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de Icaza: Rest of World Will Force US Into Linux
Eugenia writes "OSNews had an interesting discussion with Miguel de Icaza about all things Linux and Novell. Miguel talked about the general patent problem and how this will become the one single stumbling block of widespread adoption of Linux in USA, while he asserts that Longhorn uses some 'new' technologies already found on Gnome and elsewhere. Miguel believes that poor countries will be the first that will adopt widely Linux, and as long the EU won't adopt a similar system to US for patents, Europe will follow soon after, leaving no option to USA but to eventually adopt Linux as well in the long run (despite potential patent problems). Another strategy Miguel discussed was about moving as many F/OSS applications as possible to Windows in order to familiarize the casual users with open source. Among many other interesting tidbits he also mentions that Quark is now using Mono on Mac OS X." Of course, the EU not adopting software patents seems to be less and less likely.
Well, that's a nice idea and all, and the initial logic seems to follow, but... will the US actually follow suit? The US isn't exactly known for following the rest of the world. Think of the metric system, for one...
Umm, yeah... because that worked so well with the metric system.
to move F/OSS to Windows. It helps the migration to Linux a lot better.
Linux needs to improve to become a better desktop OS.
Many organizations do not use Linux and F/OSS becuase they have not been certified for use with their profession, like accounting etc. So there needs to be certification of Linux and F/OSS products. If the organization doing the certification is in the pocket of MS, fat chance of that happening.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Note: The European elections are due in a month or so, so contact your MEPs to ask why they exist if the parliament can be bypassed like this.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Is the 3rd world. While these countries are poor now, their economies will be openning up. If they have adopted a standard of open source, they will have no reason to change. Certainly not at Microsoft's prices. The point will come where, if the US wants to do business, we will be forced to adopt their standards. Good thing we already have Linux here.
...largely uses either legitimate copies of Windows (most of Western Europe and Japan) or pirated copies of Windows (poorer regions like most of Africa, South America, Asia).
I really don't see this changing.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I'm genuinely looking forward to the release of the Ximian Evolution Windows port as it'll finally give a decent free mail client, which I can distribute to the several dozen friends' PCs I unofficially support.
I've been trying to get them off Outlook/OExpress for ages (for safety purposes) but most refused to go to Thunderbird as it was "too different"
They can hardly say that about Evolution.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Of course someone deeply involved in the Open Source software movement is going to say that Linux will become the dominant system. It's in his best interest to say that.
Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, Craig Mundie, etc. all feel that Windows and Microsoft software will be the dominant platform. Steve Jobs thinks that Apple and OS X will be the dominant platform. Is this really news?
The more interesting question is if de Icaza *really* believes that Gnome and Mono are going to be the dominant desktop. I know as the founder of the project, again it is in his interest to say yes. I just wonder if he's tried to use a KDE 3.2.x system and what his impressions are of it?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
It always bugged me that Evolution was not available for Windows. I'd be more than happy to ditch Outlook, but a good alternative does not exist. The Mozilla family is not a good alternative.
I hope that this means we'll see Evolution and others ported to Windows in the near future.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Wrong. As has been pointed out oh-so-many times, not even Microsoft can open their own documents in different versions of Word in the same way. So close enough is good enough for most users.
I mean, when is the last time you heard of a successful business person taking advice from a skid row bum?
And, yes, I know it sounds harsh, elitist, and rude, but it is the truth and we all know it.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Two countries that simply refuse to be bullied by anybody. Watch out for Linux development heading eastwards - patents or no patents. China, as we have seen went out of their way to develop an alternative DVD standard just to get around patent crap. And they almost went their own way on WiFi too. I wonder what the terms of settlement between Intel and China amounts too. Japan too, for their consumer electronics industry adopting Linux in a big way. NTT DoCoMo's reference platform for the next generation phones is based on Linux.
Is for the big important games to start coming out for Linux instead of Windows.
Of course, while the U.S. sucks for console games, it rules the PC game market. So I don't know how likely it is for games to be a way for the world to force the U.S. into OS compliance...
Also if De Icaza gets his way this won't happen.. since Icaza's glorified-Wine mono project is more likely to lead to crossplatform games than linux-only ones...
-- Super Ugly Ultraman
No it didn't work, but the rest of the world cares not for the backwards, stone-age measurement systems used by the US. Instead of persisting, we just point and laugh when the US talks of feet and inches.
The US won't be the world's super power forever, once they're second or third for a half century, I'm sure they'll make efforts to fall into line.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
From the article:
Poor countries don't have the money to buy and maintain Windows; this is where open source software is becoming a real and powerful alternative," he said.
OK, but if they are too poor to maintain Windows, doesn't that also mean that they are that much more open to pressures and special "deals" (to ensure lock-in) from Microsoft?
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
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There is at least a bit of a fundimental difference.
:) ).
