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Linux: Fighting the FUD of Forking
sebFlyte writes "Fighting the MS FUD machine is a full time job for some open source developers, especially now Microsoft have thrown in the issue of the possibility of Linux forking (as Unix did)... it would also seem that Gates has moved on from telling people to 'get the facts' and creating FUD around patents and IP to criticising the open source communty's ability to create interoperable software."
From the guy that brought you exchange server and MS office closed format.
odd, that the post was visible via rss before plain old web browser.
Forking is inevitable, especially since there is now large corporate (IBM, Novell, etc.) money involved. Linux is highly flexible and, since it's open source, customization of even the kernal is inevitable.
This is NOT a bad thing IMHO. It will just take some getting used to and require knowledge of the changes.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Each distribution has typically has its own fork. The glory of the GPL rings true here. No one can be hurt from a fork. The better code, how ever one wishes to evaluate better, will live on. As others have already noted, "Nothing to see here. Move along."
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
beer marinade steak, eat with fork, good
.. well at least that demon mascot does.
Here we've got the masters of embrace, extend and lock out criticising Open Source software for lack of interoperability. Uh huh. Maybe it would all work together if they'd bother to use open standards, or to actually document what they did with the ones they DID use.
I think he's trying to make the point that someone could make a fork that is incompatible with all linux programs, or something like that. It doesn't make sense to me, because such a product would only be the result of its creators having a strong urge to shoot themselves in the foot.
I've ignored Red Hat and SuSE for about 5 years now, focusing mainly on Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, etc.
Now that I've used a Red Hat system again, I was completely dazzled by how drastically different the experiences are. I expect the GUI to be more polished, naturally, but so many underlying things are different as well. All in all, they're things I can learn, and binary and source compatibility are still there, but it's the trend that's disturbing.
All of the traditional UNIX vendors forked in order to raise the barrier of exit for people who wanted to switch platforms. Sun's platform is still alive today because Solaris is such a unique beast that you have administrators trained solely in the art of this platform. All the UNIX part does is allow for some kind of source compatibility. Maybe.
Cisco took TCP/IP, which was practically invented (and perfected?) on a BSD box and threw it away to build a new proprietary OS to run specifically on their routers.
It's hard to find a major distribution shipping the vanilla kernel these days. When does, for example, SuSE decide that binary compatibility with other distros is keeping them from "enhancing" the user experience? Can they resist?
I'd like to be wrong about all of this.
The whole nature of open source is based on interoperability. It is this very nature that made the Internet possible. Where standards are nonexistent, they are being created; for instance, look at the Jack Audio Connection Kit that allows all Linux audio applications (that support it) to interconnect. As a result, developers do not keep reinventing the wheel all the time; instead, they learn how to work with the provided interface, and just build what does not exist yet.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This remembers me of an older article and two funny comments...
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Does wider adoption benefit the developers of OSS, or would they be better spending their time working on the software than fighting FUD?
(I mean this as a serious question, not trolling)
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If Linux forks, it only offers more options to the user... they can evaluate what version works best for them, much in the way they do with distros. Of course, this is a bit contrary to MS's "lock-in" strategy, so of course they'll refute it as FUD.
Err, when we start talking about entire Linux installs, and not just the kernel, wouldn't KDE and Gnome and (Others) count as forks? Yeah, they might be interface forks, but they each have their own software packages, configuration, etc. Yeah, KDE software will run on a Gnome desktop if the KDE libs are installed and vice versa, but that isn't really highly integrated is it?
And for software where money is made by having supporting services, etc, instead of the software itself, the incentive to create easy to use but still powerful software isn't very high - that'd mean less people buying support and help!
Shouldn't Slashdot be one of the first to stop spreading Microsoft's FUD? The less attention it gets, the less effective it will be.
Personally, I'm getting sick of seeying these 'Microsoft accuses competetition of being worse then them!' articles.
So what if there's a fork? So what if Linux experiences the same sort of trial-by-fire that occured when BSD went head-to-head with AT&T SysV? Sure, there was bickering between the BSD and SysV camps over the "right" way to do things. However, for the most part, the best methods won out by right of acclaim and attrition. There are few "pure" SysV systems, the BSD/SysV wars are ancient history, and *nix is probably the better for having gone through it.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
Consider the Windows 95 -> 98 -> ME fork and the NT -> 2000 -> XP fork.
Would Microsoft consider that a mistake?
I think it's important to recognize that Microsoft, SCO and other like minded companies will do whatever it takes to distribute harmful and baseless propaganda in order to further their cause (monopolization of desktop and server markets, proprietization of media and so on). The fact is, while each distribution has minor differences in the way userland and package management is iemplemented, the fundamental Linux kernel is the same and works across all of the distributions.
As we've seen in previous anti-Linux efforts on Microsoft's part, this is another effort to steer current Microsoft users away from Linux that may be considering it to lower licensing fees and hardware overhead. We all know it takes a *lot* more sysadmin time and monetary investment in hardware and software to reach the same results with a Microsoft-based workstation or server vs. a Linux or Unix equivelent. While Microsoft's sales are strong, their propaganda efforts show some desperation and fear.
While open source developers may spend a lot of time battling Microsoft's rhetoric, I think it's more important to concentrate on creating a solid operating system for everyone, from the hobbiest to the corporate user. The best way to beat Microsoft at its own game is not to play it. That is, Microsoft seems to value marketing and scare tactics over actual development and innovation. Let's not let Linux fall in Microsoft's trap of smoke and mirrors.
shop.envescent.com - Computer hardware and more.
The reason why forking isn't a problem is because the open source community knows how to read the friggin' RFCs before we code something. Unlike a certain software giant who lives in Redmond.
Doesn't matter if there is one branch of a big project or 1000 forks. If they stick to specs, they are all interchangeable. Like your window manager. As long as they do what they're supposed to do, stick to specs and play fair - it doesn't matter which one you use.
This gives the user choice, which is why MS finds it to be such an alien concept.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What Microsoft does not want you to know or think about is the difference between a fork with the proprietary Unixes and Linux. With all those proprietary types, yeah a fork is "bad" cause the code bases will never, never merge together. The opposite of that is the strength of Linux (if it ever did fork), any of those differences in code bases can be merged to one or the other or both. That's a good thing cause any improvements can be had by the other.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The first kind is where each version of the software is slightly different, yet ABI compatible with one another. That's what the Linux kernel is, and Linus and co. have tried hard to maintain this. In essence, every time a developer sets up his own tree, it's a "fork" of the Linux kernel, but that's ok because binary compatibility is still maintained, and those changes will probably be merged back upstream anyway. Good news all round.
