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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. --
The enemy of my friend is my enemy's friend, or my friend's enemies are my friend's friends... Um, is this gonna be on the test?
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So who are these mysterious enemies of Linux?
Is it Mr. White of 42 Evergreen Terrace?
Perhaps the little old lady who lives across the road?
Or, almost inconceivably, the vicar's wife, Mrs. Candor?
Or, just perhaps, is this a thinly veiled attack against Microsoft?
Could it just be more FUD?
doesn't make them enemies.
Just very very very hostile.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Don't make your enemies happy.
Make up with your lover,
who's greedy to be back
in your good graces.
Daughter,
because you've taken anger to extremes,
you won't amount
to a hill of beans.
-Hla Stavhana
Let us not make a hill of beans for our enemies!
"Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation."
Well that's a new tactic...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Why the BSD people of course. Everyone knows the BSD triangle of NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are out to get Linux. BSD stands for BKill SDamn DPenguin. What other free OS is there that could feel threatened?
Someone you trust is one of us.
...trying to undermine Good Judgement!!
Linux doesn't need defending any more than anything else that is Good For You(tm).
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.
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildl ife/penguins/index.shtml
Sheesh slashdot editors, at least do a simple google search first!
I know some of them.
They are IT consultans who are afraid of Linux, probably because they are afraid of loosing their job. They never see any potential in other OSes than MS Windows, probably because they don't want to.
They spread FUD all fucking day long, I'm soo fed up with it
These IT consultans are many, and they are everywhere
Search Google for the "SlashFix" extension for Firefox or download it here. It worked for me, no more reloading!
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.
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/02/11/13/21272 27.shtml?tid=109&tid=4
fuvoo: watch something
In other news, there has been a report of a "computer virus" attacking various Windows operating systems. Details at 11.
According to the secret Microsoft document from several years ago:
p hp
Messages that criticize OSS, Linux, & the GPL are NOT effective. Messaging that discusses possible Linux patent violations, pings the OSS development process for lacking accountability, attempts to call out the 'viral' aspect of the GPL, and the like are only marginally effective in driving unfavorable opinions around OSS, Linux, and the GPL, and in some cases BACKFIRE.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween7.
This is management speaking, please report to my office.
I'm seeing the same thing
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
Nelson Pratt, marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation, which boasts Linus Torvalds among its top brass, said that unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms with a campaign claiming that Linux is inadequately supported for enterprise use.
Did anyone else picture Nelson Pratt coughing "MICROSOFT!" right after saying "unnamed vendor"?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Do Penguins taste nice?
It may sound like a strange question but people do actually eat penguins. In Antarctica there are research stations where scientists live for months or even years so for them having a penguin for dinner is much like us having a Sunday roast. From their experiences we have been told that they taste like duck and that they also have a high oil content, due to all the fish that they eat. Guano miners also eat penguins whilst they are working near to Humboldt colonies; this however is bad news, as the Humboldt penguin is now a critically endangered species. Guano is old piles of penguin poo and it is mined for as it makes a good fertiliser, this practice is also detrimental to the wild Humboldt penguin population.
Clearly, these people are trying to undermine Linux by spreading the word that penguin meat is tasty and nutritious.
"OMG they're eating Tux. You Bastards!"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
.. if enough research was done by the company/user wishing to implement a new system, instead of managers going "this looks good, we'll have it" or "*os name here*, I hear that there's massive security holes in it", we wouldn't need all this FUD flying around. A symptom of the lack of thought that goes into the buying process nowadays, I 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.
An OS backed by a quasi-political philosophy that gains popularity would invariably spin off a counter philosophy. (Yin and Yang)
The question is whether or not this is the usual suspects (Microsoft) or some counter grassroots organization (Beos, BSD).
So long as it stays on the up and up, a little competition and criticism is a good thing. (IE The complaints of FireFox not responding quickly to recent security problems. That's a valid concern)
people who have bought the new EU patents laws of course! Say no to EU patens and vote with you wallet, buy Linux today.
I'm getting ready to download a PPC distro to put on a G3 Server I picked up on ebay for 20 bucks, so I'm not anti-linux, (though I have to admit it's mostly becuase OS 9 is such a loser)....I just dont know why one would make that choice, and I am open to hearing from linux folk as to why they would run Linux on Apple's modern hardware instead.
