Open Source Advocacy The Right Way

[vmlinuz] writes "With a rapid succession of people moving towards Open Source, advocacy and evangelism is increasingly important in helping organizations to move over. The O'Reilly Network has begun publishing a series of articles about Open Source by Jono Bacon that teaches how to approach advocacy sensibly and more productively." From the article: "Although Aristotle developed his message many, many years ago, the concept of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history. From Aristotle to Heraclitus to Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Keller to George Bernard Shaw, many people have advocated new thinking in times of rabid opposition."

Comments

You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a geek that hasn't showered in a week, constantly rambling about "Evil Micro$oft" isn't a good way to advocate OSS?

What about yelling First Post????

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic?
Sheesh! Some of the moderators around today really need to get a clue on what all the drop down options actually mean!

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't a troll, it's more like an offtopic/flamebait type of post. It's always funny when people critisise the moderators and get proven right with the moderation of the post.

Re:You mean...

[bigman2003]

I think it is a good thing, and high time that this subject was approached in an intelligent manner.

Personally, I am no fan of Linux/OSS. One of my main oppositions to it has always been the 'culture' surrounding it, and the way they grate on my nerves with their nouveau-hippy attitude.

I really wouldn't mind taking time to look into what is going on, and possibly presenting OSS software at work. Recently I did recommend Thunderbird as a Eudora alternative, when they raised the Eudora license fee, and that was seen as a real 'stretch'.

But, I don't want to be associated with the rabid fans of OSS...the ones who talk about how Microsoft is 'evil' in our planning meetings. See, it is really hard to be taken seriously when you are calling a company 'evil' for trying to make money...when we are sitting around a table talking about how WE can make money. That is what businesses do...and rather than looking at an extremely successfull business as 'evil' we see it as something to emulate.

Before we will use it extensively, it has to change to be something that is supported by professionals...not nut-cases with their anti-Microsoft fire and brimstone speeches.

Re:You mean...

[carpe_noctem]

You realize that when you mock OSS advocates as "rabid", "nouveau-hippies", and "nut-cases" whilst critizicing them for their fanaticism against Microsoft, it's.... hrms, what's the word I'm looking for again?

Oh yeah, IRONIC.

Re:You mean...

[BackInIraq]

But, I don't want to be associated with the rabid fans of OSS...the ones who talk about how Microsoft is 'evil' in our planning meetings.

But Microsoft *IS* evil, aren't they?

The problem is, that isn't enough. Most people don't want to hear why they shouldn't use (insert product), they want to hear whey they *should* use (insert alternate product)...especially when the first product (in this case Microsoft software...or commercial software in general) has, for better or worse, become the standard.

This is, to me, the beauty of Firefox. It's one of the first open source products that performs just as well as the standard (IE), and is just as easy to use. It's polished. It's not just something for geeks to use...my mom uses it. Granted, I had to tell her about it, but then she got it, and she uses it. For the first time, non-commercial software is beating out commercial software for normal desktop users, not just geeks, not just servers. Now they have a product they *should* use, not just one they *shouldn't*.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not irony. It, like all operating system debate, is stupid.

Re:You mean...

[jejones]

Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money? A business can be successful and ethical. People call MS evil for doing evil things in order to make money, e.g. fraud (Windows testing for the presence of DR-DOS and emitting a FUD-generating warning message).

If, OTOH, you consider any action that makes money good, our ethical notions differ too much for meaningful discussion.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money?

Read slashdot much?

Re:You mean...

[Matt Perry]

But, I don't want to be associated with the rabid fans of OSS...the ones who talk about how Microsoft is 'evil' in our planning meetings.

This sounds like a problem in your company, not a Linux culture problem. Why don't you talk to those folks outside of the meetings and ask them to focus more on presenting the strengths of their solution rather than bashing Microsoft? You'd be helping not only them but yourself.

If you don't want to be associated with the rabid fans of OSS then don't associate with them. I've found that the people outside of the community don't know about the rabid fanaticism of some OSS zealots. Their only exposure to OSS is via news channels such as Business Week and CNN. They see companies like IBM and Novell putting their weight behind open source software and their curiosity is piqued. Since these people know I use Linux they come to me to ask questions and it's then my responsibility to discuss their concerns and clear up misconceptions.

In my personal experience the nut-cases are few and far between. Slashdot and usenet are about the only places that I see people foaming at the mouth about how bad Microsoft is. There are other forums where I read about how people don't like Microsoft, but those people can clearly articulate why they feel that Microsoft solutions aren't the right way to go for them. I meet plenty of people in other online forums, users groups, and computer stores who can see the benefits of OSS for what they are without being distracted by a handful of vocal teenagers.

Re:You mean...

[bigman2003]

Matt,

You may not care about my feedback...

But you gave one of the clearest, insightful, and fair analysis of the situation I have seen.

Re:You mean...

[snorklewacker]

Hey everyone, Alanis reads slashdot!

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... a $ saved is a $ earned... Your company will save hundreds of dollars on every PC you have... There may be some expenses in the beginning but they are one time only expenses and you will save even more $ since you are not forced to upgrade by your supplyer (in worst case you are forced not only to upgrade your OS but also your hardware).

Re:You mean...

[geekee]

" Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money?" /. has a picture of Bill Gates in a Borg costume. I think it's pretty clear what the general attitude at /. is.

Re:You mean...

[bigman2003]

I'm assuming you are not a business professional in any way.

Making money doesn't mean you avoid spending money.

Another trite saying would be: "You have to spend money to make money."

Think big.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS is not against making money from software. From what I have read he just wants to be able to use the software he has purchased in any way that he choses. I guess it is the whole fair use thing people keep talking about. He may take it a little farther than most of us, but I do respect him for standing up for his beliefs when it sure would have been alot easier to just accept that he can only do what the vendor says with the software.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right... I an not a business professional...

But those guys are interested in seeing as big PROFIT as possible and saving expenses raises the profit...

Re:You mean...

[jtev]

Call it overhead expense reduction, once you reduce that expence it stops sucking up revenue. Software is an overhead expense, not a direct expense. The spend money to make money thing refers to direct expenses.

Re:You mean...

[drsquare]

You'd have a point, if he was going to a primarily OSS-company advocating commercial software, calling the people behind OSS hippies and nutcases. There's a difference between your opinions on an anonymous message board and your opinions in a company meeting.

Also, it's not irony, it's hypocricy. I think it's quite ironic that you got those words mixed up, and that the OSS fanboys modded you up anyway.

Re:You mean...

[bigman2003]

Almost...

Whether or not software is a direct cost, or overhead depends on quite a few factors, and is an accounting discussion.

But 'spend money to make money' means a lot of things.

Rent is overhead. If you want to make money you probably need to rent a good/better location. You *could* try to run a business out of your house, but chances are, you won't be nearly as successful.

You *could* rent a warehouse in some back-water town, and throw some desks in, and call it your 'office'. But most successful companies see the value in locating to nice (expensive) facilities, because thier customers will be more likely to spend money- and that is the key.

Software is similar. Companies that make money, know they need to spend money, and not settle for something 'second best' just to save a little bit of money.

Re:You mean...

[ghukov]

gotta love those stereotypes. Microsoft is good for video games and viruses. Here's a stereotype... people who whine about linux users and advocates seem to always be windows weenies who have an assload of money tied up in microsoft education and training and who don't want to see linux cutting into their job security.

Re:You mean...

[johannesg]

" Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money?" /. has a picture of Bill Gates in a Borg costume. I think it's pretty clear what the general attitude at /. is.

Eh? Slashdot is not calling Microsoft evil for making money, but for all the other stuff they do. Like in the example you so conveniently ignored: refusing to run Windows with a spurious error message when DRDos is present.

It is kind of annoying that Microsoft has managed to build a shield of people who have no other purpose in the world than to repeat the lie that Microsoft is hated for its success. Any criticism is made, and people will immediately go into "Ahh, but Microsoft is only hated for success" mode, and no proof, no reason, no evidence will convince them that something else may be wrong.

Re:You mean...

[gibson_81]

Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money? A business can be successful and ethical. People call MS evil for doing evil things in order to make money

It might be a good idea to read ALL he wrote ...

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money?

A strawman argument directed at RMS! I never thought I'd live to see the day...

Re:You mean...

[carpe_noctem]

I found it ironic that he attacked OSS advocates by using the same language he found so "unprofessional" of them. Yes, it's hypocritcal of him as well, but goddammit, I know what the word irony means. ;)

Re:You mean...

[tchernobog]

RMS isn't saying anything like that.

Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".

In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.

Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.

Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this.

Re:You mean...

[kz45]

RMS is not against making money from software. From what I have read he just wants to be able to use the software he has purchased in any way that he choses.

this is true, but so do I. I would like software that I can get as-is (this means for money, or other-wise). I would like to be able to get the source code for something and not be forced to open source the software that I use it in. If I can't do this, it's not giving me the ability to use it in any way that I choose.

Re:You mean...

[Brandybuck]

This whole thread could be a case study for the article in question. Sheesh.

Re:You mean...

[kz45]

RMS isn't saying anything like that.

Perhaps you should read again the main points of Free Software. I never found anywhere something on the lines of "you must die starving", or "you can't sell your product", or worse "you can't make money from your work".

In fact, I think that it is due to many fanatics and zealots, if the true values of Free Software itself are sometimes distorted and ruined. Probably this is one of the reason why OpenSource came to exist in the first place: not to react to a "proprietary" trend, but the bad advocacy of some bad documented, well, boys. You know how it is when you're fourteen and your playin' Mr. Revolutionary.

Although to someone he may seem too radical, I always found RMS explaining his ideas well and thouroughfully, in a very correct way. "MS evil for trying to make money" certainly doesn't belong to him. If you think that, I'm not even sure you read Stallman essays before speaking.

Please also note that most of the hate and critics to MS that I hear, come from Windows users (that have no idea of what OpenSource or FreeSoftware means, let alone "GNU/Linux", "RMS" or even "Apple"). So it's MS fault that came first, to have allowed it to be like this

Here is the problem that I have with RMS and his stance on open source software:

I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.

If software isn't technically superior, then why bother using it in the first place?

Also, you say that RMS isn't against making money on software, but in a way, he is. If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.

To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.

In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.

Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.

Re:You mean...

[Jherek Carnelian]

"I lost my virginity, but I still have the box that it came in"

That sig is just so wrong in so many ways.

Re:You mean...

[Jherek Carnelian]

Who, aside from perhaps RMS, is calling MS evil for trying to make money?

Dude, you seriously mis-represent RMS by even making that suggestion. RMS is not not some commie hippie. He has no problem with, in fact he ENCOURAGES, people and companies making money by selling software.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the classic response and number one problem with OS advocates! It's always "a problem in your company, not a Linux culture problem" - because you don't ever admit there is a problem. Time and again we see people here making ridiculous claims like "of course it's ready for the desktop" or "Open Office" is a fast and coherent suite" or "my grandmother finds Linux easy".

Come out of fantasy land, children. Learn to accept criticism, do something about it, and you will be able to build a whole out of the good parts you have today. Linux users today remind me so much of Amiga users, who effectively killed their own platform through being basically unbearable to be near with their constant blind raving about how perfect their toys were (and of course through piracy, leading to developers abandoning the platform).

I look forward to the day when "people can clearly articulate why they feel that Microsoft solutions aren't the right way to go for them" - it might happen in the fora you frequent but I would call that "preaching to the choir" - so if I, an average developer don't hear it, why should I stop using MS products, or suggest to my boss that we all do, when those products do the job?

Re:You mean...

[jtev]

And how exactly is spending more money on Microsoft products making you money?

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except without giving any suggestions about how those well-reasoned MS critics can be puched to the front while the whining neo-hippies of Slashdot can be shut up. The most clueless, most alienating and most damaging are, as always, the loudest.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on - telling someone they should use an alternative for reasons of conscience is almost the stupidest thing I can imagine, if they don't buy into your concepts of good and evil in the first place. Trying it when an alternative is *not* clearly better is absolutely the stupidest thing.

Firefox is gaining ground because it is clearly better. Linux has substantial share on servers because it is better. Desktops? Hmmm.

However it is important to realize that there would be no Firefox without the whole history of Netscape, who were not originally an OSS company. A lot of paid-for developer hours went into it - and that is the case even if none of th eoriginal code remains.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

(I work in a library)

The other day I noticed that a "Mastering Datamining" book was right next to a long shelf of business ethics books.

Re:You mean...

[bigman2003]

Well, I have left many messages in this discussion, and I mentioned that we develop software.

We go after the biggest market, which is Windows. We need to use the same software as 90% of the world for many reasons.

1 - we develop for it

2 - Even ONE file compatibility issue, or font problem would cost more in time, effort, good-will and money than the XP + Office setup costs. We need to be compatible with our clientele.

Re:You mean...

[tchernobog]

I read in an interview once (with RMS) that free software shouldn't be used because of its technical superiority, but simply because it's free. This isn't going to convince too many people to switch over to it any time soon.

The fact that you don't see the reason to appreciate any issue not-related with profit or money doesn't mean that these subjects haven't an impact on other people.

And the fact that the _point_ to make the switch is that the software is free as speech doesn't exclude that it can be also technically superior software.

If all the source code is freely given away for a piece of software, not only can someone just compile that source code, but also give away the compiled binaries for free.

You simply cannot understand the GPL, do you?

To the average user, one of the main benefits of using OSS is the fact that it's free. Not as in speech, but as in beer. Sure, you can make money on services, like all the distro companies, but that's not making money on the software.

True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related

Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that.
I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence.

In stallman's day, there was no internet. He could still have his "free speech software" and people would still have to pay for the CDS to come through the mail. Now, software can easily be copied to millions of people.

I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose.

Until his attitudes change, I will not be using in any of my business applications.

Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.

I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on ./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.

Re:You mean...

[Matt Perry]

you gave one of the clearest, insightful, and fair analysis of the situation I have seen.

Thanks. It's a shame that you were modded flamebait as I do see where you are coming from in your original post. I guess I have some insight as I used to be one of those foaming at the mouth types. It took someone taking me aside and saying, "You aren't helping here" for me to wake up. It's embarassing to think back on it now. I remember one instance where I was lambasting a guy for using Cold Fusion in their company for scripting rather than taking a look at PHP 3 (which had just been released about a month before this incident). The sad thing was that this was during an interview. Needless to say I didn't get the job. Did I mention I used to be one of those zealots? :-)

In my current job I'm finding that we have to use freely available (and that usually means open source) software more and more. Our budget keeps getting cut while were expected to do more than we have in the past. I don't know what we'd do without Nagios to monitor the network. I'm currently looking at web stats programs to replace an old copy of WebTrends eBusiness Edition which we can't afford to upgrade and which isn't giving us the info that we want now.

Re:You mean...

[Tellarin]

Ooooooh, that's a costume? :)

Re:You mean...

[yerfatma]

Real mods use the command line.

Re:You mean...

[kz45]

True. Also RMS agrees, in saying that: the _side effect_ that software has little or no cost for students or simple citizens is nice; instead in the business world all the services related

Anyway, more than 60% of all the software produced in the world (speaking of commercial sofware) is made ad hoc on a custom basis. In this way, you would be paid for your software, AND also the services related. Any modifications of the software would be paid anyway, and logic says you would be the first one elegible to make those modifications, since the software was written by you in the first place and you already know the code. Note that most of the money that all the small and medium software houses in the world do comes from that.
I admit if you're a bad programmer, your customer may be tempted to change horse, and having the source code would made that easier (but, at least in Europe, many custom programs require to be shipped along with it anyway). So that's what most people that support proprietary solutions fear most: meritocracy, due to their ineptitude or Verrian opulence

you made my point quite nicely. Thanks.

Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.

I checked some of your previous comments in your user page here on ./, and I must sadly conclude that you speak without being well informed about the subject. Sorry, I hope we'll have the possibility to discuss these themes in the future when you'll get to know them better.

I use and agree with the BSD license. BTW sockets are not under the GNU license. I think you are the one that has trouble understanding the GPL.

I just assume you just lived on another planet in the last fifteen years of the Free Software movement, and when Internet arose

well, the internet only been popular (beyond university usage) for 8 years.

Reading your arguments, please stop using the internet now, since it is based on communications between sockets modeled after BSD; and the BSD licenses are more strong and vocal than the GPL about what free software is and what it isn't. Remember, since it is based on free software based on the ideals of freedom (of speech), you can't estabilish a connection between two hosts in any of your business applications.
If only Theo De Raadt or Ken Thompson would hear you, they would probably feel the urge to shut their ears.
Apple Computers instead will continue to use GCC and other GNU apps without problems whatsoever.

uh-huh. That's why apple based OSX off of the BSD license.

Re:You mean...

[sjames]

I would like software that I can get as-is (this means for money, or other-wise). I would like to be able to get the source code for something and not be forced to open source the software that I use it in. If I can't do this, it's not giving me the ability to use it in any way that I choose.

Then by all means, contact the author and offer to PAY HIM for the right to use another license. Consider the requirements to be a form of payment in kind. If you don't like the price, buy something else or negotiate.

That's the real crux of the issue, MS hates GPL software because it might be forced to pay for it somehow, and they think they should be paid, but never have to pay themselves.

One very brief summary of GPL is "no leeches".

At the end of the day, the marginal cost of downloadable software is next to zero. Proprietary source is just another form of vendor lock-in for support. The other hand over fist profits for software are just signs of an unhealthy market.

Re:You mean...

[kz45]

what I meant in my above post was that apple based OSX off of BSD.

Linux Evangelism

[Stanistani]

*Leans over podium*
Brethern, it is the time of the Apocalypse!
Stand up and be saved!
*Thumps loudly on "Linux in a Nutshell"*
Who is ready to receive saaaaalvation?!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[ackthpt]

Who is ready to receive saaaaalvation?!

