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Open Source Not That Open?
mstansberry writes "At the Open Source Business Conference last week, Microsoft's Shared Source mouthpiece Jason Matusow argued the point that open source isn't really open. He said you can't just go changing code on supported Linux offerings without paying extra to companies like Red Hat or Novell. So as Linux is commercialized, it becomes less open. While Matusow made good points during his presentation, many in the open source community are skeptical of the idea at best."
on what your definition of "open" is. Same defense, different Bill.
An objective evaluation from the leader in open source.
Come on... Microsoft!??!
It's a Microsoft spokesman saying it, it MUST be true!
sigfault. core dumped.
...if you're running something like RedHat Or Novell. Of course, for those running Gentoo, or Debian, or Slackware, or Peanut, or whatever, it still holds.
libertarianswag.com
Matsuow says: "you need to understand why you want to open certain software"
Now, presuming that he is disregarding any ideas of software being closed to *hem* increase profit, he doesn't really seem to get the idea...
I'd say that if anything, you should need to understand why you want to _close_ certain software.
Is this stupid? Or is this just what Microsoft would like to believe?
There are far, far too many forks of existing packages just because people didn't like the way they were headed ande split off a development track to reach what they considered the goal.
I tell you, if there was a similar track to split off "geegaws" from real GUI development on XP, that's what I would be running! Instaed, I run Gentoo, 'cause Microsoft is in control!
His entire argument is that if you make changes to the source code, Red Hat support won't debug your modifications for you as part of their basic support package.
I can do whatever the hell I want with GPL'd open source, short of refusing to share my changes when distributing binaries to other users. Microsoft has all these licenses, but AFAIK they've released nothing of worth under any of them. I can't view or modify any significant Microsoft source without signing an NDA and paying millions of dollars, or risking serious prison time.
The key word here is "supported", you can't expect Redhat, Novell or even Microsoft to support your modifications.
If you don't want official support from any vendor, you modify away - and support it yourself.
Microsoft software isn't all that closed. There are always open holes to exploit.
sarchasm
It's open. You just can't force someone else to change their codebase. If you really want to change it you make and maintain a patchset or your own seperate version of the codebase. Look at how many different kernel sources you can get, yet very few of those patchset ever get applied to the "real" kernel at kernel.org.
The point is you can do whatever you want with the code, but you can't force someone else to use it. I mean think about it. Imagine a code repository where every developer could write anything and it was fully open. It would never build. Code that is good enough usually gets accepted upstream, that darwinistic process helps open source, not the opposite.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm not a linux zealot (I use Win2000, Knoppix, and OpenBSD and most of the time only the Win2000) but I still say this is pure FUD etc.
/. has begun selling pagehits?).
I read the article and it's as thin as water. Nothing to see here (move along), not even anything real to discuss here (except perhaps that
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
From Wikipedia. Whatever you think about M$, the distinction between "open source" and "shared source" will be worth knowing going forward, and I'm skeptical of any source that claims Linux was the province of "the blue-haired ponytail set" in 2001. I don't even know what that means.
"Someone somewhere had to wear pants for the first time. The meek and indecisive do not change our world." -Montville
A company buys an 'enterprise' Linux distribution exactly because the rate of change has been slowed, and that they don't want to internally manage the code updates. Redhat has priced their offering based on what they know they support, so if a client wants support beyond that they have to pay for it. However, support for a open source product has an upper bound - the cost to hire someone full time to support it.
Equivalently, if a company standardized on Debian Stable, then its going to be harder to get a patch with a new feature into it.
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
Perhaps. But even so, the end user remains free to make changes. Even if the license (oddly) prohibited redistribution, supplying the source code to software with the software itself will always be better that not. Closed source is a dead end. End users have no choice, they must rely on the vendor to issue security patches and fix software.
This is not to say that every user will be tempted to change his/her software. The majority of users will be content with what is, and may not even be aware that the source is available. The freedom still exists, however.
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
Many distros only come only with open source programs by default. Which you can go yourself and change without paying anyone anything.
And the Linux kernel is also open. Just don't expect your changes to necessarily go into effect on the 'official' kernel. Just like the MS's shared source code will have 1 official version and then whatever the customers changed out there which they can't even share with each other because they signed NDAs and whatnot up the wazoo just to see the code. Unlike Linux.
MS, stop attacking Linux and mind your own business. You have less and less credibility when you keep attacking Open Source in general with your FUD and your customers are catching on. It's better to salvage what dignity you have and shut up. If and when you stop spreading FUD, your credibility might go up and you can stop spending billions advertising yourself and attacking others. But then, that would totally go against the grain of what is a marketing company, not a software engineering company.
That's a new meaning for the phrase "lock things down" that I hadn't heard before. I don't believe redhat locks anything down. The customer might be responsible for fixing problems with their own changes, but that wouldn't affect the support that redhat provides (i.e. so long as the problem was not caused by a customer change).
In effect, it's more FUD from M$. They really appear desperate now, grasping at any possible argument against Open Source. I didn't see the M$ spokesman telling the audience that Microsoft would support its own software which had been altered by customers.
So Mr Matusow, please explain again, how a license which allows customers to do more than your license allows is bad for those customers? That's like the RIAA claiming that 20-more years of copyright post death of author is good for the consumer.
If your paying for support, which the article implies, then of course if you customize your kernel and system over a standard patch level, then yes, the support should cost more.
AFAIK, one can still get those distros without having to buy a support contract.
That's not really the point. First of all you CAN alter the source if your need is desperate enough. Thus if some app needs your change you can weigh the pros and cons of blowing support vs getting the enhancement. - CHOICE. Secondly, if Red Hat dies and goes broke you have the source. Thirdly, you can make your enhancement and submit it to the maintainer and with a bit of luck it will come out in the next version of RedHat as the official supported version. Fourthly, somebody else might scratch the same itch and submit the patch which comes out in the next version.
What TFA is saying (while being overly general) is that when you move outside of the box to an unsupported configuration, you lose support -- and if you want support, you'll pay through the nose for it.
What the article doesn't say, is that M$ has the exact same stance. You run 3rd party software with Microsoft Exchange, you lose support from Microsoft on not only Exchange, but probally your install of Windows 2003 Advance Server. Go read your EULAs from top-to-bottom, and you'll see what I mean. For any Microsoft product.
