OSDL Answers SCO With Kernel Awareness Campaign

prostoalex writes "Open Source Development Labs announced a new initiative to increase customer confidence in using Linux in business. The initiative is launched in answer to legal claims by SCO Group. So far managers and developers around the world are supposed to boost their confidence in Linux with the help of this little poster, which explains the kernel development process."

Comments

kernel smernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Now why would kernel development impress decision makers? They think in terms of support, reliability, standardisation, following market trends, etc. Geek terminology only alienates managers.

duck and cover

[fermion]

I think the poster is somewhat reasonable from an educational point of view. I question whether anyone other than experienced developer can understand it. It took me a minute to understand it. I wonder if the people who make OS decisions will even take the time.

It kind of reminds me of those posters with instruction on surviving the nuclear holocaust the US government distributed ages ago. They kind of fulfilled a moral need, and made people feel like they could survive, but I doubt they would actually do any good in the event of a nuclear exchange.

Article

[Scholasticus]

No comment about the poster - it speaks for itself - but the article on internetnews was really quite good. It looks like OSDL is making a concerted effort to explain the kernel development process in such a way to factually counter SCO's claims. Peer review isn't perfect, but it is a very powerful tool for oversight of a project such as software development. With the information from internetnews it should now be possible for people who were otherwise in doubt to see how unlikely it is that "one million lines" of SCO-owned code could make it into the Linux kernel.

Re:Sorry...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

At university I wrote a lot of comments that were very BS because we had a quota of comments/lines to meet. You probably would get bad grades for submitting Linux code, but Linux is about making a good OS - not about trying to get good grades.

Yes, in places the Linux code is under commented. The code is, IMHO, structured in a way that in makes the meaning obvious in most cases and the code easy to read. This is far more important than comments. Comments do not make good code.

Re:In wonder

[Laplace]

There is a Linux girl. Apparently she runs Linux on an iBook.

Re:Business model of OSDL

[JaredOfEuropa]

You jest, but if you want to convince managers, I have one word for you: Powerpoint!

Managers understand 2 things. Short lists of bullet points, and diagrams. Anything over 2 pages is too much info for them.

And no, they're not too dumb to absorb any more information than that, they simply don't have the time.

Re:Education is great and all...

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Ummm, where management isn't 'the whole pie' you're talking about a mismanaged and out of control company.

So a company's entire business should be management? The whole thing? No quality assurance? No marketing? No manufacturing? No providing a service? No profit?

Let me get this straight. The people who at their best merely support and co-ordinate the actual money-making work of the business, and at their worst cripple a business with meaningless rules and regulations, un-needed paperwork and egotistic power games... those people?

Management?

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."