The second kind is where a substantial group of developers get into a messy political argument and take the codebase in a wildly different direction and becomes a new project in itself. This isn't necessarily a bad thing either, as you'll see cross-pollination between projects (like in the BSD's). However this may be what the FUD-mongerers are hinting at. I have yet to see any signs that this will happen though - it's downright impractical to fork the Linux kernel in a wildly incompatible fashion with the rest of the developer community - for one thing, there's a whole shitload of drivers you now have to maintain yourself. Not an easy job.
As for distros being different...well it's always been this way. Yet Linux's growth has been phenomenal, and with efforts like the LSB in place you won't find that distros diverge too far from one another.
Things look bright for Linux, any way you go. Don't listen to the FUD mongerers.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Well, there is the Linux Standards Base, that has defined standard aspects for Linux and many of the distributions adhere to some amount of this.
But really, installing Linux and applications is a lot easier than installing Windows XP and applications, certainly in terms of time to install and not needing reboots, etc.
You just get a Linux distro, one of the big name ones if you don't want to do much work and need to know that there'll be online help. For example, Suse or Mandrake. Install it. Done.
What about Windows with it's home, professional, server, media center, pocket pc and what not forks? Everyone's forking all the time. The question is only how much do they fork.
With linux: Choose a LSB compliant distro like SuSE and it's fairly standardized.
Win 95, Win 98, WinNT, Win2K, WinXp. Looks like a hell of a lot of incompatible forking to me....
Linux developers need more spooning.
I'm a big tall mofo.
You know, I've started to noticed a very strong similarity between the open source movement and the progressive political movement. Both tend to just react to attacts, are not proactive, and faile to frame the debate into their own words. Thankfully for politics, the progressive movement has picked up on this and is working to change it. The open source folk can learn a thing or two from this. However, issue framing is a bit too complex for a comment post so I recommend that all of you go out and read "Don't Think of an Elephant!" by George Lakoff. Yes it's a politically motivated book, but it's the best place to learn issue framing that I know of. Perhaps I'll get off my lazy ass sometime soon and come up with something for slashdot readers.
You know you like it.
Microsoft did NOT CREATE Interoperable Software, they just refined it a lot, and made it worm and virus friendly. Amazing the power of marketing and the ability to re-write history. Microsoft's #1 achievement is making incompatibility, and money.
Apple and Convergent had IS first, about the same time as Digital's 'All in One' office suite, when all MS had was DOS!
OSS is getting better. FireFox and Samba demonstrate this. And at least these interoperate with the OS, without bypassing the OS security model.
Well, there's lots of different foods out there. How did you pick your favorites?
Try a few. Download a few distros. Don't worry - they're free. Load them on a machine and fiddle with them. You'll find that one of them out there matches the way you work and think. All you have to do is fiddle around a bit and find it.
And don't worry about the "they're all different" bit. They're really not so different. Every distro is about 80% identical to other distros. The main differences are installation and package management.
Just jump in and see what suits you.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Funny how someone who talks a lot about the software 'ecosystem' wants customers to invest in this one dinosaur - instead of being amazed at the natural process of species differentiation and survival of the fittest.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think this is brillant, couldn't have come from a more knowledgable person at a better time. Especially given that in the past day or two a nice little article got published up on Groklaw about the SMB / CIFS protocol and what legnths they have to go to, to reverse engineer / pull it apart on the wire. It's essentially a slightly intelligent brute force method.
0 10415933
Take a look. I couldn't have made the timing for this article any better if I tried.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050205
I second Tridge's motion that when Microsoft really wants to come to the party on interoperability, let me know. I want to be there.
Personally, I think the major reason why they are going through what they are doing for interoperability now, it's all because of market pressure with the rise of open source, and the open standards which it follows. See what's happening with all the governments demanding open standards for documents etc?
*sigh* when will they learn?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
The problem isn't the forks. It is the install procedure that each fork will require to run the same piece of software.
With windows, you download a program and double click the install button. It doesn't matter if you are running Windows 98 / ME, NT, 2K, or XP. The thing installs and (sometimes) suns correctly. Try downloading a package (NOT SOURCE) built for some old version of RedHat and installing it on a new Slackware distribution. It just plain does not work by default.
This is what Bill G was talking about and I agree with him. There is no "standard" in the distribution. Where should the program go when it gets installed and does the distribution that it is getting run on grant the required privileges to install it there by default?
The Linux community needs to agree on a few things, one of the basics would be userland programs and config scripts. Until then it will continue to be it's own worst enemy as people won't be able to call themselves Linux admins, they will only be able to call themselves Distribution admins.
Start we Fedora. There. Your problem has been solved.
Install Apache, Install Wordpress and off you go! A better than average server at ZERO cost!
Later on you will find out that Wordpress works across all the major distros, and so Apache.
It is true that M$ usera are accustom to be spoon fed with state-of-the-art manuals and wizards that facilitate their work. This is not the case in the *nix world.
Yet,
my favorite motto for the OSS/*nix world is:
"You do the work, you reap the benefits"
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Bill Gates telling the open source world how to run their business is like Jenna Jameson teaching a class on abstinence.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Really? Looks like a lot of backwards compatible versions to me. Admittedly there were some bumps migrating from 9x to NT kernels, but on the other hand how many other kernels does Linux have binary compatibility with (FreeBSD, for example, includes Linux, SCO, etc. binary compatibility. Does Linux?). Hell, 98SE and NT4 device drivers work on Window 2000 a lot of the time. That'd binary compatibility between device drivers across two entirely different kernels. Good luck making Linux device drivers work on a new major (and sometimes minor) kernel version without a recompile.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
My problem is that If I spend alot of my time developing some code to give away - what is to stop some jerk from stealing it and not giving me credit? NOTHING
Or for example - I am ONE developer. I write a new app. Some big company sees $$$, so has their developers use my hard work. There is NO guarantee that I will ever see any money. Forgive me for my M$ view, but I do have to feed my family. Where does this protect me from the Open source vultures?
What about win 2003 server, win xp home/pro, windows 2000 advanced server, clustered server, etc.? I guess all of those are really the same thing, so we should just all buy the cheapest one and never look elsewhere within M$'s world for something with a different codebase of any kind.
stuff |
Yes, MS might create a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but how do you explain this?
We *could* die.
We *should* die.
We *will* die.
We *won't* die.
It even kind of has the air of: "Jeez, were you dumb enough to fall for that?"
Ever since all that hoopla about MN 2004, it's hard for me to read the word "FUD" on the front page of Slashdot and not giggle.