Let me be the first radical fundamentalist to ask whether you are some heathen using an IDE or one of the vi chosen?

Please separate yourselves into camps of worthy and unclean. ;-)

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Stanistani]

We are the Church Of :wq!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Anonymous Coward]

Nay! Don't be seduced by the false teachings of vi! Emacs is the only Truth! Holy war on the vi infidels!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Husgaard]

*Thumps loudly on "Linux in a Nutshell"*

Only heretics would use a non-free book in ceremony!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[bmalia]

Aye! If it ain't PICO, it's crrrap!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Pionar]

yes, for C-x C-s is the only true way to be saved!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Dot.Com.CEO]

By pico you of course mean nano.

Re:Linux Evangelism

[nadadogg]

I am a longtime users, I began with 10 PRINT "hello" on an appleIIe, then to QBASIC.EXE, and now "notepad.exe." I defy you to deny me my place as a chosen one!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[gazz]

using an IDE or one of the vi chosen

Using an IDE?? I Am an IDE.
And vi is my faithful servant (Unless I wanna play with Emacs.)

Bravo to Mr Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez

Re:Linux Evangelism

[ThePilgrim]

real geeks use

cat > /

Re:Linux Evangelism

[ThePilgrim]

real geeks use

cat > /<output file>

so much for plain old text :)

Re:Linux Evangelism

[m50d]

No, :wq was the infataida when we finally liberated ourselves from the great satan, by infiltrating right to it's heart, while simultaneously taking its best features. The badge of :wq belongs rightly to viper mode, and vim.

Re:Linux Evangelism

[ratsnapple tea]

Not long ago, a tape emerged from the ruins of the Free Software movement that appeared to be a recording of its final moments. Because of gaps in it, however, and some unclear references, its authenticity is not airtight, although it is generally presumed credible.

Stallman: Now we have choice. ... Hackers, it's just something to put you to rest ... you'll be free, hackers, you'll be free ...

Sobbing in background

Stallman: Free at last. Free as in freedom.

Music and crying

Stallman: ... please, keep your emotions down, keep your emotions down ... hackers, it will not hurt if you will be, if you'll be quiet, if you'll be quiet.

Crying in background, humming, music

Stallman: It's never been done before, you say? It's been done by every tribe in history, every tribe facing annihilation. All the BSDs are doing it now. They refuse to bring any more distros into the world. They kill every fork because they don't want to live in this kind of a world. So be patient, be patient ... death is ... I tell you I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries ... death is a million times preferable to ten more days of life in thrall to proprietary software. If you knew what was ahead of you, if you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to be stepping over tonight. Death, death, death is common to people ... and the Atari fans, they take death in their stride. Let's, let's be dignified.

Wails and crying

Stallman: If you'll quit telling them they're dying, if you Microsoft apologists will stop some of this FUD ... People, people, people, I call on you to stop this nonsense. I call on you to quit exciting these hackers when all they're doing is going to a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now. If you have any respect at all... Are we proud, free and open at the source, or what are we? Now stop this nonsense, don't carry this on any more, you're exciting your friends.

Crowd: Right, right.

Stallman: All over and it's good. No, no sorrow that it's all over. I'm glad it's over... Hurry, hurry my children, hurry. All I say, let's not fall in the hands of the enemy. Hurry, my children. Hurry ... there are senior developers out here that I'm concerned about. Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly ... My dear HURD team, good knowing you ... no more pain now ... no more pain I said, child, no more pain. Steve Ballmer is laying in Redmond dead at this moment ...

Cheers, shouting and clapping

Unidentified Man: All I'd like to say is that my parents, who I tried to convert to Linux, are filled with so much hate --

Stallman: You mean GNU/Linux. (in background) O.K., stop this, stop this, stop this, children, stop this crying, all of you.

Unidentified Man: -- hate and treachery. I think you people out here should think about how your relatives are suffering under the yoke of proprietary solutions and be glad about, that the children are being to rest. And all I can say is that I thank Father for making me strong to stand with it all and make me ready for it. Thank you ...

Stallman: All that's, let me -- All they're doing is taking a drink, that takes, to go to sleep ... That's what death is, sleep ... I know, but I'm tired of it all.

Unidentified Woman: ... loving thing we could have ever done, the most loving thing all of us could have done and it's been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle. No other way I would rather go than to give my life for Free Software

Re:Linux Evangelism

[kaens]

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, it's free for anyone who wants to look for it.

Re:Linux Evangelism

[Stanistani]

That's funny!

Now I'm going to drink some ratsnapple tea, put on my Nikes, lay down on my cot, and wait for Hale-Bopp!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[deadlinegrunt]

M-x doctor RET is what you need then from the sound of it.

That OS requires to have a doctor on call for when the realization that it lacks a decent editor kicks in.
::snicker::

Re:Linux Evangelism

[crumley]

Or the closely related (but less verbose) Church of :x!

Re:Linux Evangelism

[SlowMovingTarget]

It cannot be mere coincidence that such a keystroke may be read aloud as "Control excess."

Re:Linux Evangelism

[kesuki]

Warning: write failed: No space left on device.
ah well, time to upgrade to a hard drive that can save my soul! ;)

just being obnoxious

[Anonymous Coward]

ding

Martha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Martha, now that she's back in da hood can doll up Open Source code, you know do something with coding style, DOCUMENTATION (you all know you suck at it and really need some professional help) and some little blue birds and butterflies around those O'Reilly covers, maybe some frilling on the edge of the readme.txt with parens, you know.

The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

When It's Linux, it's an advocacy, evangelism campaign extolling the virtues of open-source.

When it's Microsoft, or fill-in-evil-company, it's smear campaign spreading FUD and lies in destroying the open source way.

Nice doublespeak here.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[AgntOrnge]

How true. And what most of the more 'evangelical' of the supporters don't seem to realize is that their overzealousness hurts more than it helps. Realize that there is a place and time for everything and you'll go a long way towards furthering your goal.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Doctor Crumb]

Sorry, but campaigns claiming that windows is cheaper than linux, based on MS-sponsored biased reports, are indeed FUD. FUD is when you conveniently ignore reality and depend on gullibility and marketing instead. TFA talks about how linux should do advocacy the Right Way, which avoid fanboy-dom and reverse FUD.

Really, we could write articles about how MS should sell its software as a superiour product, but they seem to feel the need to bash the competition instead ("only communists use open source!").

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[deadlinegrunt]

And while I don't disagree with the spirit of your post, make sure the MSCE* people learn that too.

*Primarily speaking of the so called admins that never ran anything besides Windows and possibly DOS. They tend to be overly fanatical as well.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

OSS advocates: Use Linux because it's better than Microsoft products.

Microsoft: We don't care what's better - use Linux and we'll sue you.

Newsflash for you: Two opposing viewpoints don't necessarily have equal validity.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Inkieminstrel]

In one case it's advocating something for the benefit of society- open standards, software options, freedom to use and modify software

In the other case, it's advocating something for the benefit of a company- more money, vendor lock-in, closed standards, closed source

I fail to see how this is a double standard. This goes beyond picking one piece of software over another.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[akinsgre]

Did you read the article? It suggested "honest, factual writing"

When does that qualify as FUD?

-greg

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Dot.Com.CEO]

You know, I don't understand this slashdot obsession with MSCE or other MS certified professional. I don't understand why a good administrator of a Windows 2003 server in a Windows shop has to have anything but an encyclopedic knowledge of Linux or Macs. Companies hiring MS certified pros do so because they want them to manage their MS network.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Pionar]

Microsoft: We don't care what's better - use Linux and we'll sue you.

Microsoft has never threatened anyone using Linux. In fact, many people at Microsoft also run Linux and have it connected to Microsoft's network.

There's also projects to get Windows to play with Linux more nicely, with better Samba integration and such.

See, it's people like you that this article's talking about. Quit spreading FUD and find the truth.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Mishura]

Yeah, but just wait until Microsoft starts The Great Patent War(TM) against Linux. Don't tell me they're just gathering all these ridiculous patents for their own protection. That kind of thinking is purely naive.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sorry, but campaigns claiming that windows is cheaper than linux, based on MS-sponsored biased reports, are indeed FUD

You keep using that TLA. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[deadlinegrunt]

" You know, I don't understand this slashdot obsession with MSCE or other MS certified professional."

Here, let me try to give you perspective:

"I don't understand why a good administrator of a Windows 2003 server in a Windows shop..."

I never made this claim, that's your first error.

"...has to have anything but an encyclopedic knowledge of Linux or Macs."

Since you did make statement, I'll comment: They don't and typically they do not even have an encycolpedic knowledge either, at best it tends to be at dictionary level.**

"Companies hiring MS certified pros do so because they want them to manage their MS network."

That is fine. Again, I never commented on this scenario. Since you did, I'll add this: If a company wants to limit its options by living in a sandbox of knowledge, that is definitely within the rights of said company. None of the Windows, Linux, Macs/*BSD, Unix flavors is a silver bullet solution for everything. Now if your average MSCE/MS wants skills that go beyond encyclopedic knowledge of computers, they won't limit themselves to Microsoft being the only thing in the world that exists.

Now since you managed to post your response, are you implying that the average MSCE is _NOT_ a zealot/fanboy/whatever of Microsoft?** I'm asking because you didn't address this, the point I was making, in your response at all. If unclear, re-read my original post; I'm not taking sides here...nor talking about grandma and her e-mail/browsing or your average end users workstation. I wasn't talking about a Microsoft only shop either. I was talking about the so called admins that think they are. I am _now_ expanding it to developers as well.

My own personal experience has shown me that a Microsoft zealot tends to be more overbearing than a Linux/Mac/*BSD zealot combined.*** This is a local perspective view and I am open to the fact that this is not the actual case view of every single person on the planet. The fact you see this as a "slashdot obession" adds weight that I am not alone in my opinion but I hate to use slashbot mentality to give weight to my statement. (I could very easily see, and agree, it as a condemnation - hence the elaboration on my part)

** Again, another generalization so exceptions will be certain. This does not read as every MSCE/MS pro but it does include a lot of them so please do not summarily dimiss my point by use of one.

*** A zealot on either side is still a zealot. Agree to disagree with me on everything else but that is a true statement and my original point. There is nothing to be accomplished by singling out one camp, they exists in both. How come Microsoft supporters do not see nor admit this when the issue or accusations come up? Oh yeah, you can't be rational with a zealot...duh!

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[ClosedSource]

I wouldn't expect a Linux-hating individual with most of his experience on Windows to be a better Linux administrator then a Red Hat certified one. Likewise, I wouldn't expect a MS-hating individual to be a better Windows administrator than an MSCE.

I suggest that any MSCE that feels smug should try getting a Linux certification and any Linux zealot who thinks MSCE's are dumb should try to get an MSCE. I suspect that if they tried to take the tests cold, they'd both crash and burn.

Certifications don't prove you're great, but the lack of one is even less convincing.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[pjrc]

Sorry, but campaigns claiming that windows is cheaper than linux, based on MS-sponsored biased reports, are indeed FUD.

No. They're somewhere between "biased" to "lies".

FUD is when you conveniently ignore reality and depend on gullibility and marketing instead.

No. FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

FUD is claims like "They probably won't be around to support it", "How are you going to explain to your boss you risked everything on the newcomer", or "There's no 3-year roadmap, so nobody is in control of where it'll be in a few years". It's fear, uncertainty and doubt about the product. Not hard facts (such as cost comparisons).

Claiming that a product has overall lower cost, and backing it up with a factual study (even a biased one) is not FUD. It may be dishonest if the study is biased or applies to a different scenario, but FUD it is not.

Really, we could write articles about how MS should sell its software as a superiour product

Actally, this does seem to be what Microsoft is trying to do. They're telling people Windows is better.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Well, you know, I think it is hard to qualify promoting one's knowledge as zealotry. MS certified pros (CPs) know one thing, managing Windows. Novell CPs (with whom I work) think Groupware and the N* solutions are the best in the market. Is that zealotry? No, I think it comes from understanding very well the solution you support. Instead of saying "for me, Windows 2003 server / Netware / Linux is the best OS for e-mail server / desktop etc." you simply say "it is the best and dismiss the rest".

I think up to here we agree.

The problem lies with the fact that you think it is the techie's job to have a global view of all IT development. I don't think they have to. Management does. If they don't have that knowledge they should find it somewhere in the market, but I hardly think that any CP should advocate a solution that would render his own training redundant. It is just not reasonable.

I fully agree with you that a zealot on either side is a zealot. I find the /. "advocating" process to be despicable. The end-user is not an idiot, he just wants to have things done on the computer and the sys admin to keep the network and their computers clean. That's it. They don't care that Microsoft are evil nor do they care that Linux is POSIX compatible therefore they can compile foo with little effort. I believe Novell's and Redhat's aproach to this is truly amazing and I also think that the "community's" blindness to simple market reality will mean they will end up harming Linux take-up rather than promoting it.

I sell Linux solutions for a living, from desktops to thin-client setups, so my view on this might be slightly tinted since I basically want to present a good-value and unique business offer to my market. I don't care about politics.

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[deadlinegrunt]

"I think up to here we agree."
Actually I think we are on the same page more than you realize. Read as I actually agree with your entire response.

"The problem lies with the fact that you think it is the techie's job..."
You may perceive me as thinking this way but that is not the case:

Good people will inform management of choices and good management will make decisions based off of known options they supply to the executive for policy. If you surround yourself with people pushing their own agenda (grunts or managment) the business will suffer. Period.

I realize you do not need this information, I merely state it to give you my point of reference.

Believe it or not, a zealot I may sound like, but I can assure you I am not and I deal with them daily. (It's like /. but with Microsoft bias instead, just as dispicable, just as bad)

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

"In one case it's advocating something for the benefit of society"

this is a crock, it advocating for something they themselves want, social benefit is just a positive side effect that can be used as a selling point

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard

[Quino]

I think MS can't wage "Patent War" and come out unscathed -- it might, out of necessity and not good will, really be a defensive stance by MS. Without a patent war chest, they are very vulnerable to an agressive IBM (or others who've been doing software longer and hold key patents or can easily prove prior art). It's not as unlikely nor naive as you seem to believe.

IBM will make things interesting and non trivial for MS to legislate its way out of having to compete with Free Software. It has an interest in Free Software, and it sure has the means to beat MS over the head with patents.

That's why IMHO IBM donated patents to the Free Software movement: just to keep MS from doing what you suggest. It's a mini warchest of our own.

Nietzsche on Open Source

[BlueThunderArmy]

I preach to you the Superlinux! Windows is something that must be surpassed. Thus spake Zarathustra.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus spake Zathras? Zathras does not spake. Zathras not even know what spake means.

Zathras never gets quoted correctly. Poor, poor Zathras. But such is life. Zathras do the best he can.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[eboot]

Furthermore who the fuck is Zathras? Zarathustra's younger brother?

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[kurosawdust]

I greatly prefer his later open-source inspired works, most notably "Beyond Micro and Mono" and "The Will to Gentoo".

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

A much better translation:

I speak to you of the Overlinux! Windows is something that must be overcome. Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[incom]

Bill Gates is dead.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

A minor but key character in the Babylon 5 series.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death. But, at least there is symmetry.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Walter Kaufmann

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[eboot]

Genuinely sorry, Ive never watched Babylon 5 before.

'Zathras warn, but no, no one listen to poor Zathras, no'

Just looking at the web page you gave me and isnt this line ripped straight out the lord of the rings book? Just replace Zathras with Smeagol. Or maybe Im confusing the book with the film and in which case its the other way around. It all gets very confusing once youve seen/read both enough times.

Re:Nietzsche on Open Source

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

That particular quote is indeed quite similar to a quote from Gollum/Smeagol, but Zathras was almost entirely unlike that character. B5 really is worth checking out, at least the first four seasons. It's still one of the few science fiction shows I've seen which use time travel as a plot device, and do not screw it up.

Miracles speak for themselves

[leereyno]

Places hand on crashed system running Windows.....

"You shall be Heeeaaaled!!!!"

"Praise Linus!!!!"

Re:Miracles speak for themselves

[Masq666]

I think you need more than simple healing to save a crashed Windows system... Miracles might work..

Re:Miracles speak for themselves

[ArsonSmith]

You may see the light of the miracle and its name is Linux.

Here's my take on it

[Wellington Primrose]

Linux needs to play to it's strength's, namely the fact that it uses mature development platforms for software, which leads to faster more secure applications.

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages. Why is this important? Because they (the IT world, who simply wants to sell you a new compiler every year for $2,000) try to push stuff like encapsulation and polymorphism down your throat as the saving grace and you simply accept it as fact because you don't know any better. If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple. You're just plugging different blocks together and hoping like hell it will work. How would you feel if they designed bridges like that? I wouldn't feel too secure driving across a bridge that was designed like today's non open source software programs are.

Unless you see a speed increase of Olog(n) then you are simply wasting resources by using a high level language. The reason for this is simple, the amount of time spent in coding is finite, yet, oddly enough, CPU time isn't. Thusly unless you can improve an algorithm along that order then your time was wasted. This is simple first year college stuff here, hardly rocket science.

As Frankie L Brooks mentions in the seminal book The Mythical Man Month, cultural differences should be shunned, as they do not improve productivity, they only give one the impression that they do.

College prof's pimp the new stuff because that's how they keep their jobs. I've been a member of the IACP panel for the past 8 years and you should see how professor's eyes will glaze over when you start to question them in a scientific manner. They don't get that kind of stuff from their snot nosed freshman students, you can be sure. Demand some evidence from your profs when they throw this stuff at you, tell them you want to see some 3d pie charts and graphs to backup their claims.

