Interview with Joseph Cheek of Lycoris

Glykoriza writes "Lots of talk lately about the future of Linux in the desktop. Red Hat wants to have a piece of the pie, while Lindows seems to do well too. Lycoris seems to do great as well, they released their latest beta a few days ago, and they have already made deals with retailers, like Fry's. OSNews hosts an interview with Lycoris' CTO and founder, Joseph Cheek."

Comments

the name lycoris

[Drunken Coward]

The name lycoris always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry can't remember the woman's name, but knows it rhymes with a part of a woman's body, so he guess that it is Mulva. It turns out her name was Dolores, but it could just as well been Lycoris- I think it rhymes even better!

What the interview didn't bring up...

[captain_scarecrow]

is that Mr. Cheek announced in the Lycoris forum sometime back that Lycoris, following the lead of Caldera, is going to per-seat licensing for business use- thus joining the ranks of those selling Linux outright.

That's really too bad, it had a lot of promise for that niche.

Re:What the interview didn't bring up...

[Veteran]

I'll try to explain what it is that other people are seeing that causes them to have a different perspective than you have got.

I have long heard the argument that the reason that owners get to keep the majority of the money in a company is that they are taking all of the risks - so that they get to keep the rewards.

But what exactly is the risk that a business owner takes? The answer is: if things don't work out he will wind up as poor as his employees and have to go to work for somebody else. That is not a risk for an employee - that is an iron clad guarantee!

The thousands of employees at Microsoft who did all of the actual work of creating the code are not together worth as much as Bill Gates. People who think that is OK - do so because they have greed and larceny in their hearts; they want to be able to steal from their employees the way that Gates and millions of others have stolen from theirs. When your highest morality is "I can get away with it" you will create a structure that lets you get away with it. Heaven forbid that you should treat your employees ethically.

In a sense the people who write software know that their time is practically worthless - so some of us have decided to become software philanthropists and give our code away - we really have little to lose in doing so; the 'Bill Gates' of the world are going to replace us with hordes of cheap programmers from third world countries in any case.

Mostly we give our code away because we love programming, and we want good software to always be available, but a small part of our motivation is malicious: in response to the way that we have been treated we want to say to the 'Bill Gates' of the world "You want to treat us like dirt? Fine, asshole, try competing with something that costs nothing."

Do you now understand why we might find it objectionable to see business men trying to exploit programmers work by something like 'per seat licensing'?

Where can I Dowload a free Lindows ISO?

[DanThe1Man]

This is not a question to Joseph Cheek, but to the linux community reading /..

It said in the article about Lindows:
LindowsOS is based on a distribution of Linux, which is covered by a license that requires it to be made freely available for modification and redistribution. However, a system designer who used an unlicensed version of LindowsOS would not be able to use Lindows.com's logo or join the LindowsOS Certification program, and would receive no technical support.

So, where can I download a free Lindows ISO without the logo?

On the subject of Lindows

[DaneelGiskard]

Did anyone yet take a closer look on them? Is everything they do in accordance to the respective licenses? I know that they are using a lot of GPL programs, but the only source code I can find is here

http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categori es . hp?category=29

and it doesn't seem to be much.

Also, one can only download (often GPL'd) software from them if he pays them a fee to access this software

http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categori es . hp

is that ok too?

Don't get me wrong. I'm a linux enhtusiast too and would love if linux finally came to the desktop and I would also love seeing a company making money with desktop linux...but I have a strange feeling about the legality of what lindows does....can anyone enlighten me? Or just join the discussion?

History repeats itself

[pieterh]

This reminds me so much of the period before Win3.0 came out. Lots of companies making valiant efforts to produce the 'best desktop'. IIRC, Microsoft beat them all largely because it produced VB and with it, a way for millions of amateur developers to make Windows applications.

I remember using GEOS, a GUI that kicked Windows' ass mightily. I remember trying to find tools to build GEOS applications. Zilch.