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I was going to say something like, "They hate us for our freedom," but it's actually not ridiculous here. Instead, I'll go with, "Microsoft will digest you with its system of mighty organs."
these are not the microsoft execs you are looking for.
okokok. it was a joke, you don't have to mod me down..I like windows too.
Heck, we're quoting Nelson Pratt -- the "marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation" -- at enormous length. Add a straw man to your press release -- poof! It's a news item!
This sort of thing, from Taco no less, doesn't help Linux's credibility much.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
When I was in Japan, I visited the island of Miyajima. There was an aquarium where I was able to pet a penguin. I considered it one of my most unique experiences.
Thanks to your post, I will now scratch off "Pet a penguin" and add "Eat a penguin."
Just a note for all you who read comments before the article:
The enemies line was brought in by the guy they were interviewing (Nelson Pratt). I wonder if VNUnet may have been a little condescending when they decided on that title.
"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. "However, going the other way was totally different. We asked how many had swapped out Linux and installed Windows and nobody had," said Pratt.
I am wondering if members of OSDL represent a random sample of server maintainers, or if they have any inherent bias? Anyone know?
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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hey! I was going to say that!
How the hell is StarBucks an enemy of Linux?
--
* Star
$ Bucks
must be their new Latte's Against Linux program
A search for Linux on Google reveals ads from Microsoft. Could this be a sign of what the article talks about?
:)
Disclaimer: The ad is in Danish, and it may thus be only the Danish branch of MS buying these adwords. It's possible that similar ads won't show up if the same search is done from other countries.
P.S.: If the ads show up, feel free to click them. Wouldn't want Google to miss out on a bit of revenue, would you?
I like to watch the videos of brainwashed CEO's talking about how they would never trust their business to "a bunch of freeware".
...just my 2 gil.
The subject of this story sounds more like propaganda than any article I've seen in a long time...
Not saying it isn't true, but the wording is quite funny.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Enterprise customers have an entirely different set of requirements than home users or even small/medium business users. Enterprise customers want to drop boatloads of money on companies and then expect these companies to do whatever they want, and by whatever, I mean **whatever**.
I worked for an Enterprise software CRM company and we dealt with customers paying tens of millions of dollars. If there was a bug, any bug, even if it wasn't our bug, we were on the daily conference calls. There was one bug that was clearly a Microsoft SQL Server optimization bug, but I had to work with Microsoft over Christmas just because our customer wanted someone from our side there... **just because**. There was no logical reason for me to be there since it was completely out of our domain, but we still had to be there. This is how enterprise customers behave and frankly, since they are paying millions of dollars, I don't blame them to expect this.
However, with Linux, even with Red Hat support, there is no such level of support. We ported our apps to Red Hat Advanced Server 3, and the level of support we got from them was good but not enterprise level.
We ran into an IBM Java Run-Time bug... clearly a bug in the Run-Time, but Red Hat's response was, "Well, IBM has a certain SLA with us when we create a bug for them, and they may or may not get to it." That was it. There was absolutely nothing we could do at that point. They didn't own the IBM Java Run-time, so they passed the buck on responsibility. Which in some respects is understandable, but is completely unacceptable for enterprise customers. Linux is a mix-and-match of a bunch of open-source software and **no one was ultimate accountability** which is something that enterprise customers are paying for and expect.
Okay here are my guesses.
C64 (The reason I am saying this, though it may seem an unusual guess is pretty simple. This weekend I bought a joystiq with a plug that goes into the tv. When you wiggle the joystiq back and fourth it boots up into the Commodore 64. Pretty strange behavior FROM A CHILDREN'S TOY! Suspicious what me? Commodore come back is secretly on the way.)
Okay, I am fairly confident in my choice so I will stick with one guess. With the second guess I would like to point out that there are some people who don't enjoy using Linux because it is difficult to manipulate files with it. These people like to use graphical user interfaces and get really angry if they have to do otherwise. They also like only one graphical user interface and so having to choose between gnome and kde is not an option!
These people are very highly organized and sometimes they carry bags around with bricks and brick bats in them. They use these devices to destroy linux servers, if it is convenient. Often these people avoid the light and end up in jail so there has not been much coverage of them.
Could these be the people spreading the information? Or mis information? It is a possibility. They are known liars and hate users of vi so much that they add the letter "deo" to random words to make them more compliant with the graphical user interface. Also, they are not afraid of mice as are some women, effeminate men, and non-effeminate men but instead embrace them like disgusting vampires! I have often seen them biting one button of a two button mouse so that it would be easier to manipulate!
