Linux Spreads its Wings

securitas writes "Businessweek's 'Linux Spreads its Wings' Special Report discusses the growing use of Linux in a wide range of products that include mobile phones, cars, telecom gear and consumer electronics; Linux in China; an analysis of the SCO litigation; a look at how Novell's Linux strategy may bring the struggling, former technology high-flyer back from the dead, as well as other articles and interviews related to the growth and spread of Linux as a viable platform for both enterprise and consumer technology."

Comments

Coders?

[NineNine]

What I'm wondering is if the Linux coders feel like real schmoes right about now because lots and lots of companies and people are making fortunes off of their work, and all they get is maybe one line in a hidden readme file that nobody will read? I know this'll get modded down, but I'm really curious. I know that if I did some work, then it was taken and used by lots of people to make lots of money, and I didn't even get a "thanks", I know I'd be pretty pissed off. Of course, they knew this going in, so why exactly do OSS people do this? It makes no sense.

Re:Coders?

[wobblie]

Dumbshit - it means they now have JOBS doing what they like, as opposed to jobs working on some POS like windows, or flipping burgers at McDonalds. Who the hell do you think these companies hire? Nobodies? Or do they try to recruit the people who've been hacking the drivers for the last few years? Get it? Do you realize how important it is to have a job doing something you love doing? If not, watch "Office Space" at least ten thousand times.

In most cases, they're getting a lot for their contributions, you're just not thinking of everything.

Re:Coders?

[jc42]

Well, getting a line of credit is more credit than I've gotten for most proprietary software that I've written. It's common practice in the corporate world to strip out all such credits from their software (especially the binaries), and replace them with a simple corporate claim.

Now, it may be true that I got paid to write those. But a lot of people are interested in more than just money. Fame, honor, and "Hey dummy, you should have done it this way ..." comments are worth a lot to some of us.

One of the widespread misunderstandings is that people are only motivated by money. The economists who believe this can't understand things like Open Source (and charitable organizations). But to those of us who understand that humans can have a lot of different motivations, including things like "honor", it's easy to explain such mysterious behavior.

Remember a couple of years back, when the OSS crowd got all upset with Sun including some Open Source software in their distributions? People weren't upset that Sun did this. They were mostly rather pleased, in fact. What was unacceptable was that Sun stripped out the credits from the code and documentation. That put Sun on our sh*t list, until they put the credits back in. Using something that is given away is fine; that's why it's given away. But refusing to give credit is unforgivable.

For an interesting example, look at the man pages on linux or BSD systems, and compare them with the man pages on commercial unix-like systems. With linux and *BSD, most of the man pages have an AUTHOR(S) section telling you who wrote it, though sometimes the person's name is in another section near the end. In commercial *nix systems, the man pages usually contain a corporate copyright notice but not the author name(s), though sometimes an actual human name does slip through.

Linux installs now easier than ever

[scumbucket]

The growth may be attributed to the ease of installing Linux from a CD-ROM based install script. I certainly have found it the easiest and fastest way to install a linux distro - and now with apt-get, installing applications onto Linux has been made easier as well.

Re:Grrr

[tamnir]

That's it! I'm fed up with the popular media misunderstanding linux and the free software movement. It is quite obvious if you've had the time to do any research that penguins swim and don't fly.

Indeed. So I guess the title of the story should be: Linux Spreads its... Fins? Hmmm.... ;-)

Linux spreads it's wings, but not to the Desktop?

[MrNybbles]

Using Linux in embeded products is one of the strong points of Linux: no directly messing with the Kernel by the user (no compiling, no inserting modules, no figuring out what exact chipset your sound card is, etc.) This makes Linux easy to use by anyone. Of course being custom fit to the device by the manufacturer helps a lot.

However, I don't see any mention of any Desktop Linux breakthroughs. Why? As far as I can tell there are two general types of computer users: those who want the computer to set itself up as much as possible and those who want total control over their computer and don't mind learning more than they ever set out to know about their computer.

If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user. But wouldn't taking control away from the user be the goal of such a distro?

But that's what I think. I could be wrong.

