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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."
And it's also a convenient coincidence that they talk about this after recently releasing Office 2003 which supports saving the file as XML, and releasing the DTD giving others an option to be compatible with this XML format (albeit the license is somewhat incompatible with the GPL).
Slackware runs a vanilla kernel as far as Im aware..
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.
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
A simple explanation is not hard to find.
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
That's a daemon, damnit!