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The Future Of The 2.0 Linux Kernel
An Anonymous Reader writes: "The first 2.0 stable kernel was released over six years ago, in June of 1996. It was followed by the 2.2 stable kernel two and a half years later, in January of 1999. The more recent 2.4 stable kernel followed by two years in January of 2001. And the upcoming 2.6 kernel is at least a year off.
Through all these years, 2.0 has continued to be maintained, currently up to revision 2.0.39, also released in January of 2001. David Weinehall maintains this kernel, and says, "there _are_ people that still use 2.0 and wouldn't consider an upgrade the next few years, simply because they know that their software/hardware works with 2.0 and have documented all quirks. Upgrading to a newer kernel-series means going through this work again."
Read the full story here."
-klerck
DTABN
October 15, 1996
Like a bowl of fresh fruit suddenly alone in the Arctic night, like a
killer under arrest for an unrelated misdemeanor, like a flightless bird
thrown up into the air by a cruel child, like an abandoned car in the
middle of a huge, empty parking lot, like a juggler dreaming of being
tied down, like a young priest watching porn in th eearly morning, I sit
in my booth and decide nothing.
Hanging: Two problems with this... First of all it's boring. I mean, God, there's no excitement in just hanging there! Second, it could be somewhat painful. Choking to death doesn't exactly turn me on. Of course, I could auto-erotically asphyxiate myself to death, I suppose.
Shooting: This seems to be the way I will likely go. It's quick, it's (hopefully) painless, and very messy which means very exciting! The only problem I have with this is that everybody seems to go out this way these days. Kurt Cobain, Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway... the list goes on. Do I really want to be known as just another guy who shot himself?
Jumping: Again, two problems... It's not certain unless I jump from something really high, and in my area, the tallest buildings are only two stories. Second, even though I am clearly highly suicidal, what if I suddenly change my mind right after I jump? At least with the other two, I don't have time to think about it!
Please, give me your suggestions, and I will take them to heart. Then, I will finally have a happy and successful suicide.
Regards,
klerck
DTABN
DTABN
DTABN
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DTABN
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He began to eat the sheep feces. In fact, HE FINISHED EVERY LAST BIT! My brother ate sheep shit!!!
But the funny thing is, I don't even have a brother! It was me! I ATE SHEEP SHIT!!!
DTABN
DTABN
2.0, a kernel whose last revision was out in January of 2001, "continues to be maintained", according to you?
Something that hasn't been updated in a year and a half counts as "maintained" in your book?
2.0 is pretty much dead.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
In the early 1870s, Francis Zefran became the first penis bird breeder in North America. He started his famous Penis Bird Ranch in Canton, OH. At the time, not much was known of the penis bird's nutritional value, but the Penis Bird Ranch changed all of that. Not only did Francis Zefran raise penis birds to sell their colorful plumes (a VERY lucrative business), he also set up the world's first research lab dedicated solely to the study of the penis bird.
The lab found many interesting things. First, it was discovered that thepenis bird was actually semi-sentient. Second, the scientists found that the meat of the penis bird was high in protein, vitamin A, vitamin B, and calcium, while low in fat, cholestorol, and sodium. Never before had such a nutritious meal been had without supplement or fortification. The scientists of the lab recommended immediately that the penis bird become a part of every American's daily diet.
When the news of the penis bird's usefulness reached president Rutherford B. Hayes, he was absolutely ecstatic. You see, President Hayes owed a number of favors to Francis Zefran because as I said earlier, the penis bird plume trade was an extremely lucrative business and Mr. Zefran was important in getting RBH elected through a number of monetary gifts. President Hayes immediately asked Congress to pass what we all know today as the Hayes/Zefran Penis Bird Consumption Act.
The act did a number of things to make the penis bird a daily meal, most important of which was the requirement that for every four people in a household, one penis bird must consumed every day. Another thing the act did was create an artificial monopoly for Francis Zefran's Penis Bird Industries. The act stated that the only supplier of penis bird meat in the US would be PBI. As one would imagine, this quickly made Francis Zefran into the richest man in the world. He was soon a multi-billionaire (quadrillionaire with today's inflation). Never before had a single man seen such wealth.