Forking creates a micro-market with micro competition. Software evolution is completely analygous (sp) to biological evolution. You have to have micro forking (microevolution) in order to evolve. Then the best traits are selected and carried on. Following the thoery of "punctuated equilibrium", those which have micro-evolved traits that are of significant advantage will be picked up by the others then the population of' those with the traits will explode. It is Natures way. No point in fighting it.
In IT though maintaining many microlines is viewed as a bad thing, unlike with biological life where things maintain themsleves. This is where the FUD really is. But one should realize that it need not be a big concern if the developers take that concern into account. An example of how to mitigate this is to use XML for settings. Any microline specific sub-tree of settings need not interfere and is only used by the microline.
HOWEVER this is an area where OSS has been deficient. Backwards-compatibility is not a highlight of OSS. OSS has gotten better, but even as recently as a year ago it was the policy of Mozilla to have the user manually do a uninstall before an upgrade. Such annoyances contribute to the magnitude of fear. What is more, backwards compatiblity policies vary from project to project. I do expect this to get better, and it has notten a lot better.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Imagine if Windows was forked... then we may actually get a version that works.
Q: How do you know Bill Gates is lying?
A: His lips are moving.
I can't understand why Linux and F/OSS zealots waste time fighting FUD. It seems like a waste to me. All the time that is spent playing politics could be spent improving software and fighting FUD with the truth... Better software. Any person with half a brain knows that Microsoft, Sun, insert any corporation, will lie (or stretch the truth) in order to make their stuff look better than their competitors. So why fight it? IMHO there are many other more important battles to fight... Like better F/OSS software, better documentation, software patents, etc. It's weird how politics has this way of sucking people in. My self included.
The difference between MS, Unix and other propriatory systems and Linux & OSS when it comes to forking is that linux "forks" (such as the kernels that most distros ship) are compatible and indeed pretty much every "fork" or variant of an OSS program has tried to remain compatible (i.e. the kernel remains compatible with all linux apps except mabie those that talk to the kernel directly like kernel modules and drivers and so on)
And programs like Apache, OpenSSL, OpenSSH and others are based on standards.
On the other hand when Microsoft and other propriatory software vendors make forks, they are often incompatible by design.
here an idea:
:-)
pick one (use any criteria you desire), learn it.
Pick another one, learn the differences.
Try a third, more difficult distro (pick gentoo)
learn it inside and out.
Give yourself a long break from Windows (a month should do it) now go back to Windows and hate it properly.
Then never ever ever again ask What is the best distro..... as the answer will always be Gentoo anyway (ok ignore that last bit
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Linux is not targeted as 'evil corporate product' like MS because there is not a single person/corporation to target.
The default assumption that Linux sources is available and can be modified for each environment is FUD since a multi-million dollar software/hardware installation will not be able to have downtime in months or years whilst the linux source is being fixed to meet their buisness needs.
On the other hand some windows 98 application fail to run on windows 98 because the right version of internet explorer is not installed. (same story on winnt4 and windows 2000). I cannot tell you abou wndows XP because i do not agree with the licencing.
If you're "giving away" your code under GPL then there is something to stop big companies from using your code-- the legal power of the GPL. If they take your code, they share it with everyone or get sued. That's the law. But really, if you're giving away the source code, how do you expect to make money in the first place? The GPL exists because it's code you felt like writing anyway, not as some half-assed get-rich-quick scheme. If you want to make money, put it out a closed source version until you finally get sick of your code and then put out one final, GPL version. Just don't expect any help on your closed source program.
Duh.
Now, this is just a suggestion so feel free to ignore it, but maybe you should consider not releasing your code under an Open Source Licence if the idea of someone "stealing" your code bothers you.
The majority of Open Source and Free Software is written either because the developer enjoys doing it, in which case they couldn't give a shit if someone else uses their work, or because they're truly being altruistic and believe in Free software, in which case they couldn't give a shit if someone else uses their work. See a pattern?
If you're writing Open Source or Free software for some other reason then you're doing it wrong. If you're going to freak out about someone else "stealing" your work then you've totally missed the point and should probably just sit quietly in the corner until you get it. Of course I bet you have no problems downloading all that free work from someone else to use in the creation of your masterpeice, do you?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Bill would know what a pain in the ass it is for an operating system to have a bunch of divergent and not always compatible offerings available.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I'll spork your ass! :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Be vewy, vewy quiet...
Gentoo simply sucks. Try Slackware!
I think a serious Linux fork would be no problem at all, thanks to the GPL. If it had features the official kernel lacked -- an almost certain proposition -- we can assume that these features would get eventually merged in. Of course, worst case scenario most Linux software can also run on BSD.
With the ego trips and lack of cohesion seen in many open source projects, a fork in any OSS is a real possibility. Nothing new hear; forks in OSS happen all the time. Could one happen with Linux? Sure, if Linus gets tired of it easily.
Perhaps it's Bill himself who should get forked.
LOL! Just had to try a firstie.. haven't done so in years!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
I love these discussions of interoperability from Microsoft. I've been supporting Microsoft products for the last 10 years and...
1. Each new version of Windows breaks some applications. Discussions about how much effort Microsoft puts into being compatible with older products only have relevance to you if you are a multi-million $ consumer of Microsoft products. Everyone else just sucks up the cost of many application upgrades whenever another version of Windows comes out!
2. Microsoft's own products don't interoperate well. Flame me if you must, but I have personally experienced the difficulties of working with Word documents from one version of Office to the next. And I went through one interation of the Basic macro programming language in Office that caused me to scrap every damned macro I wrote and do it again from scratch (there may have been more than one, but I didn't ever consider it again so it wasn't my problem anymore).
3. Microsoft always feels free to hijack existing standards to create their own, proprietary standard that they refuse to release any details on to deliberately keep people from interoperating with them. The recent hijacking of Kerberos authentication protocols is one example of this.
Microsoft made a deliberate choice of not supporting interoperability. They love the "churn" that they cause in the market. As long as everyone is busy fixing their applications to run with the newest version of Windows, discovering and then implementing their newest version of a hijacked standard and upgrading/reinstalling new applications nobody ever has the time/energy to devote to any real innovation in the market. The more Microsoft ties up everybody else's resources, the less that Microsoft has to worry about any real competition.
I find it kind of hypocritical for Bill Gates to accuse others of not being "interoperable".
That's called a dependancy. the same thing will happen on a linux box if you don't have the required packages installed.
they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win. - Gandhi
We're in phase 3...
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
The catholic and episcopal churches are going through this now and they are essentially playing the role of Microsoft.
... who is going to be the Martin Luther of Software and nail a diocese to the Microsoft Redmond Front Door?
