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New York Times Staff Editorial Promoting Linux
cotyledon writes "Today's New York Times editorial (Free Blah-Di-Blah) describes Linux as good for consumers and good for programmers. It recommends "Government units abroad and in the United States and individual computer users should look for ways to support Linux and Linux-based products. The competition it offers helps everyone." This is the paper's opinion, btw, and not a guest columnist."
Ha-... huh?
Not that I object, but this seems like an odd thing for the NYT to just come out and say. "...the possibility of invading Iraq. By the way, Linux r0xx0rs. In other news..."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Now, if we can get BusinessWeek or the Wall Street Journal to start saying things like "...businesses should begin investigating Linux to remain cost competitive", the C*O's in America would start herding over to Linux (regardless of its merits and/or limitations, but that's another story).
I've not come here to bash Linux in any way shape or form, but...
There is no doubt that Linux supports the cause of breaking the MS monopoly (a good thing, whether or not MS itself is bad..that's not a debate I'm about to start). It's good for the industry, it is definitely a nice operating system for servers, programmers, and sophisticated computer users.
But Linux (in my opinion, at any rate) is NOT appropriate for the consumer as the articticle claims. The average American (and probably European too, but I can't say) consumer can run word, e-mail, the web, e-mail, and probably a few games. They are blissful on Windows, have no desire to switch over and dont really know about (nor do they care about) the Windows vs. *nix vs. whatever.
Until Linux comes to a level of user-friendliness much more advanced than it's at now, Linux is not going to enter the general consumer market. The programs are not what people are familliar to, it's not supported by ISPs and a lot of technical help groups, the installation is still complicated (we're talking about people who generally have neither the ability nor desire to so much as reinstall Windows), and neither the CLI (obviously) nor the major interfaces (Gnome, KDE, etc.) are really as user friendly and simple to use as Windows.
I generally like the NYT, but I wish they'd put a little more general thought into some issues.
Logic is the ultimate device.
From the article:
If Linux spreads, Microsoft could see the first real challenge to its dominance of the operating-system software market.
It would be nice if the writer suggested why Linux has the potential spread where others, most notably MacOS, have so far been steamrolled. Instead, MacOS isn't touched on, and we aren't given any new arguments why Linux could succeed on the desktop.
It's great to see Linux being taken seriously by the Times but it would be better still to see this editorial add something fresh to the pro-Linux argument.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Does ANYONE really care what an editor of a newspaper thinks? About ANYTHING? In my experience, reporters are probably some of the least informed, least intelligent, laziest people in any profession. I don't know anyone who looks at the editorial section to see what "The Editor" thinks.
Maybe I'm just unusual, but I just don't imagine that hoards of people are going to think that some NY Times editor is an expert on technology (or anything for that matter, other than editing).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Man, all they ask is that you register and answer a few damn questions, all of which you can opt out on.
/. does *not* promote this utility which ultimately fills the NYT db with garbage. You know what happens when they finally get pissed off? bye bye free registration.
I'm glad that
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The article wasn't saying "Linux is good for the consumer" in the sense that "everybody with a computer should go install Linux now". All the article is saying is that if Linux can offer challenge and competition to the Microsoft monopoly, that THIS would be good for the consumer. For example, presumably if Linux starts making inroads into corporate desktops Microsoft will lower the price of some of their products (if nothing else). Better yet, maybe we'll see more interoperability between the MS, Apple, and Unix worlds, which would also be good for "consumers". Don't try to force what the paper said into such a narrow-minded view.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but doesn't the line "Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company" mean anything here?
Quite seriously, regardless of your personal beliefs regarding intellectual property rights and wrongs, and subscription news services: How is it that we pat a news organization on the back for paying lip service to our favorite operating system, and then infringe on their copyrights?
Linux has had more success than Microsoft in the embedded space. It's giving Microsoft a run for its money in the server space - at least keeping market share away from Microsoft, if not actively grabbing it. It completely dominates in the supercomputer space, where Microsoft has no presence. So far, Linux has had very little impact in the desktop space, but that seems likely to change over the long term.
Over time, it's actually very likely that Microsoft's traditional sources of revenue will erode significantly, because of Linux and open source in general. Office suites are a case in point: on the one hand, you have Microsoft experimenting with licensing schemes where they try to charge consumers $100's per year for the use of their product, while on the other hand, you have very competitive free alternatives that have been improving at a dramatic rate and are increasingly being noticed by organizations ranging from the governments of the U.S., Germany, and Peru, to colleges and companies with specialize needs. If Microsoft fails to get the world to switch to an office-suite-as-service model, and I think they will fail, Linux and open source will have played a big role in that.
That doesn't mean Microsoft is doomed. But they'll be forced to focus on and stick to spaces where they can compete effectively against "free" software - such as the big business world, where the consultants you can deploy are at least as important as the out-of-the-box software you provide.
In fact, Microsoft has been moving "upmarket" in this sense for a long time, which is one reason they began losing the support of small developers and companies: back when it sold DOS and early versions of Windows, Microsoft needed all the support it could get, and big business treated it as a minor side issue; now, big business loves Microsoft, and vice versa. If you're not a Fortune 1000 company, you're effectively little but a potential annoyance to Microsoft, a source of revenue that can't be supported in a cost-effective way.
Because of this, you can expect to see small business moving to Linux also, in servers to start with but later for workstations also, as Microsoft products become less and less suitable (Exchange, anyone?) and Linux becomes more and more off-the-shelf and automated (a la Red Hat network.)
In short, the New York Times is a little behind the times - they're acknowledging a grassroots trend that has been building for years, and that is already a reality. But they're quite timely in another sense, in that the effectiveness of Linux as a competitor to Microsoft has only just begun. It's only been four years since the Halloween documents opened many people's eyes to Linux, and the landscape has changed dramatically since then. Check back in 2006, and see how Microsoft has changed as a result. My bet is it'll be dramatic, although the specifics are hard to predict.
That's funny, I don't remember infringing on any of their copyrights.
And how the hell can you say "regardless of your personal beliefs regarding intellectual property rights and wrongs"? Those beliefs seem to me like they would be pretty important in how you treat all copyrights, not just the copyrights of articles you agree/disagree with.
Life is too short to proofread.
But you're a bigger capitalist than they are. They've bought into a monopoly -- the antithesis of a free-market economy. You have supported an open system which fosters free-market competition -- many distributions in competition, window managers in competition, and a huge number of apps that help non-Linux-centric businesses gain an advantage over proprietary competitors.
Linux is capitalism. Great ideas flourish, bad ideas are trounced, poorly marketed but technically superior ideas are salvaged from the source code of dead dot-coms. You're a fucking patriot.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Now, return to Open Source. If there is a mistake in the code, you and you personally are to blame, and everybody on the whole planet knows, because it says "stratjakt" right in the program. You're afraid that your peers will snicker and point, your mother will cry, and your wife will run away because she can't stand the shame. A coding error at a big company is a "problem requiring prompt service to our respected consumers", but Open Source is as personal as a punch in the guts, and you can't avoid dealing with it by playing office games. Your code, your glory; and your mistake, your blemish.
So the question of why Open Source is and will be superior on the long run to Closed Source comes down to one simple factor: Human nature. The Free Market works because it harnesses greed; Free Software works because it harnesses pride.