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Linuxworld Fun
The Linuxworld Expo is now in full swing, and there's a variety of news. The BBC has an overview. Microsoft has a booth at the Expo in the section intended for "new, up-and-coming companies". Sun is rolling out servers running Linux. And VA Software - Slashdot's owner - is moving Sourceforge.net to IBM's database software.
"Just please don't ignore us."
For how many years did they pretend like they ignored us while plotting certain death?
Until that booth has "MS Office TUX" I have no desire to see them at the Expo.
While some may scoff at such a question, even the most basic DB2 documentation stresses the importance of keeping transactions short, due to limited resources for row-level locking and the dire effects of lock promotion on concurrency.
Conversely, Tom Kyte in his first book stresses that Oracle provides an unlimited number of row-level locks (by storing the locks on disk), and never promotes a lock.
Now, obviously, people have gotten DB2 to scale, since it powers some very large databases. I have an interest (and certifications) in both systems, but I can't help but wonder what sort of tricks must be played with the database to overcome concurrency issues with memory-based lock structures - does this require a 64-bit address space even for a moderately-sized db?
You move from free to expensive software "VA Software, whose roots lie in the open-source world of Linux, is trying to move more toward proprietary software in an effort to boost its revenue", and your share price doubles? "VA Software's shares surged by more than 50 percent on the news, rising 42 cents to $1.24 in early trading"
What gives?
Get your own free personal location tracker
It's also possible that IBM will get to use SourceForge On-Site at no or low cost.
Not that I've heard anything, just idle speculation...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Ok, I think this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. First it was the poor site interface, then it was the auto-download system, and now this converting to DB2. Sourceforge offically now sucks in my book. I wish everyone would start moving their projects off sourceforge.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
since the representative said that he thinks all users want is ease of use "out of the box" and not flexibility, then porting, say, microsoft office to linux would make some people happy, and at the same time not harm microsoft, because linux is supposedly NOT easy to use out of the box.
obviously, i disagree. i have had enough fun with windows video drivers that don't work causing the screen to be black, but since EVERYTHING is gui, i can't do anything about it, which means i need to reinstall. can i switch back to vga? NO. but that is besides the point. frankly, linux comes with far more out of the box than windows ever will. but that is besides the point.
if microsoft is bold enough to say that their operating system is easier to use, and then appear at linuxworld, i think they should at least be bold enough to port some software (as a software vendor not, operating system creator) to prove their point. it seems they are kissing up to linux geeks to pull some PR move or some other unpredictable stunt.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
From Netcraft:
The site www.linuxworldexpo.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98.
It makes a lot more sense if there's plans for IBM to buy VA - in a M$/Hotmail sorta way.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Flexibility is a layer of experience that the user can be isolated from. Just look at Mac OS X, it is nice and flexible underneath, but moron-simple on top. Give KDE and GNOME a couple more years, and maybe they'll get there too.
Assuming from the context that you use "free" to mean "no cost" (i.e. free as in beer), just try a little logic on for size:
A company gives their core product away for free to anyone. Revenue: $0.00.
(or)
A company sells their product at $x. Revenue: $x * [num_customers].
Now, granted, if the company doesn't sell any copies of its software, the revenue for both situations comes out to $0.00. But, by selling just a single copy, the company would have made a mathematically infinite amount of money more than if they had given it away for free (any amount over 0 is, by basic definition, an infinite multiple of 0).
And in VA's case, they *have* been selling their software to some pretty large customers.
Now, which of those two situations above do you think an investor would prefer his money to be associated with?
I honestly don't understand the bitching and moaning I read from ungrateful sods (this is not targeted at you -- I'm entering rant mode here) that want to start a holy war against VA for selling a proprietary version of SourceForge. VA still runs SourceForge.net as a *free* service to any Open Source project that wants to make use of the wonderful services available there. VA provides the community with free web hosting, CVS, bug tracking, mailing lists, forums, etc. They have compile farms for you to test your software out on platforms you very likely would never have access to otherwise. And yet, people bitch that they can't download SourceForge Enterprise Edition for free.
How many of the people that make use of SourceForge.net as a free service would really want to have to hire a full time admin to install, configure and manage a local SourceForge instance? Not to mention the purchase of all the servers and paying the bandwidth bills and colocation. How many of those projects would be able to afford a setup that would provide them with all the systems in VA's compile farm? Would they be able to get the exposure they currently do by being on SF.net?
I wish I could kill -9 all the pathetic assholes that complain incessantly about VA's *free* SourceForge.net because it isn't Free enough for them.
Which would be better?
a) VA sells SourceForge Enterprise Edition (running on PostgreSQL, DB2 and/or Oracle -- customer's choice) to make their money. Using that money, they continue to provide SF.net for *free* to the community of Open Source developers that have nowhere near the resources necessary to provide themselves with the same services (or the money to pay for it elsewhere).
(or)
b) VA Frees everything, continues to lose money, eventually goes bankrupt and is forced to completely, and very abruptly, shut down SF.net, leaving tens of thousands of Open Source developers out in the cold because some ass nuggets thought SF.net/SourceForge weren't Free enough.
In closing, I have one thing to say to these same people (again, this is not directed at the person to whose post I am replying -- I'm still in rant mode):
Start your own company that will provide *every* service VA currently does through SF.net without compromising on a single feature -- including developing all of these resources yourself (no cheating by using an earlier GPL'ed version of SF), providing the compile farms, etc. or
Shut the fuck up and show a little god damned appreciation for everything VA has done, and continues to do, for the Open Source community.
And, just in case you are wondering, I am *not* affiliated with SourceForge or SourceForge.net.
You don't want to use Visual Studio, don't use it. Don't begrudge the SlashDot crew the opportunity to make some money, however. Do you want to pay for the privelege of using this site, a la Salon? Didn't think so.
t ml ] to see the positive spin this is all getting from the mainstream tech press. ...and, what, you think only MS-hating Linux-geeks frequent SlashDot? It ain't 1999 anymore. If you've been paying attention, you'll note this site is going a bit more mainstream in both the tech-news, the news-news, and the membership's postings. And with C-NET, et. al. going bankrupt, more power to 'em!
For this reason, I took it as a sign this place would be around for a while to come. Money makes the world go 'round, Ace. Count on the juvenile knee-jerk-anti-MS epithets to get modded into the sub-basement as Chairman Gates picks up more and more of the weekly pizza lunches. Small price to pay, I'm figuring.
Whoever thought up the idea of MS having a booth at Linux World is a friggin' genius, and is probably getting a big bonus right about now. You need look no further than today's WIRED [ http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,54489,00.h
When Houston comments on Microsoft's desire to learn from Linux by emulating the high degree of developer participation, I'm reminded of something Stalin supposedly wrote.
To build up their industries Stalin urged the beseiged Russian people to supplement their serious, industrious Russian characteristics with American style positive thinking. Apparently he wanted to borrow just that one little bit of American culture, to overcome Slavic fatalism and make his people unstoppable.
Of course it's all well and good to desire such a thing, but that doesn't amount to much. The Gatesists at Microsoft want their Windows community to maintain the things that "made them great", but with the addition of that communal participatory element of the Open Source culture. It just ain't gonna happen. They sure make some pretty tools, but I don't want to use them...