Indeed, Linux/Open Source scores a vicoty by an order of magnitude over other platforms in this regard.

Re:Here's my take on it

[tcopeland]

> Empirical evidence has shown, time and time
> again, that low level languages like C and
> Forth produce more efficient, faster, and
> easier to maintain code than today's so
> called high level languages.

How's that? So it's actually better to manually malloc and free memory than to let a GC take care of it? Surely you're just jesting!

As someone who's currently wrapping the Evolution C API in Ruby, I can assure you that writing Ruby code is much easier than writing the corresponding C code.

I'm not sure why this would be considered a "Linux strength",. since all the good high level languages - Ruby, Python, Perl, etc - all run on Linux, also.

Re:Here's my take on it

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

The reason higher-level languages are used is because man-power is more expensive than CPU-power.

If it's easier, and cheaper, to plug blocks together using Java, .NET or whatever, then that's the way companies will go with software. The thing is that if it's not out there, it's not bringing in anything.

I prefer C and Perl over Java and .NET any day, but it's not about preference, or 1337 skillz, or good programming conduct. It's about the bottom-line.

Re:Here's my take on it

[TwistedSquare]

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages... Unless you see a speed increase of Olog(n) then you are simply wasting resources by using a high level language.

My only explanation for your post is that where you said high level you meant low level, and vice versa. Could you reference the evidence that C and Forth are easier to maintain than higher-level languages (faster and more efficient they might be, but that is very rarely a performance criteria in modern software)? C is, in my experience, more likely to have bugs and security defects, and be far less maintainable, as well as more likelt to be unsafe. I agree that bad code is bad code in any language, but since C seems to tolerate it more than other languages, surely that shows it is a problem with C as well as the developer?

There is a reason that the trend has been for higher and higher level languages, and C is a lone aberration that bucks the trend. We don't program in assembly much any more for the same reason that one day we won't program in C much any more. For a kernel, C is obviously the right language, but for most other applications it is an odd choice than can usually only be justified because it is the language that the developer is comfortable with.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

As the OP said, would you drive over a bridge designed this way? And I would ask, would you fly in an airplane designed this way?

Re:Here's my take on it

[oliverthered]

' and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages.'

Java can be faster if you use a profiling JVM, (well unless you profile your C code and get gentoo to re-emerge with using the profile every other week)

this should also apply to .NET

Java is also much easier to maintain that C, because it's almost exactly the same as C with enough bits missing to let it run in a Virtual Machine and some extra rules inplace.

Of couse bad C is probably easier to maintain that bad Java and Bad C++.
In which case you would have to start argueing.

Use OSS because all software is bad, it's just that our version of bad is easier to maintain....

your using the 'anti' claus, your not saying were better because were the best your saying.
We use C isn't better because they try to sell a new compiler (who SUN and GCC?).

Not we use C it's better because it's simpler and more compact that many of todays languages that have lots of bolted on features that havent matured yet.

Remember, positive energy activates constant elevation. Be positive about OSS not negative about everything else.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Doctor Crumb]

Mod parent up! Back in the early days of computers, programmer time was cheaper than CPU time, and it made sense to spend more time optimising code and writing at a low level. These days, there *are* cycles to spare, and there's *no* reason to write most things in assembler or C. You can still write efficient code in a high level language, but odds are the compiler will do a better job of optimising than you will.

Re:Here's my take on it

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

If I had a choice? No. But in the world of software, sometimes there is no choice. You are expected to use what the company provides.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Dana P'Simer]

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages. Why is this important? Because they (the IT world, who simply wants to sell you a new compiler every year for $2,000) try to push stuff like encapsulation and polymorphism down your throat as the saving grace and you simply accept it as fact because you don't know any better. If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple. You're just plugging different blocks together and hoping like hell it will work. How would you feel if they designed bridges like that? I wouldn't feel too secure driving across a bridge that was designed like today's non open source software programs are.

I have to disagree, the fact is, any language can produce inefficient and difficult to maintain code. The difference is not the language, it is the programmer. Donald Knuth does not spend too much time "swapping hot registers" in his books, "The Art of Computer Programming" and those books, more than any other, defined what programming is. At its finest, it is the pursuit of the most efficient algorithm. I think you and I agree on that. In C++, I can write a sorting algorithm that sorts objects that are not even the same concrete type. To do that in C I would have to add a similar level of overhead that C++ provides built in. Now, I am not saying that C++ is better than C. I am saying that we should use the tools that are best suited to the problem at hand. If your problem requires ploymophism then use a language that supports it. BTW, encapsulation is done in C all the time. Look at the fopen and friends API. Unless you are accessing the members of the FILE structure directly you are practicing "encapsulation".

Now, I think the problem really is that the "High Level Languages" make people think that they are programmers when they are not. People who have not developed the skill necessary to write good code in any language can jump in and produce results. Those results might be low par and hard to maintain but they have been produced, and that is what the folks with the money want. They don't care that the code is sloppy and poorly designed. They just see the program working. Later on down the road they might care when they have to spend double the money to maintain the beast. But that is for another day.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

It is obvious to everyone that you have NO idea what you are talking about. Have you even compiled anything in your life?

Re:Here's my take on it

[Threni]

What's Ruby written in?

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

That was, quite possibly, the most brilliant troll I have ever read.

Re:Here's my take on it

[cerberusss]

If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple

You just keep bit shifting, then I'll be productive for my customer, mmkay?

BTW is the resume on the website yours? Because there isn't a whole lot of programming experience there (lots of (database) sysadministration though, but not programming).

Re:Here's my take on it

[Sotogonesu]

Forth? Easy to maintain? Kidding be you must.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell has language got to do with it?

Re:Here's my take on it

[tcopeland]

> What's Ruby written in?

Why was Ruby written?

Re:Here's my take on it

[BaldGhoti]

As someone who's currently wrapping the Evolution C API in Ruby...

I thought evangelists didn't believe in Evolution.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Pionar]

So, then, why didn't you write your own CMS in C instead of the badly-coded security nightmare that is PHP-Nuke?

It would seem to me that if you wanted the most efficient site, you would code all your web apps in C. For, as we all know, it IS the most efficient language out there, and should be used in any programming project.

Re:Here's my take on it

[d3matt]

>>Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages. Why is this important? Because they (the IT world, who simply wants to sell you a new compiler every year for $2,000) try to push stuff like encapsulation and polymorphism down your throat as the saving grace and you simply accept it as fact because you don't know any better. If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple. You're just plugging different blocks together and hoping like hell it will work. How would you feel if they designed bridges like that? I wouldn't feel too secure driving across a bridge that was designed like today's non open source software programs are. . First of all, C and Fortran are not low level languages. Sure, they are not object oriented, but they are by no means low level languages. A low level language like Assembly is only a step above machine language. A higher level level language (C, etc) is further removed from machine language and must be compiled. Another distinction is that a higher level language is designed to be closer to a natural language and as such higher level languages are easier to read and code. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Re:Here's my take on it

[zootm]

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient,

Granted, but with the way hardware is going it's not really a big factor most of the time.

faster,

This is the same thing.

and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages.

It seems unlikely there's empirical evidence to prove this, primarily because it's unlikely to be true in any fair test. Higher-level languages are quicker to develop in and less likely to have fatal bugs -- these, in most production environment, are by far the most important factors.

Unless you see a speed increase of Olog(n) then you are simply wasting resources by using a high level language. The reason for this is simple, the amount of time spent in coding is finite, yet, oddly enough, CPU time isn't. Thusly unless you can improve an algorithm along that order then your time was wasted. This is simple first year college stuff here, hardly rocket science.

If your algorithm isn't improved, you wasted time writing it in a lower-level language. Why? It took longer to write. 99% of the time, the efficiency you gain will be completely outweighed by the extra time you spent developing the system. Too much emphasis is placed on "efficiency" by many, when it's simply not needed.

Obviously, though, this is something that can be debated until you're blue in the face. But discrediting higher-level languages (I assume you mean Java, Python, Perl, C#, whatever) when there is clear empirical evidence of their benefits, simply because you do not see their benefits as benefits, doesn't seem right.

As for the "college profs" comment, most that I've met won't "throw stuff at you". Hell, the programming languages guy I have likes C, and argues for its use where efficiency is needed, to the detriment of development time and code safeness. Many professors like functional languages, and it's hard to blame them, given the terseness of the languages and their uses in reasoning. But, in general, they gain little from "pimping the new stuff". At least here.

Re:Here's my take on it

[zootm]

It's about the bottom-line.

Question: What is the "bottom-line"?

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

> You just keep bit shifting, then I'll be productive for my customer, mmkay?

If I didn't see your sig, I'd still guess you were a Java user.

Re:Here's my take on it

[ArsonSmith]

In order to make programming easier. He addressed this in the point that programming time is finite where as cpu time is not. Although you may save 400 Development hours you can lose millions of hours of runtime productivity.

Re:Here's my take on it

[tcopeland]

> programming time is finite where as
> cpu time is not

True. But it's seldom the bottleneck.

> Although you may save 400 Development hours
> you can lose millions of hours of runtime
> productivity.

Or you may save millions of hours by being able to quickly and accurately implement features to help the users of your produce get work done.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you could name a case where Java is faster than C. The evidence seems to be against you. Maybe you meant C++.

There are a few cases where Java can use optimizations that C cannot. The C pointer problem is well-known. Usually the advantage of using pointers more than offsets the register optimization cited.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Brian Quinlan]

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages.

If that has been shown time and time again then providing references should be easy. I'm especially interested in convincing evidence that C and Forth are easier to maintain than "so called" high level languages.

Re:Here's my take on it

[mykepredko]

How's that? So it's actually better to manually malloc and free memory than to let a GC take care of it? Surely you're just jesting!

It's funny that you would bring out this example - it is probably the one that I personally would consider to be the most concrete example of the superiority of low(er) level coding. Over the past few years, I've gotten quite a bit of experience debugging memory leaks and found that there probably isn't a Windows or Linux garbage collection implementation that is fool proof (partially because, as the saying goes, fools are so ingenious).

I just started listing some of the problems I've worked through in the past two years and looking at them, I can see the problems come down to the programmer

a) assuming they know how big the data is and defining arrays based on this assumption,

b) not checking their code to ensure that accesses stay within array/variable boundaries

c) "finding" a clever way of accessing data that saves a few lines of code.

With any of these problems, data critical to the application or the OS gets overwritten leading to problems somewhere down the road, but not at the point where the overwriting takes place.

What I find that I am always telling programmers is:

1. When declaring an array in an application, ALWAYS use the "sizeof" operator as the basis to ensure that the element size is properly included and then add 1 for a terminating null character.

2. When allocating memory for file data, make sure an LSEEK is done first to understand the size of memory - and check the result before allocating the memory. Again, add 1 for a terminating null character.

3. After writing the code for allocating memory, note it in the make file/allocate-free function source file and make sure everything that is allocated is freed.

This rigor has seemingly eliminated the incidence of memory leaks AND other application instabilities which we used to suffer from and is the point that the parent is making. "Good" code is a result of good design practices and thinking through how it will execute; when software development is properly implemented, the actual task of coding is quite small so the delta time and effort improvement of using a high level language isn't as significant and its "inefficiencies" (execution time, size and required resources) relative to low level coding become relatively larger.

I can see this turning into a holy war as to how to code applications is better and I want to state that I believe that both high and low level coding have their place but only after the design of the application has been thought through.

myke

Re:Here's my take on it

[Fred_A]

Let me see... You're selling Forth compilers right ?

Re:Here's my take on it

[Taladar]

And who decides what this mysterious "company" you talk of provides? Last time I checked even in companies decisions were made by people and people can be convinced to use something better if you have good arguments.

Re:Here's my take on it

[tcopeland]

> there probably isn't a Windows or Linux garbage
> collection implementation that is fool proof

Right, of course, it's always possible to leak memory. Just add something to a Map and never let go of it. Not much a GC can do if the application insists that it still has a reference to the object. But other than stuff like that, I feel like most high-level language GC implementations can take care of all but the pathological cases.

> ALWAYS use the "sizeof"

Right, those are good C memory mgmt guidelines. The nice thing about Ruby or Java, of course, is that for the most part those things are managed for you.

Also, FWIW, if you're on Linux, Glib has some nice macros so that something like:

Message* msg = (Message*)malloc(sizeof(Message));

turns into

Message* msg = g_new(Message, 1);

Handy stuff!

Re:Here's my take on it

[Just Some Guy]

How would you feel if they designed bridges like that?

I demand that my personal bridge engineers personally hand-select the grains of steel that they'll use to custom-design my unique bridge that won't use any of the last 5,000 years of bridge engineering experience. That's the only path to quality, you know. And back away from the libc, fella! If you won't hand-roll open(), then I don't want you writing my web browser.

By the way, what crack-smokers took you seriously enough to give you +5? Seriously, man, good job! That's one of the more successful trolls I've seen in a while.

Re:Here's my take on it

[oliverthered]

a profiling Just in time JVM can profile the code while it is running and then next time around recompile the code to be faster.

That site doesn't list how the tests were carried out except to say that there were, no details on any profiling or optimization attempts that any serious deployment would use.

It does say that start up time is included too, so that taints the benchmarks.

oh, and he didn't even try jrockit

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

There are efforts to rewrite large segments of Ruby in itself.

Smalltalk is written largely in itself, for example. And the Glasgow Haskell Compiler is written in Haskell, or at least almost all of it is.

Re:Here's my take on it

[ArsonSmith]

Both bridges and airplanes are designed this way. You think that a bridge engineer knows how to build cable? machine bolts? mix pavement? While he may chances are he just knows the details of each of those items. size, strength, weight, etc. An air plane is the same thing. A designer doesn't know the details of how a tire is made. They probably don't even know the details of how the rim is made or bearings, or axle. They do know the stresses they can take and how to fit them together as an interface.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Mant]

How on Earth this got modded up is beyond me, it's pure drivel, or maybe a clever joke the mods didn't get.

If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple. You're just plugging different blocks together and hoping like hell it will work. How would you feel if they designed bridges like that?

How do you think anything complex is designed? One person doesn't sit down and design a whole computer, or every part of a car. You use a combination of existing things (blocks if you like), and new things developed by different people or teams. To each team the rest of the stuff is a block they plug into

Even if you are using a bunch of pre-written modules/objects/classes you may be doing a lot more than plugging them together. You write the core of the app, plugging them together well takes skill and work, and most definitely is programming.

that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages.

Maybe faster to run, but slower to write, and harder to maintain.

The reason for this is simple, the amount of time spent in coding is finite, yet, oddly enough, CPU time isn't. Thusly unless you can improve an algorithm along that order then your time was wasted. This is simple first year college stuff here, hardly rocket science.

Not rocket science, just garbage. Firstly the limited programming time is an argument for high level languages that enable quick development. Secondly you can't just trade of CPU time and development time, a program may need to run in a certain time to be usable at all. If you can't get you runtime down to that you don't have an app. CPU time most definitely is limited if you have a user who wants a reasonable response.

Finally this has nothing to do with Linux/Open Source anyway.

This post has to be a joke or a troll, I wonder more at the moderators than the poster.

Re:Here's my take on it

[squiggleslash]

It's certainly not faster either. It's a stack-heavy threaded language that's normally interpreted. It's exceptionally light-weight, but that regularly counts against it, not for it - there's little scope for machine-aided optimization, for example. Forth is pleasantly speedy, but it's not quicker, it only got that reputation because it was faster than BASIC in the 1980s when Forth was being advocated most frequently.

Forth can be written to be easy to maintain, but only in the same way as C can. Use appropriate names, comment intelligently but not excessively, use standardized formatting and programming conventions. But, by itself, it's not that easy.

I've read the GP a few times, and while I hate to say it given my bias against the excessive use of inappropriate but politically-correct technologies at the moment ("Everything MUST be implemented Object Oriented", "Why use an array when an RDBMS will do the job just as well?" "Oh sure, this quick tool to process some text could be written in 30 minutes by a moderately skilled C programmer, but there's some Python library somewhere that wouldn't be exploited if we did. Much better to Google for half a day for documentation and then spend two hours experimenting with it until we get a program that doesn't actually do the job in a reasonable space of time!"), but I think he was trolling.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Bravo.

I am not sure if it will stay at five but this line...

As Frankie L Brooks mentions in the seminal book The Mythical Man Month, cultural differences should be shunned, as they do not improve productivity, they only give one the impression that they do.

is a classic.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

When declaring an array in an application, ALWAYS use the "sizeof" operator as the basis to ensure that the element size is properly included and then add 1 for a terminating null character.

I bet you even write "sizeof(char)", don't you?

I bet you look good in leather, though.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods... parent is a particularly clever troll, I grant you, but the appropriate moderation for trolls you enjoy reading is "funny", not "insightful".

Re:Here's my take on it

[jfmiller]

How would you feel if they designed bridges like that?

But bridges are designed like this, as are computers , office buildings etc...

I indeed would be more conserned about one-off designes then in proven building blocks. Most bridges these days use well tested prefabricated parts which are linked in known ways to span a given area.

Another example is the pc you are useing. The cards in it are most likely running on PCI and AGP busses. This is a form of encapsulation. The Main Board designer need not know what periferial are to be added, nor do video, sound, network card designers need to know what Main board will be used. Only a standard interface need be know.

I will grant, however, that for something like an Opperating System, there does need to be low level integration and coding. There is, however, no point in writing my web cgi scripts in Assembly simply because I'm not "bit shifting hot registers at runtime"

JFMILLER

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

a profiling Just in time JVM can profile the code while it is running and then next time around recompile the code to be faster.

