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The Riches of Open Source
Daniel Dvorkin writes "This BusinessWeek article argues convincingly that Linus Torvalds has more resources at his disposal than Bill Gates. Not only is it a nice overview of Why Open Source Really Matters pitched to a non-technical audience, but it makes a solid argument in favor of OSS in general and Linux in particular, from a solidly capitalist perspective."
I just tried this with Notepad under XP and it does not insert carriage returns. When I changed the window shape, the text reflowed nicely.
Can't comment on earlier versions...
By a factor of seven!
(This pointless comment brought to you by my need to goof off)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Not everybody who uses/contributes to Linux does so out of a burning desire to compete with windows.
Actually the original goal of the free software movement was more like creating an alternative to Unix. At that time I think Windows wasn't even an option. Today you have to compete with Microsoft whether you like it or not. Why? Because Microsoft is putting obstacles in the way of all your development. A lot of Hardware and software is only tested with Windows. Some hardware manufactors only provide Windows drivers, and documentation only to closed source developers. A lot of people try to produce data that can only be read by Windows programs. This is how the world looks today, Microsoft has way too much power already, that is the only reason they can get away with the crap they provide. It is something you simply have to fight, because Microsoft is directly or indirectly responsible for a lot of your problems with Linux, whether you like it or not.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
You are such a tool
Why don't you open your eyes. Get a new perspective of what's really going on
"MS also has many, many manufacturers tripping all over themselves building and testing hardware drivers for their products."
I think most people have no idea how opposite the situation for Linux has always been. The fact that Linux works so well with most modern hardware is amazing to say the least. Linux driver gurus have had to reverse engineer, search hard and long for specs, and beg hardware makers for bits and scraps for information. A few companies give enough info to make a proper driver, a few more provide binary drivers. Most are content to say "go away". Imagine if Linux enjoyed the same hardware support that Windows gets?
Then some kid comes on here and posts how Linux sucks because X piece of hardware wasn't autodected upon install. That's when I just shake my head.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Considering Gates is responsible for BILLIONS of dollars going toward schools, scholarships, charitible work, health care improvements, etc, I highly doubt that.
Well, I would say that the marketing has worked on you. If you look at many of Gates' earlier statements, he doesn't believe in charitable giving or inheritance (or religon for that matter). But, all of these aren't very pallitable for the American populace. Gates' believes that everyone should be self made, and build their own wealth by themselves (I guess he's libertarian then?).
Anyway, Microsoft marketing started to see that he was considered evil by everyone - and most people associated Bill with Microsoft. Now he's got a foundation. A foundation that buys computers in India right after they agree to use Linux. A foundation that buys computers for schools, as long as they lock into Microsoft software. A foundation that offered to give computers to Liberia, but then analysis showed that with all the MS software they had to buy it was cheaper to buy the hardware.
I would hardly call the Gates' Foundation charitable in the traditional sense.
Good lord.
Are you a troll, or are you truely that ignorant?
1 fucking gigabyte just for the OS? That's obscene.
On my system:
XFree: 78Mb
KDE3 w/ libraries: 45M or so
base OS, with all your various GNU tools: 45M or so.
Even if you round up, that's only 180M for a modern operating system. And that's roughly as many things as you'll get for a full install of windows.
Tack on another 110M for OpenOffice. You're still nowhere near 1G. Though you're fairly close to how much space windows took up 5 years ago!
The 650M CD distro you mentioned? Probably knoppix, I'm guessing. Knoppix happens to have a shitload of devel tools, office tools, desktop games, and a bunch of other things. You mean to tell me that in 650M, you could fit half as much functionality (trying to be fair here) in windows applications? Don't waste your time trying, it won't work.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The Gates foundation donated 12 milion in cash to the Alameda county / Oakland school district small school reform efforts. I know this because part of the money pays my wife's salary, to organize parents and teachers in the reform efforts. Small-schools-based reform is one of the key targets for the Gates foundation, and a LOT of what they give is in cash grants.
I think a lot of that money is ill-gotten gains on Gate's part, but his buisness duplicity doenst change the facts on his non-business charitable giving. Lets keep the facts straight, and attack where attack is due..
You can do ACL's with linux. There's just very little point to them. Sure, windows "supports" ACL's, but show me where it's actually being used. In reality, ACL's require the admin to know what he's doing securitywise, and let's face it: most don't.
The unix-style permissions scheme can be fully automated in the software install process. Admins can be blisfully ignorant of it and still have it work. I think it also speaks volumes about the effectiveness of permissions that most windows users run as Administrator (or a user account with comparable power), and most linux users run in a regular user account.
You can't legally copy open-source software any more than you can copy closed-source binary images.
Yes you can. What you describe is "available source", not open source. And no, you can't define open source to mean what you want it to mean, when the term of art is well understood to mean something completely different.
There really isn't any real reason why Microsoft couldn't make all their source code available.
Available yes, open no. Though no doubt by not making it available they make it harder for someone else to duplicate bug-for-bug functionality.
Opening up their source would also instantly get rid of the problem of some governments' requirements for open-source software.
Again, you're confusing open and available. Available source is less useful, since you can't create derivative works, can't cooperate on improving things. Governments are interested in more than available source gives them, including no licensing fees.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.