"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?"

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The biggest enemy is ourself.

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

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?

Re:The biggest enemy is ourself.

[Coryoth]

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?

Linux is Free software, and most of the stuff running on it is usually also Free software. That has costs, and one of those costs is that people will write whatever they feel like writing. You won't be able to force people to conform. You can have things like Freedesktop.org to lay out some suggested standards, but no one is compelled to follow them. The only way to enforce consistency is to dictate that there is only one way to do things, and the only realistic way to do that is to have a single group in sole control of all the core libraries, which means they need to locked down to prevent forking parallel development, etc. If that's what you want, great. It's out there and available right now: Apple is offering it with MacOS X, Microsoft is offering it with Windows. If you want Free software with open source, you have to be willing to take the bad with the good.

Jedidiah.

Enimies of Linux

[eericson]

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.

Re:Enimies of Linux

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The fanaticism comes from the other side. If Microsoft were capable of seeing other OSs as competition rather than The Enemy, we'd have no problem. "Enemies of Linux" is a perfectly reasonable description for people who think the way Bill&Co. do.

As a Mac guy, I've seen this before. Typical exchange:

"I'm sick of all the viruses and crashes I get on my Windows box!"

"Well, you could try a Mac ..."

"OMG LOL M4XZ I5 T3H 5VX0RZ!"

"Um, well, it's a pretty good machine, actually, and it doesn't have any viruses ..."

"I'M SO SICK OF ALL YOU MAC FANATICS!"

(etc.)

So if Linux people are starting to get a little defensive, that's pretty much why, I think.

how to count

[gregmac]

"The true installed base of Linux is being undercounted if all we do is look at the server shipments alone. We need to look at what companies actually do with the servers after they have purchased them."

To support these assertions, Pratt cited a recent poll of OSDL members which asked how many had purchased servers with an OS pre-loaded and then removed and replaced it with Linux. Virtually all of them claimed to have taken this action.

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.

Re:um sure.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Did they really expect for linux to be a viable product and not get criticized by the people whos market they are taking?

"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 ... 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."

They forget

[Skiron]

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. :)

The myth of "Linux competitors"

[ites]

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.

FOSS doesn't want to compete

[The Bungi]

It just wants to whine, cry foul and point the finger at the big bully "ooohhh, look, OMFG! how dare they attack us, we're so goood!!"

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.