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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".
What's wrong with this is that we're intermingling Open Source and vehemently Closed Source ideologies. This isn't making us a serious contender; this is making us a white flag waving wannabe. Yes, we want intercompatibility, but not because we've adopted our foundation from a company known for changing public standards and republishing them into a monopoly environment with every year's mandatory upgrades.
.Net initiative, not to be confused with the ".net" top level domain, is still bound to a company with a long and thriving history of imposing itself on everything it touches. I don't trust their HTML, let alone their XML, let alone their fill-in-the-blank that's supposed to be "open" and "cross-platform". I'd rather work in an environment where my desktop won't just be 'poof' expensive, closed source, and reporting home to a monopoly every time I open a web page or a file manager. Microsoft's "beautiful security model" has landed them more exploits and holes than a block of swiss cheese with telnet, plus an FBI warning. No thanks. Not for me. Not in a million years. No offense intended, but I don't see what's "right" about this.
Microsoft's
-j
I'm with you. I don't understand why Linux getting into the business world is a bad thing. I have to assume it is because there are still too many people that want Linux to remain the domain of geekdom. Personally, I look forward to Linux picking up steam and getting seriously entrenched in the business world. It will make it easier for me to bring in more tools that work on Linux - "Hey, we already have the system, I just have to download the source and build it." I've been getting so much resistance to putting in Linux based anything, that I can't see Linux getting serious as a bad thing.
RagManX
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.
I agree with previous posters, though, that there's a resistance from Linux backers to allow "big business" to become involved in Linux for fear that their exclusive club won't be so exclusive anymore. What they fail to notice is that some companies (I won't name them due to my personal bias) are making some solid contributions to the Linux community, without co-opting it. Not every company is building a giant space laser to take over the world, you know ;-)
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?