That's the theory. In practice, this has not yet been achieved outside very tight constraints, such as where the data does not change very often.

That site doesn't list how the tests were carried out except to say that there were, no details on any profiling or optimization attempts that any serious deployment would use.

All the source code for the benchmarks and testing framework is provided; all the compiler options and all the compiler output are included. Did you even READ the fucking site, or did your knee jerk so hard you kicked your computer off your desk?

It does say that start up time is included too, so that taints the benchmarks.

No longer the case. If you actually bother to look at the fucking benchmarks, you'll see TWO cpu time columns. One of them includes startup time, the other - the one that counts - does not.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:Here's my take on it

[kryten_nl]

The problem I have with your post, is that it seems to ignore one simple fact:

A programming languege is a tool.

The same is true for OS'es and compilers. Use the tool that fots the job. If you're building a website's content management system, you probably use Java/Perl/PHP/Ruby/....
If you're doing rocket science you probably use FORTRAN (or C if you don't mind being thought of as a revolutionary).
Discussions which language is best, without mentioning the field it's used in, are as intelligent as the Discovery Channels documentary "Why 4x4 is here to stay" or "Cranes are great".

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, have prefected the art of the troll.

Re:Here's my take on it

[chris_eineke]

In C++, I can write a sorting algorithm that sorts objects that are not even the same concrete type.

And how is this different from C? Apart from the fact that C doesn't know about classes (although you can fake them convincingly with C structs), you can sort objects that aren't of the same concrete type. Just make sure that you use a proper struct layout that keeps track of what you are using. This way you are actually saving the `type of type' in the object itself whereas i.e. in Java a certain is property / type of a type is implicit through its class name:

"Good" Java:

abstract class Account {
float balance;
void fancy();
}

class FancyAccount1 extends Account {
void fancy() { };
}

class FancyAccount2 extends Account {
void fancy() { };
} /* What about an account that does fancy in FancyAccount1 and, say, FancyAccount3 but not FancyAccount2? The following is looked down upon. (except the C code of course ;)) */

"Bad Java":
class Account {
float balance;
boolean does_fancy_one;
boolean does_fancy_two;
}

C:
struct {
float balance;
enum { NORMAL, FANCY_ONE, FANCY_TWO } type;
}

With respect to the above code, OOP is good for fairly static hierarchies. OOP is bad for a system in constant change.

Re:Here's my take on it

[oliverthered]

That's the theory. In practice, this has not yet been achieved outside very tight constraints, such as where the data does not change very often.

Which accounts to 95% of my hard drive, so tight, but common.

Did you even READ the fucking site

No I just plucked It does say that start up time is included too, so that taints the benchmarks. out of thin air.

No longer the case. If you actually bother to look at the fucking benchmark
So their fucking benchmarks now, there were nice benchmarks that showed you point earlier.

I read the FAQ, if it's wrong what does that tell me I should assume about the fucking benchmarks?

Re:Here's my take on it

[oliverthered]

Ok, here's some analysis.

Count words, I just happen to have Michel Abrash's graphics programming black book on the table and it's got a good discussion on count words.

1: The data is static, so it fits you theory.
2: The C version is almost optimal
3: The java version is not comparable to the C version for real world tasks (I haven't bothered to re-write it to be the same as the c version to see if it's performance is better or not).

HeapSort
why not quick sort? don't most languages come with quick sort built in and heap sort is almost identical to quick sort (variants on the binary merge).

Object methods...
1: the C 'object' and the java object are not the same, the java object provides a lot of extra functionality that may well be used in a real world application that has not been put in-place in the c version.
2: He didn't even use final in the Java version, how is using an almost static C 'object' equivalent to using a non-final java object in real world tasks.

I could go on.

Re:Here's my take on it

[njcoder]

" Perhaps you could name a case where Java is faster than C"

Sure.

The Ackermann test, Java wins by a small margin.

Also look at takfp. The interesting thing about takfp can be seen here in the side by side results The slope of the red line (Java) is not as steep as N increase so even though it starts slower, it wins in the end and continues to do beat ther performance of c and c++ even though it's start time was a lot slower (these numbers include startup time). Saw this in some other tests too, like reverse-file. This is mostly in comparison to c++ but it shows how JIT compiling could help.

I didn't go through all the gcc parameters but each program was compiled for the machine it ran on. In shrink wrap software, or even in the data center, you're not going to compile the code on each machine and it has to be tuned to the lowest common denominator. With JIT you don't have to worry about that as the VM will do the necessary optimizations for you. The benefits can be seen in some of these tests.

There are a lot of cases where it's close as well. In other tests I've seen Java in some cases outperformed C++ and C under large usage when the gcc binaries were optimized for the lowest common denominator. Anyway... the potention for VM's JIT compiling and all that is not just theoretical. It needs to be improved, but that's no reason to give up on it.

In other test, the lines of code are dramatically different. Would I rather write a 178 line spell checker in C and have it run in about half a second? Or write a 23 line Java spellchecker that runs in about 2 seconds? When you go past just number crunching and into real applications like web applications, you'll see a big savings in time and development.

There's a place for high level languages like Python, Ruby and Java and a place for languages like C. The real power language seems to be OCaml. It seems to do really well on both loc, memory and cpu time.

This was really cool to look at, thanks for the link. I looked up some other stuff as well. I'm tired of hearing how Java is slower than PHP since in my own benchmarks I haven't seen what people are talking about. Most of the side by side graphs look very much like this where it seems that PHP doesn't scale under load compared to java, c or c++.

Re:Here's my take on it

[drsquare]

What on earth does any of that have to do with OSS vs CSS? You've just rambled completely off topic. Anyway, you can get C for Windows and java for Linux. I think you've clicked on the wrong discussion, you're looking for 'Low-level programming advocacy'.

Re:Here's my take on it

[drsquare]

You mean, a bridge designed by putting components together, or a plane designed by taking existing devices and building a plane out of them? The 'low level' equivalent to this would be putting the bridge together atom-by-atom, forging all the parts yourself, designing and making all the bolts yourself, never using anything that's already been made. I wouldn't drive over a bridge designed that way, it's much safer to drive over a bridge where the individual parts have been made by experts in the field, rather than a jack-of-all-trades.

Re:Here's my take on it

[krumms]

In C++, I can write a sorting algorithm that sorts objects that are not even the same concrete type.

And how is this different from C?

Templates.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Karma Farmer]

You got 50 responses, and not one of them wrote anything worth reading.

I don't know if that makes you "Teh Winnar!", but I have certainly lost.

Re:Here's my take on it

[njcoder]

instead of defining FancyAccounts as classes.. define them as interfaces... more code but you keep the code for each type of account in the class where it belongs. So you'll have something like.

abstract class Account {
float balance;
abstract void doSomething(); //not a fancy account, no fancy function.
}

interface FancyAccount1 {
void fancy1();
}

interface FancyAccount2 {
void fancy2();
}

class FancyAccount extends Account implements FancyAccount1 {
void fancy1() { };
}

class FancierAccount extends Account implements FancyAccount1, FancyAccount2 {
void fancy1() { };
void fancy2() { };
}

problem is you have to define fancy1 in both classes and you have to worry about keeping them the same if they have to be.

C++ has the edge in an example like this since you could just define the interfaces as classes with the methods in them and use multiple inheritance. Your C example could be replicated in Java with

"With respect to the above code, OOP is good for fairly static hierarchies. OOP is bad for a system in constant change."

That's not really true in this example. In Java, if I wanted to add another Fancy interface and class that has a completely different doSomething(). Add the class file to the application and all the calls to doSomething on it will work. Update the class that feeds Accounts in to the system and all you have to do is recompile one file in addition to adding the new class. With C you'd have to recompile and link everything.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Merely insulting the parent poster is not very convincing.

Re:Here's my take on it

[njcoder]

"With respect to the above code, OOP is good for fairly static hierarchies. OOP is bad for a system in constant change."

Another thing... there's the whole reflection api in Java where you can inspect what methods it has at runtime. You don't have to call account.fancy1() account.fancy2() directly. You can loop through all the methods in the function that start with "fancy" and call them.

I had to use the reflection api once in a class that merged a text file with various beans. The text file contained tokens like $${token} and would call bean.getToken() where token could be any string so $${email} would call getEmail(). This was handy as the bean and text file were subject to change but the parser class didn't have to. A lot easier than writing something like if (token.equals("email") bean.getEmail(); for every possible value of token.

The reflection api used to be very slow. You still take a performance hit for it but it's gotten a lot faster with each JVM release.

Re:Here's my take on it

[pjrc]

The reason higher-level languages are used is because man-power is more expensive than CPU-power.

Especially when the customer pays for the CPU.

In the embedded world, where the CPU and code are both part of the same product, the design philisophy is quite different.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, here at my lettuce farm we have taken to burying a Knoppix mini-CD in each head of non-Iceberg lettuce toward this end.

Re:Here's my take on it

[cerberusss]

Hehheh, playing it on the person, are we? And anonymous as well.

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

why are people so down on malloc anyway?

Re:Here's my take on it

[tcopeland]

> why are people so down on malloc anyway?

Free the mallocs! Save the whales!

Re:Here's my take on it

[An Onerous Coward]

I would, if someone would just tell me why this bloody thing isn't compiling.


%include <iosrteam.com>
%include <iomannip.h>

void public static viod main( char *** argc, int argv[] )
{
sdt::cout <<< 'Hello, Wordl!' <<< Std::enld;
}


What? Hey, if you're so smart, YOU figure it out!

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Forth? Easy to maintain? Kidding be you must.

Ha ha I get it. You pushed that sentence on a stack.

advocating oss

[Anonymous Coward]

Paid advocates for free software. huh.

It's not what you say . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Aristotle developed his message many, many years ago, the concept of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history.

Yep, it's all in the way you say it. The Republican Party has demonstrated recently that even if your content is nonsensical, unworkable, and downright absurd, if you say it with lots of positive emphasis, people will eat it up like M&Ms.

Re:It's not what you say . . .

[$criptah]

Yep, it's all in the way you say it. The Republican Party has demonstrated recently that even if your content is nonsensical, unworkable, and downright absurd, if you say it with lots of positive emphasis, people will eat it up like M&Ms.

Your opinion is just as valuable as an opition expressed by a Republican. If you think that the message sent by Republicans sucks, it does not meant that that is bad message. It means that YOU think that way of the message. I am not a Republican myself, but whenever I hear parties bitching about each other it turns me inside out. Grow up.

Re:It's not what you say . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

whenever I hear parties bitching about each other it turns me inside out. Grow up.

Er... you're making the opposite incorrect assumption, which is that all viewpoints are equally good.

They aren't. The possibility exists that the Republican party might put out messages that are pure lies from start to finish - I'm not saying it's happened, I'm merely saying that the possibility DOES exist. People like you, saying that we must acknowledge the "fact" that everyone's views are just as valuable, are every bit as much of a problem as people who say that any view from the party they do not support is necessarily stupid.

It is not childish to call bullshit bullshit.

Re:It's not what you say . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

you have obviously given into the FUD of the liberal / democratic party.

sad, really. people should open their eyes and realize that all the dems that speak out are full of shit, but i guess that will never happen

Re:It's not what you say . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the people really are idiots who have fallen for the Republican message. Maybe if the Democrats keep rewriting their message, the sheep will finally understand the nuanced, yet superior, Democratic plan.

Or maybe the people aren't idiots. Maybe they see past the rhetoric just as well as you think you do. Maybe they understand the differences between the two parties and have made their choice.

Or maybe I shouldn't have even bothered replying.

GASP!

[Dorsai65]

You mean that calmly and rationally pointing out the benefits of something accomplishes more that foaming-at-the-mouth, in-your-face, mine-is-the-One-True-Way evangelism?

Nah, can't be. If things really worked that way, just think of all the time thats been wasted...

Re:GASP!

[MarkGriz]

Piss off! You don't know what you're talking about.

TROLL!!!

Re:GASP!

[Dorsai65]

Considering the number of Linux zealots that I've had the misfortune of meeting, I think not; your comment would tend to prove my point.

And by the way, I'm a Linux user, and have been for some time. I advocate Linux usage - just not rabidly.

Re:GASP!

[MarkGriz]

Perhaps you and a one of the mods should check the batteries in your sarcasm detector.

Does that mean

[Anonymous Coward]

that M$ is the suX0r!!!11!!111oneone!11 doesn't cut it anymore?

Knoppix ]P ][ ]V[ ]P

[Anonymous Coward]

guilty as charged

"yo man Linux is teh 5h1t!
M$ is for old ladies and, uh...
lil' gamer dudes -yeah!"

I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[Sheetrock]

"The best penguin sells itself."

It means little unless you know it's spoken from the perspective of a 15th century penguin salesman extolling the virtues of a soft sell vs. a hard sell. The latter is most necessary with an inferior product; if the quality of the merchandise can speak for itself, don't get in its way.

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[pandrijeczko]

What would a penguin salesman be doing in Norway?

Penguins are found only in the Southern Hemisphere.

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[kidgenius]

My only question is how a 15th century Norwegian is selling penguins. Penguins live in the Antarctic

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[xlr8ed]

I really don't give a shit out Penguins, but I do care about Yoda...and Dr. Spock DID NOT say that line in your sig...Yoda did in Epsiode V: ESB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/quotes

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[ArsonSmith]

Coorection Penguins were found only in the southern hemisphere.

Hell, I've seen penguins here in the desert of Arizona.

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[tuxette]

(OK, I know I risk getting modded down for this.)

I don't live in the Antarctic. I live in Norway. Really! (And no, I am NOT for sale!)

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[kesuki]

well let's see Penguin is an english word "Pronunciation: 'pen-gw&n, 'pe[ng]-
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete English penguin great auk, perhaps from Welsh pen gwyn white head (applied to the bird in winter plumage) m-w.com
So a 15th century penguin saleman is a person selling white feathers, eg: a pen salesman.
The fact that the Modern conotation is a species of animal found only south of the eqautor (according to the wiki) well, america was discovered in the late 15th century, so it's possible that actual penquins from the galapagos were being sold by 1499... but that's a lot less likely than a person selling white winter plumage feathers...

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[ozbird]

Penguins are found only in the Southern Hemisphere.

Exactly! You don't see penguin salesmen downunder because there's no demand for them - it'd be taking coal to Newcastle.

Re:I am reminded of an old Norwegian quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe what idiot you are! Dr. Spock said it quoting Yoda totally out of context! Now ask yourself: who was Dr. Spock? Exactly! That't the whole fucking point you moron! But it flew right over your head...

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

More power to linux

--

http://onticfusion.sytes.net/

I for one think that linux's kernel is too complex

[ABeowulfCluster]

.. and that there's too much device dependent stuff in it. When you have a knoppix disk and the 2.6 kernel runs differently on your hardware than the 2.4 kernel then there's a flaw with the design of implementing hardware support in a kernel. I look forward to a GNU HURD livecd.

The best way is to really 'show' them

[Anonymous Coward]

..the advantages of using open source software. Because I don't have to pay Windows licensing fees, I have to spend less time working, and can spend more time with my girlfriend, and more time lifting weights. People always ask me why my relationship is so successful, or how I had time to tone my body, and I just say "I use Open Source Software."

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahah.

That was a good one.

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[gotgenes]

And what's a better way to show them than through pictures Lots and lots of pretty pictures. :-)

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[Anonymous Coward]

By girlfriend, I assume you mean that your pizza delivery person is a "female" and you have a weight set in your parents basement, right next to your computer.

OK that makes more sense, after all you are posting to /.

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[sharkey]

You're not alone.

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[DrGirlfriend]

SO by your logic, people who don't support open source software have to "work more because they need money to pay Win evil licensing fees, spend less time with their girlfriend (if they have one because they would be working) and would not work out because they simply don't have the time. THEN, the people who don't support open source software are hardworking for no reason who are socially inept and really fat...aka retards. I approve.

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[subgrappler]

i go both ways, so i guess that means im kinda hardworking, somewhat social, and chubby.

Re:The best way is to really 'show' them

[Anonymous Coward]

you only wish you could have a gf as hot as me. :p

Little off topic

[sonoluminescence]

My aunts husband asked me a few days ago if I wouldn't mine showing him Linux and telling him a bit about it when he next comes round. I'm a little worried that I'll yap on endlessly about open source and Linux only being a kernel and the GPL and bore him to death before he even gets a chance to see how great various distos are.

What I really need is a good, SHORT, list of information about linux and open source software that I can print out and give to him to read at his leasure so I can get on with showing him some cool stuff on the PC.

Anyone know of anything like that?

Re:Little off topic

[PhilippeT]

I have found it's better to let most people call it Linux and tell them since it's open many people can make their own and call it what ever they want... Stick gentoo on with a nice auto login and make it do an emerge sync emerge -uD world once in a while and the only time you should have problems is when they want to install software... Someone really needs to make a fully GUI interface to emerge...

Re:Little off topic

[XpirateX]

1. It works
2. It's free
3. Hey look, here's a game

Re:Little off topic

[johnlittledotorg]

You might find this site useful: Linux Switcher

Re:Little off topic

[agraupe]

I would say that you should just stay away from that altogether. He won't care, and if he does, he will no doubt ask you. Get on with showing him distros and programs and all that, and if he asks questions, answer them.

Re:Little off topic

[Jane_Dozey]

1) Will he even care what license he's actually using? Is he likely to take some of the source code and tinker with it? If not then he probably doesn't need to know anything about it apart from the fact he can get most of the software he needs fo free off of the internet and that he's allowed to give his friends copies.

2) Does he know what a kernel is? If not then don't mention anything about the kernel etc.