Terrorists?
Spammers?
I know: AOLers!
You can't take the sky from me...
A lot of the linux people are completely out of their tree when the topic of conversation drifts to their OS of choice. That's not something Microsoft did to them, that's who they decided to be.
I'm not even saying they're a majority, but there are a lot of Wahabi Linusists, and if they had the social skills to get along with each other, some of them would be blowing things up.
In other news, an ad campaign was launched to defame free speech. Since free speech is essentially lost revenue for the communications business, so the parties argue, all speech should be taxed or otherwise paid for. One ad talks about that 'you can steal but you can't hide' ; another says 'speech is too valuable to be free'. The involved parties intend to continue until the free market has been restored..
The enemies of Linux are those platforms that constantly bombard us with WMDs (weapons of mass distraction).
If it weren't for those damned DirectX games, we'd be so much more productive!
(sleep 10;eval kill \$\(pidof nethack\))&nethack
.pid and kill it that way, but whatever works. the (sleep bit is whats important.
Probably not the best way, but that works. You could dump the pid of the process into a
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
"Criticized" is one thing; "slandered" is another.
Naturally. Criticism is protected speech; slander is not.
Do you believe that the information being distributed about Linux by its competitors rises to the level of slander? If so, when do you think there will be a lawsuit filed regarding it?
And you thought it was Microsoft... the REAL enemies are the people that make AmigaOS, who want to supplant Linux as the go-to OS for anti-Microsoft people.
Welcome to the real world.. Time to grow up and watch your back.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know... the one that turned out to be pointing to the truth about a man who cheated on his wife and 'misled'?
Just because someone says something you don't like or that you don't agree with doesn't make it wrong. One shouldn't be afraid to hear the other side.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Of course! The reason Linux isn't popular is because Evil People are spreading Misinformation and Lies. Because Linux is absolutely perfect! It lacks any flaws at all, and is certainly superior to its pathetic rivals, BSD and Windows! Wake up, people.
People should have figured out by now that stories with inflammatory headlines generate more readership. This was the case in the old newprint era and it's true in the Internet era.
Linux does have enemies. Of course Microsoft is one, but they have also been very much helped by Linux and *BSD because these have weakened or destroyed competitors in the server market who were starting to venture towards the desktop. Digital, Sun, HP, IBM, SCO, etc. all lost to Linux. Some of these companies learned that it was better to embrace the OSS movement sooner rather than later, and are now using Linux against the others. For example, IBM. But Microsoft is a different animal, and can't really use that tactic. So it is natural that Microsoft is the enemy of Linux. I say enemy as opposed to competitor, because the only way for Microsoft to defend itself against Linux is to destroy it. Microsoft can't make a bargain with Linux, or buy it out, etc.
But there are enemies of other OSS products as well. Do you think that MySQL doesn't bother Larry Ellison? Do you think that Symbian isn't concerned about embedded Linux AND embedded MS-Windows?
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
You can't slander an inanimate object.
Windows died on his computer, Linux was the only thing that worked as-is and the only person to date who's had a clue how to fix it is the one that was being mercilessly ribbed for geekiness for running linux prior to all this happening. No way he's gonna help reinstall windows.
Moral of the story: be kind to geeks, for they have root access.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I'm sure it's been tried often. Do you think you are the first person to think of this?
However, there are more than enough incompetent and even evil people working within the FOSS movement already. Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") applies here as it does anywhere. The fact that constructions such as Linux exist at all demonstrates the power of community efforts when it comes to detecting, measuring, and filtering the bullshit to leave the 10% that is worth downloading.
You might be able to do some damage by submitting clever patches that deliberately broke products, but you would be traced, blacklisted, and inevitably the process would continue to do its work.
This is why, for instance, excellent observations like this one get modded up on Slashdot, while poor ones generally do not. Community-moderated systems can work very well indeed.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Also, it wouldn't be slander, it would be libel ... only it's not libel, either.
OK. I''m reporting to your office that /. isn't working on Firefox under Linux without reloading. Does that help? BTW... I'm on vacation today. Look at the vacation schedule by the administrative assistant. K-thnx ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.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.
It is business as usual. Companies who make lots of money like Linux competitors (Windows, etc ...). They will stand at nothing to destroy anything that takes market $hare away from them. Companies are ruthless and will stand at the edge of doing illegal things to destroy others. Linux Distributions out there will have to be just as ruthless (Jugular) if they want to compete with the likes of Microsoft. The Distros out there have to treat the compitetion like an Enemy that will take great pleasure in destroying them.
