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Linux Geeks To Take Over World
B'Trey writes "According to this story by Rob Enderle of TechNewsWorld, Linux geeks are one of the most powerful forces in the world and are set to become the next Mob. Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?
If your stick-on Vulcan ears don't interfere with the hat and if there's ample room in the violin case for your fake lightsaber... why not?
Trolling is a art,
I, for one, welcome our Software Technical Union Derivative Standards (Studs) overlords.
sorry
Sounds like a plan. ;)
No and No (but if you want to compile that way...
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
No, no it doesn't.
Maybe Tux could though, Old School GoodFeathers Style
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Outside of the Strong Force in the microsphere and gravitation in the macrosphere, I suppose Linux geeks could be somewhat powerful.
Except for Gentoo Linux geeks. They may have enough power, but it's all tied up at the moment. They'll be ready any day now. Oh look, a new package to emerge!
27 year olds living in their parent's basement rejoice!
Seriously... I am one.
Bill Gates is now wetting himself.
Cause everyone wants a free Xbox360
"Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
Sure, but the jocks are still going to kick your ass.
for instance if you use Red Hat, you'd have to wear a red hat. Only if you use Fedora Core can you wear a fedora
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life
...the fedora is red
Yes, because nothing says "prepared to take over the world" like being an unemployed (RIFd? Offshored? Downsized?) geek living off of top-ramen coding free software that you'll never make a dime off of, loading up on sugar and caffeine, in the glow of your monitor.
Why, just look at all the current legislation that clearly supports linux geeks taking over the world! (LA installing public crime-cams to catch.. get this.. DVD PIRATES.... Oh - and the whole DMCA thing... you can think of others).
Why yes, the world is our oyster. Or whatever.
While all these powers are good, if one cannot successfully reproduce offsprings, any geeky genes are likely to disappear.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
just make sure its red.
...I've been planning on taking over the world with Linux for years. Just a matter of time...
FLR
I for one welcome our new Linux Geek dictators.
Grammar Nazi
The article tells a good story about how Linux is at the center of a massive nexus of script-kiddies who are eager to destroy anyone standing in their way. And how unions are powerful things.
I don't think, however, that this has much to do with IT unionization.
There will always be vandals. There will always be workers who would benefit from a union. The story failed to connect these ideas.
Meh.
I havn't even read the summery, i likely will but I just want to say that while for many on this site the headline is a wet dream, it is pure flaimbait.
Or wear a cool Fedora Core? haha!
yes, the slackware geeks can finally live up to their name...
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
--Josh Billings
the population slowly dies off because none of them know how to reproduce..due to lack of experience with the opposite sex..
The author has a disturbing resemblance to Dr. Phil.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Apparently there was a mistake made translating the Bible. It originally said the "Geek shall inherit the earth". Makes more sense.
Bill Gates is going to be sleeping with the garbage files.
so long as it's red...
:D
Much better to keep the violin in the case and download the distro of your choice as and when you need to.
I have secretly placed a ring of 50 satellites in orbit around the planet, and from my space station, I will release a terrible rain of Linux discs upon the unworthy little worms and wipe out all traces of Windows(R) on earth!!
Love, Hugo.
Enderle does not make phone calls and get facts; he prints opinions. Opinions are not required to be logical or intelligent, and they can run rampant with untruths and stupidity. There's nothing inherently wrong with publishing opinions and commentary.
The reason why this is a commentary and not an article is because there are few or no facts to back up the majority of what Rob Enderle says. I personally consider that unprofessional, even if it doesn't technically break the rules.
-Jem
I for one, nominate a tri-bunal council compsosed of Linus, RMS, and that Moglen dude (he Rocks man).
Or an anarchosyndiclast commune, each taking in turn .....
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
That nobody cares about his crappy articles enough to even bother getting mad at the stupid allegations he makes, the bad analogies he draws, the frankly ludicrous conclusions he comes to and the unashamed shilling he does.
Maybe you should just come right out and call us all nazi nigger homo terrorists Rob?
Maybe that will give you the reaction you so desperately crave?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
No one is forcing you to use Free / Open Source Software. I am sorry you are so threatened by customers stepping up and solving their own problems instead of giving their hard earned money to vendors that do not provide good products, do not listen to their customers and then feel threatened when the 'Open Source Community' commodifies their products. Guess who the 'Open Source Community' is, Rob? IT'S THE FARKING CUSTOMERS!!!
They are using Free / Open Source Software and spending time instead of money. Guess what? They are finding that it costs less and the vendors that should have been providing solutions were metering out features and bug fixes like crumbs to the hungry to extract the highest cost / benefit for their own bottom line. So if they want to play in the market now, they can play by our rules:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
dorks!
I haven't had my facts today. Thank you!
"Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
I guess, but I'd recommend replacing that condom in your wallet once a year.
"Derp de derp."
Mob??? My MANDRIVA vanity license plate better arrive before Linux geeks get all Reginald Denny on me!
my blog
The Most Powerful Labor Union in the World: Linux?
Great, now Linux geeks are going to be called communists AGAIN.
It's kinda like Fight Club, a massive underground international club of people with all types of backgrounds and careers who can accomplish pretty much anything, including toppling large credit card company buildings. Except they're pastier, skinnier, hairier, and unemployed.
Oh wait, I just read the article. He likens linux geeks as the Mob, or at least the Trade Federation. Power beyond what you can imagine and all that.
Looks like he's afraid of the Power of, oh, I don't know...the People? Yeah, that must be it.
As Linux gains popularity, it's advocates are unleashing unto the world the same FUD and marketing shenanigans that Microsoft unleashed against Linux just a few years ago. RMS invented Open Source (of course!), Linux is the fastest, most complete, and best Opterating System for all tasks big and small, portability doesn't matter if Linux is the target platform, there are no ethical dillemas in Free Software, as it is the One True Way, and its critics are Enemies Of The State.
Enderle is the most quoted "analyst" ever. He has accomplished this status by virtue of his always absurd pronouncements. He has no credentials other than the ability to string inflammatory buzzwords together.
I don't need to make a case against Enderle. Google will do it for me.
I'm not sure if I'm proud of this or embarassed. I'm sure glad 'Linux' (as the article refers to all of us in the community) can put up a good fight, but I'd hate to think that DoS attacks and bad publicity are our best weapons.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long time. I couldn't even figure out what this guy was talking about. He starts talking about a union, then he says let's call it "Linux" for no apprent rhyme or reason.
That, and this guy, writing for an online mag I've never met, is a bit delusional about this massive mob of millions of Linux people who all work together.
But it's a great way to sell advertising.
... and we can be sure that Mr. Pretenderle will be chasing down those young linux whippersnappers in his beloved Ferrari.
I actually RTFA, and I must say it's dumb. This sounds like more MS (or someother) funded FUD ... oooh Linux is bad because people DOS'ed SCO. Nice. All the people in a community are judged by the worse case scenarios. Almost akin to saying the president of the US must be a crackhead beacuse we have crackheads in the US. None of the consequences of the negative things that happened to people (ie SCO going out of business) were completely due to the fact that they were bogus, wrong, immoral, illegal or unethical?
My favorite line is the last one:
While this union forms it probably would be very wise to make sure the leadership is mature and benevolent because the one thing we don't need is another powerful criminal despot.
I bet the pre-edit had something like "like Microsoft" appended to it.
FLR
The problem is, a good number of geeks are anti-union. Not for any clear reason, as unions originally formed in England in the times of King Charles (in coffee houses, no less, which is why he banned them), as a means of providing health insurance. Members donated money towards a fund, and when someone got sick, the union payed for the best care they could afford.
Today, there are health providers for that, working in a closed fashion, picking providers by means of a closed algorithm, choosing whether to pay or not by a closed review based on closed criteria you will never see. For some reason, many geeks find this preferable to a member-run union system, which could be as open as you liked.
Unions also guarantee that employees have reasonable rights. Not everything in the book, but reasonable rights. At present, equal rights at work is something that's put on a poster, but rarely practiced. With a union that is balanced in membership and structure, that could be reversed very rapidly. Of course, there are some who would object to equality and employment by merit, but I think most people are out of the Middle Ages at this point.
Of course, there are corrupt Unions. America is filled with them, where there is virtually no balance, little honesty or integrity, and just as much closed-mindedness as they were intended to defeat.
So? Are you telling me that the nation's brightest and best (cos to be a geek, you practically have to be!) can't build a better Union? They've wiped the floor with proprietary software, overwhelmed and "Turned" many corporate giants, but can't even come up with a working system to govern their own lives?
If the only Unions in history had been Evil Monsters, I might be sympathetic. But ignorance produced by closed-source attitudes is the very Evil that geeks are commited to destroying.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is power that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many governments could only dream of having.
Got root?
Let's look at the whole concept of an IT union. That's what the article is really trying to get at, though it seems to be unable to connect the dots.
Unions have historically been necessary in professions where the employees have been at a severe economic disadvantage to the employer. In such cases, the employee would suffer more greatly by being punished by the employer than by doing some odious task. A great example is the auto industry where thousands upon thousands of workers would be literally unable to support themselves if the factory left town. The management is able to use this knowledge and leverage it into forcing longer hours for worse pay upon the workers. It is only through unionization and the threat of collective/mass work stoppage that the management is kept in check.
In the modern age, unions have been a device to demand better treatment for worse productivity. They have ceased to be helpful guardians of employee rights and have become oppressive bureaucracies in their own right. This is not really a good direction, IMO.
If the primary goal of a union ought to be the protection of worker rights and the establishment of a partnership in which both management and the employees receive favorable outcomes. It should seek to balance the power of the employers with the needs of the employees.
However in the software world, the employees are not hamstrung by monetary concerns. Any Joe Programmer can pick up a cheap $200 bare bones PC and a copy of Linux and be programming the next great thing. He doesn't need management to do this.
So management, despite its seeming power, does not actually have very much leverage over any IT employee. It is not the case that if the company packs up and leaves town that the computer engineer is suddenly out on his ass. Rather, he still has the tools at his disposal to continue productive work on his own.
Because of this natural balance in the IT industry, it will never make sense to have an industry-wide union.
I've yet to meet a Linux geek who I'm frightened of ... actually I take that back, some tend to disturb me due to their devotion to a piece of software.
My read is that this is a pathetic attempt to link "Linux" and "union" in the minds of IT management. The article is absurd on it's face. It relys on a redefinition of the words "Linux" and "union" in order to make it work, thus rending the entire ridiculous screed meaningless.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
For several years a number of us have been anticipating the emergence of a Software Labor Union. The argument has not been whether it will emerge but what form it will take. The conditions for forming technology unions have never been better.
In many companies there exists a huge difference in compensation between the management (particularly the CEOs) and the folks that actually make and service the products. There is also an increasing tendency for executives to treat employees (particularly IT employees) as disposable assets, and you have what appears to be an increasing lack of respect for the competence of management in the industry.
Forming a union isn't easy, however. It has been some time since we have seen the birth of a major union because getting people to agree on the form, direction, and leadership of such an entity is very difficult. In addition, there are concerns about management response and few, during hard labor times, want to be seen as union organizers.
For a union to work you need a critical mass of people, you need a way to organize them as a resource, you need the power of threat, and you need effective leadership.
Linux: Critical Mass Requirement Met
For the purpose of this column I'm going to use the word "Linux" to refer to the group of people who support it and the open-source initiatives that surround it. The eventual name of the hypothetical union may use a derivative of this name or, more likely, a name related to open source Latest News about open source. Something like the "Open Software Union," or the "The Union of Free Software Professionals," or, my favorite, the "Software Technical Union Derivative Standards" (Studs).
Kidding aside, Linux and open source has penetrated most technical schools, government IT shops, and technology companies. Its membership, while not officially listed, is easily in the millions of people who believe in or support their version of the concept of open source, which Linux, to them, represents. There may not be a great deal of agreement on the terms, but the group can act as a group and has the tools to coordinate that action.