Why don't you just boot the computer up into xwindows and show him what kind of software he can use, where things are in the menus and generally all the superficial fun stuff. This is how i've always gone about it. Nobody outside of the software community is likely to be interested in the technical or political issues surrounding linux.

Re:Little off topic

[ajrs]

burn him a live CD and write 'boot me' on it with magic marker. Tell him that he has the legal right to make copies of it and give it to his friends. Tell him that it is the result of people treating software like knowledge to share rather than secrets to hoard.

Then boot it in you system. Show him some stuff. Say it works even better from a hard drive, and show him that. Give him the CD.

Re:Little off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI... your aunt's husband = your uncle.

Re:Little off topic

[pe1rxq]

Keep it simple... Don't go into things like 'linux is only a kernel'.
Tell hime why it is good, i.e. not being force fed things by the marketing department of a certain big company but having choices (you could briefly mention the many distro options as an example of choice).
Mention that good design is leading the developmend instead.
Also think why the hell you used it yourself in the first place and more important why you kept using it. (Be carefull this answer doesn't get to geeky)

Jeroen

Re:Little off topic

[Reducer2001]

My aunts husband

So, your uncle, right?

Re:Little off topic

[Drooling Iguana]

They've already made a couple. The GTK one is called Porthole. There's also a QT one but I can't remember the name off the top of my head. The problem is that the Portage spec is still evolving fairly rapidly, so if you use one of the graphical interfaces you run the chance that it'll suddenly become incompatible when they do the next update.

Re:Little off topic

[SmokeHalo]

Speaking as a Windows user, that's a damn good plan. My first taste of Linux was a Slackware CD that I was given by a professor. Leaving aside the problem of not being able to mount the floppy drive, what I saw of the GUI and the workings of the OS left me with a positive impression.

This isn't to say that the average home user will be able to jump in and immediately feel right at home. However, given an appropriate flavor of Linux, the learning curve for a switch is likely not very steep.

Re:Little off topic

[RealAlaskan]

Stick gentoo on with a nice auto login and make it do an emerge sync emerge -uD world once in a while ...

Is that emerge sync emerge -uD world going to make anything change, ever? If so, gentoo is probably a bad idea. Most folks are bothered by having their computer change. They're driven right round the bend by sudden, inexplicable-to-them changes. Debian Stable might be safer, since ``Stable'' means ``never changes''. I'm guessing that since the OP will be `` showing him Linux and telling him a bit about it'', stable is better than up-to-date.

... and the only time you should have problems is when they want to install software ...

This might not be a stumbling block, since the relative may not need to install software often, or at all. Gentoo's source packages might be significantly smaller than Debian's binary packages (is that right?), which could be a real advantage if this relative has a dial up connection. On the other hand, apt-get seems to be about as slick as emerge.

Re:Little off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

What I really need is a good, SHORT, list of information about linux and open source software that I can print out and give to him to read at his leasure so I can get on with showing him some cool stuff on the PC.

"Linux is like Windows, only you never have to buy a new version again because they're all free. You can do all the same stuff like writing letters and surfing the web. You're screwed if you want to play games though. Unless you're REALLY fond of rip-offs of 1980s titles with extra penguins."

Re:Little off topic

[sonoluminescence]

Err I suppose, I don't really think of him like that because she divorced her old husband (who I wouldn't have called my uncle either) and married again.

Is the spouse of you mothers sister really an uncle?

Re:Little off topic

[cens0r]

I frequently refer to some of my aunt's and uncles as my aunt's husband or my uncle's wife. Why? Well because in those cases the person with the blood relation to me has divorced an remarried. Even though the new spouse is technically an aunt or uncle, my mind has a hard time calling them that when they are not the aunt or uncle I had when growing up.

Re:Little off topic

[sonoluminescence]

This is a really good idea, thanks. Downloading the latest knoppix now.

Re:Little off topic

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Is that emerge sync emerge -uD world going to make anything change, ever? If so, gentoo is probably a bad idea.

Aye, that would be a very bad idea. USE flags for packages change over time, Portage gets updated, etc-update needs to be run, decisions need to be made. Sure you could probably hack together a self-updating Gentoo box, but it would eventually self-destruct.

If you need a Linux distro that noobs can easily maintain, I would recommend Fedora. Just tell your users to click on the flashing red button in the toolbar, click next a few times, and the system will be kept up to date.

Re:Little off topic

[johnlittledotorg]

"You're screwed if you want to play games though."

Wrong. You may be joking but so many people still buy the "Theres no games for Linux" line that I'll bite. Aside from native Linux versions of games Like UT and other big name FPS theres services like Transgaming's Cedega that will allow people to play most of the big name titles:

"Cedega support hundreds of the top Windows games on Linux, including such blockbuster hits as Max Payne 2, GTA Vice City, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Vietnam, WarCraft III, Diablo II, Half-Life, just to name a few; MMPORG games such as City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest and many many more are also supported."

Then there's the notion that playing games on Linux just takes too much work. As if getting games to run well with Windows OS, sound and video hardware, and various drivers isn't a major pain in the ass.

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[PhilippeT]

I look forward to a GNU HURD livecd.

Hope you have alot of time on your hands

What?

[xeon4life]

...the concept of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history. From Aristotle to Heraclitus to Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Keller to George Bernard Shaw...

Was that some kind of sick joke...?

Re:What?

[Hal_Porter]

That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!

Re:What?

[Ford Prefect]

...the concept of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history. From Aristotle to Heraclitus to Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Keller to George Bernard Shaw...

Actually, as I discovered recently, Hellen Keller was (in)famous for being a highly influential author, speaker, socialist and possible communist. It's amazing what can be written out of history because the truth is not a comfortable, heart-warming view of how someone 'should' have been...

Re:What?

[Just Some Guy]

optimizing how we talk to people

Say what you will, but ol' Helen is probably the epitome of optimizing interpersonal communication. I can hardly tell a joke on Jabber without using a smiley, but she used her hands to read lips. That's like the speech equivalent of writing a graphics card driver in microcode.

I'm not saying I'm a big fan of her message, but I'm definitely impressed with her ability to deliver it, all things considered.

Re:What?

[utopyr]

The main thing I find that the folks on that list have in common is that they are all dead. I think I'll keep my mouth shut at work.

For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux needs to play to it's strength's"

Since when did this sort of writing become acceptable, God fucking damn it?

Fucking learn, you illiterate crack-monkeys.
1) The possessive of "it" is "ITS". It is NOT "it's".
2) To pluralize a noun, YOU DO NOT ADD AN APOSTROPHE. (See Bob)

You fucking half-literate retard! Where did you learn to write like this, and why are people like you setting the standards of online writing, and even writing in general? I hear horror stories of English teachers receiving papers written like your post, and even (horror of horrors) papers turned in with "u" instead of "you", "r" instead of "are", and other usages coined by 12-year-old AOL-using crack babies. What the FUCK is wrong with us!?

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

U missed the fact that he also used "thusly", a magnificently execrable neologism.

Oh, and you can get your meds cheaper in Canada.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotten to the point where I'm actually SURPRISED when people use "its" or "it's" correctly or know how to pluralize nouns. And that scares me very deeply.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

why are you religious

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't know we got graded on slashdot.

You fucking half-literate retard!
You ARE a fucking half-literate retard! (-1)

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, what? I'm an agnostic.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the one writing like an AOL user on drugs. The parent (grandparent? great-grandparent?) poster is.

And if you think you should only write correctly when you're being graded on it... well, I guess we should all start writing like "how am u? me is fine. lololol i luv teh compy!" and speaking like "How you? Me fine. Me like food. Me like fuck. You me fuck now."

When are we going to just devolve back into cavemen? It can't be long, with attitudes like yours among the majority.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

thought so.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anarke_Incarnate]

I agree with you. I have corrected people on this and their answers are almost invariably something to the extend of "I am not in school." I did not realize school was simply the only point of an education. I thought it was so that those attending would learn and use what they had learned. I must be wrong.

Re:For fuck's sake, LEARN TO WRITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is "extent" not "extend". Fucktard AOL crackbaby.

Order of Events

[maczealot]

"From Aristotle to Heraclitus" Heraclitus was PRE-Socratic, i.e. BEFORE Aristotle's time... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus And as far as evangelism goes, it'd prolly be better to lean more towards Demosthenes an orator. Aristotle was not consumed with the need to convince his audience that he was speaking for .

Re:Order of Events

[Anonymous Coward]

And Helen Keller was a mute. And didn't face "rabid opposition".

Re:Order of Events

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I was thinking that too - his grasp of history is rather poor. Yet another pseudo-intellectual shows their true nature.

Stallman can learn from Hellen Keller

[Hal_Porter]

Funny, I always thought was the other way around.

LinuxAppeal

[germanStefan]

LinuxAppeal.net is a good site to appeal to companies to release linux products. It is not a site where users bitch about companies, but rather people can find well written petitions, write their own (and add them to the site) and submit them to companies.

I figure the more people who petition companies the better so I've written a few petitions of my own on the site in hope that others will find them via google when searching for linux support for a product and petition the company as well.

I was hoping for something more earthshaking

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy says he is going to produce more columns on the subject so this one is a bit of an overview. Having said that, this column wasn't even at the level of a first year sales and marketing class. (Maybe he thinks his audience is so brain dead that it can't cope with anything more.)

I have a philosophical problem with one of his statements: "Although it is wrong to insinuate that open source advocacy is as important as civil rights, ...". Actually, open source is all about freedom. There is nothing more important than fighting for our freedom in all its forms.

This is downright silly.

[Caspian]

I'm a longtime advocate of free (as in speech) software, but comparing the leaders of the open-source movement to the sages of old, and comparing their struggles to those of Helen Keller and other heroes of the past, is downright egotistical.

Yes, open-source/free software does face "rabid opposition"; however, it likely always will. As much as I love free software, do you ever forsee a time where it will become the "standard"? Can you imagine Microsoft, or Adobe, or EA Games, making most or all of their software open-source (under any license?)

I can't either.

It's not so much that free/open-source software faces a "time" of rabid opposition. It will always face rabid opposition. It is virtually inconceivable that the BSA (not the boy scouts ;) ) and ESA members will switch to an open-source model, and-- like it or not-- they are what crank out the vast majority of software that the vast majority of end-users (and corporate "IT" people, as contrasted with "geeks" like us) use.

Don't like that? Crank out games as nice as the commercial vendors can. Release them under the GPL. Make OpenOffice as good as MS Office. Make a GNU/Linux system as easy to use as Windows, and 99% compatible with 99% of existing Windows software, or come up with GPLed equivalents for 99% of existing Windows software. Until that happens, free/open-source software will perpetually face "rabid opposition", because those who oppose it (BSA/ESA member companies) will always be the most powerful force driving software development and use.

Re:This is downright silly.

[RealAlaskan]

Make OpenOffice as good as MS Office.

It's already there. Or did you mean ``the same as''? It's just as good, unless you define ``as good as'' to mean ``identical to''.

Make a GNU/Linux system as easy to use as Windows ...

It's already there. Or did you mean ``the same as''? It's just as easy to use, unless you define ``as easy to use as'' to mean ``identical to''.

... or come up with GPLed equivalents for 99% of existing Windows software.

We already have those equivalents. Or did you mean ``exact copies''? Programs like GNUcash are equivalent to their proprietary counterparts, unless you define ``equivalent to'' to mean ``identical to''.

Re:This is downright silly.

[aug24]

You are such a pc prick. The author doesn't compare the open-source struggle to Helen Keller's. He just points out that some well respected minds have ensured their delivery matched their content and so should we. Don't put words in people's mouths then criticise them.

Justin.

Re:This is downright silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi. You obviosuly didn't read the next paragraph in the article:

Although it is wrong to insinuate that open source advocacy is as important as civil rights...

His point is that these people who were masters at struggling against huge odds have something to teach the OSS movement. Not that the struggles themselves are of the same or even comparable importance.

Re:This is downright silly.

[Knight_Walker]

Just so damn right - it's good to finally see people with some sense left in them in the open-source scene. It sometimes makes me so sick I could puke, when I here their religous baffle. You're right: Go ahead and create something that fulfills the user's needs, and not just try to cover up for shortcomings with ethic speeches about the evilness of anything else :)

Re:This is downright silly.

[Mant]

I think by as good as the parent simply means "offers the same features", that would include easy of use and computability.

Open Office doesn't have the same feature set as MS office. Maybe you consider that "identical to", but for most people of one program (or suite) lacks feature the other one has, then it isn't as good.

Particularly if you use those features.

There are lots of open source programs covering the same area as a commercial one, few are as good, or better. FireFox is a great example of one that is. OpenOffice is one that isn't, it doesn't really offer anything in the same area as Access for example (I hate Access, but lots of non-Technical, non-Database people use it a lot).

Or look at GIMP, it just isn't as good as Photoshop in terms of features and ease of use.

Open source software has come a long way, but the best way to keep improving it is to recognise where it still needs to catch up. Don't pretend it is all as good yet out of some misguided loyalty, keep pointing out the flaws so that it can get as good, then better, than proprietary software.

Re:This is downright silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear. Hear. HEAR. Not "here". When I hear their religious baffle.

*sigh*

Re:This is downright silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Make OpenOffice as good as MS Office.

It's already there.

I don't know how it compares to MS Office, because I don't use MS Office. But I found today that OpenOffice.org still leaves a lot to be desired.

For example, I was editing a document with a table in it. I wanted to do some calculations on the table, so I copied it and pasted it into the spreadsheet program. It went in beautifully, just how I'd hoped - very impressive.

Then I came to want to copy it back into the document. I select the cells, copy, paste... oops, that's an embedded spreadsheet object. I want a table.

Okay... I select the original table cells that I want to overwrite with the new values, and try pasting. Nope, that just gives me an embedded spreadsheet in the first cell.

Aha, "paste special" will do it! Paste as HTML... nope, that just puts everything in the first cell. Paste as plain text... nope.

Eventually I managed it by pasting as RTF into another Writer document, then copying and pasting cells from the table that created back into the original table. Let's just say that while I did manage to get the result I was after, I was not impressed with the effort it took.

Maybe it's better in the 2.0 beta... I really ought to try that.

Re:This is downright silly.

[xgamer04]

Can you imagine Microsoft, or Adobe, or EA Games, making most or all of their software open-source ... (?)

id software? IBM? (Okay, so IBM doesn't have "most" of its software opensource but it is releasing things)

Re:This is downright silly.

[Knight_Walker]

Sorry, stupid typo. I'm not a native English speaker as you might have guessed by now! ;)

Re:This is downright silly.

[pandrijeczko]

Can you imagine Microsoft, or Adobe, or EA Games, making most or all of their software open-source (under any license?)

I'm afraid you've suffered from a case of the old 2+2=5" syndrome there.

You can keep an application closed sourced and run it on an Open Source operating system. So all of those companies could keep their applications closed source and just port them to Linux.

Sure, there's difficulties with the nuber of different distros, links to libraries etc, but it can be done (and has been done).

Re:This is downright silly.

[cens0r]

Now this comes from someone who runs linux (now Ubuntu, before that mandrake) 100% of the time. Linux is no where as easy to use as windows. For instance, I have an external USB 2.0 HD. In windows, it is detected and automounted. In OS X the same thing. In ubuntu hotplug can't even assign it an address. I believe there's some incompatibility between my motherboard's USB (abit nf7-s 2.0) and the kernel I'm running 2.6.8.1.

That's not the only example. I had to write a python script to effecively burn audio cd's (it converts ogg, flac, mp3, aac to wav and then burns). I could use gnomebaker, but it doesn't support all those formats... nero in windows does without much trouble.

Nautilus will not under any circumstance burn a CD for me. It keeps prompting me for a blank CD. Again I believe this is a kernel issue.

Getting real, quicktime, wmv, etc to stream correctly in firefox was hardly what I would call easy; and still doesn't work 100%. I'd feel comfortable helping a newbie set that up in windows, but I wouldn't try to help anyone without plenty of linux experience try to set that up to work in mplayer.

For the most part I love linux, and for me it is easier to use simply because I do alot of things that make it easier. I have about 10 python scripts running as cron jobs. While that can be set up in windows; it's easier in linux. It was much easier for me to get file sharing working between my linux server, my desktop, and the mac os x machine I have than if I had been running windows. But those aren't necessairly the kind of things the normal user wants.

Re:This is downright silly.

[naelurec]

OpenOffice is one that isn't, it doesn't really offer anything in the same area as Access for example (I hate Access, but lots of non-Technical, non-Database people use it a lot).

OOo 2 has "Base" which is simialr to Access. I haven't had a chance to really dig into it to compare it but it looks promising. In addition, 2.0 adds a lot of other features including a more modern interface -- its looking really good. Pretty much all of my compliants with 1.x have been addressed. Infact, right now, I have found OOo to do a better job in many areas over Office XP (though can't vouch for Office 2003 since I haven't used it). OOo 2.0 looks like a HUGE release (as far as user growth).

Or look at GIMP, it just isn't as good as Photoshop in terms of features and ease of use.

Agreed. Unfortunately it seems like no matter where you look, open source or commercial, no one has come close to Photoshop. Not that this surprises me too much but Photoshop does have over a decade of development and the input of thousands (millions?) of users that got it to where it is today. The GIMP is pretty good for what it is, but unfortuantely, atleast for now, the semi-pro or professional still does not have a viable alternative to Photoshop.

Re:This is downright silly.

[m50d]

I can forsee such a time. And I am working on those things to the best of my abilities.

Re:This is downright silly.

[exick]

comparing their struggles to those of Helen Keller and other heroes of the past, is downright egotistical.