I think the competition that is out there for Linux stands on shaky ground and hides behind lawyers, money, and marketing hype.
Linux is simply a good OS for anybody who has a need for it.
Linux has more than proven itself in the server market, but to get a bigger audience it needs to establish itself in the desktop market. Application developers need to dumb down apps for Joe average who needs three clicks or less to comprehend what he is doing. But leave the power there for the "Admin types". I have noticed that since the 2.6 kernel and knewer versions of KDE and GNOME the apps seem to be getting better.
Maybe offtopic, but one of the things that piss me off is when people use the word "alternative" to refer to FOSS even the software is better than the its proprietary counterparts. Not just Linux, even in fields where the OSS software was one of the first/the first one to arrive and is clearly superior to the proprietary "alternative"s.
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?
We had run out of money and were desperately trying to find something to do with the extra four hours. The aquarium surprised us because it wasn't in any of the tourist guides we had consulted before going... and it turned out to be a highlight of our trip (we originally went to Hiroshima with a day on Miyajima - to see the shrine).
They also had a seal performance show (a la Sea World), a really neat archerfish demonstration, and fed the pirahnas in front of us. Very fun.
We were standing in front of a huge octopus when an older Japanese couple said, "oishii." For those who don't understand Japanese, oishii means "tasty."
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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Penguin recipes can be found here!
The Penguin Kabob sounds delicious!
Is there noone in the Antarctic to post some good recipe reviews?
put the what in the where?
Penguin recipes can be found here!
The Penguin Kabob sounds delicious!
Is there noone in the Antarctic to post some good recipe reviews?
Bah! Preview is your friend, preview is your friend, preview is you friend...
put the what in the where?
I think you have mistaken criticize with flat out FUD campaigns. And to top it off, those campaigns is nothing at all compared to what some resellers of said "unnamed competitors" tend to spew out.
Linux needs feedback, both positive and negative but for feedback to be valid it has to have some grain of truth in it.
This is just Microsoft everyday competitor trashtalk, not critizism.
HTTP/1.1 400
So they slime and slander Linux. No problem. I can be just as vague and condescending, right along with the best of them.
"Linux? Unstable? Oh, that. Yeah, SCO Linux is pretty awful stuff. We're careful not to go near it. We use Arch Linux, instead. It's pretty killer!"
Linux remends me of how the Three Amogos managed to beat the crap out of El Guapo.
.. since 'nine eleven' every opposing force is an "enemy". It's that simple, why don't you get ?
*sigh*
Thats because the buisness community has no idea how to succeed using non-competitive methods. Reason: they don't understand the concept of Public libraries or schools either - pure and simple ignorance. "follow the bouncing ball now kids, while Billy the wonderboy teaches us about SOFTware..." Foston
Since when do any tactics used by any public company suprise anyone? It's basically legal to slander it because there is no damage to any identified party, and it gains them good press for the CNN DEBATE:
CNN"Microsoft waded into the debate today about upstart operating system LINUSXS. Windows chairman Bill Gates says that Linux is not as secure" Foston
it's a vast right wing conspiracy!
For god's sake, I still see Clippy and Bob jokes here--five years after they stopped being either funny or applicable.
Clippy never died. He just got less annoying. I use the MSFT Office Professional and have the World instead of Clippy and have it on quiet mode.
But it's still there.
And Clippy's still annoying. I don't think he's trying to kill off Linux, but I wouldn't put it past the little b.gg.r.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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!?
Back in 1948, during his first race for the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about ten points behind, with only nine days to go. He was sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.
His campaign manager was shocked. "We can't say that, Lyndon," he supposedly said. "You know it's not true."
"Of course it's not true!" Johnson barked at him. "But let's make the bastard deny it!"
A senior OSDL exec proclaims the existance of FUD.
Sensible people respond "Well, Duh!"
Film at 11.
>> "Frankly, the value of Linux is so incredibly low that it has to be given away. If anybody tried to charge for it, they'd go out of business immediately."
Care to explain RedHat?
>> "you'll never, ever be able to keep it running on your own"
I've never seen any system that the boss could keep running on his own, although a Linux system would come alot closer than anything else to being low maintenance.
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
The Ferengi.
Duh.
All's true that is mistrusted
Warning! Poster with tinfoil hat too tight.
Care to explain RedHat?
