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"Enemies of Linux" Trying to Undermine OS?
Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
Jesus fucking christ people, it isn't that hard
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
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If we still cant have consistant pasting between apps, I'd say we're our own biggest enemy. I've used linux since the 2.0 kernel days and even I still find it impossible to paste between different apps, especially with a different toolkit. Throw in an odd app like Mozilla and forget about it, you'll end up replacing your own clipboard with what you're trying to paste over, or pasting 3 lines into the url bar which happily takes newlines.
Why can't we just unite like all the good apps on windows, mac os, qnx, amiga.. and everything else with a real solid dev team?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Er, so when did Linux stop being an OS and start being a cult-like religion?
It's a f-ing operating system for god(s) sake people. It doesn't have enimies, it has competitors.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
Linux used to be like that little kid who mowed peoples lawn for next to nothing.. now the kid decided to start it's own business and has to deal with politics.
It's no real surprize that people want to get rid of it. If not for Linux we'd have a choice of two OS (Windows or OSX) and not many people want to buy a mac just for the OS.. Get rid of Linux and Microsoft's market share once again becomes uncontested, keep it around and it'll slowly dwindle untill Linux and Windows are running evenly.
I like muppets.
This is a good point, but asking OSDL members this question is somewhat akin to doing a survey of how many people run IIS among ASP developers.
I've only ever purchased one server with linux preloaded (from Dell). Every other linux system I've ever owned has come blank, except one workstation that had a copy of Windows preloaded.
Officially, I have 1 linux system, but in reality, I have probably 15 active systems.
Speak before you think
Did they really expect for linux to be a viable product and not get criticized by the people whos market they are taking?
... If you insist on multiplying a single security vulnerability by the number of available distros, or tell people that they'll have to recompile their kernel every time they add a patch, or claim that software to do X, Y, or Z isn't available for Linux when in fact it is, or claim that open source development is inherently insecure, or that running proprietary software on a GPL'd OS will get you sued by the FSF, or make any of the other kinds of propganda attacks we've all seen on Linux (and F/OSS generally) from Microsoft and its lackeys ... then you have indeed gone beyond "competitor" to "enemy."
"Criticized" is one thing; "slandered" is another. Linux is far from perfect, and all but the most rabid zealots acknowledge this; there are many valid criticisms to be made, and in some cases the validity of these criticisms is sufficient to point users direction of Windows or one of the proprietary flavors of Unix.
BUT
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They can do/say all they wish about Linux. What they forget is 'Linux' isn't a tangible entity. It's a bit like shadow boxing.
:)
Nobody owns it (apart from !SCO), anybody can release their/a version of it, and more important, all the coders and developers don't really give a shit who uses it.
People that USE it though know the truth, and my Financial Manager likes it too, even though he doesn't really know what it is. He knows what £0:00 is, though.
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There are several companies who make products that Linux threatens directly. Any firm selling, for instance, an operating system, would feel threatened by what is becoming the standard OS much as TCP/IP became the standard networking protocol.
But to call these "competitors" of Linux is to misunderstand the nature of the threat.
Linux is not a business, it is not a strategy, it is not a concept.
Linux represents the brutal and unflinching march of technology towards the zero price point. Linux - and all free & open-source software - exists because all the barriers to its existence have been gradually razed.
The first rule of competition is that all players must be playing the same game. How can anyone seriously still think that Linux and (e.g.) Microsoft are playing the same game?
The game is not over - there is no game, and there never was.
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Now that IBM, RHN and Novell are in the ring, Microsoft, Oracle, CA and everyone else are starting to see Linux as a competitor. The problem is that most people in FOSS are not used to competition, they prefer enemies. Enemies are easier to vilify and ridicule. Competitors who are eating your lunch are not. This whole "we are holier than thou and you are so evil" thing is not going to work out there in the real world. Linux needs to compete, not be surrounded by fanboys who can pick their noses and chuckle when they write "Microshaft" and "Windoze".
Slashdot has been the main front in this whining battle for the past few years. It's gone mainstream now, of sorts, and people are starting to notice the ridiculous "OMFG WINDOZE IS TEH SUXX" headlines that adorn the front page day in and day out, complete with borg icon. And don't complain about Microsoft saying this or the other about Linux when most of you spend your waking hours claiming that Windows cannot be secured or otherwise used as a computing platform, using anecdotal data points to build feel-good statistics that only you believe.
Grow up and compete. The "some dude said something bad about Linux"-style whines like this article are starting to sound more and more like Suckdot.
I think you're talking about a frenemy, or possibly a frenemy.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Welcome to the real world.. Time to grow up and watch your back.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Really, it's been Windows & Mac users bashing each other, Sun bashing Microsoft, and so on since the Atari vs. C-64 vs. PC Jr. days. FUD and her wicked stepsister statistics have kept journalists and the likes of Gartner employed for a long time now, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Welcome to the fray, Linux!
T.J. Schmitz - the man, the myth, the legend - o
Well, I'm not sure who would have standing to sue in this case. Linus Torvalds? Red Hat? The FSF?