God I hate people slinging FUD around.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
For a while, I ran Red Hat.
Why is Bob Young posting as AC? Come on, Bob, show some backbone - we won't be that hard on you!
"He's a god; it'll take more than one shot." â" Lady Eboshi, Mononoke Hime
I mean, if I were to change the Linux memory manager and ask for support from Red Hat, RH might have an issue with that. And if I were to change the Windows XP memory manager...
Um, where do I get the source code for the Windows XP memory manager?
In the meanwhile, those who know and care will buy the best option available, while looking at historical data for reliability, TCO, and ownership experience... and then laugh at those who run the American software/vehicle upgrade treadmill.
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From TFA:
"Shared source is Microsoft's foray into community development, started back in 2001 when Linux was just a hobby for the blue-haired ponytail set."
WTF?!
The point of contention is open source vs. standardized distribution. Once you make a modification, your code base is no longer the "standard" distribution, be it RedHat, gentoo, or Slack. Therefore you really can't get support for it, free or otherwise (what, are you going to post on a forum "well, I tweaked this and this..."). So as Linux pushes towards standardization effectively the open-ness is still there and available to you but is marginalized in the sense that once you make changes then you aren't standard anymore.
It's not a distribution thing its a philosophical thing.
To make an allusion to a situation I have at work: we use a framework for development, and I have a tweaked copy I use for a pet project. But I don't dare ask for support on it, because I made modifications to the code beyond the specifications of the code. I can do that, because I am a developer and have rights to the codebase, etc. but then its no longer a standard. I can't expect it to support other applications built for the main framework and vice versa, etc...
But in truth he makes a point - the core of the OS in general doesn't need to be messed with, most tweaks and alterations do/should occur at the application level.
Just my 2 cents worth,
-everphilski-
Never believe anything to be true, until Micorosft says it isn't.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
FTA "Microsoft's philosophy is to only share code where it makes sense, with a specific goal in mind." ...
What's the "specific goal"? anyone? anyone
sarchasm
You can make all the changes you want. What he is describing is a limitation on the support certain companies provide.
It's a bit like saying that Slashdot isn't free to visit - because if you do it at work you might get fired. It's true, you might get fired, but that's because of the terms of your employment, it's not a property of Slashdot.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This is why people like me bitch about being forced to use Redhat because vendors are retarded and think Linux means "Redhat".
I'm a fan of portable software. Why, for instance, are tools like Verilog compilers not 100% portable? They're userspace text reading applications. Not like they need something from a kernel other than a heap and a file system.
Every time someone tells you "I use word" or "We only support $DISTRO" tell them "then you don't get my money".
That'll curb this idiocy fairly quick.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Scientist just discovered that air is not completely free! Researchers at Phillips Morris institute have completed a study that calculates the number of millicalories required for each breath of fresh air. This study is demonstrates that the air you breath is not entirely free but requires expenditure of energy and coordination of dozens of different muscles. This study is being release just prior to the companies announcement of a new product that uses a rechargable battery operated turbo-enhanced tobacco injection system.
We have made changes then submitted the patches to RedHat.
Redhat eventually picked up the changes and we had a fully supported system again.
You can't do that with closed source since you can't make the modifications in the first place.
Yes Microsoft and some other companies offer shared source or somewhat open source. However do they give you enough that you could build it yourself, make changes and put it into production? I don't know since I haven't seen them myself but I would bet not. Being able to see the code and being able to build and run the code are two drastically different things. If anyone knows if you can actually build say a full Windows XP system from what Microsoft will share with you I would love to know.
The other major issue is that with open source if the vendor goes under or decides to discontinue that product you have the option of maintaining it yourself for as long as you want. You can't do that with closed source. This part gets especially bad with product activation.
MS continues to beat up on linux cause they realize more and more what a threat OSS is.
When someone hates on you, take it as a hidden compliment.
Keep drinking that HATER-AID M$, we be loving it.
"Freedom and Justice for All" is a registered trademark of The United States Govt Inc. Not available in all areas.
By reading those comments I get an odd sensation that Microsoft is trying to use "developers, developers, developers" like a bunch of highly exploitable hippie enthusiasts.
diegoT
And i suppose its possible to change the code for a small fee in Windows then? Not? STFU then.
Ofcourse RedHat cant support somebody elses code, the programmer changing the code might as well be a monkey and there is no way RedHat can magically fix things if an idiot sits down and hits the keyboard with a pillow. What you can do is send those fixes upstream and if the fixes are good it will get incorporated into the next release.
HTTP/1.1 400
So I guess they are right: RedHat won't support a patch from out of the blue (say a patch I made for my ultra-custom setup) without testing (which might cost RH consult billable time).
But that isn't a big deal because MS doesn't either. It isn't like MS will support driver modification from ATI let alone anything I could come up with either so what is the advantage of MS's way?
I'm not sure where the pay through the nose thing came from but between Taos, Whitebox, Centos et al I don't see having a supported distro a big expense. If you want changes that might break something you make sure you don't. Big deal. How Microsoft competing against that? And on what planet wouldn't changes to the core operating system be problematic?
Quack, quack.
Redhat wont go the extra mile to support some code that they have supplied and I have modified.
Wow that's preposterous.
What next? Ford wont honour my new vehicle warranty if I modify the engine?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Whew!
:)
(Look @ the "penguins" going crackers...)
*
Hehe, well, all I can say @ this point is this:
"Mock not the OS of the penguins, lest ye incur their fearsome WrAtH!!!"
(Even IF what is said is fact! Lord knows, penguins get their non-existent feathers all ruffled if you tell the truth about their precious Linux!)
Don't get me wrong - Linux IS good stuff, but if somebody makes a point about the "open-ness" of Linux NOT being that open? Well, read this thread in its replies body entirety & get a HUGE laff!
APK
P.S.=> LOL! Ok, guys, take it easy now... the statement does have a point, in that apparently Novell for example demands its tribute if you play with the innards of their SuSe variant of Linux! apk
Oh, but there's more. If your mods are excellent and usefull, they might be rolled into the upstream sources and officially "supported" by having others continue to mod and improve things for you. That's why programs like the GNU debugger have 87 authors, which is way more resources than any "traditional" company can afford to lavish on any program.