Re:Why Linux will beat MS

[argoff]

The story that I herd was that IBM was in a hurry to get a PC out on the marketplace becuase all of a sudden these small pc's with integrated circuits were competing with their mainframes - so they put together a PC where you could easially interchange the parts (the x86), that way they could mass produce it quickly. However, Compaq reverse engineered the bios, AMD created a clone CPU, and every other vendor started making things compatable with the slots, and drives.

IBM just assumed that they could restrict who makes compatable things for the PC, but they (and Intel) couldn't (because at the time you cound't patent interfaces) and they lost billions worth of lawsuits - so in a panic they created PS/2 line which was supposed to "solve" these problems, and put billions worth of marketing behind it. Needless to say, even though we took some interfaces from it - the PS2 flopped hard and IBM took beaing for it.

That is such a bad headline...

[siriuskase]

...in so many ways...

Anyway, penguins DO have wings (not fins) and they fly through water (not air). We call it swimming since it takes place in the water, but from a physical viewpoint, the bird is flying.

Re:Grrr

[Black Rabbit]

But penguins most certainly do fly. It's just that the medium they fly in is water, not air. If you have ever seen footage of what penguins look like when they're in the water, it looks very similar to any other bird in the air.

"It wasn't Balmer or Gates...."

[Jerry]

who phoned and asked Bay Star to invest in SCO, Bay Stars is reported as saying. So, the journalists reports that this isn't a 'smoking gun'. My question is, "What is the journalist smoking?"

Plausible deniability? He want us to believe that who ever it was at Microsoft who did phone Bay Star and ask them to fund SCO were never told by Balmer or Gates to do it? They just thought it was a whippy idea and took it upon themselves to make the call?

Ya. Right. Al Capone never bribed any cops, either.

My guess is that Bay Star was promised additional 'investments' or was reminded of how much financial clout Microsoft has, and how much could be directed against them if 'certain' people became displeased. Bay Star took the hint, or perhaps the bribe.

Novell Reborn

[Asprin]

I just want to throw in my 2 cents and say that the Linux deals Novell has made in the past year are real head-slappers.

You know, "Dang! why didn't I think of that?"

For years, Novell has been looking at the Windows as an internet application server platform and for a while, they wanted Netware to compete. Finally, they found a way to make it happen - big time. They also bring to Linux all their years of experience with Netware, Groupwise and file and user security and directory services, so I even expect other projects like Samba and Filesystem ACLs will benefit too.

Dust off the red markers, boys, the 'N' is back in town.

Re:Grrr

[jc42]

Heh. You're right of course. It's standard bio textbook fodder to observe that penguins do actually "fly", in a liquid medium rather than gaseous. They're similar in a lot of ways, but the two fluids do have somewhat different physical properties. For that matter, a lot of birds that fly in the air (ducks, cormorants) also "fly" underwater, using their wings for propulsion at least part of the time. Their wings just aren't very well-adapted for flying through a liquid, so most of them also have those feet modified to work as "fins".

But there's really nothing abominable about calling a penguin's wings "flippers". Not only are they biologically homologous to the fins and flippers of fish and dolphins, they are also used essentially the same way. It's true that a penguin's flippers are modified bird wings, since the optimal shape for for this appendage is very different in air and water. In English, we routinely call such appendages "wings" when the critter travels through the air, and "flippers" or "fins" when they travel through water.

Calling a penguin's wing a "flipper" is no odder that, say, referring to the paw of a raccoon or muskrat as a "hand".

If we ever discover critters with wing-like appendages that live in a (near) vacuum, and use something like light pressure or magnetic fields for maneuvering, I wonder what we'll call them? Of course, people have already proposed light sails, so maybe we'll call them "sails".

And we'll pretend that they're something different from wings or flippers. Well, they would be different, sorta. But it's useful to notice both the similarities and differences between similar structures with similar functions. Especially when they're homologous structures.

Re:Linux spreads it's wings, but not to the Deskto

[symbolic]

If a decent Desktop Linux Distro ever comes out that is loved by the first group I can see the second group griping about how much it takes control away from the user.

I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive. There have been several times where I WISHED something would just "work" without having to dork with dependencies, the odd compilation error, or somesuch. Even so, just because you have a layer that provides all the sugar coating, it's just that - sugar coating. As long as I as scrape as little or as much of it off as I want, I don't have a problem with a user-friendly desktop. That in my opinion, is the essence of a powerful OS.