Today, Windows is totally out of reach of amateur developers. It is one of the most complex development environments imaginable. And Microsoft seems to be heading at full speed towards even more complexity with every new technology it brings out.

This creates a wonderful opportunity. Instead of aiming for 'end users', Linux desktops should aim at amateur developers who want a free and simple workbench for writing the kinds of applications that made Windows 3.1 rule the world.
Imagine a really simple programming environment for excellent web applications, running on a database that is as easy to use as Access, with as many widgets as you can dream of.

This is the kind of thing that will start the revolution. Not cheaper Window-like boxes.

Re:History repeats itself

[Veteran]

Did Geos kick Window's ass? Oh yes, Geos was written in 8086 assembler - it was much tighter and faster than Windows, and a total embarrassment to Microsoft. Even had Geos released the API it would have been out of reach of most developers - professional or otherwise; most programmers can't write applications in assembly. Because of the 640 K non protected mode limit on OS and applications, the programs would have needed to be either very elementary or written in assembly to fit. (It would have been possible to do something with LIM memory to have paged non running programs out to additional memory the way Lotus paged out sections of 123.)

At the time Geos was started it was a good idea; there were many 808X computers in use that did not have protected mode available so there was a much bigger market for a Geos type system than for something which used protected mode. By the time it hit the market the situation had changed: many people had 286's or better with protected mode capabilities.

Windows existed as a non protected mode version before 3.0 but it was a useless flop. It wasn't until a (286) protected mode version of Windows was made that it became successful.

Remember that a protected mode operating system from Microsoft had existed for a considerable period of time: OS/2. The main reason that OS/2 didn't win is that its DOS computability was very poor, and that few people had written apps for the GUI; so the perception of the public was that you couldn't do much with it. Microsoft created the perception in the minds of the public that Windows had better DOS computability and that there were more programs for Windows.

Inside of Microsoft everybody knew the reality: which was that OS/2 was far superior to Windows as an operating system - after all Microsoft had written most of OS/2. With Windows, Microsoft saw a chance to cut IBM off at the knees; which they did. Had people's perceptions come closer to reality Windows would have been dismissed as a poor joke and OS/2 would have won the day.

Microsoft knows from experience (reinforced with W95 vs OS/2 Warp) that inferior products can win in the market place as long as the public doesn't know that they are inferior. Microsoft knows that no matter how good any variant of Linux actually is as long as people perceive that Windows is better that they are home free. For example Red Hat is easier to install than Windows - but most people don't know that because they don't install Windows.

When your perceptions match reality it is difficult to see the world from the perspective of the vast majority of humanity - who live in the reality distortion field which caused by a lack of understanding.

The Linux community is faced with a fundamental problem: the difficulty of raising the educational level of the masses to a sufficient level that they can understand the reality of Linux vs Microsoft; as Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated a plausible lie is a much easier sell than an implausible truth.

Re:History repeats itself

[Art Tatum]

This creates a wonderful opportunity. Instead of aiming for 'end users', Linux desktops should aim at amateur developers who want a free and simple workbench for writing the kinds of applications that made Windows 3.1 rule the world.

You are talking about GNUstep. For many years, the OpenStep API and development tools have been far superior to *anything* else in the Windows or UNIX world. The GNUstep project has already got usable alpha clones of the NeXT development tools that are a joy to work with. Take a look at this mail client developed quickly with GNUstep tools. It runs on GNUstep platforms and Mac OS X.

The GNUstep project is actively tracking the additions made to Cocoa (what Apple decided to call OpenStep after buying NeXT).

GNUstep frameworks and applications will build on most UNIXes, on Mac OS X (obviously), and win32 platforms. Support for the GUI backend is Alpha on win32 but is progressing.

GNUstep has a database framework much like NeXT's Enterprise Object Framework and a web development system much like WebObjects. Also available is a 3D framework, music and sound frameworks, a networking framework, an email framework, and others.