This is a typical Microsoft smear that should backfire every time. They take their perceived weaknesses and project them onto others. This form is more insulting than most. The unstated argument is, "When X grows up, they will be just like us in all the bad ways but lack our strengths." Everytime some M$ spokesvole says something like this, rest assured it's an admission they don't have something people really want, they are not going to provide it and someone else does it better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
it has more security holes than a Swiss cheese.
So, it is not the lack of openness that bugs me with MS software, quite the contrary...
Oh well, what the hell...
Here they go again, saying that Red Hat equals Linux. Hey I got one word for their comparison... CentOS. It's RedHat EL without all the trademarked stuff. And yes, they could make all the changes and offer it under CentOS if they wish. Their big point is that changes to Redhat's codebase isn't going to go back into Redhat's Final Product necessarilly.
So? Roll your own distro. Can you do that with Windows? No. Can I tweak XP and sell it as my own? No. Better yet, can I tweak the codebase for Windows Server 2003 so that I have a company wide distro for our internal systems? Hell no.
I'm sorry but this Microspin Doctor's argument looks to be in beta still. As per usual, I don't expect Microsoft's final argument to be worth anything until the third release.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
In summary - deviate from the standard and your support costs go up.
I was in a meeting recently regarding platform development (i.e. the company sells the entire box, hardware and software to their customers). The talk of porting the app to Linux came up and the chief honcho dismissed it as neither a benefit nor a loss.
His point was that their product requires certain OS-level customizations. They can either purchase these customizations from a proprietary-source OS vendor and pay out the wazoo for them, or they can contract for them in Linux and pay out the wazoo for support on linux. Either way, money is flying out of his wazoo.
In addition, he made the point that his company's core-competency is not in building OSes, so building and maintaining their own linux distribution is considered a high-risk/low-reward endeavour.
He had a point, and it was pretty close to this MS rep's point. In this company's case, part of moving to linux was also moving to cost-effective (i.e. cheap) commodity hardware, and away from proprietary (expensive) "big iron" unix systems. So, in his case the value is really in moving from overpriced hardware to the "sweet-spot" in the commodity hardware market. But, from this MS rep's point of view - Windows and Linux are already both in that sweet-spot, which takes that argument away from the pro-linux crowd.
So, my point here is that despite trying to define the problem in terms of "open" (which it has little to do with) the MS rep does have a reasonably valid point - customization costs money no matter how you go about it.
But, the MS rep's point starts to fall apart when you ask how manys customers actually need customizations? Since the vast majority of proprietary software is one-size-fits-all, sticking with proprietary versus Free gets you nothing special. Might as well go with a standardized linux install and worry about officialy support for an official release.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
OK -
first off, the argument went like this:
Say you're running SAP or some other large enterprise system. Say it's running on Linux. The fact that it's Open Source doesn't gain you much. You're extremely unlikely to be able to change things as companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. all specify exactly which versions of some of the various fiddly bits of Linux they support running their application on. If you deviate from those supported configurations - they don't support it.
And guess what - it's true.
Oracle isn't into supporting you bump-reving your kernel, and your upgrading to the latest c lib. They'll test a working stack - identify known issues (and work-arounds) - and that becomes a "known good" configuration. So - while you can do whatever you want with the source, that doesn't mean that other people are obligated to support it.
In any case - it's sort of a straw man argument. The fact of the matter is (and he even pointed this out) for the most part most people just use software. They aren't interested in actually modifying it in any way (substantively speaking). They aren't going to look at the source code, change it and re-compile it. Only 1% or 2% of software users are in that class. So realistically the fact that you can modify the source isn't such a huge advantage in practice. Other people have cited here what the real benefits are: Freedom of choice - you can still choose to make the change and support it yourself, and security - if the company supplying your software goes away, you still have the source...
And I see a lot of people reiterating the following OoC (Out of Context):
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
What he meant by that - and clarified - was that Red Hat has supported configurations, and other software vendors upstream (Oracle, SAP) have supported configurations. They "lock things down" (not in the literal sense, damn us programmers are always soooo literal - I'm suprised more of us aren't fundies) to provide value - is simply saying they limit the scope of what they support... Deviations from those known configurations are not generally well supported. I'm very curious about how well Red Hat supports the following on the current set of it's "Enterprise" edition:
1> Downgrade a core component such as the C Lib, or similar library or set of system utilities that a lot of the system relies on.
2> Upgrade a core component as above.
3> Crossgrade a component like the file system to a different one.
Once that's been done, I'm also wondering what kind of support you'd get out of a company like Oracle or SAP...
Now with that flamebait title I should get some curious readers :D.
The most un-open thinkg about open-source I'd have to say is GCC. It encourages you to use it extensions*. To me one of the core concepts of freedom is portability/being free from vendor lock-in... well GCC does not provide that. IIRC Intel's CC can't compile the Linux kernel... so now you are locked into using GCC. How this is any different from Microsoft's "embrace and extend" I cannot fathom; nor do I assume RMS to have any nobler intentions than Bill Gates from that matter (both insane genius off on self-serving crusades which may accidently benefit others).
What if I'm on a platform not supported by GCC or one for which GCC produces poor binaries or I have special tools for a particular compiler etc?
*(I've read release notes where they begrudged removing an extension when becoming more compliant and there is a comment about not trying to check for ANSIness in the man page)
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
This is really nothing more than another Microsoft expression of arrogance.
I mean they do have the singularity OS....
But so what? IT wasn't free for your programmers to make that change in the first place--why would it be free to get somebody else to support your changes? Unless they get incorporated into the distro, you really should expect additional expense from supporting custom software--whatever OS you use. Show me one vendor that will support your random custom software changes without any kind of fee and I'll show you a stock to short-sell.
Who did what now?
Recent study done by Microsoft employees shows a link between all known cancers and using non-Microsoft software. One spokesperson was quoted as having said "Macs? Yeah you can use them, if you want football sized tumors in your brain."
What TFA is saying (while being overly general) is that when you move outside of the box to an unsupported configuration, you lose support -- and if you want support, you'll pay through the nose for it.
It should be noted that by "unsupported configuration" the OP means "Grabbing the source code, making various changes, recompiling the code and installing it." He doesn't mean going into the menu and unticking a box.