You know what would have been neat? If you'd kept reading. If you'd kept reading, you would have gotten to the part where I explained the "give away the razors and sell the blades" business model.
I've never seen any system that the boss could keep running on his own
Then you must not be very experienced. You should try getting out more.
It would be beneficial to look for the enemies of Free Software, not of one kernel.
well said.
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.
They'll all start posting comments soon. They're regulars here. :)
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Do you expect the critics not to be debunked when they are merely spreading misinformation and FUD?
Well, y'know, Linux is a peculiar phenomenon, which makes choosing terminology a bit tricky.
Linux isn't exactly a product, so some of the baggage carried by the term "competitor" doesn't belong. Nevertheless, there are people who look at Linux's features closely and plan the features (and in some cases pricing) of their products accordingly. So it is accurate, but misleading to refer to Linux's "competition".
On the other hand, Linux isn't exactly a "movement" either -- or at least not for everyone involved. So, speaking of "enemies" seems a bit overheated. But there are folks who would like to put a stake through its heart, for example by promoting software patents.
The problem with the article title is that it is imprecise. It is talking about people who are trying to push their products instead of Linux based products. So in this case it really should be "Competitors try to Undermine Perceptions of Linux Based Products". Which is the standard commercial bullshit, and nothing to get too overwrought about. If all Linux has to worry about is competition then all of us who enjoy and benefit from having access to Linux distros have nothing to worry about.
However, there are clearly enemies of Linux - people who would like to undermine the conditions under which the Linux phenomenon can continue to thrive. This goes beyond honest competition, beyond dishonest competition, and towards tilting the entire playing field toward proprietary solutions using the force of government.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Linux isn't a product, perhaps, but companies like RedHat et al have packaged Linux with support and distribution and are absolutely selling it as a product. Just sayin'.
However,
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?"
is about as close to Stalinist paranoia that I have ever seen. Perhaps a purge of the officer corps or smashing the bourgeois kulaks will rid Linux of this enemy?
But I just don't get it. The article says that vendors criticize Linux's "stability," "security," and the "ability of some companies to offer service and support." It sounds to me like those vendors are merely competing.
If you go into any GM dealership the salesman will tell you that Ford's aren't as reliable and that their service departments sucks. That's business.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
>> "the business model of giving away a poor product"
Clearly you are not referring to GNU/Linux in your business model description.
>> "Then you must not be very experienced."
And your experience is that Apple is a big player in the business market?
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
Usually as soon as I see someone saying "All of the enemies! Everywhere! They're out to get us!" I start looking for a tinfoil hat.... Have they gone over the deep end?
In fact, that's what they said (oishisou) but I didn't want to confuse anyone.
Sometimes I forget how many Slashdotters study Japanese.
Heh. I once worked at a production house where all the workstations were Macs, and so was the single server. All the server did was filesharing and NAT for a single ISDN on-demand line, not even email. And you know what? They still paid an outside consultant to come in once a week and fix anything that might be wrong with it, and when it broke in between visits, we either had to fix it ourselves or wait, because the bosses (four of them) couldn't be bothered.
Keep in mind these guys were cheap, and normally would take any steps necessary to avoid spending money. Yet they still found management of one server to be daunting.
Agreed. Gees, I would expect an 'enemy' to do that. Is this really news, that an 'enemy' of something is using disinformation to herald their opinion? I think not. I would expect it as I clearly see it go on, on both sides of the fence.
.NET being bloated. I like the concepts of the new things that are made available, but I also see those same things as backing one into the platform , with no way out. Very propritary platform.
I also have to agree with
Haven't used an OEM computer lately have you? Or do you think the random reboots are not stop errors being disguised? I deal with XP way too much to think it is crash proof.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
You said:
They're collections of code that don't give a shit either way who says what about them. People have instilled emotional attachment into these things.
And your sig reads (at this point in time):
"Firefox with two tabs: 49,532K Opera with two tabs: 20,188K Opera with 13 tabs: 31,780K"
I would argue that you have some "emotional attachment" for some "collections of code" yourself considering your sig.
God is imaginary
makes your process run at ring 0.
Seriously, though, the advantage of continual renewal and open source is that people can check in and out when they have time and/or energy, and yet the system always has sufficient resources to handle the continual attacks.