Joe Six-Pack in the U.S. doesn't usually need to use the metric system in his life, so he has no incentive to change over to it. He DOES however use the internet regularly, and his company may do deal with some overseas companies. If Linux is adopted overseas, all it means it that interoperability will probably have to be maintained between Linux and Windows. Once that happens though, managers in the US may start to see the cost savings, and switch.
On the other hand, as long as the interoperability is maintained, there is no incentive to switch.
For instance, if the U.S. was REALLY serious about moving to the metric system, they should offer incentives to Juice/Bottle makers too only put out things in metric containers (instead of a Half gallon of milk/Juice, go get a 2 liter contianer). They should also mandate that all gas pumps should be switched to the Liter instead of the Gallon. Those two things alone would bring the Metric system into the average persons, life in such a dramatic way that it might foster adoption (one they get past the resentment that things have changed
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I think its good to see a leading F/OSS developer saying there needs to be F/OSS software made available on Windows. I am a developer that releases software under the GPL and try to make all of my software cross-platform. I believe that F/OSS developers needs to get out of the Linux bubble and realize that there are other platforms which are hungry for the software. I think that cross-platform is the next logical step for developers. I want to be able to use the same software at work (SolarisOS), home (WindowsXP), and develop environment (Linux).
A little learning never hurt anyone.
I've been following Linux for several years, but it's only this year I been able to stay exclusively on linux for a week or so while doing uni work. It's like everything has clicked for me, and I'm finding that I'm prefering to work under linux for coding. Maybe it's because i've been fiddling around long enough that I've grown to love the OS and desktop managers like KDE, or maybe it's because projects in the open source community have risen to such high levels of quality.
Thats not to say though that I haven't had my share of problems- cant get tv out working nicely, or 5.1 sound, or my OpenGL working right...
But for sitting down and doing research, coding and web activites, I'm finding Linux (i'm using Mandrake 9.2 btw) is more productive for me than Windows.
And when it comes to business, productivity is a significant drawcard. Due to my new found fondness of linux and OSS this week, im thinking that OSS will win users over due to it's increasing quality moreso than patent issues.
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
First, I will admit that I didn't RTFA yet, so let's get that out of the way. Mod me down if you don't like it.
That said, I would say that the US is unlikely to adapt a standard just because the rest of the world has. Witness:
www.wavefront-av.com
What are you talking about? The United States Congress officially adopted the metric system in 1866. :-)
They just didn't force people to stop using the units and measures with which they were familiar.
Coming from a science/engineering background, I *hate* working in traditional/avoirdupois/empire units.
On the other hand, it feels unnatural to talk about the weather in anything but degrees Fahrenheit. I've tried. I have plenty of European relatives. But centigrade's units feel too "big" and awkward.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
And at the same time, avoid pissing off the rest of the metric world by spelling litre properly. I know "liter" is an accepted way of spelling litre, but it just looks wrong IMHO.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
One interesting question this raises is which MS would prefer the poor countries to do: Pirate MS Products or use Linux. My guess is MS would prefer them to use pirated Windows than Linux because MS at least then has the vendor lockin. MS change of heart concerning WinXP SP2 installation on pirated machines would certainly argue for this.
The EU is becoming more and more unified every year, and the economy of Europe is quickly becoming simmilar to the economy of the US, where you can compare a European country to a US state.
United States:
Total GDP (2002) - 10.4 Trillion $
GDP/head - $37,600
Ranked 1st (countries)
European Union:
Total GDP (2002) - 9.61 Trillion
GDP/head - 21,125
Ranked 1st if counted as a single country
Europe is coming up fast... not to mention China and India. The days of the US as the economic superpoer of the wolrd are numbered by just abount any metric you use.
Metric vs. SAE
... and a lot of other things
But then this weekend something happened that changed my mind on the future of Linux. I downloaded Knoppix 3.4 and stuck the CD in a friend's WinXP box with a failing HD. WinXP wouldn't boot. Knoppix "just worked". It auto-configured all the hardware (a Dell 4550 series P4) and allowed me to back up most of this person's data to a CDR.240V 50Hx vs. 120V 60Hz
Drive on left vs. drive on right side of the road
EBCDIC vs. ASCII (IBM vs. everyone else)
This is the kind of thing that will make people take notice of Linux. They want a car that they can turn the key and drive away. People don't want a car that needs to have the engine tuned before they can drive it off the lot. Or one that they actually have to read the owner's manual.
They want an computer that auto-configures and is intuitively obvious to use. Knoppix 3.4 is a step in that direction.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
In the US it is all too possible for something to be well established prior art, but an inventor claims to have made the invention prior to the first date of open publication. Having been involved with both US and European patents until about 1995, I considered the US system to be deeply screwed - the opportunity for fraud is immense. (though yes, that didn't stop me from filing US patent applications...)The EU system should not be so bad.
