Slashdot Mirror
Xgrid Agent for Unix
mac-diddy writes "Someone on Apple's mailing list for Xgrid, Apple's clustering software, just announced an 'Xgrid agent for Linux and other Unix platforms' available for download. There are still some issues being worked on like large file support, but it does allow you to simply add a Unix node to your existing Xgrid cluster. Just goes to show that when companies embrace open standards and code, the world doesn't fall apart."
Somewhat silly, but wouldn't you incur a bit of overhead mixing machines of different endian-ness? I suppose for non-communication intense algorithms this wouldn't be a big deal.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Everything is better clustered...
How the developers actually benefit from OSS. The way I see it is that these people put the time and effort in to make a great product - which they give away for free.
In this case, Apple, the developer of XGrid, is benefiting because in order to use XGrid you have to buy hardware. Apple sells hardware.
Just goes to show that when companies embrace open standards and code, the world doesn't fall apart.
Don't get me wrong, I support open standards/code, but it doesn't show any such thing if this linux client has only just been released. I bet Apple, and others for that matter, will be watching sales of Mac machines for use in clusters. If they drop because everyone starts using linux PCs, then Apple will probably not try this again.
Alphanos
Of the applications you've mentioned, only compiling things in Xcode would have any benefit. To utilize Xgrid, the application has to be written for it, which most apps simply aren't (and given turnaround issues, it would be suck for things like Quake and MAME).
Xgrid's main benefit is in "grunt work" calculations that aren't necessarily needed immediately. Things like SETI@Home or Folding@Home would be the sort of thing Xgrid excels at: throw some data out, have it processed, get it back when it's done.
While Apple has made clustering drop-dead easy, it's really not targeted at the home or small-business user, and the potential uses are pretty limited in that field.
Maybe that's not the right way to look at it. The way I see it is that these people put the time and effort into making great tools, not end product. Now they, and everyone else, are free to use those tools to create great products, which they don't give away for free.
The mistake I see in every Microsoft attack on OSS and the great fallacy behind every purchased white-paper that predicts that OSS will destroy the economy is that writing and selling software is only a very small part of the economy! Most of the economy is involved in creating real, tangible things like cars and planes and food, etc, etc. Most of the economy is not involved in endlessly copying and selling the same pattern of bits.
OSS creates tools that promise to improve the creation of many, many things on this planet and improve the prosperity of all. The only ones threatened by this are those that have made a business of monoplizing ideas. Ideas that are so easy to duplicate or recreate that they are deliberately trying to setup and use the force of law to keep people from producing ideas on their own.
OSS is really a "paradigm shift". This phrase has been used so emptily so many times by senseless marketing droids that it has lost impact over the years. But it is here, it is now, and it is unstoppable. How can they stop it? We have the source!
Apple is good at writing pretty, easy to use interfaces over complex to configure things. Many of these complex things are written by people who ASSUME the end user has the same skill set as they do. But as we all know... The average computer users is an IDIOT. The average system administrator is usually no better.
Let's face it, some slash-dotters who don't even work as system administrators know more them.
In the proprietary model the software is becoming worth less and less. 5 years ago run time licenses accounted for over 80% of the income of commercial software provider companies, now you will be lucky to see it account for 40% and it is going down rapidly. The rest being made up of support, training and other services.
However, the cost of producing software is the same, and what is more, it is an upfront cost. You cannot get money for it until after you have paid a programmer to write it.
Open source takes the above to a logical conclusion. As software is becoming relatively worthless (as far as run-time licenses go) you do not lose by giving the software away for free, and if you Open Source it you have available a 90% solution from free software out there before you begin thus cutting down on the production costs.
It is not about "giving stuff away" or people "not paying a cent" to use your software, it is about facilitating an extremely cost effective way for which software companies can provide services to the customer by using open source predecessors, and passing the benefit on to successors.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
Well, when I develop a piece of software (or hire someone to do it for me), I solve one of my problems. That's the benefit. End of story, really.
.. I write software *to benefit myself only*. I am a capitalist. I fully believe in free markets. I believe people should make as much as they can and get to keep it all. I also believe there's no justification for charging for something that costs nothing to copy, so I don't. It goes against my thinking: the only way something that costs nothing can be charged for is if you have authoritarian government enforcing it (which we do). Charge for service, sure. Charge for installation, sure. Charge for consulting, yup. Charge for the box, the CD, whatever. All of that takes time or materials and I can't "copy" it for the next guy.
For instance, I need a special library for an app. And none of the off-the shelf ones exactly match it. So I write it.
Now, I find out that other people have a similar problem. So I think to myself "well, I already got my ROI, so to speak. I solved my problem. So now I'll put this software out as open source and see what happens".
And people use the software in ways I didn't think of. They give suggestions on how it might be better. A few send in patches. Suddenly my solution is an even better solution, at no cost to me.
On the flip side: I download an open source library. It works okay, but there are some bugs and it needs a little refactoring. It will cost $1000 in labor to fix this library, vs. $5000 to write it from scratch. So I do it and send the patch to the author. The author is happy (free patch), I'm happy ($4000 worth of code for free), and I don't have to re-do my fixes in the next version! I sure wish commercial software worked that way.
A lot of folks make it seem that OSS is a bunch of people working for others, for free, like communists or something. Not true
Of course, you don't have to explain *how* OSS works. Just look and see that it exists and is self-sustaining, that's enough to prove that *something* about it works!
Xgrid is proprietary, closed-source software. I think that hardly counts as "embracing" open-source software. Many other parts of the Macintosh platform are proprietary and closed source as well.
I'm not disputing that Apple released Darwin source code. But before you start cheering, keep in mind that Darwin started out as open source: the CMU Mach kernel and bits and pieces of BSD. And it's not like Apple made a big sacrifice in releasing a kernel that looks and feels like half a dozen other open source kernels.