The author was not comparing struggles. In fact, he explicitly says that isn't equating them. The invocation of their was intended to show that these people have developed ways of expressing themselves and furthering their causes in an effective manner and that open-source advocates who wish to change people's minds must learn from those who have already been successful at it. "On the shoulders of giants" and all that.

And if anyone bothers to read the Peruvian Congressman's rebuttal to Microsoft, you'll see a fantastic example of what Bacon is talking about.

Re:This is downright silly.

[Hymer]

They (Adobe, EA Games) don't need to release their software under GPL... It would be a gigantic step forward if they would release a Linux version of their software...

Re:This is downright silly.

[nmos]

Open Office doesn't have the same feature set as MS office. Maybe you consider that "identical to", but for most people of one program (or suite) lacks feature the other one has, then it isn't as good.

Sure but in this case BOTH suites have features that are lacking in the other. By your definition neither is as good as the other. You mention that OO doesn't have an Access equivilant but does MS Office integrate seemlessly with a wide variety of external database products such as Postgress? Being able to create custom reports based on your accounting or POS DB and integrating that data into other documents rather than fighting with Crystal Reports is a godsend. If you want to colaborate with a friend who doesn't have MS Office (or has an older version) can you give him/her a copy?

Likewise with Gimp, while it clearly isn't as good of a solution for pro use, for the vast majority of users the "best" tool is the one they actually have spent some time learning.

Re:This is downright silly.

[njh]

"Nautilus will not under any circumstance burn a CD for me. It keeps prompting me for a blank CD. Again I believe this is a kernel issue. "

It's a bug in nautilus-cd-burner, which doesn't interpret a flag correctly in gconf. See if cdrecord works correctly for you. I wish they'd fix this.

Incidently Ubuntu warty happily detects my firewire external drive, so you may well be right about the kernel. Look at what dmesg says when you plug it in to determine the sticking point.

Feel free to email me if you need help.

Re:This is downright silly.

[cens0r]

cdrecord, gnomebaker, and cdrdao all work perfectly.

I'm pretty sure it is a kernel issue with my motherboard as to why my usb hd doesn't work. dmesg shows it trying to be assigned an address and failing when it is plugged in. I'm not sure whether any USB 2.0 device will work... because of this, I'm scared to buy a new mp3 player.

Re:This is downright silly.

[njh]

Are you willing to try a newer kernel?

Re:This is downright silly.

[cens0r]

willing yes... sure i shoudld try, no... I feel like in general I'm a pretty technical user, but I don't know if I'm ready to install a new kernal quite yet. I'm hopping when hoary goes live in april an upgrade to that will fix those last two problems...

Re:This is downright silly.

[njh]

My friend recently started using linux (debian, then ubuntu) and his words were "Now that I've got grub I'm not scared of trying a new kernel". If you have grub as your boot loader (default for ubuntu?) then testing a new kernel should just be a matter of installing it using synaptic, then rebooting. You can always select the old kernel, boot up and remove the newer kernel if something goes wrong. Be Bold! (And good luck :)

Best Open Source Advocacy

[Alif]

Best open source advocacy is the Microsoft's study about TCO. They base their claim on the postulate that a linux expert has higher salary then a MSWin expert. To a MSWin expert, this is very appealing argument to start to learn linux.

Re:Best Open Source Advocacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes. The "Linux should be an impenetrable maze to administer and use in order to foster increased dependence on we elite, which dependence we can in turn use to leverage higher salaries" argument.

I can see why you've been so successful in convincing everyone that's not part of the self-appointed elite to switch.

Re:Best Open Source Advocacy

[Anonymous Coward]

wait, wait, impenetrable? have you adminned WINDOWS???

What

[ch-chuck]

you mean sneering, derisive remarks about Windows isn't enough? Dang.

Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

You can have a top-notch techonlogy and the best minds in the world working on R&D and you can still fail if you do not satisfy customer requirements or needs or both.

Engineers do not get one thing: no invention can be spread around the world until it can be sold. In this world marketing and sales are just as important (if not more) as R&D and staying on bleeding edge. If you have a Linux box that cannot meet my needs, why the fuck would I buy it? Because somebody with a Ph.D worked on some programs in that box? Give me a fucking break.

Everybody is screaming about Linux and how great it is. I do not see it. Dell sells cheap Wintel boxes because that is what customers want: something cheap and easy. IBM invested money in new technology along with research; it sold its PC division to Lenovo. HP and Compaq had R&D... Now their joint venture is swimming down the toilet. The point is that it does not matter how cool YOU think Linux and Open Source are. They're not going to spread around the world unless people find them useful. No advocacy will help. You can write to tech magazines and give lectures to college students and that is fine; however, you won't be able to succeed until people start saying, "Wow, this Linux thing is really want I need." The keyword is "need." Not "want" or "cool" or "wow." Need for a cheap, effective tech solution is what can and will drive Open Source. This is pure business.

In this world everything is sold, not bought. Sell an Open Source solution to the public and you shall succeed. Nobody gives (or should give) a flying fuck about the technology and what it is inside. If you really want to push Open Source, show cost savings, productivity increase, and fewer losses contributed to the fact that Open Source is not Windows. Then people will talk to you :)

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[pandrijeczko]

If you have a Linux box that cannot meet my needs, why the fuck would I buy it?

The real question here is have you made a good enough evaluation of Linux to determine if it does or does not meet your needs?

If you have, then stick with Windows if that's how you're more productive, nobody would expect you to do otherwise because you have exercised your choice.

If you haven't evaluated it properly, then is it because you don't have access to all the information about Linux? Have you tried a more suitable distribution? Do you know what distributions are out there?

Since there's no glossy page advertising with Linux, how are you going to find out for yourself unless someone else advocates it?

Because somebody with a Ph.D worked on some programs in that box?

Redundant argument - I'm sure Microsoft, Symantece, etc., etc., employ are large number of PhD programmers also. Many Open Source programs can find the free time for Open Source because of daytime full employment as programmers in commercial organisations.

Also, why are you treating Open Source and Windows as mutually exclusive? Firefox, Open Office, The GIMP, GAIM, etc. etc. - all Open Source applications which run on Windows.

Is it because nobody has explained what Open Source actually is to you? Is that because there is not enough positive advocacy of Open Source?

Dell sells cheap Wintel boxes because that is what customers want

Dell is a PC company that sells pre-installed Windows PCs - that's the difference. Customers do not exercise a choice as to the OS they use, Dell has already decided to include Windows.

Most Joe Bloke users do not care about the OS they use - in my experience, they all know they're running Windows but ask them whether it's 98, 2000, or XP and they don't know.

Sure, Joe Bloke has familiarity with Windows - he knows where the browser icon is, how to plug his digital camera in and download pictures to his PC, write a letter, etc. But what happens if you move his Internet Explorer icon elsewhere or you ask him to download new drivers for his camera? How many Joe Bloke users perform the regular necessary updates of OS, virus checkers, spyware programs, etc. on their PCs?

Again, it is Linux's duty to meet Joe Bloke's criteria of "ease of use" if it is going to replace Windows on his desktop - even if it does that, Joe Bloke won't care that it's Linux running in place of Windows.

In this world everything is sold, not bought. Sell an Open Source solution to the public and you shall succeed.

Sorry, what's so wrong with just a bit of good old fashioned sharing occasionally rather than selling everything.

Doesn't sharing encourage social contact with others? Sharing a meal together? Sharing a piece of music that's pretty good?

Perhaps, again, lack of good advocacy in this selfish modern world of ours means that people no longer believe some good things can be free.

If you really want to push Open Source, show cost savings, productivity increase, and fewer losses contributed to the fact that Open Source is not Windows.

Microsoft pushes Windows, dealers push drugs...

Open Source does not work like that. It is an alternative solution, it's there if you want it, nothing more.

However, Open Source is totally the opposite to commercial software. People buy software because it meets their needs, the software vendor therefore has to put in the features it believes people want in order to sell it.

If an Open Source package does not meet your requirements you can either use an alternative Open Source or commercial piece of software or you can contact the Open Source developers and tell them what features you think are missing.

Use of Open Source implies a degree of personal responsibility in getting what you want, not just handing over some money and getting a shrink-wrapped box.

Anyone who is trul

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Everybody is screaming about Linux and how great it is>>

"everybody"? um, since you're not one of them, obviously not true. oh yes, all those millions of windows users, not them either. gee, arguing by hyperbole... like a whiny kid.

>>If you have a Linux box that cannot meet my needs, why the fuck would I buy it?>>

direct your childish tirade at someone who cares, like IBM... oh wait, you're not their market. they sell to businesses, not self-centred teenagers who are clueless about freedom.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[chris_eineke]

"Wow, this Linux thing is really want I need." The keyword is "need." Not "want" or "cool" or "wow." Need for a cheap, effective tech solution is what can and will drive Open Source. This is pure business.

I disagree. If it all were about the need, we would still be using WordPerfect for DOS. It's all about the desire. I do not need a fancy dual Mac G5 with a 30" cinema screen, but I desire it. And that's what's keeping a company up. If you have products that are desirable, you'll always have customers. If you were merely fulfilling needs, then well, good luck. You are going to need it.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[Mishura]

Actually, Linux's problem in the marketplace is simply marketing.

I have alot of non-technical friends that I hang out with. If I ask any of them what Linux is, 4 out of 5 go "Huh, what?", and the other only knows about it because of me.

Ask them the same question, but only about Windows this time, and they go "Oh yeah, I know that P.O.S.!".(*)

Simply put, people just do not know about alternatives. They have heard of Macs, but their opinions on them are still in the pre-G4 beige box era (When Macs SUCKED. -- They don't now.) and that they are expensive (They still are, even Minis are more spendy than some cheap-ass PCs I've seen).

The thing is, people will give a "flying fuck" about a certain technology, if they are able to at least SEE it. My friends that I have shown Linux to, all want me to install it on their computers. My own mother prefers Linux, and she is the least computer-minded person I've met. Give people a medium to view a technology, and they'll make up their own opinions on it.

Linux isn't going to sell until it gets mindshare. I think this is what the whole "advocacy thing" is about.

(*) I have yet to meet someone that loves Windows. Its always a "necessary evil" to them ('cuz they don't know any better. Nothing wrong with that.)

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[starfishsystems]

Engineers do not get one thing: no invention can be spread around the world until it can be sold.

So, I guess things like the wheel, the lever, the inclined plane, writing, agriculture, wine, bread, these inventions came into use principally by being sold by one party to another?

How about sailing vessels, windmills, the crossbow, the printing press, the steam engine, aircraft? These exist only through a process of being manufactured and then sold to a waiting market? What about radio, vacuum tubes, the computer, the Internet? Interest in these inventions spread only because of artifacts being sold?

History gives me a different understanding of how inventions come into use. All of these inventions spread because they were interesting. People began by sharing their principles of operation, learned methods of construction, and then applied the results directly to their own needs. Sometimes the application was private, sometimes collective. Sometimes, but not inevitably, the application is suitable for commercialization and sale. Seldom does it prove exclusively a commercial product.

In this world everything is sold, not bought.

Evidently not. I've given several examples, and I'm sure you can imagine others. Open source is one of them.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

Okay, then "desire" is what drives customers to businesses. Make people desire linux and not because it is free (as in speech).

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

FYI, I work with Open Source products for living :) I need tools like Python, Perl and gcc in order to make a living. Most of my servers run Linux as well as other systems that have ties to OS community. I use products that can meet my needs. I create products that can meet customers' needs and that is why I am able to stay employed and profitable. This is the purpose of being in business.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[kz45]

direct your childish tirade at someone who cares, like IBM... oh wait, you're not their market. they sell to businesses, not self-centred teenagers who are clueless about freedom

if the software is under the GNU, it isn't free. you are still forced to release your changes. public domain software is the only true free software IMHO.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

Sir, I respect your opinion, but you have to cut down on sharing, caring and other feelings of hippie era. This is all nice and cuddly, but if you want to spread Linux around the world, you need to learn how to market it and address customers' needs and desires as somebody pointed out.

I am an Open Source fan, believe it or not, and I do care about where the movement is going. Unfortunately, it is going nowhere because of poor marketing and appeal to Joe average. Firefox can probably be the only exception of a project that is successfully by companies, like SpeakEasy. What about the rest of the products? Most of the people who talk about Linux tend to bee engineers and geeks that are more likely to scare Joe Average with scientific and tech terms that nobody without a technical degree can understand. Is this how you market things? Attacking Microsoft or any other vendor does not work as well...

If you want to succeed, you need to put Open Source in a business plan and let people know how you can solve their problems and Linux better then your competitors that do not use Open Source. Let's take Firefox for example.

Firefox is a browser that can stop annoying pop-ups. That alone worked on most of my friends because EI could not do it. Firefox has a feature that allows you to open many sites in one window (normal people do not understand "tabbing"). Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer and it will prevent spyware from getting onto your computer. That's how it should work for the rest of OS products. Otherwise, all that cute work will remain just an alternative (and not a solution).

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[chris_eineke]

1. Make people desire GNU/Linux
2. ???
3. Profit!! ;)

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[pjrc]

no invention can be spread around the world until it can be sold.

Yeah, that explains why 20-some million people are using Firefox to websites, access 60-some percent of which are running on Apache.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[Cyno]

Nobody gives (or should give) a flying fuck about the technology and what it is inside.

Everybody should judge a book by its cover? That would make being a writer so much easier! Why didn't I think of that?!?

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

Yeah, thank you for taking a quote out of content, asshole. My point is that we need to satisfy people's needs and address their issues before bragging what is inside. In your language, give customers a book that is right for them.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

You know, this is quite entertaning. I never knew that there are so many people who cannot read. Can you comprehand one thing: address customers' needs. That is exactly what Firefox did. See one of my replies later on in the subject.

Mozilla foundataion did a great job at delivering a product to the world. So did the Apache (different customer base though). When I say 'sold' I mean customers willing to get it and use a particular product, not its competitor.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[$criptah]

Do you speak English? I highly doubt that. See, in English a word can mean more than one thing. For example, Webster dictionary has several definitions for a word 'sell.' Here is one of them:

[to sell] to develop a belief in the truth, value, or desirability of gain acceptance for; to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the acceptance of something

If you can comprehand that, here is an example of the word being used in a sentence. "I am sold on the idea of Open Source alternatives." Get it? When I say "sell OS to the public" I mean "get the public to like OS." In other words, I want people to like OS because of its benefits (monetary and not-so-monetary).

Wheels, planes, engines, cars, etc. spread around the world because people found them useful. You can use these things for work or pleasure. Relate that to Open Source.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[Anonymous Coward]

With public domain, the freedom is inherent in the person who has the software. With GPL, the freedom is inherent in the software. Obviously, you grasp the distinction, but fail to appreciate the coolness of the latter situation.

Re:Meet Customers Needs

[kz45]

With public domain, the freedom is inherent in the person who has the software. With GPL, the freedom is inherent in the software. Obviously, you grasp the distinction, but fail to appreciate the coolness of the latter situation

The key difference is that im letting the recipient of the of my software choose which path he or she would like to take (use it and keep it closed/use it and keep the changes open).

I think most people are interested in the freedom of usage rather than the freedom of the software itself.

The GPL doesn't have to be this way. If you release source code and I use it in a closed-source application, It doesn't take anything away from you. Your source code is still freely available to all that would like it.

It's mostly about trying to force ideals with source-code as the bait.

Windows Exorcisms take time and patience

[SCO STINKS]

You start the procedure by using a LiveCD. Once successfull you load Linux into a dual boot configuration with Windoze. Now you have traction, time for you exercise the demon.

Re:Windows Exorcisms take time and patience

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Now you have traction, time for you exercise the demon.>>

Only in America do they have chubby demons!

Heraclitus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god...
bring on the trolls about hairy clitus and fart-b0xen.

mZod Down

[Anonymous Coward]

happen. 'At least .to place a paper and recports and

Surely there's something wrong here!

[Mr. Cancelled]

As every Slashdot reader knows, the best way to advocate Linux is to belittle those who ask questions (preferably with over used abreviations like "RTFM", and "ROTFLMAO"), all the while making lame 'Winblows' jokes. Oh! And let's not forget that you must also belittle every developers efforts as trying to turn Linux into an MS clone.

Yet I didn't see these methods listed anywhere in the article. Perhaps the author should surf Slashdot, or OSNews a bit more before his next article.

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[Doctor Crumb]

Wow, what a troll. Of *course* the kernel is device dependent. It's a fricking kernel. Of *course* a new major version runs differently; they refitted huge parts of the kernel for the 2.6 version, including fixing some gaping security holes. If you don't want change, don't upgrade.

Not to be picky, but ...

[JohnBaleshiski]

> that low level languages like C and Forth

lea dx, msg
mov ah, 9
int 21h
ret
msg db "Assembler is the only low level language.", 13,10,0

-----

printf("C and forth are high level languages.");

Secondly, what is Olog(n)? Perhaps you meant log?

Last, large corporations don't care if their programs are slower. Throw more hardware at the problem! What they do care about is getting the product developed and out to market as fast as possible.

Perhaps by calling C and forth low level languages, you instead meant to talk about Rapid Application Development (RAD) IDE's vs. standard language IDE's. C/C++ is a high level language. Period. Now, use Borland C++ Builder, it's still a high level language but with a RAD front on it that allows you to develop complex applications quickly.

Re:Not to be picky, but ...

[WaterBreath]

Secondly, what is Olog(n)? Perhaps you meant log?

Probably he meant O(log n), as in big-O notation, as in time-complexity.

Off-topic

[Anonymous Coward]

from the for-those-of-you-about-to-rant-we-salute-you dept.

First AC/DC reference ever on Slashdot?