It's almost as bad as the media recording market share of desktops by sales price or net profit, instead of by boxen or instances of OS. Linux will never win those battles, because it's too darned inexpensive in comparison, yet the magazines and their websites only care about the potential advertising revenue, so they focus on who has the bucks to pay for ads.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
Don't know about him, but all of mine run flawlessly.
the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
I'm an open source developer who switched to Microsoft development about 6 months ago. I won't get into why I switched (*cough*money*cough*), but I can honestly say this: Microsoft people (developers at least) are not anywhere near as hostile toward Linux and OSS as the Linux community would have you believe.
I don't know why we have this persecuted mindset.
Microsoft developers simply DO NOT CARE about Linux. They're busy trying to understand shit like SharePoint and are not theatened by open source.
"Pratt also insists that the security of Linux is perfectly adequate for enterprise use. "Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability," he said."
A lot of times linux is more secure than the enterprise Unix's that are out there. I have linux on my sunblade 100 admin station is it more secure than our production boxes. Everytime I bring up that our boxes should be running a firewall no matter if they are intranet or extranet I get weird looks - and these are supposedly seasoned admins of major brand named Unixes.
I run tripwire, snort, and have a firewall on my sunblade and I would put it anywhere - extranet, intranet, although I know it won't serve 1000's of people.
These so-called Unix seasoned admins still insist on using nfs to share admin scripts, patches etc.
What a joke - I am trying to get them in the 20th century but it takes a lot of convincing.
And anybody that says linux is not ready for the enterprise, desktop, or anything else has rocks in their heads.
OSS is a more efficient development model. That should scare companies like MSFT more than Linux, which is just a manifestation of the open development model. Ten or a hundred companies could each invest a relatively small amount of money and develop a proprietary replacement product which they all can use. True, there will be other companies that benefit without investing, but that doesn't change the bottom line savings for the companies involved.
The day is slowly dawning that hundreds and thousands of companies all paying full price for software that does the exact same thing is total economic insanity.
Rag on Linux all you want, the real power is open source development. And you can't stop it. Slow it down, maybe, but you'll never stop it because it's more effecient. Efficiency doesn't always win out (think QWERTY v Dvorak keyboard) but it's the smart way to bet. What drives open source development isn't some pie in the sky vision of freedom it's good 'ol brass knuckles capitalism. And the more MSFT treats their customers like a revenue stream, the more they hasten their own demise.
Bean counters will be the death of us all but at least we'll have the satisfaction of watching MSFT go down first.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I dunno, but why don't we start with Richard Nixon's list and work from there.
Your ass is mine, Paul Newman.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
the thing that frightens the hell out of MS and others who's market share is being eaten by linux, is linux is like quicksand. they fight and struggle as best they know how but they just keep sinking. the frigthening reality for companies like MS is they know they can't stop people developing their own software and giving it away. hence the totally rediculous suggestions that terrorist's can hijack OSS. it's an attempt to outlaw OSS.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Yeah - what the hell is that reboot about? Its a pain debugging the XP systems because you cant see what the f*** is wrong, it just reboots.
Back in good old NT4 you got a screen full of usefull information, and with a little knowledge you had a chance of figureing out what got the system a tad unhappy.
"Look at Oracle and IBM. Oracle is using Linux as the OS for its grid. This shows that there is a solution stack on top of Linux that is not just Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl, but a mixture of open source and proprietary software. ISVs such as Oracle, CA, SAP and IBM are fleshing out the Linux stack,"
I agree, it means Linux is becoming a general-purpose tool: home users AND scientists/engineers/hackers (using hackers in the comp-sci sense, not the thug) are now starting to focus on the benefits of an open development model.
That means that no one is really fascinated by Microsoft anymore. Oh sure, Microsoft can still spend bucks on PR and FUD, but there is no amount of that that will make users forget this other more fascinating thing that Linux is.
In the end it's a numbers game: Microsoft may have hired spectacular staff, but they can't compete against collected might of THE WORLD, can they? India and China will lead the way, no doubt.
And besides, Linux (for the most part) exists simply because people enjoy making tools out of computers, it's not about trying to raise revenue for the coming quarter, but (funny enough) it seems to be doing just that!
If Microsoft wants to matter anymore, they'll roll with it, like they did on the Internet; late.
MS should open-source some code and actually let the Wine guys run with it; they're the only ones REALLY trying to preserve Windows, by writing a great application suite, to support the Windows user.
I know MS have been accused of fighting Wine users, but it really is to MS's own detriment; it alienates more users.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
If it's slander, then "Linux" can sue, just like any other industry. The problem is who would sue these vendors, but hey, that's one of the big drawbacks to Open Source. The facts are largely irrelevant. This is marketing.