Linux: Organization Requirement Met
Those tools are based on the richness of the Internet, newsletters and blogs with RSS feeds, and more traditional technical publications the Linux faithful can be directed to act with some degree of confidence. The battle with SCO was a case in point: At no time in history has a technology firm been as thoroughly attacked as SCO has been since their litigation with IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM started.
SCO has experienced massive Denial of Service attacks, the company's customer base has been inundated, their funding sources have been strangled, their executive leadership has been threatened, and their ability to function has been almost completely eliminated. In what has been a massive and loosely coordinated effort, a multi-million dollar company backed by a strong legal team has been all but put out of business, and this couldn't have happened without some form of organization. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft, with all of its resources, seems powerless against the massive engine represented by Linux, and its supporters often appear as an endangered species during a government-approved hunting season.
In addition, companies using Linux technology and not complying with the GPL Latest News about GPL generally face a combination of legal and public relations exposures more similar to what would happen if they faced a union than if they faced a company. Linux has showcased over and over again that, when threatened, it can move as a group to eliminate that threat.
Linux: Power Requirement Met
Let's take the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft, and imagine a scenario where they had a problem with a negative article. Generally they could call and complain, they could (as Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) Latest News about Oracle has often done) pull all advertising from the site, and they coul
SCO's problems are due entirely to their own malfeasance. Don't FUD on me.
Enderle seems to have declared war on Linux. There is so much wrong with this article that it's hard to know where to start commenting or when to stop. Linux supporters are not terrorists (in the main), but the article clearly portrays them as such.
At no time in history has a technology firm been as thoroughly attacked as SCO.
In 2003, SCO started a lawsuit against IBM, began spreading FUD, and demanded $699 for every copy of Linux. Their lies have been attacked, as they should be. SCO's business has suffered because of this, but that's just collateral damage. If you offend a lot of people, a large number of them will respond negatively.
their executive leadership has been threatened, and their ability to function has been almost completely eliminated.
That's what happens when you attack a community. But it was wrong to make physical threats. Please don't imagine that because someone made a threat then all people against SCO must all be terrorists.
In addition, companies using Linux technology and not complying with the GPL generally face a combination of legal and public relations exposures
EXACTLY. People who commit civil torts should face legal sanctions. Why is the article suggesting it's wrong to enforce a licence? Should Microsoft or IBM not enforce their licences?
Let's take the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft, and imagine a scenario where they had a problem with a negative article. Generally they could call and complain
And that's pretty much what happened - a large number of people complained to the publisher and the advertisers. It is their right, isn't it? It's not mob rule to complain when someone pisses you off.
The O'Gara/PJ saga also demonstrates the lack of mature leadership.
There was no leadership... just a large number of individuals who expressed their views on MOG's article. Linux folks don't need no stinking leadership. Linux isn't a union or a political party.
Without strong leadership any organization with this much power can easily find itself with an image more similar to that of organized crime
I really can't see anyone organizing Linux folks on anything other than a technical level. Too diverse, too independent, too spread out across the globe, too focused on technical issues, too apolitical probably.
I have to wonder if this is just another round in the MS/Linux war. Enderle seems to have picked his side - the one with the money - and is attacking the enemy to the best of his ability. Fortunately, that's not a big threat.
Without my tinfoil hat getting in the way, but with 23 years in the technology, business and corporate world, there are great forces being applied that will prevent any of this to pass. For one, business has money to spend, and they will spend massively rather than placing themselves in the hands of the uncontrollable. And, they will never do anything at all, unless they can be in control. So much much so, they'll spend a lot of money to do so. Repeat. Second, if Linux people really push any issue, business will win; if the unions could be broke, so could the OSS philosophy, over time, with deliberate effort on their part by bribes, token benefit increases, or simply sponsoring someone who can be controlled: they would win again.
How can this be? Because for the most part, the OSS side don't necessarily like a really protracted fight; business people wake up every day to do exactly that.
This is from Rob Enderle who has been described as Wrong more often than a broken clock and "Guys in Suits Who Smoke a Lot of Crack and Still Make Six Figures" poster boy
Previously statements include:
"The next person who says 'shenanigans' gets pistol whipped!"
Now who knows what that is from?
Grammar Nazi
As much as I'd like to be in an IT union... I don't think it fits. Collective payrates, strikes... rules... all that stuff.
Unions are for sheep, IT people are cats... we don't hurd well.
Also it seems he's a fan of the journalism standards of Maureen O'Gara. hmm.
I think it's one of those PR marketing "hits" more than an article.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
His piece is all about painting Open Source (Linux) with the tar brush; condemning EVERY Linux user for the actions of a few.
Would he really publish that article if he would believe what he writes?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
If you take this argument further, you get something that looks a little like this. You're going to have to scroll down a ways to part 2: Hive Mind Independence, which takes place somewhere between 2013-2023 by the scenario timeline.
The basic idea is this: What if the smart mobs take over? Not just software, but everything?
We see these open developments happening first in software, then elsewhere.
First Open Source software, then Open Source encyclopedia, then Open Source manufacturing, etc., etc.,. It does not seem unreasonable to me to believe that more and more work will develop on top of the network of relationships and trusts that arise from open development.
All of those are valid points. Unfortunately, the blind ignorance of most people around here will lead to the parent and I being modded flaimbait and off-topic, respectively.
In unrelated news, where did the captchas go? All of a sudden I am not getting any.
make the general public and business believe that we are terrorists. Microsoft is really getting desparate now, pulling out the big guns. Let's fight men. We got some WinOS to kick!
Meh.
I definitely agree with him (sarcasm). So, we should, as a single entity that he accuses us of being, form together and see he is fired and left to live off a rich man's table scraps for the rest of his pathetic life. Then we will disband so that this great power can never again be used for evil.
Of course, if you say that what's-her-name's article was simply badly proven (and if memory serves it was pretty much just very mild libel) Enderle's whole thesis falls on its heels (because then the people at Linuxworld and the community would be vindicated for showing a fraudulent claim for being fraudulent and making sure EVERYONE knows it).
FUD.
Someone else to take money out of my check, scream at me who I should vote for, and make life hell for my employer..
Let's speculate about a future labor union, let's call it "Linux". Now let's talk about the actions of a few individuals whom the the general Open Source movement definitely does NOT approve of. A few idiots DOS attack SCO and Enderle describes it as :
In a coordinated combination of attacks which included a broad DOS attack on Sys-Con and an e-mail attack on Sys-Con's advertisers, Linux effectively made good on a threat that is beyond even Microsoft's reach, and often beyond the U.S. government's reach. That threat is putting your company out of business if the desired result is not achieved.
This man is steeped in FUD and misinformation. Perhaps the Linux guys get why all the Apple fans hate this dude with a passion. And ya know what... he thrives on anger and hate-mail. The man does nothing but troll for readers and me... I guess I've fed the troll. D'oh.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
This individual is just twisting his loss of power as a journalist versus the power the public has gained to share and express their own thoughts and form their own opinions. When we as individuals now agree on a subject we are no longer isolated with the only public opinion being the one paid for by vested interests.
Yes, the public landscape has changed, freespeak is gaining influence and it is FREE becuase no individual, religion, group, union, government, corporation or media empire controls it. We are all just individuals with a equal voice and this is what they fear the most not becuase of what we gain but because it diminishes their voice regardless of how much money they have.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Only is you are using RedHat Fedora. :+>
Why was this reposted from here?
SCO and Linuxworld / Maureen O'Gara / Groklaw are his examples? Give me a break. SCO's lawsuits were the last gasps of a company that had been dying for a long, long time. They were dying even during the Internet bubble, for Christ's sake! They aren't dying because the Linux mafia put out a hit; they're dying because no one wants to pay for their OS when their are better, free alternatives.
Magazines come and go all the time too. This bad publicity woudn't have killed Linuxworld if it hadn't already been in trouble.
The power of all the Linux IT staff in the world is a powerful force indeed, but not so much more than that of teachers, bus drivers, factory workers, farmworkers, truckers, cops, or any of the other groups of people who keep civilization going. And as with any other group, management can bring in scabs if the Linux mafia won't do their bidding. You're not indispensable; plenty more where you came from. Any college kid with a (free) copy of Debian and some O'Reilly books is a potential scab worker.
geeks always think they are going to rule the world. this keeps them sufficently preoccupied with non-political nonsense. the funniest part is the geeks are far more likely to get drafted than take over anything.
enjoy the draft kids.
Why? Why? Why?
you had me at #!
Oh geesh, Rob Enderle again. Why the heck does his stuff still get printed?
O'gara created a strong argument suggesting PJ wasn't really who she appeared to be???? Who was PJ supposed to be? A young, slim, white, protestant, paralegal with red hair? Where does it say what she was supposed to be? And why do we care??
First of all, O'gara didn't even know for sure if it was THE PJ. And she attacked the religion and living habits of someone who could have been a complete innocent bystander. If that's not just being plain mean and abusing your journalistic responsibities, I don't know what is. That's the REAL reason why everybody was so upset.
Oh, and don't forget she must work for IBM because she lives in New York. In fact the millions of people in New York ALL work for IBM. It's a huge state-wide conspiracy!!
Also, Enderle fails to mention that the MyDoom viruses aimed at SCO was traced back to Russia. Could it just be, maybe, maybe that those DOS attacks were not made by anybody in the free software movement? No, I'm sure Enderle being that great analyst he is must have definitive proof that linux kernel developers were directly responsible for those DOS attacks. He wouldn't just point fingers with no proof right????
Hey Enderle, maybe YOU DOSed SCO so that you could point the finger to someone else later. Hey, I have as much proof as you do, maybe I should go write an article! Geesh, what a maroon.
And Queen Amidala will marry Jar-Jar in the revised edition of AotC. "Lukesa! Meesa yousa fassa!"
Talking of FUD, who on earth suggested that portability doesn't matter? Although our company uses Linux internally our customers are prodominantly Windows users. We develop using Java, PHP and Python, and all our applications are cross platform.
Portability is the difference between surviving and not surviving; at least for me. Linux is not the one true OS, but it is an excellent example of the new way of thinking, a way which doesn't have greed at its core.
a steel cage deathmatch with Enderle and Stallman. The jackass who can't even figure out what Linux is with the fanatic who can't say Linux, it HAS to be "GNU/Linux"
This guy is way out there
two words
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
It seems to me that this is exactly the way that the internet was supposd to empower the people. We were supposed to be able to collectively gather the information and arrive at a conclusion and collectively have our voices heard. This isn't so much about Linux as it is about what happens when you strike a nerve with technologically savvy people -the very people who nursed the internet through it's infancy. The author misses that point, and assumes that because the first chord struck (loud enough for him to hear) was centered on a Linux related issue, that the power must belong to Linux. It doesn't. Why else do you think that DRM issues and legislation are so important right now? Why do you think that Slashdot discussions get so heated when we discuss copyright law, politics in general and digital restrictions? Because we're Linux users?? Last I saw, there we're a lot of Apple and Windows users who are just as concerned (I'd even bet that a lot of them were participating in the article's mentioned ddos attacks, etc) posting here on Slashdot... a reasonable sample of the people behind the scenes of the tech revolutions. The author missed the boat on this one: we're not just Linux geeks and hackers, we're involved people keeping up with the world's realities, and on rare occasions, we can all agree enough to act upon our convictions.
"one of the worst articles ever"?
Before you make such sweeping statements perhaps you should google for Enderley's other articles which easily outstrip even this article. The man is a master of crap, thank you very much. Not easily achieved!
Bitter and proud of it.
This guy may well think Linux geeks are the mob. There was a while when he was an industry analyst with some kind of specialization in SCO. He received piles of well deserved scorn from the 'mob' over at Groklaw. We all thought he had crawled into a hole to lick his wounds and try to nurse the shreads of his credibility back to life.
