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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."
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?
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.
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The whole article is a puff piece. Even the above-quoted sentence really doesn't say anything.
But I do have to admit Microsoft is way ahead on interoperability - many more viruses and trojans "just work" with their systems.
Anyone who believes this mindless pap deserves what they get.
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.
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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.
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
Win 95, Win 98, WinNT, Win2K, WinXp. Looks like a hell of a lot of incompatible forking to me....
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you here. There is already a "standard" of sorts. /etc will work when nothing else will. /usr/bin also will work when nothing else will. The real problem here is that the developers of applications pretty much leave this kind of thing up to the distributions. If developers took the time to come up with one click installs for their apps then people might not be so dependent on the distro's The distribution should not be responsible for solving the install issues for their apps. That is the developers problem. When Gnome or KDE offer a one click install for their product then standardization will come. Until then each distribution will continue to offer their own "unique" way of doing things.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
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 would go further and say even those examples show the most important characteristic:
The push ahead innovation - in this case, on the OSS side. Of course, in a sense it wastes development time, but on the other hand - when are you more motivated to code? When you're working on something nobody else in the OSS world is working on - or if you're working on something that has competition and you want to show off that your piece of software is better...?
It's posts liket his that make me wish there were a '-1 Bullshit' moderation tag.....
Patches added to kernels != 'forking'.
Different software subsystems != 'forking'.
Different methods of hardware detection and setup != 'forking'.
If that's true, then Linux forked in the early/mid '90s, because Redhat used a more SysV-like bootup system, and SLackware used a more BSD-like bootup system.
Distros have always had sometimes significant differences between them. I've never, however, had problems getting things to run between distros, except for maybe library differences and versioning hell.
And the first distro that removes 'binary compatibility' will simply go away, because at that point it will cease to be 'Linux'.