If this still applies, the important thing is for all ideas and concepts being brought to the OSS table to be published as soon as possible after they arise, thus creating prior art even if it is only in a very buggy bit of code.
Of course, if the US gets the entire IP world to rely on "date of invention", we're all screwed, and I'm going to buy a farm and retire.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
And does anyone actually want a monopoly operating system? I know I don't.
There are two or three agendas in the FOSS movements which can be summarized thusly:
- "Why? What are we going to do tomorrow Brain?" "Same thing we do every night Pinky... try to take over the world!" Microsoft, goes the argument, is eeeeeeevil. We must topple it at all costs. While it may or may not be true, there's an element of 1918 here, toppling a cruel and dictatorial czar and not caring what the regime is that replaces it.
- "Freedom!" - Proprietary software is eeeevil, we must topple it at all costs, toppling dictators whereever we might find them even at immense cost to ourselves.
- "Choice" - The problem isn't Microsoft, it's Windows. If Windows was what we wanted, we wouldn't be so hostile to it.
My problem is I see too many people who see GNU/Linux as a chance to create an alternative Windows. And I don't see how anyone really benefits from that. We replace one monopoly with another, that monopoly might be less "evil", but we don't even know that. What we do know is that an inappropriate clone of someone else's work isn't likely to be as good as the original. And many, many, of us do not like the original.Above all, the regime being proposed is frequently the worst of all worlds. People who hold this view tend to argue that Windows needs to be replaced with a version of GNU/Linux that looks like Windows. But a version of GNU/Linux designed to be as similar to Windows as possible to an end user is going to be dysfunctional by definition. GNU/Linux isn't Windows, it shares few of the same concepts, the solutions Microsoft came up with for interfacing the underlying OS with the user are unlikely to be relevent to GNU/Linux and rarely are in practice. And Windows is simply not a good example of a user friendly operating system, unless you're talking about the original version of Windows 95, which at the time was "pure", it hadn't been hacked to try to push certain competing middleware out of the market. And do you really want to switch to Windows 95 today? GEM and Mac OS System 6 were user friendly too, would you like to clone either?
There's some legitimacy to this view, but again it has a tendency to be undermined by its own supporters who frequently assert that, as a starting point, you need to clone whatever's already there. Again, the Pinky and the Brain scenario springs to mind here, with the more vocal supporters being in favour of a dysfunctional system "because it's what users know." In fairness, most also argue that free software, by its very nature, improves choice because if you don't like the way something works, you can modify it. However, it's not "free software" that's taken hold so much as "open source", where programmers across the world collaborate. This is both a strength and an Achile's Heel, because just as Microsoft and other proprietary vendors cannot keep up with such a freight train, neither can most ordinary users who'd like their software to work with a better paradigm.
This is the only one of the three scenarios that has immediate and obvious benefits to end users. A view based on choice works best when people create Free Software, when programmers try to do original things, and when people try new things.
Personally, I love free software. Given the choice, however, between One (Supported) Free Operating System (the "Supported" is important), an Operating System whose design choices have made me dislike it intensely, and a miriad of supported proprietary systems, at least one of which works in the way I prefer, I have to go with the Devil and chose the latter. It's not Microsoft I dislike, it's their operating system and the dull grey rock of monoculture. Changing who owns that rock doesn't make things much better.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
More to the point, IP laws in the US are generally becoming more restrictive, as corporate interests codify their wish-list into our legal system.
This will backfire, as it forces innovation out of the US.
Honestly, I expect Europe to follow the US lead. The same corporations that are doing this to the US are also well entrenched in Europe. So in effect, we're pushing innovation to India and China, the new growing world economies.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The US economy is very dependant on foreign trade. Over time many other countries are becoming richer and influential. For example, today China's choice to use Linux doesn't matter much to the US. But if it's the next big market as many people believe then what standards they use will most certainly matter to the US. As trade with China grows and companies become more entagled overseas their choices will influence US companies.
Developers: We can use your help.
I think a lot of people may be missing a few key points. I'm sure these will draw some criticism, but here goes:
First, F/OSS is only as good as it's user input. If you use such software and gripe about it's this-or-that, but never submit even these quirks to the dev team, DON'T expect the issues to get resolved any time soon. The dev team, unlike major corporations, doesn't have the ability or capital to test and develop on a wide scale.
Second, on a lower level, I doubt Microsoft would be up for offering deals to poorer economies, lock-in or not. If they offer WinXP Pro to Uraguay for $50 a license, the American businesses that got the "Special Business License" for $75 would start whining. That's just something they don't need to deal with. In such case, I think MS will continue to treat the market as a whole in the manner they always have.