The catholic and episcopal churches (claiming to be the original church) are warning against a break in the church - saying it dilutes the congregation. They are threatening parishes with lease termination. Microsoft also claims that that some distributions are totally against many standards and warns of their "communististic nature" - just as the catholic churches complain about the protestant offshoots.
Interesting to see that Linux and Windows are being treated more like religion and less like commodity software.
So
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
By responding to a couple of Bill's utterings (even shooting him down) Bill gets to set the topic of debate. He also gets to advertise his XML as if he were leading the way and waiting for the amatures to catch up.
He wants "interoperability" on everyones lips just as he releases Office2003 with XML support.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Joel on software talked about this long time ago:
0 00 49.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000
I'm sorry, using verbose protocol to make everything portable isn't the way, thanks.
my 2c.
Each 'distro' is a fork from the other version.
Now, most are minor changes, but there ARE differences between distros.
Hence Fork.
Back in the 1980's and 1990's the various UNIX vendors did not hold hands and exclaim "We are UNIX, We are Unified" and Microsoft got the fork label to stick. Microsoft is trying the same thing again.
Now, if the "Linux" camp had stopped labeling anything that might run on a Linux kernel version "Linux" or even hardware running "Linux" as "Linux", then Microsoft would have limited targets to point out flaws. But with many, many different definitions of "Linux", Microsoft will have many, many years of pointing out flaws. Good luck covering all those bases.
...software that is in-operable by design.
It is an easy mistake to make.
I prefer fscking rather than forking
I must be missing the M$ point as software forks all the time. Did not Winodws NT 3.5 fork from Windows 3.11 ? Are not users of Windows NT 3.x user long since faced this same issue? I don't believe Microsoft nor Linux could release a new version without a fork... but Linux being POSIX and having source code can in fact address most of the issues by re-compiling and re-installing.
But if the point is Linux could fork to a different group supporting it, this is a plus. It prevents a monopoly and the associated costs with it. It also allows distributions to evolve to what the market wants, and not marketing letting us know what we want.
For example, I was using a very old version of Linux, stable but needed to upgrade. I ended up going to a different distro as it was nicely tailered towards the desktop and it was destined for my laptop. The switch was painless.
That's not really "forking", IMO, those are just old and current versions of same OS. There are really just two forks there: the old Win9X and the NT-based Windowses.
AFAIK what people usually mean by "forking" does not directly apply to Windows. Yes, we have Win98 (for example) and W2K. But W2K is a successor of Win98, and not a fork. But in Linux we have Red Hat, SUSE, Lindows, Lycoris, Debian, Gentoo etc. etc. And they are all current. It's not like SUSE is an successor of Red Hat. I do not consider Mandrake 10 to be a fork of Mandrake 9, and neither do I consider Win XP to be a fork of W2K.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This is my BIGGEST problem with slashdot /. a 1337 that has no time for a gnuB.
Why is it every time I admit I am a Microsoft guy, I get modded down?
I really WANT to learn Linux. Can anyone help me understand Forking, or is everyone on
There are some helpful comments here I know can help my MS peers get off the ground - if only SOMBODY could mod the parent up!
I'd rather have forking Linux than be totally forked by Microsoft.
The two forks of Windows there are: NT, 9x, and CE.
The three forks of Windows are: NT, 9x, CE, and Phone.
Noone expects Bill Gates...
A simple explanation is not hard to find.
FreeBSD can even use Win2k device drivers for some hardware.
Dear Bill,
You talk the talk on Interoperability but let's cut to the chase of the matter. Microsoft software only has the APPEARANCE of functionality with non Microsoft software.
Examples?
How about your broken LDAP implementation, which leads to a broken AD implementation. Oh, wait. You MEANT to design it liks that?
Front Page. Yeah. Right. Ever try to configure Front Page on an Apache Server? I know, you provide some broken ass extensions with a lame assed install script. That's why RTR Software has to release the FIXED version.
IE. Riiight. We wont go there. Or maybe we will. Let me give you a hint, Bill. Firefox. I won't say FF is perfect - but it's a damn sight better than that broken old clunker you call a browser.
When you get right down to it, Microsoft software will ONLY work with Microsoft software. The MOMENT you hook it to something NON Microsoft, your engineers get squirrly, say "That's not a supported configuration" and walk away. Nice. Now not only do we have something broken, but we now don't have support from the company THAT HOLDS THE SOURCE CODE AND KNOWS HOW THE HELL IT WORKS.
Bill. I'm tired of rebooting to install a patch. I'm tired of crappy software. I just beat out a competitor on a bid for a medium sized company WAN. Guess what they were quoting. You guessed it. M$. Guess what I quoted. It wasn't M$.
Guess what else. I'm aggressively selling AGAINST your software. But I'm not selling SOFTWARE. I'm selling my install services for GPL based software. And making much, much more than I would have ever made if I'd been a M$ "Partner".
= Grow a brain...
I've spent the last several days trying to figure out how to let my users update their sites on a WebDAV-enabled Apache server using Microsoft Web Folders. Microsoft's implementation of client side WebDAV in Windows 2000 (and probably others) is really only compatible with their own IIS DAV module. It does things that are not RFC-compliant and that break when you try to upload to a RFC-compliant DAV module.
Microsoft isn't interoperable with anything but their own software, so why should we try to interpoperate with theirs? Let 'em hang!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
CE is not meant for PC's, so it's irrelevant in this context. It's meant for embedded systems and the like.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Linux is (technically) the kernel. Whilst the default RedHat and SuSE kernel may have some different compile options specified they are essentially versions (depending on the time the kernel was fixed for a particular OS release) of the same source code with different compile options. Sometimes the source code does vary a little but typically these changes are temporary and fed back into the base kernel. I suppose the analogy might be if Windows Server 2003 required a kernel fix and it was changed in a particular build of Windows Server 2003 but the change took a few builds of Windows XP to get back into the main kernel source. In neither case is there a true fork of the source code, just revisions not checked back in, but in both instances a fork is a theoretical possibility. (The analogy may be false as I don't know Microsoft's internal development process in detail).
In terms of individual additional components that form the whole of GNU/Linux or other associated tools then full forks are possible and are problematic. However there currently seems to be a tendency for most common distributions to follow the herd on changes. There are differences on whether LSB is supported but I think just about all the common distributions will fall into line with regards to LSB. LSB then provides consistency and interoperability. Actually these days I find there is more consistency between different versions of Linux, Unix, OSX, etc than there used to be. So they may be different versions of a similar UNIX-like concept, but they are easier to work with consistently then 10 years ago. Even between different versions of some operating systems (the move to HP-UX 10 comes to mind) there were huge changes and the rate of change in the fundamentals seems to be less between versions and across systems these days.