I don't respond to AC's.
The ability to edit posts allows for revisionism. It has no place during a conversation. I am very glad slashdot doesn't follow that stupid idea and do it just because everyone else is. It's a bad misfeature.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Hmm?
Linux is free... How can anyone compete with that? How can a competitor eat it's lunch? There is no lunch!
Linux, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc etc etc don't have to compete with anything, they are going to consume the market landscape because they are free and their "competitors" are not. It's a mathematical certainty, the only thing which can stop it is legislation.
The question asked is "A million bells, whistles and the cost of a dollar or good enough and free".
Good enough and free wins, becomes the defacto standard. I've been in this business for, well, decades now and I've seen this over and over again. The people who think they are competing against Linux and other Free and Open Source software are deluding themselves and their shareholders. They are going to end up selling some expensive, niche products.
Whether you like him or not, Richard Stallman is a very clever man.
Deleted
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.
There are NO enemies of Linux! Yes, what I tell you is the truth, Stallman be praised, all the enemies are dying surrounded by confirmations from Netcraft! Yes, we shall cut them up and hang them by their intestines, the worthless sons of a peebrained 16-bit operating system! All our enemies have already been vanquished and sent into the afterlife to be burned by daemons over the fires of hell and to swim in blue streams of death and to face the ravages of General Protection Fault and Colonel Panic ... yes! They are dead already! Gone! Vanquished! Kill -9ed! I tell you again, THERE ARE NO ENEMIES OF LINUX!
;)
(You know I am telling the truth; our wise leader Linus, may Stallman praise him or atleast let him call his OS Linux, believes in absolute honestly
To regular Slashdot readers the Bill Gates as a Borg logo is just sort of toungue in cheek exageration. But to newcomers this coupled with the "enemies of Linux" articles makes Slashdot sound sort of like a paranoid cult.
Beware! The enemies of Linux are everywhere. They're infecting the fabric of the open source universe and attempting to subvert Open hearts and minds with their evil doctrine. They're hiding behind the trees and in spaces in the walls, and I think I've spotted them coming through my Windows chanting subliminal proprietary propaganda.
Now, what did I do with my aluminum foil hat?
true. the g4 is a slow processor. it's like the celeron of powerpcs. you want a real powerpc, you need a g5.
"So-called "enemies of the people" - bourgeois pseudoscientists hired by imperialistic agents - are conducting a systematic campaign of disinformation which aims to undermine the credibility of the socialist regime."
This is probably going to go way over your head, but for all intents and purposes, your understanding of how a price is determined is severly flawed. The price is determined by one thing only -- the intersection of the supply curve and the demand curve. That's it.
In your simple painting example, the supply curve has one item to sell, so the price will be determined exclusively by demand if the sellers minimum price is met.
What you have with Linux is a complete reversal of the curve. For commodity linux, the supply curve is infinitely long at a zero price. Since the demand cannot possibly be infinite, the demand curve must intersect the supply curve at a price of zero. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the buyer's utility function, the quantity they wish to purchase, or the "perceived value" of the software. In fact, every single buyer could bid a million dollars and the price would still be zero.
If you do not understand that, you missed the fundamental theory behind supply and demand.
-Hope
To copy text from one point to another
Substitute the text with some old text
Total 5+6 == 11 actions needed by the user
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
With X11 standard way moving text
With X11 substituting text the old-fashined way
Total 3+6 = 9 actions needed by the user. Which are less the 11 needed by Cntrl-C/Cntrl-V!
X11 has a better solution - windows are 22 % slower than X11. The most common operation - to move some text from one place to another are 66% slower in Windows than in X11!
Just saying it like it are.
From the article:
/etc hierarchy. Every tool has it's own config schema and syntax. There's no standardization whatsoever. Trying to write a tool to manage this mess is like trying to write an application using 100 diverse and unstable APIs. And forget about more advanced admin tools like automated integration of multiple components. (ex. ldap + postfix + cyrus + amavis + spamassassin + your favorite webmail) A key-value based replacement for /etc is the first step in creating an Open Source "unix that just works." And it wouldn't even be that hard! The beauty of the Elektra concept is that it can be a gradual change and no new tools or security models are required.
"It's not surprising that the revenue is so great. More and more commercial organisations choose to buy Linux rather than download and deploy it independently," he said.