Enderle still thinks the virus attacks against SCO were orchestrated by the Linux "mafia" or what have you. Not to mention this crap about poor little Microsoft:
"its supporters often appear as an endangered species during a government-approved hunting season. "
Not one comment about how people are leaving Microsoft for...just pulling an example out of thin air here but setting up an Exchange server. First you need to buy the Exchange media. Then the licenses to connect to it. Then the Outlook licenses to take full advantage of the proprietary features.
This guy is way out there
This article has its points but it doesn't mention that free software is about freedom. I don't want anybody controlling me, I don't want a union, I don't want a leader.
The article doesn't make any sense; it's obvious that the author just knew that it would get posted on slashdot. The kind of power he's talking about "Linux" wielding is only possible if the entity is not legitimate as a legal entity. As soon as it became a legal entity, like a union, it wouldn't be able to wield the power that was being talked about (DOS attacks, etc.). So forming a union would, in a sense, degrade their power.
Although, I suppose in some cases, having legitimate fronts with loose couplings to illegitimate terrorist organizations is possible. The PLO, for example. =P
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
How fitting the slogan of the Linux section is all of a sudden. Check the top left corner of this page.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
This guy is infuriating. Not one word about the blatant unprofessional attack on PJ. Nothing about posting her address/phoen number on the Internet. he just sits there and implies that someone is directing "attacks."
I think he's directing these columns. I think Maureen O'Gara directed a extremely personal attack. But Maureen's victim doesn't have deep pockets. No sympathy from Rob for you, PJ!
This guy is way out there
This kind of articles show that people aren't really ready for open-source. It's the kind of people who don't really understand the nature of it, accusing open source advocates of poisoning the world with a bad product.
First of all, it's not a bad product. Google has shown the world what can be done with an open source OS.
I would invite this guy over to a "villa miseria" ("misery village") in my country where people don't die of starvation but are close to that. Imagine how many things you could do with US$ 199 (XP Pro) instead of having to pay a license for every computer the government owns!. US$ 199 could pay for 1 month basic salary of the IT workers. And there are far less IT technicians than computers.
But I don't know what drives these people. It's like my Java teacher, he thinks this open source movement just "can't be. why would people give away what they write?". Once, I asked him "why not?". So he goes because you gotta make a living and stuff. So I go, "well, yes, but suppose you have a good life and program just for fun. Would you keep all your discoveries to yourself? you think linus torvalds released a full operating system? no, he set the foundation for it, and thousands of people chipped in with tiny lines of code, and now we have this big monster, owned by nobody and everybody at the same time. Also, you have the possibility to use things like a database server, which you wouldn't be able to use. Face it, not many of us can get a job at the gov't data center which 30 years ago started with huge mainframes. Sure, it's been a long time since PCs can run database servers. But they ain't free. In order to use them, you had to be an employee in a big company, or at a college. Or use a pirated copy, which, I suppose, you don't support. If you don't want to give away your code, I suppose you don't want it to ve given away either. But with the open source licenses, you can work with a free full-featured database and you can also make a living out of it. In a company, what you write belongs to the company, not you. But what you do at home is another story.
And finally, I know you're a big fan of IBM. They support open source. If it's such a bad thing, they wouldn't support it. They aren't that stupid". The guy just didn't see all that coming.
But well, most people who think that way are just dinosaurs who live in another era. And dinosaurs are extinct now.
While reading the summary I noticed a Microsoft ad.
"We got to market six months faster, and saw 14 percent in cost savings over Linux." --Owen Flynn, Chief Technology Officer, Equifax, Inc.
They know this because they moved the same service to market twice? If so, wouldn't it go faster the second time? If not, how do they know? And why is it we don't see Microsoft here? There's task #1 for the Linux Union.
Danger danger Will Robinson! Unsubstantiated accusation based upon faulty logic ahead! Swerve damn you! SWERVE!!!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
For several years a number of us have been anticipating the emergence of a Software Labor Union. The argument has not been whether it will emerge but what form it will take. The conditions for forming technology unions have never been better.
I actually have to disagree with the article's initial assumption, that software workers will inevitably unionize.
The primary and necessary condition for a labor union to form is that it becomes easier for the company to replace a worker than to appease them. (In this case, I'm considering total cost of replacement, to include training a new worker to do the job) This leads to a whole new working dynamic: The company can pay dirt wages, because if the worker complains, they are replaced, hence the necessity for a union. If the worker is difficult to replace, they will do better bargaining on their own than collectively. This simple comparison (cost of replacement versus cost of appeasement) defines the distinction between white collar workers and blue collar workers. In other words, between skilled and unskilled labor.
Technology workers have always classically been skilled workers. Not just anyone can work a computer and get it to do what they want. Software, in particular, is a field which requires skilled workers. Not only is the potential pool of software workers significantly smaller than the general population, but the cost of replacement is much higher due to the specialization going on in the industry. A SQL programmer is not going to easily be able to fill a kernel programming job, for example.
In this case, for technology workers, the unionization argument is based more on the idea that worker supply exceeds demand. This idea holds water on the surface. Just look at all those poor folks out there whose jobs got outsourced who have been on unemployment for ten years and have nine kids to feed, and the big bad corporation just turned them out on their ear. These people are, frankly, the bottom of the barrel. Oh, I won't claim that the supply of people who want to be in software isn't high. But the demand for good developers far exceeds its supply. One hardly needs to look beyond the salaries for that information.
So is anybody going to unionize? Sure, eventually. Eventually, the "blue-collar" technology jobs will be automated to the point that a trained monkey can do it (or a trained SQL script), and you'll see the demand for web administrators and BOFH's go down. But software, in general terms, will always be moving forward; once a problem is solved, then the good developers move on to more complex problems, ad infinitum. As with any quality knowledge worker, a quality software worker will always be expensive to replace, and will always do better to bargain individually than together with potentially inferior co-workers.
The only place that this might not hold is in the games industry, where the amount of supply is so incredibly overinflated by the "coolness" factor of working in games that companies can (and do) treat their programmers as dispensible. I suspect that this condition is only temporary, however, and these conditions will come more in line with the rest of the industry as potential workers learn more about the conditions, and the pool of people willing to get shat upon dries up.
Software will always require skilled knowledge workers. In software, you never solve the same problem, or go through the same motions twice. Nobody in software writes the same algorithm day in and day out. Or at least, if they do, they're seriously shooting their productivity in the head by missing the automation opportunities. Every day presents new challenges built on the results of the previous day's challenges, and replacing a worker is lethal to that process. Good software workers will always be skilled knowledge workers, will never be interchangable, will never benefit from bargaining collectively versus individually, and therefore, will not unionize.
This guy is a shill for MSFT/SCOX and he is always floating some poorly thought out stuff that can be distilled down to "MSFT should be able to tax us".
This particular article tries to equate Linux with the union movement of the early twentieth century in an effort to stir up U.S. politicians. Notice the veiled indication that Linux users are a 'terror organization'.
Rob has made some attempts to characterize FOSS as 'communist', when in truth MSFT has a sort of monarchial structure, while FOSS is a deeply democratic meritocracy.
You should create a cron job to download his article 52 times every minute to make sure he doesn't sneak in any changes and be sure to not follow any of his advertising links
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I see, so the Linux world will become the new Microsoft? Feel free to ignore the double standard, after all this IS slashdot, where many would love to believe that this would happen.
..... In a coordinated combination of attacks which included a broad DOS attack on Sys-Con......
It was not a DOS, you Insensitive Clod! It was a slashdotting.
Enderle has (or rather, should have) no credibility whatsoever. About a year ago he gave a keynote at SCO Forum entitled "Free Software and the Idiots Who Buy It."
It took logical and rhetorical fallacies to a whole new level. I picked it apart line-by-line, and for a little while it was on the first page of the Google search for "enderle".
Here it is again, in case anyone needs convincing that this man should not be taken seriously.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Linus: Andrew, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Andrew Morton: I think so Linus, but where are we going to find a duck and a length of rubber hose at this time of night?
Listen, Sonny Jim, it's a known fact there's a society of the best Open Source programmers in the world, called the Lintaverate, who run everything and meet three times a year at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as "The Meadows."
Enderle is still trying to work that meme but no one has shown it to be factual.
The majority of zombies are WINDOWS boxes.
None of SCO's claims of "threats" or "attacks" have been substantiated. Yet if they WERE attacked, it would be ultra-easy to post the logs showing it.
SCO's "evidence" of the "attacks" are the same as the "millions of lines" of "stolen" code they've claimed. Non-existant.
How are Linux geeks going to organize and take over the world when we can't even decide if its KDE or Gnome? VI or Emacs? Sheesh.
I once worked at a place as a contractor (non-union) that had to deal with a union. Maybe it was the contract (however I dont think so) but my expirences in dealing with the Union were not pleasent. For example I was not allowed to open a server case, I needed the union member to open it for me and then I could work on it. I could not pull my network cable from the back of my PC, The Union member had to do that. The only problem was that the Union Members were sleeping (I am not kidding) and were therefore not availible. One of the grivences filed against me was that I disconnected the keyboard/mouse/network etc from my PC when we had to move to another building. The Union also filed a grivence when we contracted running cables over 20 miles to connect 2 buildings over public land. They thought they should have done the work. At 5:00 they were gone even if a system was down. I have no respect for Unions in the IT sector.
YAY!
It's GPL, in other words, all your code base are belongs to us!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
one can only assume that with these idle, potential threats; saying things that would interfere with governmental stability or perhaps disrupting power grids, this asswipe just blew the legs right off of what ever potential it may have had to actually become a reality. not that a 'mob' would ever exist, but an organisation could, potentially: but its fierceness is being over rated.
the awareness has now been raised. expect even further litigation limiting usage and liberty of such. never before has such a death blow been dealt if any one actually heeds what this fool is saying.
the best thing to do is go quietly in to the night pretending this article was never posted.
Linux, you see is an underworld agent threatening your profits. With that idea firmly planted, Enderle reaches for his current favorites in his arsenal.
SCO is a reasonable company besieged because they dared sue IBM. This is where Enderle gets to note DoS attacks and personal threats. It seems this alone has sunk SCO and not anything to do with their own buisness tactics or actual strength of their case against IBM. For some reason he also takes this time to mention Microsoft and point out that even this powerhouse is powerless in the face of such an onslaught.
Enderle also notes that companies who violate the GPL face union-like retaliation. And while it does point out "Linux" (which Enderle notes early on he doesn't wish to distinguish from other players) has managed to defend its license... the implication is certainly that this isn't business as normal.
Enderle's next favorite is the O'Gara incident. He generously describes the involved piece as an incomplete expose where O'Gara "implied, but did not prove, that PJ worked for IBM." What Enderle fails to note is that O'Gara also implied that PJ was a paranoid nutjob with generally frowned-on religious beliefs. The impression implied is that the Linux community apparently responded to unwelcome news rather than a personal hatchet job bordering on harassment. And again, Enderle gets a chance to trot out the DoS boogyman. Whats interesting is that he characterizes disapproving emails to advertisers supporting Sys-Con as an "attack". In the end, Enderle characterizes the negative response to this incident as power not even wielded by big corporations or governments. If demands aren't met, Linux moves against you.... and it would seem fits you for digital cement loafers.
You see - Linux is the new Mob. That is Enderle's subtle point. It's more subtle than his normal attacks. But it is a hatchet job, none the less.
One final comment - it's interesting how Enderle highlights the O'Gara incident as damning PR for the Linux community. The opinion is that if the community hadn't responded to O'Gara, the piece would have simply slipped past unnoted. But instead, it was picked up by major trades and gave Linux a black eye. Readers might want to question for themselves why the major news outlets picked this up and pay close attention to the players. Is this Enderle claiming that "suits are back"?
Seriously, why does slashdot feed this troll pageviews?
This clown is in the same short list of paid shills for SCO/Microsoft that MOG was in before she went a little too far and got her head handed to her.
He is just trying to put the idea that Linux folk are unstable sorts who shouldn't be allowed to be near the mission critical infrastructure into pointy haired heads.
Democrat delenda est
Just let me sum up what he meant.
begin
"personal Freedom is the most powerfull force.\on the planet."
end
Thanks for coming out.
Gunillablue
...welcome myself as Overlord.
I think Mac Geeks are waaaay more powerful *duck*
don't you know, we can put malicous code in all those open source programs and take over the world!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Vandals are the only true innovators in software.
If not for vandals software security would not be where it is today.
I rest on my laurels
Gunillablue
LUG
In every city, I branched out from the airport to downtown and checked the internet cafes. There was always a fight LUG. Linus was setting up franchises, all over the country.
INT. ANOTHER BAR - NIGHT
Jack walks in and sits at the bar. The BARTENDER wears a LINUX PENGUIN NECKLACE and has a GOT ROOT SHIRT on.
BARTENDER
Welcome back, Sir. No one's in here. It's always empty the day after fight LUG.
JACK
Talk to me. Have you ever met Linus Torvalds?
BARTENDER
Is this a fsck, Sir?
JACK
Yeah, it's a fsck.
BARTENDER
You were in here last Thursday night. You were standing right there, asking me about how good our security is. And it's tight as a drum.
JACK
Who do you think I am?
BARTENDER
You're the person who did *this* to me.
The Bartender shows Jack his hand -- it has TUX branded into the skin.
BARTENDER
You're Linus Torvalds, Sir.
I dont think Linux geeks can contend with KOMPRESSOR KRUSHING POWER!
But I'm pretty sure he's either a twerp or a twit. ... Maybe both? There's some doubt as to whether he could 1) boot a live CD or 2) pour [redacted] out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel.
Who give's a rat's ass what Pretenderle says he thinks?
Reminds me of one of Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth: "It is because they do not think at all; they only think they think. Whereas they can't think; not two human beings in ten thousand have anything to think with."
"Rantin Rob" is a perfect example of someone with nothing to think with.
KwKSilver, refugee from the M$ Gulag Porkipelago.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Unions are there to stop their members getting exploited and to represent them when they need to take some form of warranted action that they cannot afford themselves. Everything beyond that is the politics you see creeping into any large organisation, which gets out of control sometimes.
There's no union that covers me, but unions in other sectors keep the wages in my country from going down and make 80 hour weeks with no extra pay the exception rather than the rule. Currently the government is asserting that penalty rates (overtime payment) and unfair dismissal laws (still very easy to dismiss someone who isn't up to scratch or reads slashdot all day) are a major threat to productivity - but there are enough reasonable unions out there to point out that it is bullshit to make removing the positive changes of the pasprohibitiont century unpopular.
It's the people not the union - if they all have to leave at 5pm due to some wanker talking about not breaking ranks, or there's some management prohibition on overtime and union prohibition on unpaid overtime then that's the problem. In a reasonable environment you could go to a supervisor and ask if you could take the time off later, which should also go with the union conditions. In a non-unionised environment you usually get some form of advantage to doing the extra time - even if it's just the advantage of no-one ever caring if you come in a bit late sometimes or read slashdot at work.I'm sorry to have to point this out, but:
Using the Bar Association as an example of an organization that knows how to keep morons out probably wasn't the best choice.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Jocks play team sports, wrestling doesn't count. "without really being into Star-Trek, Star-Wars, comic books and anime" also disqualifies you from geekdom. I suspect you aren't a goth either. I think you feel somewhat alienated because you're a closetted homosexual. Otherwise you are another clone in a cookie-cutter society. Just sleep with your best friend and get it over with M'kay.
Again? When were they called capitalists?
See1
tech_sec.blog.ca/index.php?blog=10347&p=3456
for my reply to his article. Sorry about not making it clickable. I've run into a Slashdot bug. If I try to post a URL, it *INSISTS* on changing "tech_sec" to "techsec", which obviously doesn't work.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The planet has apparently been taken over - "conqured" if you will - by a master race fluent in the language of *NIX. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive M$ men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the geeks will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new four-eyed overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a open-source advocate I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves, or perhaps stockpiling their offices wiht Mr. Pibb and Mountain Dew.
Multi-million dollar companies with no actual assets go out of business all the time. They bought paper companies that didn't actually exist, they dissipated assets through neglect, their assets turned out to be of only short-term value. The fact that SCO responded to the discovery that they didn't actually own anything worth selling by trying to recoup some money through speculative lawsuits is SCO's responsibility, not anyone else's.
I once worked at a place as a contractor (non-union) *snip* my expirences in dealing with the Union were not pleasent.
Of course they weren't. You were a competitor. Did the union hire you? If not, it was management making an end-run around the union. I wouldn't expect a union to *let* you do their work, let alone *help* you.
I was not allowed to open a server case
I wouldn't let an outside contractor (let alone a competitor) touch my servers either. But, then again, I'm competent to fix my own problems. Dunno about this "union" in question.
I could not pull my network cable from the back of my PC
Ditto. Of course, I merely advise people not to go unplugging things instead of prohibiting them. But I still get to laugh at them and clean up the mess when something explodes. I've seen people plug telephones into network cards, network cables into telephones, fuck-up all the little pins on the monitor when plugging it in, and, (really this is the best), try to swap monitors without changing the scan rate, letting out the magic smoke in the process. The best way to avoid all that is to just mandate that only competent people can work on computers, period.
Of course, the other good way is to take the "dentist" approach to professional services: belittle people when they fuck things up. Think about it: if you told your dentist "I tried to do my own root-canal and chipped a tooth" he would call you an idiot to your face, and proceed to hurt you even more than usual while fixing it. Even if you just tell him you haven't been brushing, you can probably expect a mild chiding. If you told him "I went to Larry the dentist instead of you last time, because he charges less. But he fucked up my gums, so, could you fix them?" you'd be lucky to wake up from the laughing gas.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I couldn't have written a funnier spoof of a supposed futuristic inverted-apocalyptic Sim-City-newspaper-headline if I were the cryogenetically reincarnated ghost of H.L. Mencken.
But let's call his bluff. Instead of reacting in strange embarassment to the fact that we've got bad ambulance-chaser IT consultants so down on their luck that they have to flame-bait /. en masse for any hope of a full inbox in the morning, let's all rest our hands on our Yoda walking sticks and reflect for a moment that a warning against power from any quarter is always a good occasion to kick back and sip a brew and contemplate the finer world we might make with a smile and guiding hand towards our technology-inept brethren in their fledling attempts to suck the lifeblood out of The Next Good Thing because they've long ago drained their own marrow dry.
(Though it is tempting to imagine abusing my newfound welt-ruling power just a bit to trade my boss's Project Plan in for my own cron-driven workplace tyranny. Just for a day at least... or better yet until he learns cron syntax.)
I've heard the name before. This time I read the article. Then I read another from the same site. What a jerk!
The guy is a FUD-merchant. Nothing worth reading here.
My advice:
Don't visit this site.
Don't read his writings.
Slashdot - don't review his articles.
The person who, coincidentally, if you look at his body of work, every single thing he writes is pro-SCO, pro-Microsoft, anti-Open-Source, anti-Linux, anti-iPod, or just basically arguing whatever line is good for Microsoft's PR interests and bad for Microsoft's competitor's PR interests.
So basically all this article is is that a pro-Microsoft shill is complaining that pro-Linux shills are meeting with more public sympathy than he is.
Expect this to continue. That is, as the world of the Microsoft astroturf "analysts" continues to ever so slowly shrink as slowly one by one media publishers catch on to what they're doing, expect those "analysts" to get more and more shrill about interpreting this as if they're being oppressed by the Linux extremists. O'Gara started it; Enderle is continuing it; and whoever else is working along these lines is going to keep going with it in desperate hopes that a mainstream media source will assume, if only briefly, that since it keeps being repeated over and over it must be true. And every single time it gets repeated, Slashdot will have a story about it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Wrestling doesn't count?
My good AC, you have not seen good scholastic wrestling if you insist on standing behind that comment. Wrestling is one of the purest jock sports there is. No pads. No team mates. Just you - and your opponent -- and the mat.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?" I see you are running Red Hat.
Thinking for themselves, reaching logical conclusions, uneffected by marketing! There would be no controlling them. Using blogs and RSS feeds they could share ideas and reach similar conclusions. There would be no way to control them. It would be like ... an enlightened democracy! What would we do?!
I, for one, welcome our new Linux geek overlords. Oh, wait, I'm one of them. Sweet...
We bumped off SCO and Maureen O'Gara is off the map.
You're next.
Sleep tight.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
This guy can hear me. Ergo, here's what I have to say:
You're dead wrong. You're so wrong it's amazing. In creating comparisons between unions, large corporations, and movements, you are being more than mildly unwise, and making yourself look like, in so many ways, someone who is both paid to know what he's talking about, and completely unaware of what he is talking about. Your article is more of a 'run away from Linux' pile of steaming bison-dung than almost anything else I have read in years. The particular incident you are mentioning was a case of invasion of privacy. Were Microsoft's minions to have their privacy invaded - or, God Forbid, the Great Bill have His Privacy Infringed Upon - they would be shot, stabbed, sued, and then their family would have had to eat the body for lack of charity from all the scared peons around them. Whoever paid you to find some way to portray negatively the Linux community and Open Source Movement certainly got what they paid for.
Secondly, to the difference between movements, unions, and corporations: Corporations are after profit, and only profit. Corporations are bereft of certain interpersonal skills, not being people and all. They're treated like people because of - essentially - historical need that is in some ways outdated and some ways still around. Unions are bands of workers attempting to equal the playing field any way they can, and live better lives by negotiating as a group. Movements have a calling. Movements want to make everything better for everyone involved by changing the very playing field. Where unions attempt to negotiate as a whole, movements simply happen. They happen for completely different reasons from unions or corporations. In the case of the Open Source Movement, it has happened not for profit, but for efficiency. The Open Source Movement has happened in response to copyright law making the professions of so many intelligent people frustratingly inefficient in a closed, corporate, trade-secret based environment. In response to their frustration, due to smart people not doing the same thing twice, and really smart people not wanting to do the same thing anyone else has done ever before, 'nerds' have started to share. In the name of efficiency, not accumulated negotiation. If you look at the people behind open source, you look at the people who push it forward the most, they're the ones who benefit through being able to USE it as much as anyone else. The sponsors and creators are working in the name of efficiency, that thing captialism is supposed to drive the hardest. And many of them have managed to make huge amounts of money along the way. Not Bill Style Money, which is apparently all you're paid to respect, but money that they're willing to put back into the community that helped them get where they ended up.
As far as I'm concerned, Slashdot doesn't need people like you peeping in. You don't get it. I'd love to say this with a lower user ID, but this is all I've got, and I say you're fifteen years older than me and not as perceptive about what you're talking about, despite being paid.
My little site.
I think it was when Red-Hat went IPO.
No...wait...it was when IBM invested one billion dollars.
No...wait...when Install Shield decided to port to linux.
No...wait...
If we really had that kind of power, you'd be living in a trailer park and working at McDonald's. And that's if we decided to let you off easy.
Look, let's step back and think about this rationally.
Let's see, your example of a company that ignores the GPL and infringes on a copyright. Oh, they face consequences? Wow, as opposed to what, the BSA? Yeah, infringe Microsoft's copyrights and get your ass handed to you on a platter. Why do you keep harping on this ridiculous reasoning?
And, Rob, for a minute, why not consider that maybe Maureen O'Gara's article was just a wee bit over the top? She didn't build a very convincing case of anything except that she's a complete asshat. I am still shaking my head over that. And the wierd thing about it is that none of it was news to me. I had generally always figured that PJ was an older lady (but not too old) and probably a Jehovah's Witness simply based on her writings. Does that somehow mean that SCO actually *does* have a case?
Oh, and SCO. Yes, SCO. Let me get this straight: *we* brought them down? You have to be kidding. It doesn't matter who your lawyer is if you don't have a case to begin with. You might remember that Darl claimed that there were reams of "unix" code in Linux, then was unable to provide even a single example in court. Even the judge has pointed this out, Rob. Of course, you probably think he's our little puppet, too, right?
Seriously, Rob, if you believe your own article, you should be literally quaking with fear about now. My guess is that, instead, you're patting yourself on the back for again trolling Slashdot and bringing in more ad views that usual.
Bravo.
Asshat.
Do you have ESP?
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?
Oh come on... Trying to start a distro flame war in the fricking SUMMARY now?!
Resume upon request. :D
~Jimmy Hoffa
I bet this hack gets 98% of all his traffic from the buzz created by even mentioning his latest regurgitation.
If you stop linking, they will never come. This clown's writings should suffer from the decay that only comes from having no readers.
let the sand just run out
gawd what a stupid article. there's 5 minutes of my life I'm not getting back.
See, my Penguin don't like people laughin'. Gets the crazy idea you are laughin' at him. Now, if you apologize, like I know you are going to, I might convince him you didn't really mean it. *long pause...I take out my Colts and shoot 4 Windows users* Always wanted to do that.
I'm a union steward. I can tell you from experience, a lot of people who join unions don't care about politics - they just want to get a tyrant boss off their back, and make enough money to feed their kids, and maybe have a decent retirement and health insurance. There would have to be locals, in any case - the few national locals (like the one I'm in) tend to have less power, and less cohesiveness. It's far better to have union officials that deal with a certain geographic region - saves on travel costs, if nothing else.
TFA reads like the kind of intellectual thuggery that is traditional when the servants of power try and shut down a popular movement. And the open-source movement is definitely not a union (speaking as someone involved in both).
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Not.
Lets face it, we (community) do not need to form any *official* Union!
With nearly total anarchy (or 'leze fair' to be more acurate), look how muc *trouble* we've able to bring upon the corporate Beast. And the only tools we're using, is free and superiour software.
Imagine what the next few years might bring, if we have been able to do this without not only unions, but corporations or megalomaniacs like gates.
Linux is soooo much more than just an os platform.. it is.., or rather it *represents*.. to the core, the clashing of the extreme diametric cultures (ie. good v. evil) we experience within the human race...
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Enderle is a clown, with powertrip fantasies only a nerd could muster. Linux geeks can't even all agree on how to pronounce "Linux", let alone the kind of organization he talks about. Most of the effects of this "organization" (of what, exactly?) on his chosen example, SCO, were perpetrated by IBM's lawyers, or SCO itself. The DDos attacks pale in comparison to the spambot zombie waves across the Net every day, and the rest of it is a joke, too. Linux geeks are a vast, arguing herd of cats, and the "power vacuum" he describes in the leadership is likely to remain more like a quantum foam than an office into which someone ever moves.
--
make install -not war
You know, the conclusion of the article also goes to prove that the Linux community isn't a mafia-like organization. Afterall, since there isn't strong leadership then it really doesn't have the organization that would define it as organized crime. If the strong leadership existed, then the article would go to say that it mimics organized crime instead of software development and evangelism. The premise was based on a community gaining power and the ability to make waves. Public opinion is no longer being shaped by the media, rather the media is being shaped by public opinion. Now that a group of techno-advocates have the interest, the knowledge and the ability to be able to point out falacious articles and to proof read, some people are complaining. I think that articles like this are really showing a cultural difference, if not a certain "class-struggle" between the media elite and the average citizen -- the reliance on the media is dwindling as people are now apt to get their own news, if not write it, and people have a way to share their opinions. Slashdot, for example, has considerable power in exposing unpopular and popular opinions alike. Instead of fighting and antagonizing the Linux world, how about supporting it and being useful. The reason that Linux and those that work with Linux are so "powerful" is that what makes up Linux is not one person, group or even a company. The Linux community is of a larger scope than what one organization can encompass. So to argue that there needs to be strong leadership would actually cripple one of its strengths, being diversity, and would define Linux or FOSS for that matter as another Microsoft. (Of course, this is overlooking the fact that Torvald is the final stop for what goes in the Linux kernel, or Stallman leading the GNU)
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Without him we'd never have C, BSD, Perl, TeX or any of that other totally bullshit software that he had nothing to do with!!!
RMS is not a god. He wrote a bloated editor and a manifesto. He's done fuck all since.
I've long said that the ideal union should form to solve a specific problem, then once the problem is solved, disband before egos, personal power and political corruption take root. If a problem is minor there will not be the impetus to organize; that threshold acts as a check to help prevent abuse.
If you think about it, this follows one of the ideals of Open Source; if something is needed and that need is great enough, a solution is built. When the need is no longer strong, the solution fades into obscurity but can be revitalized by anyone. If enough "anyones" are motivated, a new project arises and solves the problem -or a like problem- again.
This guy's a fucking moron. Why does anyone even post stories by him anymore?
Who cares what Rob Enderle says? Why should SlashDot readers read a badly-written article and thereby increase the hit count of an idiot who got his job who-knows-how?
Because "we" are naieve and gullible. Unfortunately it *is* necessary to refute even ridiculously spurious arguments but not everyone understands that names need not be mentioned while doing so.
As soon as someon mentions "Ratdinkle's" name or the name of the publication that carried his article, he has achieved what he se out to do by being irritating.
Tim
This is all just my personal opinion.
Dude, you can do whatever the fuck you want; it still won't make you cool (if you aren't already - and I'm led to believe you aren't, due to the fact that you'd even suggest a thing).
I'll just stay being myself, thanks - cool or not.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Hey, someone please mod down the linked story to f**k up the link from his rag
The main reason SCO attack on "Linux" failed was because of their business practices. If you alienate a bunch of people you are likely to loose customers, or potential customers. All the "Linux" had to do was sit back and whatch the show. The reason that the attack on the maintainer of groklaw failed was that "Linux" does not like lies, it will fight for the truth. As you can see if you come after "Linux" you better have the truth on your side, or you will lose. As for management, as pointed out before, "Linux" is too diverse, and spread out for any formal management. with the availabilty of computers today, there is no great threat to IT jobs. anybody with arround $500 can start programming for them selves.
with so much coverage of late consisting of this sort of idiocy (Rob freakin' EARLE?! Come *on* now...) plus the subperfunctory job "moderating", /. has become largely irrelevant. I *miss* /. I feel you are no longer there for me.I haven't actually counted all the idiot posts modded high and labeled "insightful" or "informative" lately, but I have certainly noticed the percentage is shockingly high.
:(
/.!!!
well -- I'm afraid
Somebody needs to put down the bong and do some research, 'cause without that you're just a bunch of misinformed wannabe's.
Hey, *somebody* had to say it.
Anyway, get well soon
I miss you!
"And the geek shall inherit the earth."
Management has come up with the perfect weapon to combat this.....it's called software patents. The software patents will force you to work for the patent holder exclusively or get suid out of your mind. This means your cheap pc holding the tools of the trade are worthless since you can not use them without infringing on some stupid patent. Better make sure the boss is pleased again because he just got his stick back.
This asshole is absolutely being PAID by Microsoft - either that or he IS literally the biggest asshole in IT.
Once again, these Microsoft shills have attacked the entire OSS movement, branding them "fanatics", DoS perpetrators, serial harassers, and probably beanie-wearers as well.
The only thing we haven't been accused of being is actual Muslims! Or maybe "child molesters!" We've already been called "terrorists" and "communists"!
Enderle proclaims that if we'd all ignored the bullshit MoG put out, it would have been ignored by everybody. Oh, really? Is that why HE'S babbling right now? He expects to be ignored? (He should be, but that's not the case.)
This jerk is hawking the same crap that a multi-billion corporation (who shall be cough!RedmondCough! nameless) and we're supposed to just sit back and enjoy? Who has the power to attack who here?
Read my lips, Enderle!
FUCK YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE GENETIC HISTORY!
In due time, Microsoft will be go into bankruptcy and YOUR pissant ass will go on the unemployment line where you belong! (Or maybe become the "Minister of Information" for the new Iraqi government...)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Therefore clueless people are afraid of it and are also trying to classify it somehow, however they haven't got mental cathegories for such phenomena.
Thereupon the names the Open Source folk is called are absolutely unappropriate.
While looking at that article, I'm quite concerned what will happen if human kind would meet some real extra-terrestrial inteligent life form.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
I really don't think that a single person will ever be able to harness the "power" of such a distributed mass of people. Frankly because (most of the) geeks have a strong (healthy) anti-leadership attitude. We don't generally like to be controled for the same reason we don't like proprietary software. We don't like to be told what to do because most think they are too smart for that. OTOH an ideology could come out (see GPL) and convince most of the people of the "proper software values" (let's say... no closed-source, etc). Given enough convinced people, this could lead to some interesting results. But I don't think that there will be a single person in charge (although most of the ideas could come from one single source).
However, power without leadership is just dangerous and often more dangerous to the very organization which has the power. ...said the automaton, as he unwittingly cemented another brick in the walls of Babel.
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
RE: The Most Powerful Labor Union in the World: Linux?
I don't know where to begin, but it doesn't matter since nothing you said made any sense - and of course, you knew that. You were just paid by Microsoft to dribble it out anyway like snot out of a crack whore's nose.
You HAVE to be either directly paid by Microsoft to be a shill - or you HAVE to be THE biggest asshole in IT right now.
You make Larry Ellison look "fair and balanced". You make George Bush look like George Washington.
I have news for you, monkey-boy: Linux is going to take away your job and leave you in the unemployment line where you belong. Ten years from now, Microsoft will be on the ropes and no longer willing to pay you for anything since you obviously weren't effective. And you damn sure won't be getting any money from anyone on the OSS side of the industry.
Take another shot of crack and "Have a nice day!"
Moron.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
hes just mad that he didn't get in on this in the beginning and thinks "Hey maybe I'll plant some seeds in their head and they'll sprout and grow into corruption" truth of the matter is that most linux projects are not even a part of the big picture when they 'sprout' everything is independent and people with their projects feel compelled to achieve a small goal. the collaboration of these small goals together make up and define linux as a whole. i believe most linux users know this, and they also know that if all these indie projects were 'controlled' by one person/a select group of people then it will become just as corrupt as the rest of the major players. This is child running around with a nuclear bomb. careful there pal
I for one, take objection to the author's grouping of all linux supporters and open-source initiatives into the singular "Linux" with a capital "L". It is simply not fair to write in this manner, when you are referring to a disparate group of individuals, and especially a group so broad as to encompass "linux users", companies making an income from linux (Redhat, SuSE. etc.), multinationals such as IBM, Sun and Novell, "developers", hobbyists, educationalists, governments and so forth.
The author ignored the power of corporations to bring themselves down, through their own bad decisions. Surely part of the reason for SCO's demise is that they just didn't have a way to make a profit without conjuring up a ludicrous lawsuit, and also that they just didn't have a valid case? Isn't it fair to mention that? In a fair and balanced article it would be, actually.
There is also a new and disturbing trend in America that really does alarm the rest of the world. It generally starts with labeling someone a terrorist, for instance in this way: "The power to control the press and the skills contained in this organization are likely capable of disrupting travel, power grids and other broad national infrastructure"
Where did this leap of logic come from, and what damage can such general statements do to the innocent? What damage have they already done in other contexts?
Finally, the author wrote:
So linux users/developers are children then? Where have they hidden their weapons of mass destruction? This makes Y2K seem positively benign! Who indeed is more dangerous? Could it perhaps be those who write the articles that damage the reputation of others, perhaps? And to whom are they themselves accountable?
The problem with nerds is:
/. and in blogs about how the boss sucks, and hope that somehow miraculously the problem will just fix itself.
1. Being disconnected from reality, and believing in nutjob ideals of purity and perfection, instead of more realistic compromises that work.
Which is at least mildly entertaining when it comes to "vi vs emacs vs Eclipse vs VS.NET" flame wars, in which some small detail is inflated to mean "it's not 100% perfect, so it 100% sucks." But it's less funny to see people shaft themselves and screw up their own life in pursuit of that pure utopia and relentless shunning anything less than perfect. Between something like (A) having a boss that shits on you, demands 84 hour weeks, makes "YOUR job could be the next to move to India" a corporate motto, and generally makes Dilbert's PHB and Catbert look like good compassionate folks, and (B) a union, a nerd will keep option A because B isn't 100% perfect.
2. Disconnected from reality again, in the form of believing in nut-job extremist theories, of course dressed up to look like some 100% perfect ideal as mentioned above. You're pretty much not a nerd if you don't really believe in some oriental religion, or magic, or global conspiracies, or... some bullshit idealization of pure unregulated capitalism, 19th century style. Which is what we're seeing waved around every time someone mentions unions.
"Noo, unions just let people demand more pay for worse performance! They get in the way of capitalism! Let's get rid of minimum wages, unemployment benefits, medical insurance, etc, too! Make those lazy bums work harder!"
Well, guess what, folks? That unregulated capitalism didn't work _that_ great for the country. It just served to funnel most of the benefits into the pockets of a small oligarhy, while 90% of the population was living only _barely_ better than slaves on a plantation, and were left to literally starve the instant they had an accident and couldn't work any more.
Using _that_ model to rise productivity and GDP, yeah, would work, except it wouldn't be _you_ who sees any benefits out of it. You'd just have over half the factories producing bigger yacht and personal planes for CEOs while you're starving on a miserable wage. That's what historically did happen.
3. Insecure. Nooo, maybe the boss will fire me if I don't kiss his ass and lick his boots. Or god forbid join a union that says "no, sorry, 110% unpaid overtime is right out." Better keep a low profile instead, not stand out from the crowd, and line up for the daily boot licking routine like everyone else.
Instead let's whine on
Guess what, folks? It won't. If you're even vaguely tempted to compare your job to Dilbert comics, chances are that your management already knows you're spineless. They won't grow a compassionate side, they'll keep piling shit upon you and thinking it's _normal_. That's how you got there in the first place.
4. Hidden behind a "Nice Guy" (TM) facade. Nah, can't do something as nasty as, ugh, a strike to the boss. Would tarnish that "Nice Guy" facade and all that.
5. In reality not that nice, and self-centred to ridiculous extremes. Just you're the smart guy, everyone else is a retard, right?
The sad reality is that your average nerd doesn't want to fight for _others'_ rights. "Whaaat? And end up having to do a strike too, to support workers from another company? Why would I want to go on strike when it's not about _me_?" seems to be another major theme that pops up on these boards and others each time someone even mentions unions.
Well, guess what, folks? You're not really the centre of the universe. The Real World (TM) is a give-and-take place. People will help you if you help them. That's what it's all about. If you want it all to be only about _you_, then you're on your own. And that's how the IT worker conditions got to be the mess that they are.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In the 90's Margaret Thatcher (our ex-Iron Lady) has proved that once you are an entity it is easier to crush. Power - yeah!!! The most moronoic uneducated article I have ever read.
I, for one, welcome our new Linux geek.....wait....that's me! MWAHAHAHA!!! The world will tremble at my fingertips! You're all doomed, DOOMED!!!!!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Here is my favorite quote from the article:
In what has been a massive and loosely coordinated effort, a multi-million dollar company backed by a strong legal team has been all but put out of business, and this couldn't have happened without some form of organization.
As if poor management, a poor product, and generally being the scum of the earth wasn't enough to put SCO out of business. This author is a sensationalist.
Qxe4
Unions get their power from monopolization. A traditional trade-union is an effort to monopolize the market for skilled labor in a certain field and geographic area. Notice the parallels:
So, unions are similar to monopolies, and what do we know about Free/Open software and monopolies, kids? That's right: they don't go together. Monopolies in software rely on legal barriers-to-entry, such as copyrights restricting duplication of code, or broad patents prohibiting all competitive efforts. And Open Source projects disdain all those barriers.
Computer programmers working with Free Software simply cannot unionize or monopolize; they will be instantly out-competed by scabs either in India, or right next door. It is vaguely possible that a union of proprietary software developers will arise, but Linux could never be part of such a thing.
(Traditional unions use social pressure and geographic proximity as barriers-to-entry, enabling their localized monopolization. Digital workers are basically immune to those methods)
you have what appears to be an increasing lack of respect for the competence of management in the industry
Competent management is common in the industry?
In all fairness, I have known a couple highly competent managers.
Lets recap the article:
/.
1) The community of "Linux," not the FSF or EFF, who have lawyers to defend themselves from what I'm about to say...
2) Are what will become the labor union for software. After all, developing free and open source software is the hallmark of labor unionization in the software industry...
3) And you bunch of hooligans already behave like mafiosos... let me just recap what a victim SCO has been...
4) You bunch of denial of service attack launching juevenile delinquents...
5) O'Gara is so cool... you jackasses had her fired from a publication called "LinuxWorld," when she made some specious claims about a Linux advocate...
6) You really should have let her do that, since, after all, you should be pumping funding into SCO's defense fund...
7) It was an immature act that just goes to show that you're a bunch of children, with no leadership...
8) See how I still haven't mentioned the FSF... now they won't mail me and complain.
9) Yes! I win! I get to dig on the Linux community, and I'll get a front page article on
10) Go meeeeeeee!!!
I fully agree that the author and its patrons and financers have to recieve their dose of bashing, but I want to emphasise that there is a point which is more important for our (geeky) future than any commentator or evilcompany...
The trouble with ground-breaking ideas is that they are only useful to people qualified enough to study them. It is quite possible that Enberle accidentaly hit a goldspot without knowing it, or, on the other hand, he has been whispered a secret truth of the future by a higher entity and hasn't quite grasped the concept. While he joins a paradox after paradox (can you imagine BOFH joining, let alone running any union, an IT union, to exaggerate further?)
This article tried to cope with the fact that in what is now a post-industrial-, information-, global-, and yapyapyap society, traditional authorities no longer apply (or for now, do not at least apply as fully as they used to). Naturally, it failed and missed the point.
But that doesn't mean there is a point. Humanity has had priests or other religious authorities for millenia to apply a sistem of rules in human lives only to resort to rule of law in last few centuries, making lawyers (and other legal experts) somewhat of a privileged class, some even calling lawyers the priesthood of liberalism.
Well, there is another rule on the way and another class of people called upon to make and enforce the new rules. Information society is just a buzzword if it would by run by priests, kings, presidents, judges or lawyers. Running an information society requires a cleverer breed of people who beside having the appropriate ethics and the knowledge, and an environment with a suitable way of thinking. Enter the allmighty sysadmin geek who runeth the servers and secureth thy data with his application-developer buddies that make the brave new world possible.
This may sound very theorhetically, but I see stuff happen in practice on a micro-level, particulary with geeks growing older and migrating to other related professions while still maintaining their points of view. If human civilization is to evolve further, and if tehnology is to advance to better our lives, things are bound to happen.
Try to spell it Bob, just once...
Seriously, when public outrcy results in change, that is grass-root democracy at work.
This is what happens when the formal democratic institutions (and here, I count the officially informal press as formal) start working against the people. In this respect, the Linux/Free/Open communities are no different than other modern political/social movements, like the environmental or anti-globalisation movements etc, just different values and ethics...
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
I think Enderle does "miss the point" on purpose, in an attempt to paint the Linux community as dangerous criminals.
;-)
Of course, his argumentation is weak enough to make him look like a moron. Which he probably is, otherwise he would act in a more subtle and difficult to disprove way.
Let's have a look at his technique:
1) He starts with the probably valid point that the emergence of a Software Labor Union is not unlikely, due to reasons he lists IMHO correctly.
2) "Linux: Critical Mass Requirement Met"
Here, he jumps to talking about a union of Open Source developers, conveniently ignoring that the worst working conditions are reported from (closed source) game development studios. Which is where I would expect the first Software Labor Unions to pop up.
He goes on to talk about "Linux and open source has penetrated most technical schools, government IT shops, and technology companies", in order to make it sound more dangerous.
In order to buy this so far, you have to be uninformed or stupid. But this paragraph could still be excused as a slip in wording by a guy that needs a bit of pep in his article
3) "Linux: Organization Requirement Met"
Much talk about the trouble SCO is in, and vague accusations about criminal activities for which the Open Source is supposedly responsible.
Again, he conveniently ignores that SCO made most of the trouble for itself. Sueing a company like IBM who can afford excellent lawyers itself, plus pissing off your own (ex-)business partners is hardly a good strategy.
More talk about how "its [Microsofts] supporters often appear as an endangered species during a government-approved hunting season". By now, we are clearly in propaganda country.
3) "Linux: Power Requirement Met"
Here, Enderle talks about how Maureen O'Gara wrote an article about PJ of Groklaw and the resulting backlash forced Sys-Con to pull the article.
"Linux effectively made good on a threat that is beyond even Microsoft's reach, and often beyond the U.S. government's reach. That threat is putting your company out of business if the desired result is not achieved"
Wrong on two accounts:
a) There were no "threats" in the way a mobster would make them.
b) Microsoft has done similar things before. By other means, but they have put companies out of business that got in their way. Remember Netscape?
"What is even more amazing is the effort was so powerful it may have eliminated a sister publication as collateral damage. LinuxWorld may no longer be a viable publication after the voluntary departure of its entire editorial staff."
And the editorial staff explicitly said that they were leaving due to lack of journalistic integrity on part of the publisher. Forgot to mention that, Mr.Enderle?
4) "Linux: Leadership Unmet"
Here, he tries to pass of the Open Source community as fanatics and lunatics who use their power irresponsibly. To back up his argumentation, he gives a few links to media who have picked up the story about O'Gara and claims the effort backfired.
But if you actually follow the links, O'Gara does NOT look like the good girl in this controversy.
Overall, Enderle comes off as a second-rate propaganda writer rather than as an analyst.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Oh, you read the title and thought "most powerful labor force in the world?! yeah!!"... not so fast. Others have commented on the not-so-subtle pretext of this article. Linux == Unions is a stretch (and meant to deter/repel business investment in Linux) but it goes even further.
This is just plain disgusting: This is power that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many governments could only dream of having. The power to control the press and the skills contained in this organization are likely capable of disrupting travel, power grids and other broad national infrastructure systems if their demands are not met.
The intent of this leader should be clear and offensive: Obey the new Open Source mafia or we will TEAR IT ALL DOWN!
Equating resistance against honestly distasteful tactics like SCO's groundless power grab or another Microsoft FUD report with terrorism against the state is so rediculously off base that it would be hilarious if the less enlightened didn't actually consider this a valid concern (and they will. the US Gov has gone ape shit over critical infrastructure secrecy. The terror attack that brought down the Russian grid is only going to fan these flames)
The real power of open source and Linux is that it shows without a doubt that cooperative methods of production actually work, and can be vastly more efficient than traditional competitive market based battles where someone always loses and the resources expended in a needless conflict simply wasted.
Open Source should be a model of cooperative and open process - a stark contrast to the often secretive and psychopathic dealings of large corporations directed by executives shielded behind a hierarchial diffusion of responsibility and completely beyond any form of authentic accountability.
that shows what the word FUD means.
Ooo,the ope source conspiracy, we'll take over the world by DoSing articles with slashdot and by writing angry letters to editors!
yes, and soon you will lose your job because you exposed our worldwide conspiracy, but you can't stop us!
muhahahahaha!
My new blog
Finally I ge to bust out my Fedora and cool Italian style nickname.
Ever notice a trend between stoners and Linux users?
Because I have low karma, I need pills.
Mr Enderle,
Let me prove you wrong...
We don't need to join into a union of any kind before we begin to send you emails with our opinions on what you can do yours.
Retards,
A linux using friend.
- "They misunderestimated me."
I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
When will people stop listening to this man? He has made no sense yet.
There are quite a few FOSS projects that spit in the face of portability. Quite a few are written by programmers who will use Linux specific code in a C/C++ program when there was absolutely no reason to. These are purely userland programs that have hard coded stuff that relies on the system being structured a certain way and have a specific implementation of a specific interface provided (e.g. relying on very specific headers that you're not supposed to directly include, where you're supposed to include higher-level portable headers that indirectly include them).
As a result, the code doesn't work even in BSD systems without tedious, manual modifications to the code.
GHDL is a good and rather frustrating example I've encountered. The author seems to be too apathetic to bother testing it on anything outside of Linux.
Frankly, it sickens me to think that authors don't just make the code *nix specific, but they make it Linux specific for purely userland programs where no special kernel functionality is needed.
Even worse is that many of these projects, especially GUI ones (e.g. KDE and gnome), don't give a shit about having ports to the two most popular platforms--Windows and OS X. It's not that they haven't gotten around to it (after many years), it's that they don't want to integrate it into the code base. There are some porting efforts (kludges), but they will forever refuse to integrate them. The only chance I see of them doing it is if the windows port is actually superior to the X "port." Since when does being a FOSS developer mean you have to be fervently against developing for commercial OSes (especially Windows)?
I think it goes against a basic, core principle of FOSS, in fact. The idea is that the software is supposed to be free (as in speech) for everyone to use. Deliberately limiting it to a tiny portion of users goes against that principle. And the worst part is that a lot of the more naive coders who don't think about this kind of stuff get duped into using non-portable libraries. GTK+ is one of the most popular, if not the most, *nix GUI libs. And yet, GTK+'s still only supports one platform outside of X and that's with an unofficial hack for windows.
may the force be with them.
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
The one thing you really need to make a rep that will strike fear in the hearts of victims and potential rivals is a cool nickname.
I suggest we start thinknig of good ones for well known figures, like "Ricky 'Gnuckles' Stallman". Larry Wall is lucky to practically have a built-in nickname, "Larry the Wall". The Python gang can get behind "Guido Snake-eyes".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Linux is cancer (Ballmer)
Linux is communism (Ballmer)
Linux is a Union
This guy oviousely hasn't done his homework. A great case in point that a "Linux Union" would never come to be is that it has already been tried (at least in one form). United Linux was one effort that was rejected over and over again by the GNU/Linux/OSS community. It was an effort to standardize and it failed horribly (though they called it a success). In fact, every "Linux Geek" I had conversations regarding it was met with sarcasm and disgust at the very thought of it (rightfully so, I believe). Read for yourself...
:)
However, I kind of like the idea of ruling the world...jk
You mean "When our community under fire, you dont want to protect it."
Horsesh*t why all of you go and watch those SW.
And those suckers, who says DDOS ing SCO is bad.
Shut up guyz, or do someting. Whis is war. When you are middle of the line of fire, looking nice is not save your ass.
We are not labor, we are an ARMY.
After the day of GPL BAN, whole internet goes unusable.
Anyone BET ?
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
This crosspost is actually relevent enough to the parent (while ending up looking loopy) enough to be funny.
He's merely paid by someone, group or company to write whatever it is that he writes. If you have the money, I'd expect you could get him to change his tune this afternoon. And he, perhaps only with help of his financers, gets published prominently. So, it's not interesting what he says, but that he has been hired to say it and hired to say it just now.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200505202 05027290
More poor research on Rob Enderle's part.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I think this guy is way off. He implies that the vast majority of Linux supporters participated in attacks on Sys-Con Media and SCO.
While the DOSs in question no doubt cam from a few Linux zealots, I doubt the vast majority were involved.
If, as he implied, most Linux supporters were involved in these attacks, that would make the Linux community more like a terrorist organization, not like a union.
BTW, yes this does mean that the people who did participate in those attacks are terrorists. They were using a threat (of a DOS) to change somebody's (SCO or Sys-Con) actions for a plitical reason (support Linux).
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Freud would be proud.
wha ah remember cd's - an' don' git me started on floppies - I had a stack a'slackware floppies - fifty high, I did, back in my day...
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
The most successful pressure group to date is The Campaign for Real Ale. No other group can compare, nor offer a wider range of beer.
You don't need a lab to make mud.
He doesn't seem to understand than most linux users are just like any ordinary people.
:-).
I don't hate Microsoft or any other corporations, I simply use Linux because it's useful for some of my projects. Period.
All this hype will be gone within few years. New generations will find a new casus belli to fight for.
Sure there are fanatics. But if Linux didn't exist, i'm sure they would have find something else to worship.
I'm pretty sure also than most of these fanatics are just teenagers trying to find ther way. Hardly the core system of a labor union.
If another OS will be proven more reliable, more flexible, less expensive, better designed and better supported. Then I will happily switch to it.
Softwares are just tools for most people.
The only Machine I love is my first computer. A Sinclair Spectrum 16K. I won't launch a vendetta if somebody dares to critics its performance
Olivier
I'm going to use the word "Linux" to refer to the group of people...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Wow. Amazng, ain't it? A pity that, if you only TALK to someone who is a member of the famigerated Linux community, you can see that things are pretty different. But, reality isn't that shiny as fiction is.... therefore, we have this article.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
what a moron
what a moron
I guess he wants to be our leader -
fuck him - who the hell does he think he is.
the article about P.J wasn't journalism - it was complete and utter trash that would be found in the news rags at the grocery store. This is where his article should found too. I let SYS-CON know it too - I canceled my subscription to SYS-ADMIN magazine and told them why - and I applaud the editors at LinuxWorld - they stand behind what they write.
I find it highly degrading that he thinks I am a criminal despot. I wish slashdot wouldn't even post his articles. This guy is nothing but SCO and Microsoft PR.
OSS does not need a leader - that is the power of it - it is the people that control it not ego maniacs like him and the majority of CEO's out there.
So Rob why don't you just go count your SCO and Microsoft stocks somewhere and shut the hell up.
We do not need FUD like yours.
This article is just FUD, but we can use it to our advantage. I don't see much point in forming a union. We and the world would be better served by forming a guild like the ones of old. This would give us absolute control over product and services. Society at large would be better served. The appropriate skill levels for each job could be guaranteed. Apprentice levels would do website development, etc. While Master level technician would develop and maintain critical infrastructure control systems. This would put the control of technical tools and staffing in the place were it belongs - the engineers.
Dose not surprise me one bit,in the end I setup my own lab in a shed on some land,I went the full monty having stuff ripped off numerous times due to small towns and small communities and lack of civil law inforcment.
I have a full blown security sytem including biometric access and CCTV etc.However this is a workshop or Lab or facility.
Due to it never have being done in this area or state before I ignored local council regulations to the most part and created a big stir in the process.
First the local council thought I was living in my Lab,and next they thought I was running a fortune 500 company and did not like me at all.
80% of this activity was in the name of actually being able to R&D in OSS.(couriers coming and going,me buzzing about too and from my job down the road etc)
The locals can't stand me,my shed and my way of doing things was too much for them,just the locals moving from their sleeply homes to come at look at my shed in the middle of the night and see the lights on through high tint glass is enough to make them go crazy.
In the end I approached the council for a facility that I could opperate from,however no such thing exists or is possible under regulation anywhere in the state.
You cannot opperate(bussiness) 24hours a day unless the land zoning is industrial,however you cannot live onsite of an industrial zoned area,which is pretty much required for any serious R&D,Home bussiness applications are possible however with real limits that i would be sure to break,such as driving around in the middle of the night playing with my new homemade FM transmittor so to speak or wirless access device,so on.
I was advised a rural setting for my home bussiness development and just try to not distrurb anyone.Anything the local council could come up with was half assed and really dodgy.
I accept I live in a consumer locked country,however you would think that there was a little room for private R&D.
I say private because this wacked out government funds companies that want to R&D and gives them tax cuts.
What do you think i am doing now?
Linux Geeks are fat slobs who live in their parents basement. They never shower and play video games all night.
Here is his info.
Haven't they taken over the world already !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
Alas, it probably means you get to wear an overcoat made from discarded AOL CDs and carry Fedora Core 4-beta in a violin case.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
In many companies there exists a huge difference in compensation between the management (particularly the CEOs) and the folks that actually make and service the products. There is also an increasing tendency for executives to treat employees (particularly IT employees) as disposable assets, and you have what appears to be an increasing lack of respect for the competence of management in the industry.
I agree wholeheartedly. I would even go so far as to say that most managers have *no managerial skills whatsoever*, and are paranoid and afraid of what I can do.
But the difference here is that I'm not a "linux geek"; I'm a "windows geek", and I get the sneaky suspicion that I'm *not* the kind of geek he wants to include in that definition.
I hate to break it to the author, but IT specialists, AS A WHOLE, generally loathe the incompetence, micro-management, and self-centeredness that our superiors offer. It doesn't matter which OS a person prefers or enjoys.
Managers often pride themselves on the fact that they "may not know a whole lot of technical details" but that they "are great at managing". Oh bull, the good managers are the ones that don't talk themselves up or feel a need to "establish their superiority" over those of us that work for them.
I can do great things, but the less I see of my manager, the better quality work I do. There's nothing more sickening than seeing a coworker and a supervisor clashing at work over which is the better "manager".
Yes, they will, but at least afterwards you can go home, login, and make them cease to exist.
Or you can just learn to fight, but that takes all the humor out of the post.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case? Hmmmm..dunno that id own up to wearing a fedora, might prefer my /. hat and shirt -- http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/hats/2996/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/apparel/golfshirts/6620/
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Oh, wait. Geeks can't get married, right? :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
While you're looking, check out the history of the Union's at Eastern Air Lines, what, there's no Eastern Air Lines?? Gee, could be that strike they took at the end, which left most of the employees without retirement benefits, or at least 50% reduced, oh yea, and out of a job!
Yea, I'd agree there's good and bad in unions, just like companies.
Crap. Competition.
Nonaggression works!
You should go back to school as a teacher, there is no shortage of 'crap mastery'; it seems to be pretty common to become a 'master of crap'.
Think global, act loco
Would be a shame if, uh, anything were to... happen to it.
Slashdot editors, you really should not have posted this story. As a short-term business decision it was probably fine, fueling as it will the frenzied website advertising feedback loop that drives hordes of users to and fro.
But as a long term business decision, and as a moral matter, publishing this article was probably a bad idea. Besides being false and malicious, it is damaging to the Linux community.
I was playing with http://www.gizoogle.com/ and subjected this discussion to it's translation engine. this is what it did to your post:
This homey can hear me. Ergo, here's W-H-to-tha-izzat I hizzle ta say:
You're dead wrong. You're so wrong it's amaz'n. In trippin' comparizzles between unions, large corporizzle n movements, you is being mizzle tizzy mildly unwise, n mak'n yoself look like, in so mizzle ways, someone who is both paid ta K-N-to-tha-izzow W-H-to-tha-izzat he's rapping `bout, n completely unaware of what he is rapping `bout. Yo article is more of a 'run away from Linux' pile of blunt-rollin' bison-dung thizzan almost dippin' else I have read in years fo' sheezy. The particizzles incident you is mention'n was a case of invasion of privacy. Wizzle Microsoft's minions ta have they privacy invaded - or, God Forbid, tha Great Bizzay have His Privacy Infringed Upon - tizzle would be shot, stabbed, sued, n thizzay they family would have had ta eat tha body fo` lack of charity frizzom all tha scared peons around tizzy. Whoeva paid you ta find some way ta portray negatively tha Linux community n Open Source Movement certainly gots whiznat they paid for cuz its a doggy dog world.
Secondly, ta tha difference between movements, unions, n corporizzles . Listen to how a motherfucker flow shit: Corporizzles is pimp profit, n only profit. Corporizzles is bereft of certain interpizzle skills, not being thugz n all. They're treated like thugz coz of - essentially - historizzle need that is in some ways outdated n some ways still around. Unions is bands of brotha attempt'n ta equal tha gang bangin' field any way they C-to-tha-izzan, n live betta lives by negotiat'n as a group. Movements have a call'n. Movements want ta makes weed-smokin' cracka fo` everyone involved by chang'n tha very play'n field . Real niggas recognize the realness.. Where unions attempt ta negotiate as a whole, movements simply happen. Tizzle happen fo` completely different reasons from unions or corporizzles . Chill as I take you on a trip. In tha case of tha Open Source Movement, it has happened not fo` profit, but fo` efficiency. The Open Source Movement has happened in response ta copyright law mak'n tha professions of so many intelligent thugz frustratingly inefficient in a closed, corporizzles trade-sizzle based environment . Fo'-fo' desert eagle to your motherfuckin' dome. In response ta they frustration, due ta smizzart thugz not doing tha same thing twice, n really smizzay thugz not saggin' ta do tha same thing anyone else has dizzle ever before, 'nerds' have started ta share. In tha name of efficiency, not accumulated negotizzles n shit. If you look at tha thugz behind open source, you look at tha thugz who pizzy it forward tha mizzay they're tha ones who benefit through being able ta USE it as M-to-tha-izzuch as anyone else. The sponsors n creators is work'n in tha name of efficiency, that thing captialism is supposed ta drive tha hardest. And many of thizzem have managed ta makes huge amounts of money along tha way. Not B-to-tha-izzill Style Money, whizzay is apparently all you're paid ta respect, but money that they're spendin' ta put bizzle into tha community that helped tizzy git where they ended up.
As far as I'm concerned, Slashdot doesn't need thugz like you peep'n in. You D-to-tha-izzon't git it paper'd up. I'd love ta say this wit a lowa user ID, but this is all I've got, n I say you're fifteen years olda tizzle me n not as perceptive `bout what you're rapping `bout, despite being paid.
[This space for rent]
I suppose, but how would you arrange to prevent the 1928A1 from damaging the cd's if the case was inadvertantly dropped or otherwise jostled?
The 1928A1? Thats to enforce the GPL with...
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
I'll start out by acknowledging that labor unions have done some good in the past. Now, however, they are bastions of mediocrity. They actually punish the exceptional, but treating them the same as the rank and file. Now, ego not withstanding, I'm better than the average software developer (well, mybe not when it comes to spelling, but who says that's important?). And I refuse to be lumped in with the incompetents and barely there people that I encounter from time to time. I think I can do a lot better on my own than with the help of any union. So I'm kinda hoping for the whole organized crime thing to happen. I always wanted to be a crimial, I just never had the nerve!
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
"Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora and carry my distro CDs in a violin case?"
Oh, we weren't supposed to be doing this already? That's why those windows admins call me Fat Tony. I thought it was just because I was a fat guy named Anthony.
Wouldnt it be awsome? A group of geeks that agreed? It would be like something notable.
Im afraid it couldnt last long though. It would probably fall apart as soon as someone said the words "RedHat" or "Bitkeeper".
Wouldnt you agree RedHat?
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
because of debacles like ENRON, World Com, United Airlines, and the hundreds of smaller corporations which have abandon ethical treatment of employees and retirees just so stock holders and high level management can "earn" millions salaries and bonuses while driving their companies to bankruptcy.
These mental midgets think "offshoring" of manufacturing, jobs, and lower and middle management, caused by NAFTA, can allow them to maintain high profits and 'earn' their outrageous incomes and perks.
Did they ever stop to think that by moving the jobs overseas these companies are destroying the very economic groups that can afford to purchase the products they no longer make in this country?
People have lost their homes and retirement incomes and at 70 years of age, just when they expected to be living in their own homes and enjoying a modest retirement income, now live in rented slums eating one meal a day and stand in the Walmart employment lines because some greedy stock holders and CEOs want to live on 100 to 1000 times the income of the best paid workers.
Working at Walmart gives them 37 hours a week at about $10-15/hr with no benefits. If you are 'luckly enough' to be promoted to manager you get to work 60 hours a week at about the same rate.
The "Walmart" syndrome has even worse effects. First, it destroys the many mom&pop businesses which formerly supplied living wages to many people. Those people then end up working for poor wages at Walmart. That forces them to shop for the cheap Chinese junk sold at Walmart because they can no longer afford the higher quality, and higher priced, American made goods. If they can afford to own a car it is the cheaply made imports.
What these people haven't lost is their right to vote. It may be too late for the retirees recently robbed of their retirement, but those in their 40's and 50's can see the handwriting on the wall. They are next. Expect to see a HUGE shift in the political climate in the country in the coming elections.
After describing a DOS service and e-mail attack on the publisher of an article that portrays a woman in an unintelligible light (I can't figure out what the original article was about), Enderle writes:
"This is power that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many governments could only dream of having. The power to control the press and the skills contained in this organization are likely capable of disrupting travel, power grids and other broad national infrastructure systems if their demands are not met."
That statement is shortsighted and naive. It's also a rather irresponsible.
Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco - those companies can easily disrupt services on a massive scale. Look at blaster, sasser, etc. - what if the manufacturer (with their intimate and proprietary knowledge of the inner workings of their subsystems) intentionally did something along those lines?
Once infected, we would be for all intents and purposes be completely at their mercy for resolution.
Fortunately ethics and common sense prevent them from doing that (or has thusfar).
Perhaps I'm taking Enderle's article the right way, but it seems to me that a few crackpot OpenSource users out there who read this article as if it were a manifesto might feel justified in unleashing unspeakable havoc over the public Internet and against corporations and other services...which ultimately may not produce their desired results.
Climbing off the soapbox.
-Al
Will linux users form a mob? Personally i doubt it. Considering that most linux users (at the present time at least) are geeks (with low self respect) they will not take any decisive action. They'll probably wait for others to see the true power of linux and convert.
Think.
As long as there are people like you supporting Linux I doubt very much we will look at it as being either successful or good for much of
anything over time. Threats and name calling are hardly the tools of intelligent adults and I have little doubt that if they represent your behavior you'll be out of a job long before I am. You see, Microsoft doesn't have to pay me, I point out problems with Linux and Open Source because people like you convince me they exist. If you look back at where this all started for me, you'll see that this is true and maybe get a clue. The fact you even need to fabricate a lie like this indicates I'm much closer to the truth then you are.
You see, in my world there is no excuse for behavior like this, none. It is people like you who give Linux a bad name.
By the way, since you appear to be an American, you might want to read up on Free Speech.
Don't write again I have absolutely no desire to communicate with people like you.
Rob Enderle
Principal Analyst
Enderle Group
389 Photinia Lane
San Jose, CA 95127
renderle@enderlegroup.com
(408) 272-8560 work
(408) 272-8554 home
(408) 832-6326 cell
(408) 904-5274 eFAX
www.enderlegroup.com
Rob Enderle wrote:
> Threats and name calling are hardly the tools of
> intelligent adults
But you an support calling OSS people "terrorists", "communists", linking us to people being laid off and destitute, connect us to any number of other negative things, and this ISN'T "name calling"?
And you support a fake "journalist" who harasses somebody's mother just to print an attack piece on someone SCO doesn't like, a piece which has been rightly condemned by journalists everywhere as "beyond the pale", and you say this ISN'T "name calling"?
> You see, Microsoft doesn't have to pay me, I point out problems with Linux and Open Source
> because people like you convince me they exist. If you look back at
> where this all started for me, you'll see that this is true and maybe
> get a clue. The fact you even need to fabricate a lie like this
> indicates I'm much closer to the truth then you are.
"A few years back, when I was first starting out as an analyst, I got myself into a lot of hot water by doing something I knew was wrong to prevent a crime from being committed. I am both an ex-auditor and an ex-sheriff and took the related vows very seriously and still, for the most part, live by them.
By all accounts I would have lost my job and probably had to change careers again if it weren't for Bill Gates personally coming to my defense and pointing out that what I did probably kept a lot of folks out of jail. He didn't have to do that and, to this day I doubt he even remembers he did, but I remember.
A few years later Steve Ballmer invested a great deal in our company on my word, although this agreement grew well beyond my intent and control, after taking the money, we started to destroy the value that Steve had relied upon. I made the call to Steve and suggested he move to cover his own ass and had an instant day off. I knew the risks but it was my word, and trust is also incredibly important to me. Steve protected my job in return."
You recognize the above text? You want to tell me again how you have no ax to grind for Microsoft?
Now to mention that I've told you before what your admission that you're an ex-sheriff means to anybody who can read. You made your living throwing your weight around long before you got into IT, apparently. You have no conscience and no balls. I KNOW cops - they're the most gutless punks walking the street. They can't go up against anybody without "backup". They taser sixty-year-old women and five-year-old kids. They need sixteen cops to beat a drunk black man.
> You see, in my world there is no excuse for behavior like this, none.
In MY world, there is no excuse for people deliberat
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Calling all Linux geeks, calling all Linux geeks ... a DOS attack is needed at the above address. Reply immediately or face the consequences of being thrown out of the order of Linux geeks!
It would mostly consist of fumbled star trek jokes and limp wristed slapping.
I took the time to read this article and haven't seen this kind of crap taken seriously even when written in slashdot comments.
The article is starts right off with the statement that the author is going to abuse terminology...
And he does follow through on the promise to twist, abuse and pervert every possible viewpoint, conveniently ignoring whatever obvious flaws exist in logic or ethics of the viewpoints.
It implies that harrassment and character assassination are legitamate forms of journalism and rebuttal is censorship. It shows SCO as an oppressed innocent with no regard to an validity of claim. It makes vague conspiracy allusions
It speciously tries to link the technology sector to the manufacturing sector implying that unions could form soley because there are lots of people, power and organization.
All to make the point that FOSS believers might stop thinking for themselves and follow the directions of a corrupted union that could gain control of the mindless mass.
This is so superficial that it is pathetic. Make horrible allegations against a group to get noteriety and point at any rebuttal saying "see! I told you they are bullies"
I fully expect the next column this guy puts out to go in depth into "how the 'Linux' attacked me for exposing them!"
If we are going to post articles that attack something, at least pick things that are thought provoking, not mindless drivel like this.
Even if no stories get put there, just by giving the editors this option, it might make them pause half a second and think (or god forbid read) before posting such anti-Linux FUD stories on the front page.
The editors are perpetuating the FUD problem not just by feeding the anti-Linux trolls, but by burying them in a month's supply of tasty troll-chow every time a story like this hits the front page.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Does this mean I get to wear a cool fedora ... ?
As long as its a red one, you should be good to go.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
No, it means Rob Enderle is a fucking moron.
Clearly, Mr. Enderle is on crack. I mean, his name is an anagram for Mr. Needler, for crying out loud!
The weavers of Lyons, the Paris Commune and the Catalan factory workers beg to differ.
The Free Software and Open Source movements closely parallel the spontaneously formed associations of skilled craftsmen and labourers that were at the core of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century Anarchist movements, most closely the Syndicalist Anarchists.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I grew up in a union family in the 60s and 70s so I have an inside perspective. I don't want to be in a union, ever. What you have to understand is what I have come to call the "union mentality". Geekdom is largely a meritocricy. Individuals are recognized/rewarded based on talent. A union is as far from a meritocricy as you can get. The central basis of a union is the notion of the "collective" (e.g. collective barganing, etc). I am absolutely unwilling to give up being able to strike my own employment bargans. I will on stop doing non-union development only when they pull this keyboard out of my cold, dead fingers.