I read this far. The parent was high enough for me.
i ngStarted/
I would agree that you should get your hands on Fedora. (And one day you'll end up on Gentoo). In the install screen you'll want to install Apache, PHP and mySQL and install that. (...and before you get to that screen, whatever it proposes for drive partition is probably fine, in linux you need to define the amount of space for memory to overflow to) - A quick Google found this guys guide: http://www.johnmunsch.com/articles/FedoraCoreGett
Those crazy Linux commands can be dificult to learn, though powerfull. Are you going to be near this box a lot? If not it might help you to learn more about VNC and use the GUI interface remotely over the network - it functions like Remote Desktop.
Lastly, it's not really forking. At the moment their just diffrent implementations of the same standards. The linux distros are closer together on 'the linux standard' than Netscape and IE were on HTML.
.\.\att Clare
You forget the economics of Open Source.
If you release a piece of software under an Open Source license, it is likely that others start using it.
You will get feedback, both positive and negative. Because there is no warranty you can feel free to ignore the negative feedback - or offer to help people needing help for a fee. And the positive feedback is mostly bugfixes and improvements in the form of patches that you get for free.
How the maintainer(s) of an Open Source project handles the positive feedback, determines the risk of the project forking. If bugfixes and improvements are not put back into the codebase, the risk of a project fork is high.
to quit forking around and shut the fork up!
If I attempt to run a Linux application from 1995 on a modern Linux distro I generally get errors about missing libraries. In fact, trying to run apps just a few years old on a Linux box is often fraught with difficulty. I can often get it to run in the end - though not always.
Microsoft have had a fairly consistent set of APIs over the last decade. I really can't say the same about Linux - expecially the UI libraries.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
the FUD Bill Gates could make, after dealing for years with an angry anti-Microsoft community, about the same community's ability to create (and get approved for publication) extremely long and antiinteroperable sentences.
Try installing wine and binfmt.
./configure
Don't be fooled by the apparent install procedure consistencies in Windows, there are more different installers for windows than there are for linux.
MSI, InstallShied of various types, wise VB setup to name a few, and when the one you need doesn't work theres no way to install the product, at least with GPL there's always the
tar -xjf
autoconf
make install option
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What do you expect? Quite a few vocal Linux groups hangout here and telling everyone you're an MS man/woman is like shooting yourself in the foot.
Some steps to changing to Linux. (I go with this way, and you see why).
For the Newbies coming from Windows...
(1) Check that all your hardware works with Linux first! Take the time and search!
(2) Make sure there are MS equivalents apps that you used to use, but they work on Linux. Also check if your Windows-app works in WINE.
(3) Pick a distro that is stable and not some cutting edge test platform for the community...I usually go for anything that uses the 2.4.x Kernels like any Red Hat Enterprise (RHEL for short) class based distro. (Like CentOS, StartCom Linux, etc)
(3) The benefit of using a RHEL-based distro is that there is solid documentation to fall back on. Like CentOS is closely based on RHEL, so documentation should apply to both. If you have trouble, just read the manuals!
(4) Once you got over the basics, take a step up in difficulty and move onto distros like Slackware, Debian, etc.
(5) They'll be alot of reading, but its worth it to get the MS product away from your setups. It'll take time to get use to things, but be patient as you'll understand the rewards in the end.
(6) Make sure you READ the manual FIRST! Then if all else fails, ask for help...Make sure you're detailed as possible! (include logs, error messages, etc)
As for Bill Gates's BS...Do any of you listen to his crap? I sure don't...He's a businessman, and like anyone who wants to sell something and make billions, he's full of shit when it comes to competiting products.
I would rather focus on improving Linux, maybe help in some way to get all Linux folks around the world to follow some general standards.
Why? Because atm, Linux is a bit uncoordinated, as everyone is doing their own thing! IF however, you get everyone to follow in the same general direction and coodinate your efforts, you see Bill Gates shit his pants and try to spread more FUD. We all know Gates is scared, all we have to do is "fly in the same direction" and he knows its "checkmate".
The point is, if something is really good and everyone knows it, nothing needs to be said about. There's no need to say anything...Gates can babble all he wants, but if he cannot deny the fact that another product is better and its out there for free, he's stuffed.
I am not sure if you are trolling or if you really are missing the point, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
;-)
Lets take two scenarios:
Scenario 1: You write a killer app. You keep it a closed source model, and some greedy big company decides it likes your software and wants to make money from it. Whats to stop them from doing a little reverse engineering, decompiling, and then "adapting" it to make it look like they wrote it? It's not very hard to do, really. And, since your source is closed, the only person that can really prove that SomeBigCo stole your software is you.
What is your recourse? You sue SomeBigCo for copyright infringement. However, you have to prove that you wrote it in the first place, which may or may not be an easy thing to do. SomeBigCo can also throw lots of lawyers at it and it will plod through the legal system. If your lucky and you win, you may see some money in a decade or so. In the mean time, you will need to spend your hard earned money on legal fees.
Scenario 2: You write a killer app. You open source it and use the GPL for the license. You are making money not on sale of the software (although that could be done), but on service, support, and perhaps customizing the software for others. Others have seen your software, liked it and have sent helpful patches and features to you, thereby enhancing your product. SomeBigCo sees it and wants it for their own. They have a choice then - they can either follow the GPL and release any changes as open source (thereby leveraging their developers to your effort), or they adapt it and try to make it their own.
If they release their enhancements as opensource, that is fine because you can incorporate it into your source tree. Since you are making money off service and support, you still have a revenue stream off of your software and that will not diminish by SomeBigCo helping your development.
If they try to make it their own, then you still have copyright law to enforce the copyright of your software. Only this time, since it is GPL, you stand a good chance of getting the Free Software Foundation's lawyers involved, rather than paying for your own. Additionally, a company may have no qualms about stealing software from an individual or even a small company, but only the foolhardy would risk a GPL lawsuit.
How does this protect you from "Open Source Vultures"? By using a service and support model, you will have a steady stream of income regardless of whether you are doing the development. No matter what, if SomeBigCo decides to try and steal your software, you still will need to litigate the issue. However, with a closed source model, your legal expenses will be your burden. Also, don't forget you will need to pay a lawyer to write your license for you, and if not written correctly it could allow SomeBigCo to take your software through a legal loophole. The GPL is a very stong license, and although it is not fully tested in court it is strong enough to considered formidable by the Nazgul of Armonk (IBM's lawyers).
