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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."
Linus Torvalds is not the only one with more resources because of the open source community. Everyone, including Bill Gates, has more resources at their disposal, because of the open source community. We have improved knowledge on all fronts, due to the hobbying of business, as seen from the Open Source community. Hobbies that become replacements for standards, cause positive growth, and better solutions. I think it's because of the love and passion that everyone puts into their hobbies, in hope that they can get somewhere other folks haven't been before. It's like a kind of space exploration, but with the benefit that you can do it in your own basement or home office, den, on a plane or anywhere for that matter. PHP is a great example of how good application of Open Source can make for a much easier and better tool than other, less loved products like ASP.
:)
How many people love ASP? I'm guessing not as many as those who really do love PHP or Perl.
You see that because we can all work together to make our products better, the global knowledge is shared and improved upon. Years ago, way before computers, we all had a similar thing to open source. It was called learning and we all did it together. Scholars spent their lives enriching the world with their findings, to better humanity.
Open source is in this same spirit, for mutual benefit based on recognition of participation, not branding, per se. Microsoft spends millions on branding, on marketing, packaging and distrobution. They could easily make loads more money if they focused instead on a model closer to the Open Source model. Who knows, maybe they are counting on it in the future, but likely they are not. Likely Microsoft is going to keep selling us the same regurgitated products they do every year, with new packaging and more "updates". I for one, will keep supporting Open Office.
I'm sure that Linus has more friends than Bill Gates anyway.
He has a world of developers. Bill has a company of developers.
Bill Gates has to pay people to work for him. Linus does not. Advantage: Linus.
Said the Anonymous Coward.
It's a commonly repeated manta that you can't understand something until you have broken it. The BusinessWeek article suggests that frequently being able to apply this principle to Linux is what moves it forwards.
I disagree. On that basis Outlook Express would be the best e-mail client on the planet. Hell, the thing's been broken for over a decade now.
Beep beep.
The open source community is, according to the article, "a vast flock of very creative, un-sheeplike sheep".
;-)
I have little to add to that... it's just a great line. Beware of getting fleeced by SCO.
Vanya's Law: "In any culture without irony, fart jokes will be the highest form of humor."
Finally someone ther has enough sense and not just a MBA degree.
Seriously if common sense would prevail in IT industry over marketing hype and FUD, ...Oh the possibilities.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
But there is a huge difference.
Linus can ASK the world to do something, but if they don't like the way he's thinking, they won't do it. Linus controls the world as long as the world likes the orders. So in a sense he's just a way to focus the desires of the majority of developers.
Gates on the other hand can ORDER everyone in his employ to jump around and shout "I'm a little idiot!" and they'll have to do it wether they like it or not. Thats a huge difference. Gates has the world as his playground.
Google Toolbar is SPYWARE!
...is that open source software, assuming it can weather legal and business challenges (**cough**SCO?**cough**), will always have an army of part time coders and testers that will work out holes, plug leaks and innovate products. However, I think the challenge for open source is that often times several different groups are writing competing code for competing projects will little consideration of the massive duplication (witness many distributions of Linux, many of which are functionally identical) in efforts. The successful projects in the open source world are projects that can agree on standards, organize factions of programmers, and distribute to a wide audience.
The article mentions Linux all the time, and Linus, but it wouldn't be usable as an entirely free operating system without the free software from GNU.
:-)
Now, let the flaming and zealot-naming begin, but what I'm saying is just true.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
Interesting article (yes, I read it), but one thing I don't understand. The author states early on that "Both men must find ways to motivate people to work together so knowledge can spread and have maximum impact on improving software quality."
I don't see Linus doing that kind of thing. Does he, personally, motivate a damn thing? It's not like I studied the history of this "movement", but didn't he basically just toss the infant OS out there for whomever to use in whatever way?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it...
The community of Linux users and developers is held together by pride and the thrill of working toward a common goal of a universal (...) alternative to Windows Hmm... I thought that a lot of people were contributing to Linux simply because they like the idea of an open source OS, and believe that it is the best way to produce software... irrespective of wethere or not it's going to be an "alternative" to windows. Not everybody who uses/contributes to Linux does so out of a burning desire to compete with windows.
Being disorganized can actually leverage that knowledge more effectively than a command-and-control hierarchy. ... you would assume we were talking about terrorists.
I can't wait until the GPL is held in that politically charged light.
T.
This space for rent.
One example. Microsoft notepad. Ever try really use that for things ? Word wrapping INSERTS CARRIAGE RETURNS instead of making it simply looked wrapped like any other editor I have ever used. Change window shape -> gets messed up. Microsoft isnt that incompetent. Its by design. I BET this was to get people to use word .doc files for even the simplest things to lock people into word. Most people wont go search for another text editor. That is what the profit motive got us there.
