. They don't fit into topologies where you have multiple servers behind a single address that are all processing requests for the sake up upping your throughput. Stuff like the LVSP isn't going to work with FTP or rsh connections though works well with HTTP. XML based RPC (or any stateless RPC method) are much more efficient in modern networks because I don't need to fuck with my external network configuration to add capacity. SOAP and the whole
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.