Oh please.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft will turn down your money for a support call on a Windows XP BSOD because you have installed Firefox? I doubt it.
I've had MS in both Australia and the US assisting in the resolution of an Exchange issue (to pick your choice of server app) where the servers had non-MS antivirus, non-MS drivers, HW vendor management software, unsigned code ... and nary a peep from any of the specialists [sic] they employ about "We won't support it because you've installed non-MS software".
Perhaps you meant to say that MS may require you to help reproduce the problem without the non-MS software installed? And yes they will - but that's normal troubleshooting procedure. Find the minimum product set in which the problem surfaces.
Would you like to troubleshoot a kernel panic on $DISTRO with 50 different apps from 50 different vendors, and not get the product set to a minimum state? Would you prefer any $DISTRO support org to say something like "You've got a program installed from another vendor. Since you're paying by the hour, we'll just work with it as is. You probably shouldn't try to save everyone's time and money - and get your system running faster - by minimising the problem app set." And don't fool yourself - the cost of a support incident is set according to the amount of time estimated to solve the average problem. If you make all support calls take twice as long, your Linux support will be twice as expensive too (as will MS, Oracle, IBM, etc etc etc).
Anti-MS FUD is still FUD.
Say you're running SAP or some other large enterprise system. Say it's running on Linux. The fact that it's Open Source doesn't gain you much. You're extremely unlikely to be able to change things as companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. all specify exactly which versions of some of the various fiddly bits of Linux they support running their application on. If you deviate from those supported configurations - they don't support it.
The problem here is that Oracle and SAP are closed source. If you're running a large system on Oracle, you might as well be using Solaris on a Sun box. But take something that is running on all open source software, and your choices for who to get support from can increase.
I mean, if I were to change the Linux memory manager and ask for support from Red Hat, RH might have an issue with that. And if I were to change the Windows XP memory manager... Um, where do I get the source code for the Windows XP memory manager?
Strangely enough I have a friend who did just that. Now the research project he was working on had been granted access to Windows NT source after signing NDAs but the license was transferable if the project moved to another university, they were not prohibitted from publishing, etc. It was a pretty reasonable deal.
Some customers have source as well for the very reason many around here trumpet open source, they want the ability to make changes *iff* necessary. I know I've been very fortunate in alwyas being able to get employers to purchase source licenses for libraries we wanted to use, not the less expenside binary only licenses. It always seems to have paid off.
So open source's advantage is not that you get access to source, it is that little guys get access to source. When you are a big enough and you are buying enough everything is negotiable, even access to source code.
They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
Biased much? No, to provide value they don't need to lock things down (although last I heard DRM wasn't intalled on Linux distro's, you don't need a registration key to use a distro, you don't have to call up to register your installation. I'd hate to see what Matusow claims Windows is, if he believes Linux is locked down). To provide SUPPORT they need to lock it down. Linux has been able to offer value in it's distro's for years without locking it down. Although value is subjective, so I'm sure many MS cronies will disagree.
Cigarettes not really deadly? Ocean not really blue? Microsoft not really a megademon?
That's just frelling stupid. Like the MS QC talking head I heard a the PNSQC conference recently who said he didn't use any open source testing tools because if he did then he would be forced to give away the source to Windows.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22definition +of+is+is e .html
...and some of the entries show the Bush crew getting involved in the game
An especially interesting entry:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sjblatt/notes/nottru
America isn't really the land of the free, because not anyone can vote in an election. To provide leadership, even America has to lock down it's election process. Not only do you have to be an American citizen to vote, you have to be over 18 and be registered with a particular party, and also provide your home of residence and keep it up to date.
NOTE: This was intended as satire.
If you go with Open Source, you have the option to spend time/money to fix things. If you really need to fix things, that's what you do.
If you go with MicroSoft or other closed source products, when you are up shit creek, you are relying on them to give you a patch. Maybe you don't really matter to them (or whatever vendor sold you the stuff) -- in which case, you can go jump in a lake.
Sometimes the problem isn't that there's a bug in the closed source stuff, but that your stuff is interacting with it in a way that makes it misbehave. Perhaps the system is documented, in which case you need to read a thousand pages in the reference manual, hoping to find the requirement that you've failed to meet -- thereby causing the failure.
Or you call the vendor:
You: "it's broke."
Vendor: "Why? What are you doing? Nobody else has this problem"
You:"Well, I don't really know."
Vendor: "Thanks for calling. Please get back to us when you have more info."
On the other hand, if it is open source, you can fire up the debugger, find the problem, and work aroudn it or fix it -- all of that is perhaps faster than going through the support process. If you do a big project, the odds of you encountering a roadblock like this approach 100% percent. If you are pessimistic about the vendor and believe you can fix things, you pick open source.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
King said the "Open source isn't open" argument is Microsoft's attempt to wave the Unix fear flag.
Don't you find it interesting that the way Microsoft inspire fear is to claim that it is close to their own business model. They might as well say "Watch out don't use RedHat Linux because it will cost you money"....which is entirely different from Windows how?
The other interesting part of the microsoft argument is: A team has the capacity to change the OS code significantly. (which microsoft says will require redhat to write you custom patches which will cost you money.) But if the team is competent enough to change the OS so significantly that updates aren't compatible. Then they'll also be competent enough to review the updates from the OSS community and tailor them to work with their unique system.
It's not a fair assumption to say that your company is smart enough to change the code significantly, but then on the other hand suggest that your company is now too incompetent to apply new updates/patches without the help of RedHat. (What is fair to say is that: If your company function is so unique that you need to significantly alter a mainstream linux distro to make it work with your business, then you will likely have a permanent/contractual IT team growing and maintaining that same system, and quite likely never had to buy RedHat linux in the first place.)
c'mon, that's bs. i can grab the linux source, say, from debian, change what i want (and if it's just the logo shown while booting) and call it "super foobar os", burn cds and sell it (while releasing the sources according to gpl). i mean, what more "open" do you want?
as much as i dislike some of his essays, i thank rms for what he (not he alone) accomplished. and i'm happy that linus chose the gpl for his os. i mean, just take a look at the trove map at sourceforge, it's geek's heaven.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
MS continues to beat up on linux cause they realize more and more what a threat OSS is. When someone hates on you, take it as a hidden compliment. Keep drinking that HATER-AID M$, we be loving it.