Many challenges were made to the Hayes/Zefran Penis Bird Consumption Act, and several even made it the Supreme Court. It was argued that the act was unconstitutional and went against liberty itself, but once the detractors tasted delicious penis bird meat for the first time, they immediately dropped their cases and followed the law to the letter. We all know today that penis bird is the most delicious meat man has ever known, but at that time, the only meats people ate were pork and beef.
In the early 1970s, though, challenges to the act began again. Many argued that the monopoly given to Penis Bird Industries by the act was in all ways unamerican. The Supreme Court finally agreed, and in 1974, Section II of the act was struck down. This in effect opened the market to competition for all.
Today, Penis Bird Industries is almost no more. Today we have the market leader Penis Bird Meat International facing against Penissoft, a recent startup. Where will the future lead the penis bird market? Only time will tell us, but one thing is certain: penis birds are here to stay!
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DTABN
The point is not that everyone should maintain their own source code; the point is that if there are enough people interested in keeping it around, it will stay around. You're not at the mercy of your monopolistic vendor's business plans.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
DTABN
By doing all this shit, you've made it clear that the trolls have won. Now you've got your little janitors running around the place wasting mod points, when before everything was easy -- the trolls had their place. I find "on by" et al. to be bloody funny sometimes, so let's get back to the nice world where your little Slashbots post their lame messages, and I can enjoy the trolls.
I agree with this post.
That's not correct. You're assuming that a vendor's sole interest in a product is whether there is sufficient interest to continue to sell it. A proprietary vendor might want to force you to upgrade, even when your current software environment is exactly what you need.
Now, why would a vendor do something that is against their customer's interest? Easy: they are only interested in their customer's interest as long as that is in *their* interest. For example, let's say an OS vendor has struck a huge deal with entertainment industries to package and deliver their customers via a "secure operating system" that protects digital media. The vendor stands to gain for every customer they get on board, and they *lose* money for every customer who chooses to stay with their current OS.
In monopoly situations, the vendor's old product is actually a *competitor* to its new product. It has to kill off its own older software in order to generate new sales from the same customers.
And why would a customer go along with this coercion? Because they have a large investment in the vendor's platform and the cost to switch is prohibitive. Or, in a monopoly situation, the customer may simply have no other realistic choice.
How could the vendor actually leverage the customer to accede to their desires? By drying up supply; by refusing to burn more copies; witholding support; by fixing prices to make it prohibitive to resist; by no longer fixing security flaws as they're discovered; etc.
Now if we look at the previous poster's comments we see that open source has no remedy whatsoever. If there aren't enough people to warrant keeping a product alive in the marketplace, then why should hackers continue to support their "product" when so few people use it?
You still don't get it - with proprietary software, the vendor can kill a product even if (under normal conditions) there IS enough interest to keep it alive! And the fundamental fact remains: If the source code is available, you CAN actually pay someone to maintain the code. Regardless of whether you or anyone else thinks it's economically viable, any single person to whom it's worth it to do so, can keep the code alive.
There is sort of a mythical maintenance belief going on in the open source crowd. Many seem to believe that just because software is still sitting on a web page or ftp that it is still maintained and updated (or even worthy of a download).
I don't know anyone who believes that. There are scads of projects that are started, abandoned, die deserved deaths and are forgotten. That's certainly not unique to open source software. The difference is - even if you're the *only guy in the world* who wants a copy of that code, you can get it. Software houses with failed closed source projects just don't hand out their failures to the three or four people who might be mildly interested.
Open source software has no greater value than proprietary, if the code is worthless to the user. This is the reason so much is rewritten and so many wheels recreated in open source camp.
It's rewritten if the developer chooses to rewrite. If he wants to borrow someone else's code, he can.
My point of this is: outdated open source is not going to be maintained more than proprietary,
Maybe, maybe not, but with open source, it's the user who decides if it's outdated. Not the vendor.
and in most cases the source code will be worthless to whomever decides to use it.
Huh? If they use it, it's because they find it useful; and if it's useful and they use it, it's not outdated. There's some kind of circular illogic at work here :-)
If only one organization decided to use say, Linux 1.x, then they _could_ maintain it by themselves since no one (I don't think..) maintains that version any longer. But they would have to learn the entire code base and train people to maintain it. In the end, they would have been better off rewritting from scratch--or simply going to the new version.
Again - that may or may not be the case in each particular instance; the main thing is that this is UP TO THE USER.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.