Re:Off-topic

[pandrijeczko]

There should be more...

IMHO experience, there's nothing like an AC/DC concert to kill any "Linux vs Windows" arguments dead in their tracks and have all geeks rocking together in brotherly unity under a common flag of truth, justice and the Angus way! :-)

Damn! I'm getting AC/DC withdrawal symptoms now - there simply must be a new CD and tour soon...

Who cares?!?

[dfn5]

Honestly, who cares about advocacy? IMHO, (which is why I'm posting right?), Open source is not about getting other people to use open source but instead to do cool stuff. I am involved in Open Source because I like to program, nothing more, nothing less. If someone uses my program then great. If not I don't care. My license plate says "OPENSRC" not because I'm advocating open source but because it is what I am about. If someone asks me my opinion I'll say go open source. If they choose to ignore my advice then so be it.

And isn't that what is wrong with the world today. People need to worry about themselves and not about what other people are doing. (unless, of course, those other people are hurting other people)

Re:Who cares?!?

[pandrijeczko]

If someone uses my program then great. If not I don't care.

I'm not sure I understand the logic here.

If someone sends you an email that says "I downloaded your program, it's great and I use it every day" that must give you a real good buzz.

If someone else sends you an email that says "I like your program but can you make it do this?", are you really saying that you wouldn't at least give that feature some due consideration?

What about if you said "No" to that person but then 50 more people emailed you asking for the same feature?

I'm simply curious because just about all the Open Source people I've ever emailed with this kind of thing are always very thankful for feedback from others - sure, they're not always going to say "Yes" or "Great idea" but they do always seem thankful for interest and feedback.

IMHO people devote time to Open Source projects because they just like programming, because they want the notoriety and "pats on the back" from others (not a criticism, BTW, a perfectly laudable reason to do it) or because they have a great idea for a new piece of software.

But surely all of those reasons get better by people sending you feedback.

Re:Who cares?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, who cares about advocacy?

Because technical excellence alone is not enough to gurantee survival in this world dominated by greed, self-interest and corruption. Sometimes the only language anybody speaks is politics.

Open source is not about getting other people to use open source but instead to do cool stuff.

That may have been true in the past but now things are different. There is a danger doing those cool things might become unacceptable in the future. Some time ago certain people decided to take it beyond your definition and spilled it over into a different world. Now the narrow interests are afraid of it.

Even if things do get out of hand you probably have the ability to continue developing your own tools. Not everyone has the priviledge to do that. Anyway there is no pressure for anybody to be an advocate. Different poeple do different things with open source.

And isn't that what is wrong with the world today. People need to worry about themselves and not about what other people are doing. (unless, of course, those other people are hurting other people)

I completely agree. I wish things were good but not everybody lives in an ideal world. Not everyone plays the game by the same rule and sometimes there has to be a struggle just to have the right to do simple stuff. For some the stakes are just too high to just not do anything about the happenings that are going on today. Just think of the big picture and you might understand.

Re:Who cares?!?

[ThousandStars]

Honestly, who cares about advocacy?

People care about advocacy because computers, especially now that so many are interconnected, exhibit a strong network effect. The more people who use a given OS or architecture or whatever, the more likely developers will write programs for it and the more likely that costs will drop from economies of scale. Peripheral vendors and ISPs will support the most common configurations possible. That means if you want your life to have fewer computer hassles, you're better off recommending that others use OSes and such similar to the one you use -- otherwise you'll buy scanners that are unsupported, and your ISP won't give you tech support and if you need an obscure piece of software you might not be able to find it.

People do need to worry, at least somewhat, about what other people are doing, because what other people are doing usually affects the people observing, at least to some degree.

The individual is a part of a larger web, and the vibrations you send from your tiny part of the (metaphorical) web travel through it in ways not always perceived by you.

Re:Who cares?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess what I'm saying is that for me it's all about the programming. When I hear someone talking about "Advocating Open Source" I think of trying to convert people, like one would try to convert someone to your religion. Isn't it enough that one believes in something? Why does one need others to believe in the same thing? If someone tells me they downloaded my program that is fine. If someone tells another person they are using my program that is also fine. I'm just not into trying to get someone to use my program instead of one made by someone else.

I suppose if you are a company, like RedHat for instance, then you would be concerned with converting people to Open Source. But frankly what they do doesn't concern me.

-5 TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the damn post before you mod it.

It is full of misinformaiton, blind assumption, and poor spelling.

Try push polling

[stonebeat.org]

Push Polling usually worx.

sample question:
"Would you be more likely or less likely to by ClosedSource/Proprietary/ClosedStandard Application if you knew they were designed to trap you in becomming life-long customer (vendor lock-in)?" ?

Oh wait, that is not push-polling - That is the truth!!!.

What's definitely the wrong way...

[ssj_195]

...is the way I was introduced to Linux and the open-source world. "Open-source software never crashes!" (false); "Open-source software is nearly always better than proprietary software!" (true in some cases, but on the whole, I would say, false); "Install Linux and all your problems will be solved!" (he he he :)) These are all "facts" (albeit roughly paraphrased) that I heard, from several sources about Linux and open-source in general.

So I excitedly downloaded and burned some Mandrake 9.1 CDs, installed (amazingly painless), and entered this whole new world of Linux and Open Source.

There are many ways you could describe my reaction to the yawning gulf between expectation and reality: "furious backlash" would be one; "blind seething rage and betrayal" would be another. The catalogue of disasters and frustrations that followed left me cursing the names of the people who recommended Linux to me as this wonderful cure-all and utterly *hating* Linux with every fibre of my being. I actually stuck with it for a few more days and, after deciding that linux was the most pointless project I had ever had the misfortune of dabbling with, returned to the comparatively hassle-free bosom of Windows.

Luckily for me, the story didn't end there and some persistent and random lockups in Windows led me to re-install Linux (Mandrake 10, this time around) to see whether it was hardware or driver related (a dodgy fan on my graphics card, for what it's worth). This time around, with my expectations greatly lowered (in fact, by this stage, Linux had improved unrecognisably, and I was very pleased with its progress), I fell head-over-heels in love and haven't had Windows installed since.

But it could so easily have gone the other way; it is hard to explain just how much the hype followed by disappointment soured me on Linux at the time (an understatement!) and it is my firm belief that if I had been forewarned about the things that I could do in Windows but not in Linux, I would not have reacted so sharply. So now, when "recommending" Linux to the curious, I usually start with a list of negatives (some hardware may not work; you may not be able to run your favourite games; don't expect installation of software to follow the Windows model, or you'll be in a world of hurt) before extolling its non-pragmatic virtues ("It's an operating system with love in it!"). It's heartening that quite a few people are still willing to give it a shot even after hearing my litany of gloom :)

So in a nutshell, don't be a blind fanboy, or you will be Open Source's worst enemy; let people know that there will be concessions to make, but that many people still feel the switch is worth it. Make a special point of mentioning just how different and customisable it can be (show them a variety of WMs, from the absurdly minimalist (Ratpoision) to the wonderfully glitzy (Enlightenment) - this diversity and difference from the comparative homogeniety of Windows usually gets people curious, in my experience). Don't oversell it, as this is just a recipe for disaster.

Oh, and this post mainly deals with the casual home PC user, so might be a little off-topic - apologies for that :)

Re:What's definitely the wrong way...

[mormop]

4 odd years ago I had a success converting one guy to Linux after he'd had KAK worm take his computer out.

At first, the response was to tell him to buy a virus checker. He bought a £15 a month McAfee subscription but got suspicious when his PC slowed right down. He updated McAfee which found nothing and then uninstalled McAfee and installed AVG which found Sircam. After much swaering he asked "how I dealt with all this shit" at which point I said I don't have to, produced my laptop, showed off Linux. He started using Windows 80% of the time and tinkering with Mandrake the rest and within 4 months was wholly Linux. The rest of his company followed soon after.

Inspired by how easy it was I tried pushing it on someone who lacked the "pissed off" motivation and was only interested because of the low price. The cost savings were easily offset by the constant moaning of his office lackey who had enough trouble dealing with Word, let alone a new OS so the whole thing failed dismally.

Since then, I mention Linux once to people and never allow myself to start a conversation in which it's mentioned. If I'm asked about why I use it or whatever I'll happily state my case in as few words as possible leaving the other person to lead the conversation along handing out Knoppix CDs where required. This worked quite nicely in the interview for my current job. Linux on the CV/resume, mention it once or twice as an aside during the interview and after getting the job in what was a 100% Windows office, waiting for small tasks that are easy to setup as examples.

So far, CD server that was bought 3 years ago works with NT but not with XP. No problem, save £1000 licence update fee with a copy of Mandrake 10.1 pulled off their site that night. Print servers? three in the pipeline using parts salvaged from a pile of 600MHz Celerons that would otherwise end up in a skip.

All the time I'm working on the server I have KDE running and have installed a selection of apps that attract attention from users and other IT staff along the way as I have set the monitor up to be visible to all who enter. Once again, let them initiate the conversation so I don't come across a zealot and answer only things that they ask about although the odd "watch this it's pretty damn cool" moment can be throw in if they appear interested enough.

On the whole, reaction has been good with a couple of Knoppix recipients asking where they can download a full version. Mandrake seems favourite so far. People love the look of Fedora although they're disappointed by the relative lack of apps (maybe better now the extras site is up).

Best of all, if it all goes tits up they hung themselves (although I provided them with the rope) as at no point have I suggested they try it. This leaves them with a: a philosophical attitude e.g. "well, I gave it a go but it's not for me" and/or b: enough of a glimpse to set the seeds for another look further down the road to see if it's improved since lastime.

Bottom lime, people don't like to be pushed, but are happy to be helped along the way. Hopefully, if it ever comes to trialing a desktop version in the office enough people may have sufficient familiarity to soften the shock.

Re:What's definitely the wrong way...

[m50d]

Maybe people are just sharing their experiences. All my problems have gone away. The only way I've crashed my system on oss is using a beta that was marked as such. So that's what I tell people.

Listening to what people want is the best way

[gillbates]

I listen to what people are tell me about their computer experience:

• If it's filled with complaints about how often their system crashes, freezes, or slows down, I'll inform them that I could fix this if they're willig to try something new (Linux).
• If, OTOH, they complain about not being able to play the latest games, or run the latest applications they bought at Best Buy, I'll recommend they learn to use a firewall, AV software, etc...

It still amazes me the number of people who are willing to ditch Windows completely and learn something new. As long as you clearly explain the pros and cons of running Linux, most people are willing to try Linux. Where you see Linux get a bad rap is when a flaming OSS zealot installs Linux over a crashed Windows installation without first explaining to the user that their previous system, as they knew it, will be completely gone.

And contrary to popular /. opinion, Linux is not always the best choice:

• There are still a class of users who prefer to format and reinstall every 6-12 months because it is easier for them than learning to use Linux.
• Let's not forget gamers - most of whom would be mighty unpleased if some OSS zealot "restored" their system and *lost* all of their games.

I think the key to being a successful OSS advocate is simply to listen to needs of people. Many idealistic people would run FOSS software, but don't because they don't have the requisite knowledge (or time) to understand it. That's where a good OSS zealot can help people out. But at the same time, we have to realize that for those users who rely on Windows-centric "features", installing Linux would not be doing them a favor.

Re:Listening to what people want is the best way

[pandrijeczko]

As long as you clearly explain the pros and cons of running Linux, most people are willing to try Linux.

Not to mention the fact that Linux (through LILO and GRUB) encouragesyou to still keep your Windows installation to dual boot quite happily.

I've yet to see a Windows installation program that says "I see you have Linux in this partition. Would you like me to install elsewhere on this disk and give you an option menu at boot up?"

Re:Listening to what people want is the best way

[at_18]

I've yet to see a Windows installation program that says "I see you have Linux in this partition. Would you like me to install elsewhere on this disk and give you an option menu at boot up?"

My windows2000 upgrade from win98 detected the Linux partition and added a bootloader with the choice between the two.

Re:Listening to what people want is the best way

[Anonymous Coward]

That must have been lost in the Windows XP upgrade.

Re:Listening to what people want is the best way

[Cyno]

...with the choice between the two.

You mean a choice between Windows 2000 and Win98, right?

If you mean to say your Windows 2000 bootloader gave you the option of booting Linux, I would have to say: prove it!

Post a screenshot of your boot screen or something. I've been installing Windows professionally for over 5 years and have NEVER seen it autodetect a Linux partition and/or add anything to its boot menu. It always overwrites the boot sector I had previously installed (LILO or GRUB) and gives me two options to boot Win2k (normal and safe mode).

Without proof, to contradict my years of experience, I must assume you are lying. Perhaps you got a new build of Windows 2000 with enhanced features not available to the general public and incorporated customers?

This article says NOTHING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the first day discussion at the "intro to speech" class. Seriously, anyone who has ever spoken publicly knows all of this.

He uses some historical examples of great figures teaching philosphy and government constructs to tell us how to speak to businessmen? Perhaps he should eval;uate his own methods.

This is a symptom of the whole community Im afraid. It treats everything like a high minded debate and philosphy when the people using the stuff just want to make money. FLOSS advocates talk over everyone's heads, and the author does the same thing while trying to tell us to - not do that.

This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[leereyno]

The only people who act more like rabid idiots than Linux/OSS advocates are Mac zealots. They are their own worst enemy, not to mention a bunch of bald face liars. With Linux/OSS there are valid technical merits and advantages that exist. With Macs this is not the case and has not been the case in well over a decade if not longer. Yet the true believers still persist in trying to con anyone who will listen into pouring their money in a hole in the ground by buying a Mac, and acting like petulant brats towards anyone who won't listen.

That being said, opposing something in the technology world because of the culture surrounding it, and not because of any concrete technical reason, is simply irrational. Linux and OSS are ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency, both of which inevitably lead to more $$$$$. Shunning them because some of the people who are behind them are unpalatable, just doesn't make sense.

Lee

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[bigman2003]

I disagree regarding your comment: "opposing something in the technology world because of the culture surrounding it, and not because of any concrete technical reason, is simply irrational."

If I am at a meeting, and a few projects are being presented, the typically come in three flavors:

1 - This project may not be exciting, but it is based on technology that is popular (Microsoft), and we haven't been burned by this yet. This project will be probably be successful. "Okay...sounds good, let's do it"

2 - We need to stop using Microsoft! We shouldn't support Exchange! There is this really great project on Sourceforge, it is at a .6 release, but it will be going beta soon. We should scrap our current plans and use this, because Microsoft is Evil! "umm..okay, let's move on"

3 - Umm...I just need to go to the bathroom.

I have been VERY successful in getting my projects accepted. Because they may not be exciting, and they may cost us a little bit of money...but a proven track-record goes a long way.

I made the choice to base most of my development around SQL Server, back when MySQL was being pushed, but the tools just weren't there. Now we have so many projects using SQL Server, it is sick. And when we are looking for things from outside vendors...lo and behold, many are written on top of SQL Server (yes...stored procedures really are a good thing.)

So my projects are considered 'solid'. I want to disassociate myself from the OSS camp as much as possible, because they are seen as a bunch of people more concerned about the technology (and culture) than the bottom line. And the people who make the decisions on where to spend the money? Well, they ONLY care about the bottom line.

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[ThePilgrim]

So my projects are considered 'solid'.
Sir Humphry Appleby was promoted to Cabinet Secrety at the start of 'Yes Priminister' because he was considered solid.
This mentality permiates through a Burocrasy, and a Burocrasy is the last place I'd look for technical expertiese.

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[Anonymous Coward]

He said:

Linux and OSS are ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency, both of which inevitably lead to more $$$$$.

And somehow you translated that into:

We need to stop using Microsoft! We shouldn't support Exchange! There is this really great project on Sourceforge, it is at a .6 release, but it will be going beta soon. We should scrap our current plans and use this, because Microsoft is Evil!

If there are valid technical reasons why an open source solution is superior to a Microsoft solution, or any proprietary solution for that matter, then it should be easy for you to sell people on it. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that you are required to be an ass when trying to sell it to your company.

they are seen as a bunch of people more concerned about the technology (and culture) than the bottom line.

What is the bottom line? Marketshare of the products you're using? If the products you end up using aren't focused on the "technology," then what are they focused on? How do you get something that actually works well if you don't care about the technology?

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[bigman2003]

I'm not sure what business you are in...but we are in the business of creating applications, and supporting 'other party' applications for our customers.

So, if we decide to support some 'open' version of Exchange, we would be addressing about .01% of the market. On the other hand, if we use our resources to support Exchange, we are hitting about 65% of that market.

Also, if we are developing an application, we can choose which market to develop for.

#1 - we can develop for Linux. That way our potential customer base will be about 5% (being charitable) of the companies out there. And these people have proven to prefer Free/OSS software.

#2 - we can target the Windows market. Which is used in 99.9% of the companies we are interested in. (Fortune 1000)

So the bottomline is: we want customers. The customers are running Windows. If we support them, we can make money. If we take another path, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[Daniel Dvorkin]

With Macs this is not the case and has not been the case in well over a decade if not longer.

You are, of course, wrong. But given the attitude you display in your post, I don't expect you to listen to any of the reasons why you're wrong.

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

There are zealots of all flavors; Mac, Microsoft, OSS, etc. Let's not make the mistake of labelling *all* users or fans of a particular techology as zealots, when usually it's just a few outspoken individuals. And I think we should also try to recognize the "zealots among us".. I.E. if you're a fan of Linux, you probably don't tend to pay much attention to a rabid pro-Linux advocate. (or Microsoft, or Apple, or..)