Third, in relation to the productivity of an application or OS, I would haard a guess that one is more productive when one goes into something (e.g. a new OS, a new F/OSS app) expecting to BE more productive. I tried the Firefox browser a few months ago, and hated it. Coincidentally, I expected to hate it because it wasn't IE. A month or two later, I tried it again, with a more open mind, and lo and behold, it's my current favorite browser. Same idea for C++/C# IDEs - from VC++ 6 to some no-name F/OSS IDE with ero problems. It's all relative.
So as far as a mass migration to Linux, it's anyone's guess - but I think it's a bit too early to be calling it Linux's game. Too many branches, and a whole new system to learn, seem to be a bit daunting for the average user. Wait ten years until Linux certification really gets a firm footing in the industry, and until the weaker Linux flavors drop off or conglomerate, and we may have some good competition.
[SQL Error ID 10-T: This sig. is above your current threshold.]
The problem is that F/OSS has to be better that Microsoft when it comes to things like file format conversion, not just as good. Like it or not, people have a double standard: if they try to open a Word document in Open Office and it doesn't work, they'll say that OO (and by extension, F/OSS in general) is no good; but if one version of Word refuses to open correctly a document created in another version, they'll shrug and say, "That's the way it is with computers, what can you do?" Microsoft is like the weather to a lot of people -- they bitch about it, but they don't seriously think they can do anything about it, and they think of it as an unavoidable part of their environment.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Quite true and rather a confusing situation for everyone for a while. Interesting you talk about territory when the EU is a political entity. It's the people which matter. About 2/3 of the countries have joined.
The EU is now 450 million people, just two weeks ago it was 380 million. In 3 years it will be 480 million when Romania and Bulgaria join. Then it will be just Switzerland, Norway, the Balkans. I suspect Russia will never join and it be a good few years before Belarus and Ukraine join.
In 50 years the EU is going to be a unified superpower and the EU and Europe will be synonymous. Hopefully they won't forget the reason for it existing in the first place.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The US is already a major user of Linux. Pick any major distribution, what language is it in? What country does it originate from?
I think there is just a few faulty assumptions here, as well as some mis-applied logic. For example, "MS is evil" is a subjective opinion, and not really fact. If it wasn't for MS and windows, I don't think computers would be quite as widespread as they are now. "The US will follow the rest of the world", while at times they should be doing what the rest of the world is doing, the US will do what it wants, for better or worse (proof: metric system, Iraq)
We're a bit worse off in the Great White North, because of exactly this. While we're technically supposed to be metric, because of heavy trade with the US we have to do both. FYI I live near Toronto.
When you're buying a house, the property size is measured in metres. However, the interior measurements are all given in square feet.
I know my height in feet and inches, but my driver's license lists it in centimetres. Funny, because I measure my skis in centimetres.
I buy meat in the store by the gram or kilogram, but my microwave asks me how many pounds is it when I want to defrost it. Of course I know my weight in pounds.
Construction materials are measured in feet, while I drive in km/h. I pump litres of gas into my tank, while I purchase hard booze in ounces. But beer, water and soft drinks are sold in millilitres.
I read the outside temperature in celsius, and I set my thermostat in C, yet my oven is set in farenheit. At least, all the recipes I have do (some ovens have both C and F listed).
We're pretty damned confused up here.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
There is a very good chance the UK will withdraw from the EU after the referendum. There is an unholy alliance of little englanders, anti-immigration parties, free-marketeers, beaurocracy haters, democracy lovers, and now software developers. Straw polls indicate 60% of the population will reject the new constitution.
I wouldnt be suprised if Denmark breaks away too, possibly taking the rest if Scandinavia with it.
Germanic cultures will then find itself isolated with Latin countries to the West, poor ex-communist states to the west, and independant states to the north and south. Cant imagine Germany will hang around when its having to bankroll everyone elses peasant economy.
After that, I think its Britain's turn to invade France. Or maybe Germany's, its hard to keep track these days.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
The huge risk in not migrating is not being able to satisfy your customers while your competitors do.
If your clients decide TCO is compelling, then it doesn't matter what you think - someone will be there to support them, and someone will be there to send them documents in formats that work well for them, or take their data in formats you can't handle, or whatever is relevant to your business.
That's how Windows and Office came to dominate in the first place: Some people saw a benefit, and they got a domino effect from partners, customers etc. that may not have seen a direct benefit, but saw a benefit in interoperating with people who had taken the leap.
My roommate is from Germany and he says that an Austrian man living in his home town for 40 years is still considered an Austrian by everyone in the area. I don't want to apply a stereotype on all of Europe, but I don't think tolerance will come so quickly (and it may never come). The EU may be united in currency, but there is a lot of cultural conflict in the entire area. There is even internal conflict in countries like Germany where the east and west have completely different views.
Don't forget, even the United States has trouble getting along with itself. Not just the political parties, but the North and the South still see each other as "separate but equal". Just because you belong to the same state/country/alliance doesn't mean you'll get along.