Finally, think of it this way - writing software is very much like the pursuit of scientific research. The very act or reading this is a culmination of work and ideas created by others, all built upon one another to create this gestalt called slashdot
An ounce of perception is worth a pound of obscure
Gawd, what awful applications. I always hate when that happens.
My own code for Windows platforms is always pure Win32 (with DirectX or OpenGL for graphical things), and will run on Win95 through to XP SP2.
The trouble the other coders get into all starts when they start using auxillary components in Windows, like IE or the goddamned MFC library or such. (This is also where many of the security holes come from)
You're getting modded down because you're coming on like a troll:
/. where you say, "What's the best distribution for a beginner?" that's fine, but if you say "Say you work years developing some kewl new software. Then somebody with some bucks comes along and hires some developers to try to make it their own (i.e. STEAL it)," it's pretty clear that you're just here to add to noise to signal ratio.
"IMHO The BIGGEST problem with Free OS is Forking."
It's clear from that statement that you either don't have any idea what Linux (ie. "Free OS") and "Forking" are, or you do know what they are but are trolling. Given that you claim to be a software professional, and there are numerous websites that explain how to get started with Linux (ie. burn a damn Knoppix live CD), it seems less likely that you ignorant and more likely that you are trolling. If you want to have a very special ask
I'm getting tired of your trolling. Have you figured out the difference between a fork and distro yet or should I let myself waste more time with pointless complaints about people stealing your code?
...interoperability among differents versions of MS Office and the SMB protocol of Win98 and Win2k...
I just don't understand why the Linux community wants everything to be so complicated. I run Linux and Windows. One thing Windows has is ease of use. I click on *.exe and the program installs. I don't have to open up a command window type in long strings of jibbrish over and over again and follow xx number of steps. Oops I screwed up step 3. Why not make some standards? People (normal people) will use Linux. Microsoft has 99% of the market mainly because 98% of users are stupid.
Who is Gates to lecture on forking? Look at Windows--they forked into the 9x series and the NT series. Poor Win32 developers have to make sure that their software is compatable on Win98, ME, NT, 2K, and XP before shipping. And even as we finally start phasing out the abomination that is the 9x Kernel, we still have to support ME for another three years or so.
Arent there already several forks of the linux source for the embedded market?
If you're going to freak out about someone else "stealing" your work then you've totally missed the point and should probably just sit quietly in the corner until you get it.
I write open source code because I want my work to benifit society, not to make some company to rich stealing my code and using it not to peoples benifit (not giving it to them for free)
I choose GPL rather than BSD specifically for that reason. I think that's probably the reason why there are alot more contributors to Linux than any of the BSDS
icrosoft software can talk to mainframes and minicomputers from IBM and other manufacturers; other operating systems such as the Mac OS and various UNIXes including Linux; NetWare or AppleTalk networks and native Internet protocols; dozens of programming languages, ranging from COBOL and RPG, through C++ and Java, to the latest experimental languages; hundreds of databases including Oracle, Sybase and DB2; popular business applications like SAP or Siebel; vertical industry standards like SWIFT or HL7; email systems; and infrastructure products providing message queues, directory, management and security.
Please Mr. Gates point me to the SQL driver for Linux. I know that FreeTDS exists but it's not supported by Microsoft. The interoperability that Billy speaks of is not due to efforts by Microsoft. Quite the opposite. It's been Microsofts goal to make non-M$soft software a failure on its platforms. Sure Java works in windows despite Microsoft's attempt to make it a failure. Stop shitting in our mouths and calling it fudge..
"Fork yourselves!"
> Looks like a lot of backwards compatible versions to me.
followed by:
> Hell, 98SE and NT4 device drivers work on Window 2000 a lot of the time.
"a lot of the time"??? So, which is it? backwards compatible or not?
Fighting the MS FUD machine is a full time job for some open source developers...
/. 1users. Real developers program full time. The next time you want to make fun of me for running Windows just remember: I know you can't program.
Hahahaha!!1!
More like OSS fanboys fighting FUD because they don't know how to program and thats the only thing they can bring to the table. I'm looking at you
I've seen way too many people arguing that forking is like the process of evolution. It's quite simple. While there is tremendous diversity amongst life on this planet, the difference in DNA between a human and a bacteria is 10% or less. Add to that the basic fact that all DNA works the same way, using the same kinds of carbon chains. Forking like BSD and AT&T isn't the same thing as evolution because the incompatibility barriers raised are more like like group abdoning ATCG. And that's before you even get into considering different hardware, something bioligically akin to if we found life that wasn't organic. The kind of compatibility here simply doesn't do a good analogy with evolution.
Don't call it FUD. If you think a man is a liar, call him a liar.
People concerned about "forking" neglect to take into account that forking doesn't mean less support for each fork. Once they get large enough, projects can fork in order to accomodate the needs of a new user community. That doesn't mean that people get left with a less supported option. Open source projects have the sizes and features that their user communities demand. If enough people want to keep using a piece of software that's 20 years old, then that piece of software is going to keep getting used.
And that's a lot more than one can say for commercial software: after all, does Microsoft still support Windows 3.1? Or Microsoft Word 1.0? Didn't think so. Lack of long-term support despite user demand is a serious problem for commercial software vendors because they need to bring out new versions in order to keep the revenue stream flowing.
I guarantee you over 90% of most applications going back to Windows 95 will happily run on XP. Your nephew's game that wouldn't run on 98? Bogus. Name it.
If your Windows 3.1, 95, or 98 app doesn't run on XP, chances are you were misleading and not pointing out that it's a DOS app. XP is based on the NT kernel, not DOS.
Those aren't forks anyway. A fork is a branching that continues to be developed alongside. Those are newer versions of the same product. Unless you think Linux 2.4 and 2.6 are "forks?" I can't run 2.4-era RPMs on today's Red Hat machines.
Does that mean Linux 2.0, 2.4, and 2.6 are forks?
What's incompatible about those versions of Windows? All my apps still run, going back to the Windows 3.1 versions. In fact, the massive compatibility layer and bending-over-backward to make things run in Windows is what has made it so unstable, and why they're replacing Win32.
When is the last time KDE and GNOME developers ever put out any roadmap on making KDE and GNOME apps compatible to each other? NONE, even after Trolltech licensed Qt to GPL! You can argue that you can run each other's app with appropriate toolkits, but that is like saying you can run Windows on Linux by installing Windows on Linux machines. That simply DOES NOT COUNT. Only when KDE apps can be run in GNOME without Qt, or GNOME apps can be run in KDE without GTK+, it can be considered as compatible.
If KDE and GNOME, which do similar things with similar system requirements, and don't have legal issues to prevent cooperations among developers, can't even work out a deal to improve compatibility among each other's apps, how can you expect open source developers that do vastly different things to cooperate?