:-)
It's not that Linux presents a new threat to MS, it's more that Linux has displaced traditional Unix vendors. Where MS used to attack Sun and company they now attack Linux. Right now the only people getting killed by Linux are the traditional Unix vendors.
You are correct in that MS probably is taking posts like yours as compliments. Pot. Kettle. Black.
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
He's wrong. It's still just as "open". Besides, he's descibing a sitution that's unlikey to happen. If you know enough to make changes to the source code you probably don't need Red Hat.
FUD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fud
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
There is a difference. With Linux you *can* fuck up your system by changing the source code. Maybe it will work better, and if so then you might be willing to ignore the fact that Oracle does not officially support it. With Windows you can't try to change it at all, whether or not this will make Oracle dislike you.
Why does the submitter insist on validating Microsoft's gibbering nonsense by portraying it as "he said / she said"? The fact is that I can change any code in GPL software that I want, without paying extra, and that Microsoft is just lying. How about them facts?
--
make install -not war
...on how much responsibility you want to take for the open source/free software you use. Honestly... when was the last time any of us really needed paid support for a lot of the most popular FOSS software? I haven't used paid support AT ALL since moving from Windows to Linux. I'm also very willing to take on the responsibility of solving problems with the FOSS software I use at work. Many times the "worst" of it is in an extended Google search since many other people are likely to have experienced the same problem that I have.
Now, regarding paid support... I have yet to have a paid support response that I feel warrants the highly expensive support contract fees we pay where I work. If we're paying thousands a year for support I want 24x7 and I want qualified support staff. I just had an experience over the weekend (involving the migration of software from one system to another) for software that we pay a LOT for support services. It was dismal as usual. We called the company's after hours support line at about 9:30PM on Saturday night. It was automated and stressed that we'd better be in a down/critical situation. We left our message with the correct information regarding contact and the problem being experienced.
The message on their end stated as 60 minute response time. However, their support person managed to call the wrong number and we didn't hear anything. So we called back and actually got a human this time. After talking to the support person for a while, the person said they would call us back after doing some research. Since this product is HIGHLY PROPRIETARY, my Google searches only brought back two responses to the error message we were getting on our server. And those search results were only viewable in cached form. They were... cached web sites that use the same producvt who were experiencing the same error. That is to say the cached pages were just those sites displaying the same error at one point. No forum discussions. No knowledgebase articles. Nothing helpful.
Eventually we got a call back from support and this person had tripped through their internal knowledgebase which gave the most common cause of the error with no other suggestions. We verified that it wasn't the most common factor causing our error after which the support person said, "Well, I'm sorry folks. Maybe you should move back to the old system". WTF?! Fortunately, we pressed them to find someone else to give us a better answer and we eventually got a call from someone else who asked more pointed questions that eventually led to a solution but it took three hours to get to that point.
Ideally, we should have gotten a call from the second person right off the bat since our details were very specific. And that person should have been knowledgable enough to know for certain what was causing the problem. For god sakes, we're paying a LOT of money for support. Enough to staff one person yearly very comfortably. We should have had an answer within no more than 90 minutes. If this had been a FOSS project instead of proprietary crap, I would have had an answer in minutes since the error is definitely caused by a very finite list of factors. Sadly, that is not the case with proprietary software. And this is one of the BETTER experiences I've had with paid support!
The usual is more along the lines of me calling an issue in and having to hound them every few hours or days until I get an answer. Many times the answer is just, "uhhhhh... hmmmm... it SHOULD work...". I'm sorry but I'm more than willing to replace proprietary stuff with well known, well supported FOSS offerings: Apache, BIND, ISC DHCP, the Linux kernel, Bash, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, etc... And if I really need a fast answer that I didn't find with a Google search, there are always FOSS coders that will fix stuff for a reasonable fee that ISN'T the equivalent of a year's salary. This Microsoft guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It's a shame that no one will ever consider anything Microsoft wants to say about an industry, it has no experience in. I'm sure they hired Jason to provide reassurance.
"Let's get a UNIX and open source expert and have him proclaim our business model is so much better." Steve whispered as he rolled over to take a share of Bill's bedsheet.
This is really nothing more than another Microsoft expression of arrogance.
I mean they do have the singularity OS....
You're telling me. FYI, there was once a large retailer who had over 1000 stores whose customer value cards authed thru a central farm of NT servers. The problem was that these servers would crash on a regular basis and arguably cost the company over a million dollars per hour in downtime when it happened.
To get to the root of them problem, they bought expensive specialized hardware, put up big money for a custom tcp/ip stack, and scheduled nightly reboots, but still nothing helped. So they flew in experts from all over thw world, who eventually came back to them and said there was a flaw on the OS. Then they went to Microsoft, and in not so many words got the finger even though they would have certainly been willing to pay big bucks to fix it if they could.
So how do I know about this? because I was one of the people hired to help the move over to Solaris at great great! expense to them. But their reboot problem was finally resolved.
So really, at least Red Hat is willing to take your money and not leave you screwed. And why is that? Because if RedHat won't do it someone elese would because Linux is FOSS and that forces people to compete off of merits and not by giving customers the finger when service and support don't fit into a companies master monopoly strategy.
So excuse me, but this has got to rank as the most blazing hypocracy I've ever seen. I'm sorry to see that your post is rated as flamebait at this time, because Microsoft truely is ARROGANT by the words very definition. They're gonna get what's comming to them, and nobody is going to cry a tear.
you need to share what you've been smoking.
Oh please.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft will turn down your money for a support call on a Windows XP BSOD because you have installed Firefox? I doubt it.
Actually, that was exactly his point. Remember the "you will pay through the nose for it" part? You're not too likely to get FREE support... not without a few "passing the buck" attempts. (HP and Dell ping-ponged me all night once over an AMAZINGLY SIMPLE MATTER. I wanted to firebomb them both. X_X )
Meanwhile, no one's talking about simple things where you're using one of a billion 3rd party pieces of software getting annulled... They're trying to think up situations at least reasonably analogous to the originating FUD and how it compares.
How stupid !