If this is true then one must wonder why Linus doesn't utilize more of these available resources. Why does he instead have a relatively small group of hackers working on only a kernel? Why, with all his resources, is he not developing, embracing and extending a plethora of other operating system components and applications?
The fact is that while open source does offer the potential of having a very vast number of developers owrking on a project or multiple projects, the reality is that few developers actually participate. Combine this with the fact that they are driven to participate based on their interest or itch and we end up with a fine kernel, a few great apps and an abundance of mp3 players.
The potential is there for Linus to have more resources than Bill Gates but, the reality is that Linus has no where near the resources of Bill Gates.
The altruism of open source is very noble. What will put the fire in the belly of Linux's white knights if they win their crusade and Microsoft does crumble?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Our PC GOD Torvalds, which art in Transmeta^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSDL
Hallowed be thy skillz
Thy kernel comes, in the US and all the earth
Give us this day our daily updates.
And forgive us our holes, as we apply thine patch.
And lead us not into closed source, but deliver us from Microsoft.
For thine is the kernel, the skillz, and the leetness for ever and ever. Amen.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Way back when I was a lad there was a nice candy store in town. The owner, Mr. Glucose, would have one day a year in which he would allow all the town children to get candy for free.
One year on Free Candy Day two teenagers were standing outside the front of the store. "That's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag," my friend whispered to me, "they're a couple of junior high bullies!" We tried to enter the store when the two bullies moved in front of me. "Hey kid," snarled McBride, "this is our candy store. If you want in you have to pay me a dime." I protested "But.. but.. Mr. Glucose owns the candy store!" Sontag laughed. "Hey punk, my mom was making candy at home for years. That means we own the candy in the store if they use sugar in it like my mom."
Upon hearing this exchange, Mr. Glucose came out of the store waving a bat and proceeded to beat the two bullies to pulp.
~ The End ~
Linus also has more ability to actually use his resources. He's not spending time with folks like Warren Buffet playing bridge-he's focused on technical issues. Linus may have a few "yes men" around distorting his perception, but nothing like Bill Gates.
The kind of extreme wealth Bill Gates has also brings some serious hassles. Gates can't travel anyplace without security measures--and even with those security measures, a suicide bomber in a station wagon full of fertilizer and diesel fuel could take him out at any time. Anyone that has to think about this sort of stuff-or hire people to think about this sort of stuff has a problem.
Gates, to his credit, at least seems to have some old friends(some prominent Silicon Valley executives don't). Still, I honestly suspect that if money were suddenly worthless (say due to a major economic collapse or EMP of the financial system), Linus would be in a much stronger position than Gates.
Though not necessarily intentionally.
Like Taoist philosophy.. a great leader leads without leading, a great ruler rules without ruling...
Linus does not necessarily view himself as a manager or leader, but he IS ONE, regardless, and a very highly successful one at that.
The OSS movement focuses on Linus as a centerpiece, a leader, whether he wants them to or not... When Linus speaks, people listen.. and very few actually disagree with him, at least openly.
Anti-Linux peple will say "Oh, you have this one guy who runs the kernel like a tyrant.. what if what he does doesn't match up with what big business wants?".. well, he's been doing alright for a decade, regardless of what his motives are, you can't argue that.
that's more than we can say for a great many guys with MBAs running billion dollar companies.
Linus coordinates more people in a really loose environment, and produces a heck of a product... go figure.
Yes, I realize it's not all his grand plan, but he is the focal point, the leader.
From the article: On the surface, Linus vs. Bill seems to be the ultimate David vs. Goliath contest.
I'm pretty sure that, by definition, the ultimate David vs. Goliath contest was in fact: David vs. Goliath.
Otherwise they'd be called "Linus vs. Bill" contests now wouldn't they?
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I think that Linus would rather have the money to be honest. Nevertheless I don't think the article is completely correct in showcasing the Linux vs Bill super smackdown.
Money vs Altruism
----------------
While having the 'community' of open sourcers behind him is certainly exceedingly important, the open source community is fractured across a variety of fronts, frequently cannot integrate (merge those fronts against a common foe), and lacks a true core focus comitted to solving specific problems. When it does do these things, it does so slowly and without focus. One can blame Microsoft for a wide variety of things, but they can repurpose the company on a dime to release a brand new product (note I didn't say original) within a years time and make it acceptable and commercially viable.
The Linux community - particularly the open source community has simply not the structure and organization to do this.
Geek Fervor
------------
The author talks about how there is a cause to create an alternative to Windows. That's fine - but at the same time, it cost most - lots and lots of money, lots and lots of marketing to make people switch. The one thing that really helps open source sometimes is that the alternatives are of such crap quality that people will endure the lack of support and documentation of an open source product just to get something of good reliability (something the commercial vendors just lack these days).