Also, what MS API difficulties are you talking about? I've found many things just as hard or easy on both platforms. One thing I did have difficulty with was MFC - it seems kinda disorganised and unorthogonal compared to the X toolkits I've used. But much other stuff is the same: eg. grabbing a surface suitable for 3D rendering, without relying on an easy cross-platform library like GLUT, is just as horrible on both platforms. I don't know anything about developing things like web, database or e-commerce applications.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
FUD, in all of it's manifestations is a sort of propoganda that can be easily equated to the negitive political ads that we in the United States see every time there is an election. When it comes to talking about all of the confusion that forking creates, it probably should be fought with answers that are real, simple, and above all logical.
Forking is a system that mimics "natural selection." When two camps have differing ideas they are both welcome to try it, whoever comes out with the "better" product is the "winner." The weaker of the two products may either "die on the vine" or continue to exist for those people who need the feature's it offers. If it dies, then the product that is being offered is clearly better. If both products continue to exist, then the user has more choices. Either way, the end user wins.
Most of today's modern automobiles have grown from "forks" of the original designs. There is no real reason why they have four wheels and symetric design other than that is what people favor. They have their humble starts with the Ford Model "T" and a few of it's fore-runners. Nobody complains that today, we have too much choice! Why is software any different?
In nature, we see that mono-cultures are almost always vunerable to some outside threat. Sadly, with the pervasivness of Microsoft Windows, we can see that the virtual world is also close to being a mono-culture. Is it any suprize that this operating system's vunerabilities have made things like viruses, trojans, spyware and other vunerabilities so wide-spread (and so dangerous)?
Forking is healthy. It works like natural evolution to both strengthen and diversify. It gives choice, and advances software's strengths and brings out it's weaknesses allowing developers to fix and improve. These are all good things!
Otherwise, I doubt that people would push the LSB2.0 as strongly as they are now.
Let's hope their efforts bring us the fruit that finally crushes down Microsoft's evil.
Software patents.
'Nuff said.
Fighting the forking FUD?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
And speaking of Apache, that's a fork of the (original?) Cern httpd. The name comes from "a patchy server" because early versions were distributed as patches against the Cern httpd source.
;)
So, did that fork have a negative impact on interoperability?
The other interesting fork in this context is Windows NT. (Sorry, revisionists, NT does not derive from VMS.) Who recalls:
OS/2
begat OS/2 3.0 (Microsoft's fork.)
begat OS/2 3.0 New Technology
was shortened to OS/2 New Technology
and finally just NT
Well OK, I guess that proves Gate's claim that forks can be bad.
...but on service, support, and perhaps customizing the software for others...
Conveniently ignoring the fact that for most apps (not all, but most) smaller than an enterprise service, there is no money to be made there. Developer starves to death; scenario 2 ends.
Consider all the Real-Time Embedded Linux forks.
When one vendor fails to adequately support a project, it's SUPPOSED to fork.
This is the ENTIRE ADVANTAGE of GPL'd software over proprietary software(*).
--- (*) Not really.... proprietary vendors are often required to enter into source-code escrow agreements - which, are quite literally a legal agreement preserving the Freedom to Fork for proprietary software
never has there been a more destructive mentality than the "works on my box" mentality that is the norm today in OSS. Not only does it ignore the issue at hand as if the writer is some 3 year old holding their hands over their ears, shutting their eyes and yelling "ya-ya-ya-ya-I can't hear you-ya-ya-ya." No, it also avoids critically looking at WHY your system works and the other people's do not.
Even worse than this is the ego fest that ensues (read: fanboy orgy) in which the "works for me" folks feel generous and give such wisdom as "you must have configured it wrong" or "PEBCAK" type statements.
As for the "OSS ability to interoperate" I think this is full of humor. First is the most obvious, in that Microsoft's past "strategy" for interoperability has been to tie in people to only their systems and force upgrades across the board if and when various components change and do not include reliable backwards compatability.
Now for OSS. The linked email is right on the money in pointing out that "creation of many permutations of the same type of software application" as that fragmentation happens all the time, stripping talent and ideas from various efforts and casting them to the winds of hundreds of smaller and never completed, never stable applications. Continuing from the email, "which could add implementation and testing overhead to interoperability efforts." is a quote that is as factual as saying "changes to a code base can bring about unforseen and therefore planned changes to other areas of functionality" namely... bugs. This is a fundamental truth of software that many simply refuse to grasp. As if that child once again is chanting that he can't hear you, many "developers" of various projects refuse to see reality. Reality exists whether you believe in it or not.
Lets forget Microsoft for a while and focus instead and not being stupid. Stupid is a choice. Stupid choices include
Just as we might be thinking of various parts of software not working together (or at least not without horrible "glue" that turns out to slow down the system and to add one more hard coded, static layer that must itself be later glued to) we must also think of the release cycle of apps. No, you don't get off that easy. In working with specific projects and their releases you MUST also look at the entire environment it will run on, and that includes dependencies. THIS is where OSS has fallen on its face, and this trend seems to be increasing. There should not be such an administrator beating performed to upgrade and update applications. Practice some discipline and maturity when you write apps. Including the latest
Surely the poster meant a regular table fork, not a pitchfork!
Why the %$*(#$ is everybody talking about word documents?
I believe Bill was talking about Directory Services, Mainframes, etc...
C'mon, Games don't often fail because they use the hardware directly- in fact they don't. They use DirectX in most cases. Just because MS claims that the versions of DX are backwards compatible, doesn't mean that they ARE so. And just to close you off, DOS based games do not count as they weren't Windows games- sorry, no traction there.
.so files to work 100% of the time. And, for the large part, as long as the kernel interfaces don't radically change on you, a statically linked app will just simply run. I've got apps from the '95 timeframe that still work fine- having said this, there's newer versions that work better. In fact, I can guarantee you with a 100% certainty that the applications I've written will run on pretty much any distribution to date.
Applications don't 100% work- YOUR applications might do that, but not all of them. I can guarantee you with a 100% certainty that that GDI calls for the desktop and for printing are not even close to consistent across Win 95, Win NT4, and Win2K. I can guarantee you that the API interfaces may be "consistent" but what in the hell they do isn't. And there's broken stuff in the API's from Win 3.11 to NT/95, and better yet there's horrifically inconsistent stuff across their API's (There's been three different, utterly and radically incompatible methodologies for thunking in the last decade- and one invented way that I came up with to support some cross version document imaging components back in the 96 timeframe.)
You either have done minimally complex coding or no coding at all- or else you'd not be making these claims you make about the Windows API.