1. I take a Red Hat distro and change it to something different.
2. Red Hat does not give support for my special distro.
3. I start whineing that "Hey it's not open!"
The main story should be marked troll.
From my point of view this really puts the blame on the comercial vendors. The fact that they only support one configuration on one specifik platform makes the OSS alternatives look much better from a customers view.
I do alter source code pretty often infact. It has been invaluable to me at work since i can find an error, fix it and continue as nothing happened. I have had problems in commercial software that hasnt been fixed for years and could do nothing.
HTTP/1.1 400
/. needs to add a new MS Specific Icon for any and all MS Specific posts that include the word "mouthpiece" in the post body or are by known MS shills such as Didio and co.
After all... Bill the Borg gets lonely sometimes.
My prefs may be skewing this a bit, but 92 of 142 comments are above my threshold for this article. This compares well against 337 of 618 comments for the "Mac Converts" article posted earlier.
I guess Linux "zealots" aren't so bad after all B)
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Open source allows people to fork software if they want to. That means that if I don't like RedHat, I can start my own distribution. And, guess what, that's exactly what people have done. That's what matters. It guarantees that software is written for users' needs, not for the needs of Bill Gates's bank account. And it guarantees that the software will be around long after the original developers are gone.
Is there a screening process for people wishing to be a part of Linux kernel coding? Can anyone write code for it? Can anyone's patches REALLY be accepted by Linus? If Linus always decides whose patches go in and what new features are ultimately added, is it really open source? Or an semi-open software project with a dedicated maintainer?
Don't you remeber? They even open sourced Windows!!
Ride the skies
1. RedHat's distros come with (backward) compat libraries and compilers packages (optional to install) with their enterprise products. I believe the that between the two you have most things covered. The compat libraries are typically required by Oracle ...
2. You might get away with core upgrades, if it lives on an extras disk. I haven't explored them... anyone? However, if people complain loudly enough and the change isn't that major, they have been known to include things that were intended for a future release, or were even being deliberately excluded. A good example is their reluctant support for the features of QLogic FC HBAs. It took months to get them to stick it into EL3. AFAIK no clients actually paid for it (all they really had to do was incorporate the vendor's own code, and that doesn't taint the kernel), and even though the vendor's drivers were eventually compiled in, the user had to know what symbolic links and modules.conf changes to make to get it to work... before that I was downloading the source and compiling in the vendor's driver. RedHat wouldn't have supported any I/O related issues to those disks, I'm sure, but they would still support configuration of the web server!
3. RedHat have deliberately left lots of things they will refuse to support out of their kernel releases. Reiserfs is a good example of this. If you want it, you have to install the source rpm, reinstate the config and compile the modules for yourself. I do however find it very annoying that we need to in the first place. But then if you don't like it, you can always go with SuSE.
The downs may seem very significant, but the only issues this causes to the likes of me is when the hardware compatibility matrix is affected. I like to be able to dial 1-800-REDHAT and have the expectation of a reasonable answer to a reasonable question in a reasonable amount of time. Now if only they could get the answers right more often! :)
The arguments this turkey made wouldn't fool a 3 year old. He clearly has self-esteem issues if the best job he thinks he can get is prostituting himself for Microsoft and making a fool of himself in the process.
It just goes to show you that when money talks it's usually speaking bullshit.
Unlike so many here I don't hate Microsoft. My hatred is contingent upon their ability to cause problems, which is quickly dimminishing. Their goose is pretty much cooked. If this is the best their zillion dollar FUD machine can muster then I almost feel sorry for them.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
GPL licenced Open Source Software is the only kind there is.
[sigh]
Microsoft knows full well of BSD licenced software. They just prefer not to mention it since it would make their bullshit clearly that.
I guess while Microsoft slogs it out with "Linux", Sun and Apple, this will make BSD the "meek"?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
An IT manager may look at this argument and conclude there is no advantage to open source solutions, in that there is no point having solutions that are not supported. The manager may conclude closed source is a better choice; while no self-modifications can be made, at least the system is supported in its entirety.
At the end of the day, your average IT manager needs to desperately separate him or herself from the technology. Otherwise, they get completely snowed under doing technical work that should have been delegated. When there is an option to pay for support, most will take it. The argument is powerful in that it contends as there is no option for support of changes, so there is no ability to make changes. So why buy open source as opposed to a fully supported Microsoft product?
Very smart implication, I think anyway.
The thing to remember is that not EVERYONE needs to change the source for ANYONE to benefit, ONLY one needs to change the source for EVERYONE to benefit.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
That's a given really... the more commercialized a product becomes, the less I want to use it anyhow, same thing goes with music!
I've worked with SuSE and Red Hat Systems, and I never suggest using them, simply because they are so commercialized, that they ARE almost proprietary (compared to less commercialized distros).
Debian, Slackware, and Core Linux wide open for tweaking.
The purpose of linux (as I see it), is to be able to build a custom OS to fit your exact needs, no more, no less.
Debian, Slackware, and Core Linux are perfect for this, and should stay this way.
Carry on! =0
Few if any competent companies would expect that they can modify the source willy nilly and then expect direct support on what _they_ have done from the distribution vendor. I mean, if you have an understanding of the process of software development and have spent 5 minutes reading about the Open Source movement, then you'll understand that it is a completely impractical, if not irrational, way of working.
When has this approach ever been promoted by the Open Source community? This sounds like only something a PHB could arrive at, following a methodology of gleaning an understanding of OS while walking by the cubicle farm and overhearing casual conversations.
Seriously, to me it seems like Microsoft sat around a table brainstorming for potential negative aspects of OS that they could market to suitably gullible people. I guess they feel sufficiently threatened to roll with even the weak results of that session. I hope the audience laughed at the guy, and told him to go back to counting the cash piles back at Redmond.
In other words, they're setting up a strawman (by claiming that open source is something it is not), and then attacking that. Very clever, given that few people outside the scene (and not even everybody in the scene) know what open source really is.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
From TFA:
``Shared source is Microsoft's foray into community development, started back in 2001 when Linux was just a hobby for the blue-haired ponytail set.''
Excuse me? Am I delusional or were major, reputable companies already using and supporting Linux in 2001?
Had this nonsense been coming from one of Linux's adversaries, I would have understood, but this is coming from the reporter!