You know what this tells us? The OSS community is not going far enough. We're producing a lot of good raw materials but not enough good solutions. As a result, companies must turn to expensive commercial support options (usually bundled with proprietary administrative interfaces that make our raw materials useful in the real world). It is quite time to abandon the mentality that most users should/will build and configure their systems by hand. This old-school style of Unix admin was right for a time, but that time has passed. And I'm not just talking about the desktop. For example, it is far too difficult and costly to use stock Debian or Fedora to build a full-featured enterprise server using best practices. (ex. Linux 2.6 w/ACL patches, LDAP, Kerberos, Samba, NFSv4, etc.) Yes, it can be done. I've personally pulled it off. But it's extremely ugly and painful. And when it comes time to patch/upgrade, some work must be re-done because there is no way to cleanly and automatically migrate / merge settings. As much as I like Debian, it's not really applicable to many real world tasks where time-costs matter. Or even if the costs even out, it's more hassle than it's worth.
The solution? http://elektra.sourceforge.net/ (or at least the concept presented here..) The reason why we don't have any good Open Source configuration management tools (GUI or otherwise) is that it's too difficult to grok the hideous mess that is today's
No, I am not a member of the Elektra project.. I just happened across their page the other day and was shocked at how obvious their proposal is in a "duh! why didn't I think of that?!" sort of way.
... marketshare == desktop && laptop machines ...
... all my devices (including a 1394 and 802.11b pcmcia cards) were found/have support ... there is serious headway being made my the various linux flavours in the way of desktop/laptop 'market share' ... but i still only seriously use linux on computers without monitors, and have no real reason to go through the extra effort involved in tweaking xorg/xf86 to the point where my 'tv out just works' and my 'scroll wheel works predictabally'.
... and could argueablly be said to be 'enterprise' ready, and generally are more accepting of cross-platform communication.
is what i read out of that, but i disagree. my viao runs much more smoothly with xfce/xorg than the xp home that shipped with it
i will admit though, on my windows pc, i have a running vnc connection most all the time to a linux (xfce recently only blackbox) desktop, which in turn runs kmail, gkrellm, and anywhere between two and ten xterms, nothing else. but that's one of the advantages of a dual-head right, permenant full screen vnc session on the second?
*nix will always have an invaluable place on the server side of things, where the fancy anti-aliasing and shadings and fades mean nothing except wasted cycles. projects like samba (for example) provide for usefullness, and often times provide higher levels of security (typical 'more eyes' arguement)
blah blah blah
and now, as i read over the parents' post again (some english major pleeease correct me on how to use an 's s' whatever, i always forget), this should be modded -1 redundant, because: i agree. except the bit about cold sweats: i'd bet they both sleep fine. dropping from 35billion in worth the 32billion in worth really really hurts sometimes, but i don't think it's worth losing sleep over to them.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
I've often had over 100 tabs open in firefox with no trouble. But with 512mb of ram, that's not saying much.
Effective immediately, the open-source threat level is being raised to penguin-beak yellow as we receive reports that enemies of linux may be planning an attack. Be aware of anything suspicious and report it to the authorities until we determine that the threat has passed.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
That is true. But the majority of Open Source "Linux" software is still produced and maintained by people who aren't employed to do so. The commercial vendors are there to polish it, add the missing pieces that enterprise customers want, provide support, etc.
The best defence is to let it run it's course (roll with the punches) whilst publically demonstrating that the opposite is true. No customer appreciates being deceived so while some sales in the short term are lost, over the medium to longer term the company that uses this tactic suffers.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I think that Linux vs. the unnamed vendors is a good thing, because Linux and Microsoft are trying to get more secure OSs. And users/customers are the real winners.
i'm forced into doing tech support earning peanuts while CTOs of major corperations get multimillion dollar bonuses for cutting their software budget.
Unless you are in Bangalore, this has already happened to you. If you are in Bangalore, save some money - it's a short ride.
Figures that /. would make such a big deal out of a what amounts to a press release from the marketing director for the defacto Linux promotion group.
For years the Linux zealots have conducted a compaign against Windows; how it crashes all the time, how buggy it is. But often these opinions are past on old versions and when they are not, the zealots ignore the shortcomings of the various Linux distributions. I love the qualified quote from Pratt:
"Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability,"
Yeah, but companies don't buy kernels, they buy operating systems, platforms and solutions on which to base their information infrastucture on.
Wake up and smell the competition Linux.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".
Individuals with guns does not make a well regulated militia.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf