Slashdot Mirror
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."
It sounds too much like a maxi pad commercial. "New OS, with wings. For those heavier data flow days..."
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.
Penguins can't fly, you insensitive clod.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Soon, i'll beable to put linux on my toaster.
-Pizentios
Because MS is not competing with an operating system, they are competing with a paradigm. MS may have a market cap of half a trillion dollars, but the US economy puts out 12 trillion per year alone. If push comes to shove, it won't matter how big MS is - they will get squished like a bug. I renember when IBM spent billions back in the 80's to push the PS/2 (not playstation) on the market place to try and squeese out the x86's already out there. It didn't matter how big they were either, they got hammered.
It runs on (almost) all hardware architectures and supports a huge open-source application library which can be recompiled for all hardware architectures.
Mindshare, application library and number of users will continue to increase in all computing, yes even on the desktop.
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.
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
This came to my head instantly...
Don't get me wrong, I like the penguins... it's just funny... Oh well, there goes my karma....
Because we have massive balls.
Probably because Baystar wants their $20mil back, RBC is expected to follow this week wanting their $30mil back, both with 20% penalties against SCO, nobody else will loan SCO money after major investors wanting their money back and SCO doesn't have enough to pay them back, much less continue the lawsuits afterward. Oh, and they don't seem to have many actual revenue-generating customers anymore.
Speculation considers that most of SCO's assets could be frozen pending settlement with Baystar/RBC assuming SCO fights the redemption claim.
But I wouldn't be surprised to see SCO spin an up story for a week or two and have the stock jump again before everything crumbles in two weeks to a few months.
You think Linux and OSS coders feel like schmoes?
Let's see, they are independent coders who know the ins and outs of popular business software that's making money. If you're a company making money off of Linux/OSS and you need help debugging or customizing your implementation, who are you gonna hire?
I've already been thanked.
Now I'm saying "you're welcome."
There are other currency systems than "money", you know.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There's your problem right there. You're using emotive language and I wouldn't be surprised to see you modded down because of it. A person can't really take something when it's already been given away, now can they?
Why do people write OSS? I just don't understand this question. I mean, is it that hard for people to understand someone wanting to contribute to a community project? It's not such an alien concept. Is it so different just because it involves writing software, instead of helping out at a local school or non-profit organization?
The content of the article may be "the same old," but it is important that this is running in Business Week, which is probably the most read magazine among corporate executives and wannabes.
It's articles like this that prod CEOs and CIOs to ask their staffs, "Why aren't we using Linux more?" Or they at least make executives more receptive to staff proposals that incorporate OSS.
If we're ever going to get to a tipping point where OSS is the first choice and MS "standards" are a second choice, more articles like this are needed in BW, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.
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.
..." comments are worth a lot to some of us.
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
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.