I guess, by the same token, Linux was created in 1991, while Microsoft was still struggling to establish a foothold on the PC desktop market.
Please forward my (and your own) complaints to the reporter and the editor's.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I have a number of production servers to this day still running RedHat Linux 7.2. They are patched and up to date, even though RedHat axed support for RedHat long ago. I spend very little time doing so, because Progeny came to the rescue allowing me to milk another couple years out of otherwise perfectly happy, capable, production servers.
Also, there's the Fedora Legacy project which has picked up RedHat 7.3 as well, providing yet another option for administrators of "axed support" distros.
Let me ask you this - what companies or groups have stepped up to the plate to support Win9x after Microsoft's abandoning of the platform?
I guess Windows is really not that open, is it?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
To me, the 'open' in 'open platform', 'free (as in speech) software' has little, if anything, to do with having access to source code. Nor does it have much to do with having portable code/being free from vendor lock-in.
The 'open' to me is about being able to find out how it works, and (resulting from that) being able to replace it with something else. In that sense, an open source project may even rank low on the open scale... if there's no alternative in existence, nothing to replace it with if you wanted to, nobody left that understands the existing code.
But GCC sure is open in that sense. If you want to compile your pet project with something other than GCC, you can study GCC's source code and masses of documentation to find out how GCC turns your pet project from source into binary. And thus, it enables you to build something else that does the same job. I'll admit, that may be a huge effort. But you can also modify GCC to suit your needs (like, be compatible with other compilers/compliant with coding standards of your choice). Or your can modify your pet projects source code to not use GCC specifics. With enough effort, that makes GCC pretty much a replaceable component (and thus: open).
The access to source code requirement of free software licenses IMHO essentially serves to make this process of reverse engineering/modifying easy enough to make it practical. The 'open' doesn't come from the source being out there, but from the fact that because the source is out there, it's easy enough to look inside, see what it does, and construct something else to replace it. Microsoft's "embrace and extend" fails here because the extensions are often inaccessible in one way or another (undocumented, binary-only, licensing issues, whatever).
So your point is interesting, but just doesn't hold water."Are you suggesting that Microsoft will turn down your money for a support call on a Windows XP BSOD because you have installed Firefox? I doubt it."
The EULA you agreed to says they can. In practice this means they will still take your money, blame the other software and close the case. Either that or like you said they will ask you to install a new server with only MS software on it, load all your data to it and then try to replicate the problem. After a week of blowing your sysadmin's time you won't be able to replicate the problem, they will take your money and close the case.
Yes, I have been there, done that. They once asked us to ship our entire database to them. The CIO flipped. Imagine sending all your customers, vendors, transactions and all kinds of sensitive data to MS!. Trust me they know how to get you to close those pesky tickets.
evil is as evil does
Repeat after me: NOTHING a Microsoft employee who is authorized to talk to the media says is ANYTHING but a LIE!
These guys make Scooter Libby look like the soul of honesty.
Pointless to even discuss anything they say as if it had meaning. There's no more meaning to a Microsoft statement than one from George "We don't torture" Bush.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
There also wasn't anyone to sue if something went wrong. And there wasn't documentation. And there wasn't a 5 year road map so nobody was in control of its future. And more recently, you could be exposed to legal uncertainty.
Well, people aren't buying that old FUD anymore. So now we've got the new and improved FUD.
Now you can't get support if you've modified the code.
Next thing you know, there won't be documentation available for your own modification.
And then there won't be anyone to blame/sue if your own modifications don't work.
Your whole company will have an uncertain future because your modifications don't have a 5 year roadmap from an industry leader in the software biz (that consistently misses its own goals, but nevermind that detail). No 5 year roadmap = uncertain future.
Worst of all, your own modifications might have legal uncertainties, possibly infringing upon someone else's patents or other so-called intellectual property. You could be exposed to lawsuits or other frightening uncertain legal woes.
Be affraid. Very affraid. And also uncertain and filled with doubt!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I think not.
Same thing.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I've found bugs, submitted a patch, and they reply with the most generic of messages:
"Bug confirmed. Thanks for the patch, will be in next release."
What's wrong with that?? They review the problem, review the solution, and if it's good, they take it.
VS. M$, who just says "take your problems and shove it!"
This is the whole point of open source and free software: You apply a patch to the maintainer in the hope he will submit it to the codebase, and THEN you get your support!
/free software you can easily apply your own patches to software and kernels anywhere in the system by compiling those modules yourself.
In case your patch is not accepted, you can always maintain a fork, which you can even use to compete with the original maintainers (depending on how "open" the license is of course).
In case you don't want to run your own show, you can always keep a diff, and hope the surrounding code doesn't change too much over the versions. With open source
This is just yet more FUD from Microsoft. This only shows how much they fear Linux now that Free distros such as Ubuntu has come to the scene and Linux is starting to look better than the current Windows offerings on the desktop..
What was it Gandhi said?
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Mohandas Gandhi
Another good quote:
"I think it would be a good idea."
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
In fact Gandhi has an enormous collection of good quotes. Look it up on the net.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Just like how the unions are saying that Proposition 75 is a way to silence union members. What is is is to say that the union can only take money out member's paychecks for political campains, after they get permission. Not jump through hoops to get a refund of polical dues. Or Proposition 75 will cut school funding. But it actually limits the amounts of spending increases.
Fight Spammers!
Nothing to see here. Move along, please.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
the man is missing the point. These enterprise distributions are based on all sorts of software packages that people CAN all make adjustments too. This means that the law of Linus applies to them, and bugs are more quickly fixed.
To me it would be obvious that Red-hat wouldn't support changes I made to the services they provide. The point is that if I make a change to the kernel (say patch an ext3 hole on my reference system) then I can send the patch to the lkml or Red-hat themselves and it will probably end up in the next release. I can also revel in the fact that other Linux users can do the same and I will benefit from their code too! If for some reason Red-hat didn't deem the problem a high priority for a patch in the next release then I still have the choice to patch my kernel anyway.
Also, as you do have a support contract, you could just phone in the bug and Red-hat will fix it for you AND it will be put back into the community.
ScuttleMonkey: Open Source Not That Open?
ScuttleMonkey: Open Source Forming a Dot Com Bubble?
Hemos: Open Source Design in risk?