Creative Chaos
-------------
Chaos is a good thing. Good things can come from random brainstorming - however many times a good idea can simply be neglected in an open source environment where it would have thrived in a commercial environment. There's something to be said for having the time, energy, and resources to actually take an idea that sounds great but would take enormous resources and focussed manpower to pull off.
So while I think its great that open source can do some serious damage to the monopoly of Microsoft and push us forward - I would be quick to note that it isn't really the open source community that's making the types of advances that we really need with respect to getting people to USE the fruit of our labors. Sun, IBM, RedHat, etc. are utilizing the greatness of open source to actually make a difference to the average consumer. And after all - isn't that the point?
Talking to students at university and meeting folks in technology in general, I've really started to notice a braindrain away from Microsoft products. I'm really not trying to flamebait, but it seems that people who are really into computer science and doing innovative things with computers are staying away from Microsoft products in droves.
.NET developers and those who were not (usually Java guys). The personality difference was startling. Has anyone else ever had to compare MS and non-MS people side by side? I'm serious, the non MS people seemed more creative, inventive and - well - smart. Meanwhile the MS .NET people seemed more like, I hate to say this,managers? If you are in a corporate environment and need to do everything the MS way - the whole "managerial" vibe is a positive trait. You need someone to impliment MS solutions, not create solutions. But the huge side-effect IMHO is that all the smart people doing cool stuff are running as fast as they can away from MS.
I also mention this because we were looking at hiring Jr. developers and kept observing a incredibly different mindset between those who were
I think this impacts MS future big-time. Has anyone else had this experience or read an article about this?
-_-
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.
Gates can, at any time, get out of the software business and take his huge fortune (power) and wield it to do something else. He can buy an island, put a huge laser cannon on top of its highest mountain, and populate it with a thousand expensive "escort companions" to satisfy his every whim, every night. Money is raw power that can be converted to many uses.
Linus can't do that. Linus can just dominate the software world, but his power is mostly limited to that subject. I don't think Linus will ever have a giant laser cannon.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Hmmm...reading this article reminds me of the classic arguments and debates that I manage to have with my friends and my family. Some people believe in a more capitalistic system of resource allotment, in which resources are only controlled by those people who use them, and they put them to the use that they best want, whereas a more communist kind of system has a structure in place to determine where resources are used. The really cool thing about the capitalist kind of system is that it can adapt to a changing resource picture much faster than the communist kind of way. It almost seems as though this article is saying much the same, except linus commands a fluid resource pool, and bill controls a resource pool that is fixed (although it does change according to the corporate goal of the month).
All in all, good article.
Linus has a worldwide army of voluteer and hobbyist developers, testers, etc. Bill has the employees at Microsoft.
But MS also has a worldwide army of volunteer and hobbyist developers, building tools and solutions with MS products. Some good, some not so good.
MS also has many, many manufacturers tripping all over themselves building and testing hardware drivers for their products.
Wrong. Torvalds is not counting on the marketplace's judegement of anything. In every interview he plainly states that he has no market-driven or competetive goals whatsoever. He simply wants to make Linux improve over time for whoever chooses to use it, whether that is ten people or a billion.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Do you honestly believe that? Look, I would LOVE to see MS adopt a more open model, but that is because I know how much it would benefit me, and the rest of the tech community, not because I believe for a minute that it would actually be better for Microsoft. Do you really think they would have 90% market share with open source products? Of course not. They got where they are by not sharing the pie with anyone. If they opened up, others would take what they have done and run with it. People would release 100% compatible versions of Windows, Office, IIS, etc that were more secure with less bug fixes, and Microsoft would have to work harder, spend more money in development and QA, and still end up with less of the market, thus less money. For that matter why would anyone buy XP if Windows NT 4 was still under active development by an open source community that made it just as modern and up to date? Would all this be good for the rest of the world? Yes. Would it make MS "loads more money"? Absolutely not.
SCO.com uses Linux
Value can be looked at from two different sides: consumer: does it work and add value when I use it; producer: can I make money from it.
Bill cares about the latter, Linux and users about the former. Bill cares about the consumer's attitude to the extent that he gets sales, but would rather exert power play to keep market share.
I put it to you that in the long term OSS makes more sense because Bill will kill (or not support) products in line with his business interests, not yours. BIll has not brought anything significant to the party for a long time so, apart from power play, it is difficult to see how he can keep market share in the long term.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Good article overall, in fact pretty damn amazing coming from mainstream press. But I did notice one disturbing thing:
And while Torvalds and Linux have recently faced legal issues about whether Linux might have some proprietary code embedded in it, that distraction is dwarfed by the time and energy Gates has devoted to battling the U.S. Justice Dept.
Now, all of us here are aware that the 2 cases are pretty much polar opposites. The former is the little guy being picked on by a big, greedy coporation. The latter is the little guys (us, represented by the govenment) picking on the big, greedy coporation.