Like Apple, you can write your applications in Objective C or Java. Unlike Apple, the GNUstep project provides several other language options: Ruby, Guile, and other scripting languages by way of StepTalk.

Funny claim...

[gentix]

The article claims that "Red Hat is warming to the use of the Linux operating system on desktop computers, a difficult market where customers are picky and Microsoft is the leader."

Most customers aren't that picky, but just go along with the mainstream of users and do not understand the power of open source systems such as Linux. The majority just wants text processing software, solitaire, and some internet capabilities, and seem to think Microsoft software is user friendly and Linux software is complex as hell. If customers were in fact picky, Microsoft would have a very hard time competing with these open source software systems, since they provide more stability and speed at much lower cost. How's that for user-friendly? Easy of use is becoming less of an issue in later distributions of Linux and and you don't have these big-brother issues as with XP and the coming Palladium...

No, customers being "picky" hasn't got much to do with it, but many customers are just ignorant.

How user friendly is it to have to push "start" in order to shut down a computer anyway?

Re:What makes Fry's special?

[mccalli]

Can they really do better than Dell, Gateway, or any other dedicated system builder who has attempted to provide Linux systems and given up?

Yes.

People can see the OS first, rather than just picking a drop-down off some web site. Besides, although I don't know about Gateway Dell buried their offering so deep it was almost impossible to find on the site. You had to go in via some special URL - if you just went through to order a laptop via the normal route, you wouldn't have ever seen Linux as an option.

Also, as far as I remember, the Linux option was actually made more expensive on Dell machines than buying a Windows license.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:What makes Fry's special?

[zandermander]

Dear Obvious Guy,

Obviously you've never been to Fry's. They are a California-based electronics chain but far, far better than CompUSA, Best Buy, Radio Shack....

I have had the pleasure of living near a Fry's for 9 months and, basically, it is a Slashdotter's wet dream. You name it geeky/gadget/electronic/radio/software... they've got it.

I hope you too one day have the chance to visit a Fry's.

Customers (MIS depts) or users?

[crovira]

Users, being stuck in the office on nice days, having to schlep to the office on nasty ones, occasionally confronting the BSoD, having to put up with their idiot colleagues, Hell, having to work at all, have no love for M$ or much of anything else work related.

M$ may not be kidding itself about that but I suspect that the reality distortion field around Bill Gates these days makes the one around Steve Jobs look like clear-eyed, realistic pragmatism.

Users don't like M$. The great majority of them hate it. Its work.

Customers, the OEM who just want to shove boxes out the door and make enough dough to pay the rent and DP/MIS/IT deparments, on the other hand are applying the same rules that gave rise to M$ in the first place:
1) nobody ever got fired for buying IBM quickly followed by
2) nobody ever got fired for saving money which created the clones, and M$.

Usability was a secondary concern at the time. Remember all those books about DOS and the command line?

Visicalc opened the office door, Lotus 123 swept in followed by WordPerfect and M$ became an expert at ripping off other people's IP.

And nothing much has happened since except in niches like desktop publishing, graphics, (now Apple is doing it again with video editing,) email and the web which didn't depend on M$ in the first place.

Given the downward direction of the ROI and upward direction of the acquisition and support costs of an M$ box, M$ will disappear when Linux becomes just "good enough." Not even, uh, "Insanely Great," but just good enough.

OpenOffice, a free OS that any MSCE can install on existing boxes to extend their usable life (even by a single year,) and cheap site-wide licences will destroy M$ on the desktop almost as quickly as the switch to the x86 destroyed Digital Research, who never made it off the -80 architecture.

The switch to a new architecture on the server side is starting to worry M$ too since they have nothing real ported to it anyway. (NT in x86 emulation on the Itanium architecture? Naw, I think, we'll go Unix or Linux.)

I should be smelling fear from Redmond but since M$ has billions in the bank and can survive a change in course, in direction and in what sea they swim in, they won't disappear.