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Can Open Source Save Hardware?
Culexus writes "Tom's Hardware has a interesting story about Open Source saving the hardware industry. Pretty good read all in all. Hopefully chip makers and vendors won't have to bend to the iron might of Microsoft any longer." Some good comments on how early-adopters and enthusiasts are being marginalized by the industry, too.
Was Windows XP Product Activation. This inconviences anyone who changes a lot of their hardware regularly, and many of these folks do. They upgrade to the latest stuff right away, and regularly build whole new computers. It's no fun having to call Microsoft a few times a year to get their permission to run a piece of software that you bought and paid for.
This article makes the assumption that Microsoft is currently or has in the past somehow inhibited hardware vendors. Now, there are all sorts of "hardware vendors," but I would say universally most hardware vendors have bennifited tremendously from Microsoft, especially around Plug 'n Play (once Redmon got it working).
I would say that for many of today's hardware vendors, supporting the Linux OS is more painful than supporting the traditional unix vendors which were difficult enough.
The problem is that there is zilch technical support for linux, outside of the open source community. Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there. Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software and they are leary of giving that away to competitors.
Not to mention, there is no partner marketing bennifits with linux. At least Microsoft promotes its hardware vendors, and comarkets their products with Windows, including them in its collosal marketing machine.
To be fair, the computer world in general has bennifited tremendously from open source. Don't get me wrong: I love linux, gcc, bash, etc. NetBSD has been a huge win for appliance vendors looking for instant-OS.
However, to say generally that hardware vendors are being saved by open source is actually the opposite of what the hardware vendors are really feeling. My experience with every hardware vendor that I've worked with is that Linux and open source is their #1 pain in the butt.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Ok, so THG gets through this week enfuriating the enthusiast community. Posting infomercials labeled as articles, then throws the community this pat yourselves on the back editorial on Open Source? Anyone else find the timing a little suspicious?
See, for example, www.opencores.org.
I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?
Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Open Hardware Project
Enjoy. Most of it's still rather raw, and most of it's based off m68k, so don't expect to run "real" linux on it (uClinux is often the objective though).
I've always thought that a creed of Linux was to do more with less. It's the continual bloat added to Windows that drives the need for new hardware. Linux development strives for more efficiency. The only way Linux could spur sales of high-end hardware in the consumer market would be if they could finally get a stable gaming base. The lack of a killer app for the masses for so long is why most people are content with a $200 PC. They don't need anything better, because that $200 buys a great system.
I think the decline in new tech development will continue, now that most people in North America have a computer, or can afford a cheap one easily. Perhaps hardware manufacturers will concentrate more on useful features and cross-platform compatibility in the future, instead of making stuff faster just for the sake of making it faster.
In other words, what really bugs Tom's Hardware is that nobody cares about Tom's Hardware any more.
Consider "overclocking". Overclocking in the 486 era was marginally useful. Overclocking today belongs in the same category as car stereo loudness competitions.
Open source can, and has, done a lot for server-side hardware. But it just doesn't sell enough iron on the desktop to matter. Look what happened to VA Linux.
The next "must buy" computer thing for consumers will probably be DRM-equipped hardware. They'll need it to run popular games and play popular music. All across America, kids will be screaming at their parents to buy the new "entertainment-ready" computers. Open source will be locked out of that world completely. (Yes, you can write DRM code for Linux. But Vivendi, Universal, and the RIAA aren't going to let the decrypt keys out into the open source world. So all you'll be able to play is off-brand protected content nobody will pay for.)
I'll tell you what pisses off the vast majority of hardware companies:
If a significant number of them act as their customers would like, they will only be able to compete on hardware.
What hardware vendors *should* do is open up the specs to their hardware. If they are especially competitive, fund the development of open source drivers.
The fact is that hardware with well defined and open specs works brilliantly in linux and the BSDs. Thats because the drivers are generally better written, usually because the drivers can share infrastructure and code from drivers from similar hardware, and these drivers are often written by the same people.
Hardware vendors who do not open their specs or write drivers for Linux are writing themselves out of the future.
If a driver is accepted into the mainline kernel, and has an appreciable userbase, its very unlikely that there will be a lot of tech support issues - IF the hardware isn't flaky.
And thats what they hate. A huge amount of vendors make *really* bad hardware. If it becomes known that a bit of hardware works well in linux, more people buy it. As Linux market share increases, *this* PR ( the hardware is actually *good* and *works*) will take over from the MS crap ( the hardware company has some agreement with MS that says *nothing* about the quality of the hardware).
I know which kind of PR I take more seriously.
Don't link to Tom's Hardware anymore Slashdot. This past week they threatened to sue AMDMB.com for defamatory comments.
D =243
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleI
I have to agree. Not only that, the article just plain didn't make sense. I just read it beginning to end, and I still don't have any clear idea what it's supposed to be about. Is it about hardware innovation? Software innovation? Corporate adoption of 64-bit computing? Open source? Enthusiast communities? All of those things are mentioned, but there are no clear lines drawn to connect them.
It's possible that there's a thesis in there somewhere, but the author never actually says what it is. It shows no depth of thought, fails to articulate an argument, and and provides no coherent evidence for any of the points it actually makes. If I were grading this, it'd get a C minus. Maybe a D plus if I was feeling uncharitable.
Have we gone full-circle?
Yes. What makes it more amazing is that MicroSoft itself has forgotten the strategy that made it so popular against the behemoth of the time, IBM. Now, just as IBM did, they want full control; probably, they will lose that control for just the same reasons IBM did.
Furthermore--MicroSoft has forgotten the lesson of "good-enough". Their software may have more capability than Linux--I think it does, especially for end users. However, one of the reasons that MicroSoft won against Apple was that MSFT's offerings were like enough, and good enough, compared to Apple's--but also were cheaper.
Good enough + cheaper=adoption.
Now, Linux is cheaper that MSFT--and it will become "good enough" very soon. Very very soon. And in a down market, people will count their pennies and decide that Linux is good enough for the price, and MSFT loses. So goes my fantasy.
--
$tar -xvf