On the other hand, I can expect code made for the major version numbers and properly linked against the generic instead of the specific
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I call him and his lieutenants that all the time.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Linux forked years ago.
I do remember that X.400 was used, at least here in Australia. I remember a number of years ago seeing a business card with both an Internet email and X.400/X.500 email address on it, so I presume it was used by somebody at one stage.
IS-IS (routing protocol) is probably the most used ISO standard. All the big ISPs use it as their internal routing protocol, as in the past it was more stable than OSPF implementations, and has a few attractive adminstrative features that OSPF doesn't have (e.g., being able to renumber areas without disrupting the network, independent setting of hello (dropdead) timers for routers on a link.).
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
What the fork are Microsoft on about, the whole idea of open source is being able fork to your hearts content, you can fork, then defork, then fork again. The basic concept of software freedom versus proprietary closed source lock in (where a fork is designed to do nothing more than force a customer to continually upgrade at great expence time and effort).
As for other software producers to be able to match their programs to the most appropriate fork, it is always publicly obvious which fork is the most popular, hence which kernel will draw the most commercial software and as a result become even more popular.
When it comes to standards, every operating system is in itself a fork of the concept, with the various incomptable versions of windows just being additonal forks of a fork. As for being a standard operating system Windows has proven itself to be insecure, unreliable and un-trustworthy, definately a forking fork to be left behind. When it comes to the worst fork of the Linux kernel, I expect it to come out some time in the future and be the one produced by Microsoft (so as to be able to re-introduce Linux users to the joys of Microsoft marketing, where promotion far exceeds product quality).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This is a very good point - for application rather than server/enterprise software like "My First Paint Program", "Jim's Christmas Card Creator", "Laz0rDeath 3: This time it's personal"[1] there is never going to be any money in service, support or customisation, and so the only route to making money with it is by xlosing the source and charging for it.
[1]: The programs do not exist.
Obviuskly, every time I edit a .c file on my machine, I'm either creating something totally new, or modifying some existing code.
/etc setup, you're free to take them. If people develop a viable alternative, there's obviously a substantial community that wants something different. In which case having the option is sensible.
If I modify the existing code, I'm creating a fork. That fork may persist only as long as it takes me to execute "make && make test && cvs commit", or it may last a little longer, depending.
But if my change ends up being a good idea, amd I've distributed it under a FOSS license, then anyone can merge it back in to the mainstream and so strengthen the trunk. (And if it's a bad idea, it'll be rightfully ignored.)
A really long-lived fork exists only as long as there is an actual difference of opinion as to what constitutes "good idea".
That's the point. If you want Red Hat's package manager, and init scripts, and
Temporary splits are required. And in the rare case when the "main" branch has stagnated (NCSA httpd, GCC 2.x), the forked branch (apache, egcs) can take over tha main position. The point behind FOSS licenses is that things can be re-integrated (as was done with GCC) once the issue becomes clear.
Is it me, or wasn't the Microsoft Office 'open' XML document format FUDged rather a lot?
Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened
An open source fork is fully visible, if you want to match it or include an interoperability layer or just swap to it, you can. You can readily make your software run on any open source fork (free of BS licensing fees and twisted patent stealing contracts) you can see the source code, you can use bits of the source code.
A closed source fork is the exact opposite, you can't readily make you software run on a closed source fork, you are burdened with BS licensing fees and twisted patent stealing contracts. And you know when they introduce a new fork you are going to get ripped off yet again.
Let's not forget the extra special part about closed source forks, if you produce a extra good software package and say someone like microsoft decides they want to compete with your package. They just introduce a new fork that is incomptable with your software, throw in a few hurdles and roadblocks to insure your product is disadvantaged on the new fork versus their version of your software and you are dead in the water.
Microsft forking for profit at everybody elses expence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Linux has come a long way in terms of packaging and dependencies. It may be able to be installed easily because the legacy packages are avaialble or it may take a little research however I could find those old libraries and run it.
More of a problem with Windows is when the dll is called the same this with a different binary interface. This happens and causes a lot of those crashes that you see. Linux on the other hand has a model that shows when a shared library (equivalent to a dll) has a binary incompatible upgrade and two versions can happily live on the same machine servicing both programs.
Finally most applications can be recompiled or drawn from current packages getting rid of bugs and security problems for free.
So all in all I would say that the fundamental process of Linux is far more robust from a technical viewpoint.
Take your car analogy for example: I know that I or even a new driver can step into any car on the road, even those with the drivers side switched, and quickly learn to drive it. There may be advanced features outside of basic driving, but even those as a rule are intuitively figured out by drivers.
The issue with OSS (as a rule, not specific exceptions) remains that of a hypothetical situation where all the variations in cars consist of incompatability with current roads and road rules, incompatability with common fuels, incompatability with known and established driving conventions and most importantly incompatability with maintenance conventions. Of those, the maintenance aspect is the worst of the lot in following conventions but yet we can clearly see that even that aspect is still under a rather small umbrella of common denominators and more to the point is constantly improving.
Arguing against facts that can so readily be observed about OSS systems (again, as a rule) is obviously the work of emotional fanboys that therefore have no true desire to improve the systems. As if they cover their ears, close their eyes and say, "La-la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you" there is no mature and pragmatic analysis of what works, what doesn't and standing on the shoulder of giants.
OSS proves every day that it is the playground of toy tweakers. Simply ignoring this fact does not change reality.
Perhaps the most devastating problem with OSS mentality is that of getting the worst of both worlds. While many would argue that a more interoperable system breeds more stagnation by its nature (and that is a fact) we have OSS and its always behind the times issues to where only the most bleeding edge projects can bring what Microsoft and (thankfully Apple now) have out of the box and ready for stable use by users, administrators and developers alike.
So, what you get is stagnation AND instability. Plus with each single bit of non-interoperability you exponentially bring about even more stagnation and problems of playing catch-up. Dependencies may be handled by package management systems but in the end it is still a problem with the developers and caused by their lack of pragmatism, maturity, skill, experience, and discipline. The fact that an "open" community, often even within one project, can not seem to work together and engineer interoperable architectures (as a rule) is exactly what you would expect from hobbiests.
Trying to compare OSS with non Open Source systems is like comparing a neighborhood group of children's toy paper boats after a rain shower, to that of the builders of cruiseliners. They each have their own purpose and overall requirements. OSS is for toy tweakers and people who like cobbling together parts with duct tape, spit and shoestring.
You will in fact have to be intimate with the details of lzh compression, and other such low level trivia so that you can find and fix your problem... wasn't that fun? Hope your reason for installing this system was to gut it and fix it while drowning in the details? If not, then please use Windows or OSX.