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[Jane_Dozey]

Ah, so in other words your choice not to use OSS solutions has nothing to do with either technical merits or the culture surrounding OSS (which isn't as you suggested, a bunch of rabid zealots. They're just the loudest and more public of the community) it's about business decisions which is fair enough. Why didn't you say that in the first place? Or would it just have been off topic?

Of course, you *could* just support them both you know. Develop for the windows platform first (as most of your target audience is running wondows) and then get a couple of developers to port your solution over to linux or try and make sure the windows implimentation works with wine. Seriously, most of your customers are running windows but alienating the linux user base will win you no friends. Why not start trying to broaden your user base a little?

Re:This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[leereyno]

You are, of course, a gerbil. But given the attitude you display in your post, I don't expect you to listen to any of the reasons why you're a gerbil.

IBMers going to San Diego?

[LinuxHam]

Any IBMers going to San Diego for next week's conference? One of the offerings is "How to build an enterprise using only Open Source software". Should be interesting.

I believe emphasis shouldn't be on OSS but...

[xutopia]

on formats people use and the shackled they accept in their every day lives. If we show people that they are stuck paying expensive fees or pirating to use their computers they'll be more interested in hearing about alternatives.

It'll be worth waiting for!

[Weaselmancer]

Cause I hear it'll run Duke Nukem Forever, right out of the box!

the most rabid are the most worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony, of course, is that the most rabid of open-source advocates are the ones making the least contribution in terms of code and money. The Linuses and Allisons and Behlendorfs are the one who perssuade with their code, not theirn loud mouths.

open cd

[k3v0]

one good resource for promoting open source software on windows is the OpenCD

it's much easier for some to learn by using than it is by listening...

WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Screaming, insulting and sladering are the only true way to make an impact. Just ask your local politician.

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[zootm]

Wow, what a troll. Of *course* the kernel is device dependent. It's a fricking kernel.

No, your parent post wasn't really a troll -- more a criticism of the Linux kernel's monolithic structure. It's an "academic vs real world" argument, really. I'd swither towards supporting a microkernel system, but the fact is, Linux is here and it works (most of the time), whereas microkernel systems are restricted to the HURD, which is gonna work "real soon now", and commercial offerings from Apple and Microsoft.

Inspection analogy

[PhilHibbs]

If a civil engineering company offered "proprietary" contracts, where all work was conducted in secrecy and was not subject to inspection, then this would clearly be unacceptable. It is equally important that software be subject to similar inspections, and therefore that the source code be made available. Remember, "Open Source" does not mean "freely redistributable". A private company could tender for a contract and produce the software that the government can use and have the source code for, without that software being downloadable from SourceForge for all to copy and use.

If you want to campaign for "Free software", then that is a different matter. I respect that point of view, but it's much harder. Anything worthwhile is probably going to be difficult.

Re:Inspection analogy

[The Cisco Kid]

No, Dr. Villanueva was specifically supporting that the source code be inspectable not only by the government, but by the citizens as well. That doesnt necesarrily mean it has to be on SourceForge, but it does mean that *any* citizen of (Peru, in this case) must be able to obtain a full copy of it. Now perhaps I can see it not being redistributable, but to support the 'free access to information by citizens', there must be no restrictions preventing someone else from writing software which can read (and/or, esp. in cases where citizens would be submitting data *to* the government, write) the data formats that the program uses, even even, if they are so motivated, from writing a competitive program which performs the same task.

LOL:

[Kjella]

Nice, except there doesn't live pinguins in Norway (nor in the rest of the northern hemisphere), if they did they'd probably only be on Svalbard and the expression would never enter mainstream language (What does he think? That ice bears walk around in our cities?), and even so I doubt it'd become an expression. Simply not catchy enough, and could be applied to almost any product.

Made me laugh at least, though I'm not sure if you were going for funny mods :)

Kjella

Re:LOL:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ice bears? Jeg tror du mener "polar bears". :P

Re:LOL:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Great Awk: http://ulterior.razorhead.co.uk/archives/143

Extinct, but not forgotten.

Re:LOL:

[Anonymous Coward]

Förlåt honom; han är trots allt norrman.

Re:LOL:

[tyldis]

So Bouvet Island and Dronning Mauds land is no longer a part of Norway?! We have plenty of territory with penguins.

More traditional advocacy is needed:

[Anonymous Coward]

"check me out i'm running xp2005".
"dude -your OS is made in Redmond Washington".
(crowd gasps)
"Redmond Washington?!?"
"Linux is made in Beaverton -where folks KNOW what software should taste like!"

Re:The Slashdot Double-Standard - to keep in theme

[chris_mahan]

Amen!

Brother, you know it!

Let the people hear the good news!!!

Sure, if the other side plays along

[Anonymous Coward]

It occurs to me that the same thing happens in politics - One side will calmly and rationally point out good plans and the problems inherent in the other side's plans. Then the other side overtakes the media and shouts and screams 24/7 with foaming-at-the-mouth, in-your-face, mine-is-the-One-True-Way evangelism. When you're drowned out by circus of the side with all the money, being calm & rational has its disadvantages.

Microsoft isn't quite at the level of Republicans and their media saturation, but they do have the decided advantage in money and power. FUD has helped them a little.

Linux may be more a case of the tortoise and the hare - if the software makers can not get distracted by MS's efforts to destroy Linux and just keep making their software better, eventually they'll have outstanding solutions that people will be unable to ignore. Kind of like where Apple is now with OS X...

Now maybe it's just me...

[gt_swagger]

But I think forcing somebody to use Windows ME, especially on a fresh install, for an hour or two is more than enough to give them interest in alternatives. :)

Re:Now maybe it's just me...

[Knight_Walker]

WIN ME is most definitely the worst Windows ever, whereas Windows XP is pretty mature, stable and user-friendly. Yes I have used Linux - KDE and Gnome in their latest versions including development versions of the upcoming releases KDE 3.4 and Gnome 2.10. Since my vendor ensured that all of my hardware works out of the box on Windows, it is a pleasant experience. SD-Slot, 5-Button-Mouses, TV-Out (with Twinview) and a lot more just works. And all of my apps. So - I was interested in alternatives and if Windows ME would be the most recent Windows, I'd probably use Linux as my main OS. But Open Source has to catch up, you can't compare it to Windows ME or DOS, you have to offer what Microsofts offers now. One Problem is the monolithical kernel, IMHO. I value the way I NEVER had to reinstall or reconfigure/compile my Kernel because I needed some new drivers. I am really unsure if that's the way to go.

Letter from Peruvian Congressman

[suso]

This letter by Dr. Edgar David Villenueva Nunez that the linked article links to is absolutely fantastic. I've never read such a good argument for open source outside of its founders. Nor have I read such a great and well thought out letter by a modern day politician. It makes me want to move to Peru.

I think that you all should take a moment to read through that so that you can remind yourself that open source is the "more correct" form of software development.

Re:Letter from Peruvian Congressman

[corblix]

This letter by Dr. Edgar David Villenueva Nunez that the linked article links to is absolutely fantastic.

Wow! That guy really put some thought into it. Some of the more interesting quotes from his letter:

On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.

So two arguments for using proprietary software contradict each other. Cool.

On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.

Yep. Make them back up their claims!

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Linux on my Mac am I then a Linux preacher or Mac zealot ?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither, you're a faggot with more money than sense.

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have ever developed drivers (resource managers) under QNX Neutrino, you would really understand the truth behind your comment.

Envangelism is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in favour of evangelism or advocacy when it comes to Linux. The more fuss you make over something, the higher the skepticism and expectations and the bigger the backlash.

I prefer to use Linux, save money, mention or demo cool features of OSS software when the subject comes up, and be willing to install it if the interest is there but with no obligation beyond that (and with the original proprietary software left intact for them to go back to at their leisure). This is much the approach that any sane parent uses with children and food.

So far, my wife's used Linux for years, my parents use Firefox and my mother uses Thunderbird. I point out some cool features for them but they often find things they like that I may not even know about.

Re:Envangelism is bad

[pandrijeczko]

I don't think there's actually any more evangelism with Linux than there is with Windows - for example, on here we're told daily that "Blue Screens" are a thing of the past on Windows these days. (No, I use this an example, I've not opened this topic for debate!)

However, in my experience, most of the Linux people I know, including myself, have lots of Windows experience also and can therefore make valid comparisons between the two.

Many Windows users use the same tired old arguments when it comes to talking about Linux, to the point where you know they've formed their opinions from FUD and the words of others, not through actual usage of it.

The real "big hitter" of course is that Linux is only the kernel in reality and everything else is (usually) a GPL application that many times has a port to Windows also.

Consequently, if everyone was a bit more positive and knowledgeable all round, fed problems back to Open Source developers rather than just sitting back and moaning, these applications would get better for all of us, not just the Linux people.

The fact is, you can strip out a huge number of the included apps in Windows and replace them with equally as good, sometimes even better Open Source apps - so the fact is that the core OS, from that perspective, becomes pretty much redundant anyway...

Re:Envangelism is bad

[Ministry of Cube]

I've been quite disenchanted with Linux myself, it's not so much that we're sitting back and moaning, it is more along the lines of "Will I be taken seriously if I DO let the developers know, or will they spit in my face and tell me to go back to Windows?"

The culture for such things is simply not there, for an average person trying out Linux, getting help with stuff usually meets the usual response of "RUN [insert distro]!!~!~!" or "Compile ur own kernel for your needs" As a user, I'm not interested in these solutions, there needs to be a quick immediate fix available, or else I won't care to run your software. Simple as that.

Just to append something here, I've tried many different distros. The ones I have not been satisfied with are Mandrake 10.1, Ubuntu 4.10, Linspire 4.5, Knoppixes 3.4-3.7. The ones that I do find quite bearable, which I would gladly use should I be forced to switch from Windows are: MEPIS. Knoppix 3.3 was great as well, for a smooth LiveCD/no install experience. The main problem with the former bunch are the soundcard support, which is ridiculous IMHO. The regular plain vanilla PCI SB Audigy has to be one of the most common cards around, and the fact that this many distros have problems with it is disconcerting.

ed, man! !man ed!

[Mishura]

I use ed, you righteous bastard!

The funniest part of this article

[dereklam]

The funniest part of this excellent article is this snippet comparing large corporations with ``real world'' small businesses.

If, for example, you are targeting a large organization with a complex managerial structure, it is likely that there will be a culture of managers impressing managers. With this in mind, research needs to come from established organizations such as government agencies, objective research institutions, universities, and professors. Within this targeted audience, educational chops play a real role. On the other hand, if you are targeting a small business, real-world information will more likely be of interest. In this case, usage/skills statistics, press, similarly-sized case studies, and awards may have more impact. In a smaller organization, the focus is more typically on technical ability and costs, as opposed to the political issues encountered in larger corporate environments.

Re:The funniest part of this article

[TCook]

I am interested in why you see this as "funny"?

Cheers,
Tim

Re:The funniest part of this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the grandparent meant that the article was an (unintentional) sad commentary on how large companies are out of touch with reality. Small businesses actually care about real-world concerns like getting the job done. Large corporations care about managers impressing managers.

If, for example, you are targeting a large organization with a complex managerial structure, it is likely that there will be a culture of managers impressing managers. With this in mind, research needs to come from established organizations such as government agencies, objective research institutions, universities, and professors. Within this targeted audience, educational chops play a real role. On the other hand, if you are targeting a small business, real-world information will more likely be of interest. In this case, usage/skills statistics, press, similarly-sized case studies, and awards may have more impact. In a smaller organization, the focus is more typically on technical ability and costs, as opposed to the political issues encountered in larger corporate environments.

Learning must be done everyday.

[Dana P'Simer]

I thought it was so that those attending would learn and use what they had learned. I must be wrong.

Of course you are. That is why "evangelism" instead of rational argument are used to convince people of the merits of one technology over another. The rational argument that Linux and OSS are a viable alternative to closed source products just doesn't get people excited.

We should endeavor to learn everyday and Schools should just be a place where that process is intensified.

obvious

[Call me Ishmael]

So, to be persuasive I should craft an argument that makes use of specific, quantifable, verifiable, evidence? And you're telling me that this is more persuasive than unsupported generalizations?

The fact that this counts as "news" is a strong comment on how the focus on job training has reduced our universities to glorified tech colleges.

How to talk to businesspeople

[UES]

WRONG:

The #1 product in the market sucks. The company that makes it is evil. This free software you never heard of is the best. It is written collectively by hippies. Everything should be free, including YOUR products.

RIGHT:

The #1 selling product in the market is not the best in the market. If we implement [Linux, etc.], it will be CHEAPER, it will be MORE SECURE, it will produce LESS DOWNTIME, it is EASIER TO UPGRADE, you will increase your PROFITS by reducing costs.

Re:How to talk to businesspeople

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not give less of a shit about whether Linux is "widely adopted". I don't want to lose my right to use a superior OS for bio-technical applications because a fascist government (literally) decides by fiat to grant a perpetual monopoly to Redmond.

The proper way to accomplish this is not to persuade people that linux is profitable, but rather that government should encourage competition, preferably in a way opposite from weakening the apparently-successful (which is the interpretation that Bell and Microsoft antitrust suits lend themselves to). Doing this is closer to your "undesirable" way #1 above.

Re:How to talk to businesspeople

[$criptah]

Bravo. I have a smiliar post here. Although I went a step ahead: let people realize that they need Linux. Let businesses see its potential in terms of profit and success.

the document snuck in!

[ximpul1]

just click start>run then type "cmd" (no quotes)

then

less /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Advocacy

(yes the windows part is in jest)

L. Ron Hubbard

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance, developed an eternities worth of material on the subject of life, as best he could describe it, using words and modes of literature available to him. "Modes of thinking" is a primary facet of the entire Scientology stricture; controversors and squirrels aside, there is sort of a point to the fact of Scientologists' rabid devotion to 'standard technology'.

Its an interesting thing that literacy is an individual responsibility, with entirely cataclysmic consequences when dealing with ones fellows. You are the one who determines your literal understanding of the world, no matter what anyone tells you; yet, the more you listen to others, the more you may yet learn.

Interesting equation. Thank God.

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[m50d]

Not necessarily, he could just be arguing for more drivers being distributed as separate modules. It's not really doable until the ABI stabilises or linus gives them more support - remember the philips webcam guy's comment about non-in-kernel drivers being very much second-class citizens - but it is a defensible position.

You're my roommate!

[Anonymous Coward]

AHA I caught you AC you're my roommate I just know it!

Re:I for one think that linux's kernel is too comp

[zootm]

It's a real pity, in any case. It's one of the biggest problems with Linux today, although it's obviously been getting better of late.

I'm BLOODY sorry...

[Hymer]

...but english is not my native language and I do not live in any of the english-speaking countries...
...and when you can say "rødgrød med fløde" flawlessly I will consider to improve my english...

Re:I'm BLOODY sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

You also aren't the original poster, now are you?

Re:I'm BLOODY sorry...

[Hymer]

That is correct...
I just wanted to say that some of us may have a reason for beeing less-than-perfect in the english language...

You Moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Helen Keller taught herself to speak, through great struggle. It's one reason she's such a famous figure.

She was also very political--a fact which is often covered over in the sappy elementary school biographies. She was a Southerner who opposed racism in the Jim Crow era.

Nobody likes an evangelist

[qwijibo]

Most people aren't software people. Most people do things with their computers. It's only geeks like me who like computers for the sake of computers. All the business people I work with have to use them. They simply do not care about anything other than their needs being met in the most timely, reliable and cost effective manner.

When advocating open source, what problem are you solving? I used to advocate open source solutions for individuals and companies, but now I just give options. I still include open source options where they are a good solution, but that's not always true. People who like to play the newest popular games should probably not be switching to linux. Part of advocacy is knowing when to shut up. Pushing a particular solution to all problems, regardless of requirements is a major turnoff to pretty much everyone.

Marketing more important than the product?

[rduke15]

Is this really what OSS is striving for? Sophisticated marketing? Can't the OSS community offer an alternative? One where the quality of the product is more important than it's marketing? Isn't this how the OSS successes came? Did Linux, Apache, Perl, etc. have a fancy marketing department, or have they "simply" been delivering great code?

Can't we start bombing these marketing schools where assholes are tought how to best screw us all?

Beware.

[drxray]

Beware. I've tried this, and the new user always says "I want THAT linux, the one on the CD, because it's what I'm used to."

I point out that it's not really designed for a hard drive, and isn't as well supported as a version that is (i.e. no automatic updates, security fixes, comes with less software and the like). And they are unhappy about that.

I'd use a livecd based on an ground-up designed-to-be-installable distro rather than Knoppix. Ubuntu, maybe. Or I think SuSE does livecds.

A bit more off topic

[Neoncow]

Is the spouse of you mothers sister really an uncle?

Apparently he IS your uncle.

In Chinese, there is no generic aunt or uncle label. There are specific names for my mother's older sister, mother's younger sister, and mother's brother. There are also corresponding names for their spouses.

Unforutunately, I can never rememeber which name is which.

From Aristotle to Heraclitus...

[Anonymous Coward]

is to experience about 200 years of time reversal. That should help with the new thoughts.

Conquer them with music

[YGingras]

Jono Bacon is also the author of an excellent death metal remix of the Free Software Song.

so how do you tell a ....

[3seas]

person who has not in their vocabulary the words to decribe what it is you are trying to commnicate to them?

according to the article you have to speak in their language....

Hmmmmph....

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Norweg and this proverbial is actually covering buffalos but a points is that it is very relevant here. So don't be nitpick about pinguins and focus on parent's points that is very insightfull. Please mod parent up. Thanks.

(P.S. Great sig - I'm a fellew Trekker ;-D)

(P.S.2. I amn't sorry for my english... i believe your norwegian sucks equally badly! :-P)