Most of the non-tech people I know are aware that MS's name had been dragged through the mud as a result of the DOJ case, and have a lot less respect for MS now that the law has found them guilty. Regardless of the merits of the case, or the result, the fact is the general public often thinks of MS as the bad guys simply because of a court decision.
I really, really hope this doesn't happen to Linux, but articles that even mention the 2 situations in the same paragraph (without explanation) blur the issue. How long until my Mom asks me about Linux, the "Operating System written by thieves"?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
-The most obvious one: If Linux has so many more resources, than why doesn't it have all the features of Windows already? Flame me all you want, but it doesn't.
-Even though Linus has "the millions who use Linux and continue to tinker with it", in reality there are very few contributors (definitely not millions). Windows also has a larger installed base and thus a larger possible base of testers. How does that factor in?
-It neglects the fact that Linus's disadvantage solely as a gatekeeper, instead of director, is that unpopular, tedious, but necessary work might never get done. One advantage of motivating with money is that you can force people to do work they might not otherwise elect to do. I mean, how many MP3 players does Linux need?
-I don't think BillG has any trouble sleeping at night. Linux might be a threat to his company, but it's not going to make him a lowly multimillionaire any time soon.
What a bunch of cheerleading.
SCO may only be the first of many to try to attempt to somehow grab the reins of the open source community. Some may try to find a loophole in the GPL. Others may try other unthought of tactics to make a quick buck at the expense of the altruistic group that comprise the Open Source movement. It's all made the more easier if you have a cadre of unscrupulous lawyers who aren't afraid of risking a little money and time in order to litigate the presumably legally underdefended targets such as Torvalds and RMS. Watch SCO, you future vermin!First terrorize LT and RMS and threaten them with lawsuits. Meanwhile extort the legitimate Linux users (the ultimate payoff). Laugh all the way to the bank. Appologize (or do nothing) only when it eventually comes down to the end and Open Source's honor is eventually vindicated.
New business model Summarized:
1. Exploit Open Source/GPL Loophole
2. Hire cadre of lawyers
3. ????
4. Profit from gullible business Linux users
5. Lose multi-year court battles
6. Appologize
7. Slip into handsomely rewarded obscurity
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I know you're joking, but I have to give Bill Gates some credit. If I was obscenely wealthy like that, I don't think I would be ABLE to stop myself from buying a laser cannon.
It would be like you or me buying a Snickers.
You are such a tool
Why don't you open your eyes. Get a new perspective of what's really going on
Oh come off it, its called PR, advertising, and tax-breaks. It apparently worked on you.
Why do people think that sharing ideas is communism? If the federal government controlled Linux, that would be communism. Communism is a form of government. If I lend my neighbor my lawn mower am I being a commie? No, I am being a good neighbor. And I will probably get a favor in return. (Not that I help people only for a reward.)
Medicine and physics seem to work fine in this sharing environment. No one patents an operation. Instead when a doctor learns of a discovery they make money giving lectures about a new procedure.
What you are seeing is not Communism, it is a resource economy. Instead of exchanging goods and services people are giving resources to those who put them to good use. And thus making the fruits of their labor available to everyone. Which is the basics of a resource-based economy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
That will be true when Bill is willing to GPL his software. Until then, Bill is relegated to software that is free (as in do whatever you want with it), as opposed to Free (as in RMS).
So I'd say that the bulk of what is referred to as Open Source is quite inaccessible to Bill. And as for benefits to Bill through competition, no way. Bill doesn't benefit by making windows better - he benefits by selling more copies of windows. If linux were not around, he could sell more copies of windows with less effort put into improvements.
I think Bill would be hard-pressed to find anything about the Open/Free/free software movement that he likes.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The article makes the same mistake that most articles of this kind make: it assumes that everyone who uses linux gets the sourcecode, that everyone who gets the sourcecode looks at the sourcecode, and that everybody who looks at the sourcecode contributes to it. This leads to the conclusion that Linus has an army of millions at his disposal, which is simply not true.
You will have no reason not to switch to proprietary software when the proprietary software is low-cost. Despite what Open Source movement proponents say about making better code, many so-called Open Source programs are functionally inferior to their proprietary competitors. If all you value is saving money or the practical ends that the Open Source movement champions, you'll never miss the freedom to share and modify software. It's great to get someone interested in Free Software by demonstrating practical use, and it's true some people are uncomfortable talking about ethics and responsibility as well as convenience. But the Free Software community was not built by giving into whatever businesses want. The FSF wrote an interesting essay comparing the Free Software movement with the Open Source movement.
Crediting Linus Torvalds as an altrustic operator is simply incorrect. Torvalds' brand of pragmatism falls squarely into the problem I just described--his use of Bitkeeper is a perfect example. He is also not "Linux' guardian" (as the BusinessWeek article claims). If that title is accurate at all, it properly belongs to the GNU General Public License, the preeminent Free Software license written by the FSF: the organization whose ethical basis Torvalds dismisses.