In any case, I wasn't trying to make a legalistic distinction. I don't know, and don't especially care, if the FUD Microsoft et al. are throwing at Linux rises to the legal definition of slander or not. (I also don't believe that corporations or organizations should be able to sue for slander at all, but that's a whole 'nother argument.) But it is definitely slanderous, rather than critical, in tone and content: that is, it's "words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another" rather than real analysis of the relative merits and flaws of Linux as compared to other OSs.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Others' posts not withstanding, I don't care much about how easy or hard it is to install an operating system, as long as it's easy enough. Neither Windows nor Linux is easy enough.
But installing an operating system is something that most people will never do in their lives. It's something that even the most hard-core computer hobbyist might do once every year or two. It's just not important.
What's important is the ability to accomplish tasks with a computer. Have your students take three computers out of the boxes, one with Windows installed, one with Linux and one a Mac. Have them download some pictures from a digital camera and burn them to CD.
There's your test.
The whole "Enemies of Linux" thing comes across as deeply paranoid. It makes it sound as though these organisations are evil forces that want to destroy the heroic land of Linux.
A better slant would be that software companies who have compete in the same market space as those companies that use linux are using their usual dirty tricks and misinformation to undermine the competition while the competition simultaneously uses similar tricks and lies to undermine them. But it's hardly news is it?
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Surprisingly, the developers are a tiny part of the "cost" of commercial software, and there is no reason why open source developers cannot be very well paid, and no reason why excellent developers should be doing less challenging work. There is a huge market for the best people. I know - this is my business.
I said that technology moves towards a zero price point, not that people's labour does.
The price of labour is affected by a different equation, namely the elimination of barriers that previously stopped other people competing for the same jobs.
Any student of economics will understand that competition is a positive force. Seeing one's salary undercut by competition is tough, but it may be the incentive you need to rethink your job, your productivity, and your role in society.
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For many, it's something other people decided they were and decided to treat them like.
A few years ago I was asked by a family friend to take over his business network because he couldn't find someone competent to take care of it, and I ended up fixing various problems for him anyway.
I let him know that while I was happy to help out where I could, I wouldn't be comfortable doing it officially because I didn't really know anything about Windows networking as I only used Linux in that capacity. The reaction I got was stunning. I spent the next month defending myself against accusations of trying to force him to move to Linux, of shoving it down people's throats, of not living in the real world where people had to use Windows, etc. Now, keep in mind that the *only* time I ever mentioned Linux was that one time when I said I wasn't familiar with Windows networking.
I finally got fed up with it and told him he needed to justify all the crap I was getting, at which point he thought about it for a while and apologized, telling me that he had heard that Linux people were all zealots and so that's what he had reacted to.
I know that not every accusation of zealotry in Linux users is unfair, but I'm also quite sure that the majority are. It's also interesting to note that when people behave that way about Windows instead of Linux, people consider it perfectly acceptable, even normal. There's a serious double standard there, and it's not coming from the Linux side of things.
As told by Ghandi:
Stage #2: they'll laugh at you (done)
Stage #3: they'll fight you (current stage)
Stage #4: you'll win (next stage)
Also known as Stages of Acceptance (learn more). For me it's very clear what is happening.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
The biggest criticism and outright hysteria I hear is from non technical people followed by technical people that don't know what is out there, myself included. Another problem is which one and that is a problem.
Users and managers are still frightened. They remember Linux distro's of old. Yesterday a user that does web pages was ready to scrap RedHat and go with SuSE because Veritas has a segmentation violation if she uses xbp. That is the ONLY problem she had with it. It isn't as if you can simply move what she does in 10 minutes or an hour.
What can it do? Can they read, write, view everything they an with M$? Often the answer is yes. Sometimes yes if you install something. Sometimes yes if you spend enough time getting all the stuff you need - like vlc for example and other times the answer is no.
Which one? Here we are in the idiot religon wars again - RedHat, Suse, Knoppix, Mandrake, Bob's distro. The only ones I hear about are RedHat and Suse, the others are never mentioned seriously. I know places where they are putting off going to Linux because they don't know which one to use. Personally I don't care, however I would appreciate it if everyone used one or the other or at least make them so they are very similar between them.
face it, linux zealots are often the worst enemies of linux. check out Usenet for plenty of "RTFM!" posts. newbies don't want to put up with that crap and quickly find a friendlier distro or go back to Windows and Mac. then there are the wonderful threads about "linux is a kernel, not an OS" which just further confuses newbies. this "pass the buck" routine is getting quite old. the icing on the cake was seeing several prominent websites that claim that dissing linux is spitting in the face of the F/OSS developers. sure i'm appreciative of the OSS devel guys (some of whom are paid!), but that doesn't mean i have to suck their weenie. next i'll be "anti-american" for dissing linux.
The linux kernel is just a kernel (much like the solaris kernel is just a kernel), but when most people talk about 'Linux' they're usually talking about far more than just an operating system -- what RMS would rather be referred to GNU/Linux -- This includes the kernel, the OS tools, and the various apps that come with most distros. Whether it's the wide 3rd party support you get for RedHat RPMs, the boot-from-a-CD convenience of knoppix or the built-for-a-purpose utility of smaller versions (like Damn-Small-Linux).
Microsoft, especially likes to include patches for all of the subsystems of Redhat into it's security counts, and then compare that to patches for just windows -- but when it comes to denigrating it as 'just a toy', they'd be more than happy to FUD on the side of 'it's nothing more than the kernel'.
You wouldn't happen to be one of those astro-turfers would you?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.