Slashdot Mirror
McVoy Strikes Back
cranos writes "Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"
Your seething propaganda might rival that of Tokyo Rose, but you've got a long way to go, buddy, before you rise to level of Microsoft's chief spin-artist-slash-ass-wiper.
As an aside...Microsoft (Lord William, in particular) is busy developing an advanced kernel. He had corn for dinner last night. It's already starting to bespeckle his poo! Duty calls!
What geeks don't seem to realize is that most people look at a computer as a machine. And machines are supposed to make work easier. Proprietary software with many features makes work easier. Open source software, free as it may be, often doesn't have the features or ease of use that regular folks are looking for. They also don't get how some nerds equate software licenses with freedom fights for civil rights.
Folks just want the best products. If they're photographers they're going to prefer Photoshop to the GIMP. If they're authors they're going to prefer Microsoft Word to Open Office Write. If you play video games you are going to want Microsoft Windows and not GNU/Linux.
One of the most amazing things about the Free Software movement is that somehow a core of very intelligent people have somehow convinced themselves that acutally LOWERING their productivity by using incredibly arcane and user unfriendly applications is in some way a GOOD thing and are simultaneously confused and bewildered that the other 99% of humanity disagrees.
To paraphrase Han Solo: "The people aren't in this for your revolution, princess."
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Innovative open source software? How about... Oh, say... The entire fucking Internet, from A to Z? How about gcc? I'd say one compiler that can compile dozens of languages for any platform you care to name is innovative - mostly because nothing did that before gcc did. How about emacs?
There's plenty of innovation in open source software. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that isn't innovative, but don't pretend that isn't the case with proprietary crap... Er... Software.
Maybe RMS will give you some of his inheritance.
Now how about producing a reliable kernel?
My Windoze computer at work is 10X more reliable.
McVoy lives in the San Francisco Bay area. The rents there are enormous. EVERYTHING costs an insane amount there. If McVoy and his *team* weren't wrapped up in the idea of living in a swanky place like SF then they wouldn't have to spend so much damn money. Still they don't even really need it there. Lots of poor people live in the bay area but McVoy has obviously bought into the materialistic, capitalistic notion that if you're a software developer you DESERVE fast cars, nice houses, going out to expensive restaurants, etc. We have computer networks, he could live almost anywhere in the world, i.e. some place cheaper to live, and do his job just as well. McVoy is a greedy SOB!
Larry once commented about how much he is worth, "I will not tell you, but Myself, my wife, our children and our children's children do not have to work a day in our lives". And that was after he had donated a HUGE chunk to the catholic church.
Likewise, it is known that Linus is in the same boat.
So are you wealthier than they are? Are you Bill Gate's?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Linus and Larry are very well off proving that OSS does pay.