Digital Citizen
The headline claims that the article "makes a solid argument in favor of OSS in general and Linux in particular, from a solidly capitalist perspective". Sort of, not really. The article merely points out that Linux has many more people working on it, who are (it is assumed) more motivated and creative. There isn't really any discussion of capitalism, except to point out that in some cases money may not be the only factor determining the success of a project. Really, the article doesn't point out anything that most people interested in the topic didn't know already. The really interesting question, as regards capitalism, is how Open Source projects (and the people who work on them) will be funded. The author doesn't go into that, except to suggest that Linux is more akin to a charity project, or a religious movement than to a commercial effort. The only thing interesting about the article is that it happens to have been published in Business Week, but that isn't even that exciting, considering that quite a few large, important buisnesses (i.e. IBM), are using Linux these days. The article is basically a Linux cliff notes for executive types.
No offense, but Bill Gates has 40,000 FULL TIME EMPLOYEES. Thats 40,000 people doing what he says 8 hrs/day on demand. Linus might have 100,000 contributors, but less than 1% are active regularly and even less than that are full time devotees.
If Linus had anywhere near the resources that Billy has, then Linux would be a Desktop competitor.
Monopolies do not come about by government inaction. They come about precisely because of government action: priviledges granted by the government to various corporations. Microsoft's "monopoly", if you can call it that, only exists because of government-granted patents and copyrights. Without these, there is no MS monopoly.
The only way for the free market to function optimally is for the government to retract itself from the market entirely, and cease any tampering with the free market.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Very hard to direct them to go where you want, impossible to keep from going where they want.
Linus exerts more control by running the can opener, rather than the whip, as any cat owner would testify.
I just wanted to say that free markets are about freedoms and not about markets. When you have true freedoms, then the markets will tend to take care of themselves as people use tohse freedoms to their benefit and advantage.
Microsoft is not about free markets because it is not about freedom. In fact they assume on faith, that the right to restrict what other people copy at their disposal, copyrights, is a fundamental inherent right. It is not. In the future I have no doubt that copyrights will be lumped in with the right of the government to choose your speech, and the right of government to choose your religion, or even the right to own slaves (another false 'property' right). In the meantime, we just half to fight it out. Microsoft will not sit arround passively while people who exercise their freedoms cut into revenues. All hell will surely break loose.
The author pulls some sleight-of-word here, lumping two quite different groups together. There are certainly "millions who use Linux" but there are far fewer who "tinker with it", a claim supported by looking at the difference between the number of downloads or users with the number of patch submitters or CVS commit privilege holders. This disparity is a natural one; few people have the skill, time, or inclination to contribute, even to tools they find useful.
Doubtlessly people will reply that the number of users directly contributes to bug detection which is a valid point. However the utility of a bug-report and of a patch are certainly not equal. Furthermore, the same analysis can be done in this case by comparing the number of people who experience bugs to the number who file bug reports (not to mention the fact that Microsoft has millions of users to detect bugs as well. Why do you think they have automated bug reports these days?). I'm not discounting the value of many eyes on a product but the article is using an optimistic metric.
Linux's advantage isn't in the millions of users (since Windows has many more) but in the thousands of patch submitters. Indeed, this may be why creating linux-for-the-masses is a hard problem: Ease of use, polish, and intuitive design aren't something captured in twenty-line fixes; they need to be woven through entire user interface. It is certainly possible to make Unix "just work" but, so far, it's taken professional designers paid by Apple to do so.
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.
Bull.
I used to run Xwindows, etc. on a 66mhz 486. So your statement 'your hardware requirements go way beyond the 75mhz Pentium' is flat out *wrong*.
The reason people see it as unreasonable to run like that *now* is because hardware is faster, they're used to it operating faster. When it runs slower than they're used to, they see it as unacceptable.
That doesn't mean it won't work. It just means the expectations have been raised.
Code or be coded.
I think you may be confusing bloat for scalablity. You can run a small linux distro that does something very specific, or you can get a large linux distro that can do just about anything. Comparing the install footprint of a large linux distro to windows is inaccurate because comes with far more software then windows. If you want an accurate comparison take a basic windows install and add Office, IIS, MsSql, MSVisualStudio, and Photoshop.
In a way though, its all relative. Didn't Ted Turner give away a third of his wealth a few years back? Has Gates even given away 5% of his wealth? How about 1%?
When I hear about what a great philanthopist Gates is, it makes me think of the story in the bible about the poor woman who essentially gives her last cent to charity vs. the wealthy who give many times more. The question is, who really gives more? The person who gives out of their need, or the person who gives out of their excess?
And, BTW, from where did that excess come?
I guess it's okay then to monopolize an entire industry, stifle innovation, crush competitors, and enrich yourself through monopoly pricing as long as you give lots of money to charities.
Read the book: Big Blue - IBM's Use and Abuse of Power.
This trick of giving lots of money to charities is something IBM figured out in about 1918 or thereabout. That book is quite a lesson on monopoly behavior, and it is amazing how well it describes Microsoft's behavior.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
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
One of the things that continuously bothers me about people who write about open source and even people who post here frequently is this whole "linux vs windows" talking about market shares, competition, and linux domination.
What people need to understand is that Linux wasn't created to be specifically an alternative to windows, it wasn't made to bring down the beast at redmond, and it wasn't created because BSD is dying or to be the one true OS. It wasn't created with hopes of making lots of engineers rich and lots of middlemen richer. It was created because it was fun and educational to do so at the time. Seems to me that all of these people who are trying to reconcile linux's role from a capitalist perspective are missing the boat. Linux isn't THE alternative or THE future, but it will be there along for the ride.
While Torvalds is a threat to Gates, Gates seems to be little or no threat to Torvalds. To hear Torvalds talk about it, he's having fun as Linux' guardian. His challenge is merely that of being an effective shepherd to a vast flock of very creative, un-sheeplike sheep.
A flock of sheep? Shouldn't that be a herd of cats?
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
The only way for the free market to function optimally is for the government to retract itself from the market entirely, and cease any tampering with the free market.
It's time to put this tired old libertarian fantasy to rest. The "free market," as you call it, wouldn't even exist without government. For the free market to work, we need a system of property rights, which requires some form of legislation to decide who can own what, a judicial system to settle disputes, and an executive branch to enforce those property rights (i.e. by jailing people for stealing.) For any decently-sized economy, there needs to be a commonly accepted currency-- again something the government sets up. And a capitalist economy is impossible without a relatively stable social order-- thanks to government. If the government withdrew completely from the economic sphere, we wouldn't have capitalism. We'd have barbarism, rival warlords slaughtering people for control of resources. You can argue that the government is currently regulating the market well or regulating it poorly, but there would be no market if it did not regulate it at all.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
If this is true, there may be many reasons, perhaps working in concert (different people may have different and multiple reasons, making the effect much stronger). For example, the fact that the developer can see the OS code may make him far more confident in working on code above it... because he can really understand what's going on underneath (and fix it if there's a problem). Having the entire OS's code means that he can experiment with anything... and even if today he doesn't want to experiment with something, using OSS/FS means that he'll be more prepared for that time when he does. From a security point-of-view, he can analyze and fix anything, and knowing that others can do that too might raise his confidence in the results. By improving OSS/FS, he gains respect in the technical community that he wouldn't get simply by writing closed code (even if they're both paid for, everyone can see EXACTLY what you did in the open code).
I'm sure there are others.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Considering Gates is responsible for BILLIONS of dollars going toward schools, scholarships, charitible work, health care improvements, etc, ...
Except that, when you look past the first paragraph, you always seem to find the Bill Gates isn't actually giving anyone those dollars.
Most often, he is giving software, and the value is the "full retail price", i.e., it's a fake price. And he only gives out the first version; you have to pay for upgrades and transfers to new machines. So it's really just a dealer's first sample to get you hooked.
In the highly-publicised cases of "gifts" to Africa to fight diseases, the fine print informs us that these are actually loans a full market-price interest rates. And the money can only be spent for drugs from the companies that Bill has stock in.
When you read the details, it seems that Bill is mostly engaged in marketing, not philanthropy. His "gifts" lead to further profit going to his stock accounts.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
People are free to speculate when they're basing their conclusions on relatively sound facts and logic. There are disinformation agents out there. For example, I saw one site claiming that because we have the technology to take pictures from space at high detail, the recent fires in California could have been prevented. There was no mention of the difficulty of monitoring every acre of forest from space, and the article went on to suggest that because the fires were preventable, they were a satanic ritual "welcoming" Arnold into office.
Think with your head. It is safe to dismiss the Arnold-Satan-fire article as being proposterous, but I challenge you to find any flaw in the GNN article worthy of being patently dismissed as "conspiracy theory" garbage. If anything it is just overly cynical.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
You're absolutely right and the grandparent is a moron. The most powerful counterexample to the government-free economy is history, where companies used to have their own armies (East-India companies to be exact). Would you feel comfortable with Microsoft having an army that they could employ at will? No matter how powerful Tove is, Linus wouldn't last a day.
And lets not forget the thousands of extra IT jobs Bill has created because people have to constantly repair damage caused by his broken software.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
My paper More than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size measured Red Hat Linux 7.1. It found that this distribution had over 30 million physical source lines of code (SLOC), it would cost over $1 billion (a Gigabuck) to develop this Linux distribution by conventional proprietary means in the U.S. (in year 2000 U.S. dollars), and would have required about 8,000 person-years of development time. Over one year's time, it represented a 60% increase in size, effort, and traditional development costs.
Another study (inspired by mine) looked at Debian 2.2. The found that Debian 2.2 includes more than 55 million physical SLOC, and would have cost nearly $1.9 billion USD using over 14,000 person-years to develop using traditional proprietary techniques.
Linus, of course, doesn't have any sort of real control of GNU/Linux outside the kernel. But in the context of this article, the real issue seems to be a comparison of the open source / Free software community (as represented by GNU/Linux, the Linux kernel, and Linus Torvalds) versus Microsoft. And in that sense, this community has managed to acquire an absolutely astounding amount of resources, since it's managed to become competitive with Microsoft in spite of the many roadblocks it's had to handle (lack of hardware vendor support, perception that the approach can't work, etc.).
More quantitative data showing that there cases where open source software / free software is competitive is available in my paper "Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!".
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
If Linus Torvalds has more resources at his disposal than Bill Gates, then what when we add Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, Don Knuth, Damian Conway, Guido van Rossum, Norman Hardy, Bruce Schneier, Ian Murdock, Martin Michlmayr, Nicholas Weaver, Ken Thompson, Robert Thau, Theo de Raadt, Robert Malda, et cetera? Amazing. Truly amazing.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I was refering to South America, where some countries pretty much completely deregulated utility industries, and havoc ensued.
It sounds like Rothbard, from your description, is describing laws that marketize environmental protection. This has failed before, and it will fail in the future. Who files a tort, when the victim and his relatives are all dead? And, who sets the value of compensation for polluted air?
Also, sending out a link to a page that refers to "Liberal petulance" in the first paragraph isn't a great way to endorse free market pollution controls to someone who expressed a fairly liberal position.
I just resent the fact that the Republicans tells me how great free markets are, while at the same time telling me that we have to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. Hello?
Education is the silver bullet.
and how much of his wealth did he give away before the anti-trust trials, which dragged him kicking and screaming into the public spotlight?
he's gotten WAY more visibly "generous" since recognizing how politically important it is to be viewed as a nice guy by the rabble. i still can't stomach that picture of gates personally administering polio vaccine to an african child, with that big, fake goony smile spread across is face for the cameras.
And, BTW, from where did that excess come?
exactly - from predatory business practices that crush competition and extort huge sums of money from businesses - large, medium, and small - across the globe.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I work in corporate IT, and I really prefer dealing with MS. Their people are knowledgable, very helpful, and just want to see things work. Im sure you can pick anecdotes which are bad, but in almost ten years, I have had nothing but positive encounters. Im sure that is going to make people angry to hear (because it isnt anti-MS), but its true. MS is #1 for a reason, and it isnt because they are 'forcing' corporations to use their stuff.
I don't work in corporate IT. Most of my computing experience has been from the residential end of things... home users for the most part, and my own experience at home. I've only had to contact Microsoft twice regarding computing issues, once for myself and once for a customer. Both were bad experiences. The technicians were not knowledgeable, helpful, and while they may have certainly wanted things to work (probably so I'd stop asking these hard questions), they didn't aid me.
A customer had a Compaq desktop system. The hard drive had a restore partition, and the restore CD queried the partition for the restore data. The hard drive died, and Compaq wants to charge for a set of restore cd's (understandably so), and the customer was unwilling to pay for them. I installed a new hard drive, and installed WinXP, using a retail CD. His key (the one pasted on the front of the case) is a OEM key. Hence, I can't install XP using his key, and he can't authenticate XP using my retail key. Nor can I can change to his OEM key when the time to authenticate comes around. A little research yields that there's a simple text file ($ROOT_CDROM$\I386\SETUPP.INI) on the XP cd that determines how the CD acts, and what keys it'll accept. Change that file, and you've got a retail copy of XP that'll accept an OEM key. Simple, right? I contacted Microsoft regarding the problem, twice. The first time, I was told it was a problem that Microsoft could not resolve, and because it was a Compaq OEM key, I would need to contact Compaq. Compaq, obviously, turned me right back to Microsoft. The next tech at Microsoft explained the retail/OEM key problem to me, and told me that I would need to find an OEM cd. Nothing about altering the text file.
My second experience concerned their dial-up service. It requires that you install MSN Explorer. The first time MSN Explorer runs, it asks for your Passport ID. Upon verification, it creates a computer generated username and password, grabs an access number, and creates a dial-up connection. When you start up MSN explorer, it dials in first using that computer generated login info, then allows you to sign in with your Passport ID. Since I was dual-booting with Linux at the time, I wanted to set up 'net access under Linux. It took me two hours on the phone with MSN Tech Support to find out that they "weren't authorized to give me that information, and I should try using the on-line help chat." I hopped back over to the MSN help chat online, and spent the next six hours being told "MSN does not use a computer generated login to dial-up. It only uses your Passport ID." At the end of the conversation, I let it slip that I was attempting to use MSN under Linux. The tech simply stated "We don't support Linux," and refused to continue, irregardless of the fact that I had an account issue (I needed that computer generated password). After giving up on that route, I used a cracking utility to pull the generated password on the dial-up account, and proceeded to finish setting up 'net access under Linux.
In both cases, Microsoft's support was unwilling and/or unable to provide me with the solution I needed. Under my experience with Linux, most of my problems have been solved within a couple days simply by browsing the web for the information I needed, posting to a web board, or firing off an email or two to a local Linux user's group. Some were solved within a few hours.
When this article mentioned "motivation", I couldn't help but harken back to that old saw-horse of behavioral theory -- Maslow's Hierarchy of Need.
...
People work on Open Source because the gratification that comes as a result of their labor to produce robust, functional software will actually satisfy a "higher" need than material comfort and economic security (such as MS provides in salary). It's pretty hokey, when you boil it down -- but people want to do something useful with their energy and talent, something that appeals to our better nature.
While this _can_ be done while making a buck at the same time, it's just harder to balance. Plus -- not to sound like Newsweek, but -- with the ever-increasing impact of technology on society, it's reassuring to know that what we are building isn't strictly the result of the motiation towards commercial profit.
Restating the obvious, maybe
Post an article, any article portraying Linus in a positive light compared to Bill. In no time whatsoever will you have loads of MS fans defensively pointing out how many developers MS has, and thereby missing the point entirely.
"BTW, I don't fall for the argument of wonderfullness of altruism."
I think that attributing all work done on open source software to altruism is a mistake. Certainly there are many people working on open source projects because they want to contribute to the world, but most of the people that I know working on open source projects do so because they need to write software to get a job done, and it's more efficient for people with the same problem to write one common piece of software than each to write their own solution, and they don't want to get into the software business instead of the business that they're in. Why does IBM or SGI or Apple pay engineers to work on open source software? It's not altruism, it's a smart business decision -- Apple and IBM sell hardware that is vastly more valuable because of the open source software that runs on it.
My personal opinion is that ultimately the operating system market will resolve down to Microsoft, selling Windows, and every other computer company, collaboratively making open source operating systems (Linux, BSD, etc.) better. And the combined investment of IBM, Apple, HP, Sun, etc., combined with the efforts of the "grass roots developers" will continue to outpace Microsoft.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
While I must admit that I love all the open-sourced projects to improve on old commerical engines(Quake, Doom, etc.), their success seems limited at this point because of two key factors involved in a game's success:
1. Game content & design. This part is usually the tough one for an open-source game, since content has taken up a larger chunk of time for the developer year by year, and since people volunteering to make content want to make content they enjoy, there is a tremendous amount of friction involved from the start to find people who want to make what YOU want to make(hint: it's better to go the other way and make the team first, then discuss the game). In the case of modified engines, the use of old content holds back the game and intoduces lots of nagging compatibility issues.
2. Ease-of-use, ease-of-development. Since a game in open-source is make because a developer feels like it, he's probably going to stop as soon as he's satisfied, and because games are so varied, his work isn't guaranteed to be picked up like with other open-source projects - instead, you end up with hundreds upon hundreds of partially-done projects lying around. Of course, this isn't good enough for players - commercial games get to a finished, playable state, for the most part.
There is an intangible factor too: The game market is biased towards making sequels, as opposed to "version 2.0s." Truthfully, most game sequels(and remakes, etc.) really *are* version 2.0s, but the good ones change something enough(the story, some basic gameplay feature) so as to render it different, too, if only slightly.
I think the development paradigm will shift at some point, but not immediately.
To understand how the free market solves the problem of pollution, where government regulation is a failure, see Rothbard's For a New Liberty
Unless you have an actual, working example, then this is not how the free market solves the problem, it's all theory. How does the free market deal with companies that pollute and then go out of business?
Or the libertarians' beloved property rights. Is there a square inch of land owned on earth that cannot trace ownership back to one guy with a big stick taking it from another?
Pollution is exactly that -- a tort.
So you want even more frickin' lawyers than we have now. Joy. The law does not guarantee fairness, just see O.J. Simpson on the golf course for an example of what money can buy.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>The process predictably goes on an on, until we
...BUT, at least read the freaking "Communist Manifesto" before you go tossing the word around so lightly.
have communism
No, it goes on until you have Stalinism, which, for the last goddamn time, HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH COMMUNISM!
Libertarians who haven't studied the history and theory of Communism should go buy a small plot in Vermont and live off jacked deer so we don't have to listen them.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not a Communist, nor do I think it has ever, or probably could ever work, as it has been formulated and practiced...