That's more FUD in two days that I would expect from Micro$oft!
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Look at me, I'm a spokesman defending a major software company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense!
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... Does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lived on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
It quotes a total of three people: one MS rep repeating the company line of FUD and baseless assertion, and two "experts" who basically parrot the rep. There is no critical eye turned toward Microsoft, only toward those dirty hippies trying to free people from the grasp of monopolistic software companies. At no point does the writer even try to inject any sort of meaningful discourse or contrast.
This doesn't surprise me, considering the source (a CIO magazine).
...to get support from a standard vendor, your patches must be accepted into the standard packages. Well doh. If you have something that looks like a driver problem, try same config on a different machine. Application problem, try it again with stock tools. How many programs are you likely to sustain your own fork of? No more than a handful. The point isn't to make random changes to the code and have people support it. Those kinds of forks die almost without exception because they are never merged with the main codebase. The OSS development process is as it's always been, add a good feature and ship it upstream. That is the safest option for making sure the features you need are available in the future.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
when you move [...] to an unsupported configuration, you lose support
:)
Huh, so you don't get support on what is unsupported ? Incredible !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
As response on linux you might even say. Been busy with linux myself since 1993 or 1994, bit murky there. Yee good old times of nights of kernel hacking to get your hardware working.
For myself: I had bright blond and grey hair since that time, no blue, and not enough to wair it in a ponytail.
Another weird observation though: I loved linux from the start even with all the torture of the early kernels. It must be appealing on a nerd level I guess.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Actually it is: You sue Ford after you have blown up your car (burned to a crisp) after modyfying some parts, and get a settlement. So in that case Ford is pretty much f**ked.
It is pretty common though that people want support on code that they altered themselves, and than claim that you put a bug in it beforehand and have to fix it. Happens all the time, and everytime it is a fight to get paid for your time again when it is not your fault. Standard action: Run it through CVS to see the changes, after that send the original code without the extentions the customer made, and than just hope that they will see your point: It is not my bug, but yours.
Ofcourse it also happens that the customer is correct, but that is like 1 in a million (LOL).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Back in 1995 I had a Slackware linux box running UUCP as a production mailserver. It replaced a rather aging Sun based system.
It was not considered unusual, and in fact the ISP I was using in the UK were happy to work with it.
I have never had a ponytail, and never had blue hair.
I have, however, had red white and blue hair. This was back in the late 80's when I was working days as a software engineer and nights as a nightclub DJ. I hadn't really made up my mind which profession was best.
Back in the 80's the DJ gig pulled the 20 something chicks and software paid the bills, now the Porsche Carrera pulls the 20 something chicks, but software still pays the bills.
I no longer have red, white and blue hair, but do have a linux mailserver. Some things never change.
here's the difference: can you pay microsoft - or any of its employees - to work on windows or office to get them to fix bugs or add new features?
Just don't tell the folks maintaining the Debian distro's that.
Water not that wet. /. post not that insightfull.
Happiness not what it's cracked up to be.
Trees not that smart.
Primates not the first afterall.
When will you hippies realise that communism doesn't work, and never will work!
Nothing costs nothing
From the article :
"Red Hat issues patch updates for its premium offering, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and keeps customers' IT infrastructure secure.
'But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]'"
1. I take a Red Hat distro and change it to something different.
2. Red Hat does not give support for my special distro.
3. I start whineing that "Hey it's not open!"
The main story should be marked troll.
Demonize Open Source software to sound more like... you software. That'll win them over.
Major problem: only one is as free as beer should be.
Direct away from face when opening.
Curious, If I F#C# up a computer with windows on it, How supportive will MS be to me. Will they come over, and back up, and format-re-install for me? Or will they tell me I need to do it, and Be left to myself to do. MS gives less help than you find in the OSS community. When the store was up and running (its taking a nap), People flocked to give me a hand with it, and that was a business. I will guaruntee this, With OSS, you get more support than you do with MS.
SimonTek
Read the RHEL eula. https://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_us_3.html
"Customer may not modify, copy, make derivative works of, distribute, reverse engineer, decompile or export the RHN Code."
(Plus, it uses Oracle)
Have you ever written kernel code before? You simply cannot write a kernel in standard C. It isn't possible. You need extensions to the language if you are going to be doing that kind of development. Sometimes you do need extensions, and there's no way around that. The best that GCC can do is provide its strict mode operation so that you can turn them off if you don't need them. Last I checked, the MS compiler didn't have much in the way of a strict mode. It does let you disable certain extensions and enable various features (like variable scoping for declarations in for loops), but it doesn't let you turn them all off. Finally, when an open source project creates extensions to something, it is much more forgivable than proprietary extensions simply because the extension is documented by the code - other developers can look at the code and figure out exactly how it's supposed to work, plus there will be no patents covering the extensions. Therefore, it's quite possible that extensions in open source can make it into standards, whereas this may not always be possible in proprietary software.
This is about Red Hat charging more for supporting modified systems.
So what is Microsoft's response to those people who 'modify' their systems (inadvertently) by installing the Sony DRM-rootkit?
[Paraphrased] "h4h4h4h4 j00 f413 17!!!! Upgrade to 64 bit Windows."
Red Hat will at least offer support if you modify your system. Microsoft just tells you to take it up with whoever modified it. Who would you rather go with?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Dang. That'd be a great business model.
Why didn't we think of that?
Oh, wait...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Try downloading SuSE or RedHat, finding the right source modules for the kernel and building an identical kernel to the one that came as a prepackaged binary.
It's damn near impossible. I'm not sure if it is missing patches, missing files that aren't GPL'd or some other missing magic. To me it makes the whole "compile it yourself" seem like a smoke and mirrors game being played by the commercial Linux vendors.
Try it some day. Go looking for a How-To on (re)building a SuSE kernel to match the one they install. Or RedHat. And no, downloading any kernel source not from those two and using that is outside the scope of this test.
As much as I'd like to compare this with BSD (where this problem _doesn't_ exist), it's not accurate because none of them take a common code base and "modify it".
but Vulture's Eye/Claw? I'm familiar with a number of spin-offs (prefer vanilla 3.4.3 so far), but not that one.
Actually, I'm not totally dumb: I went to google and here is a link for anybody else who's curious.
Clinton's defense wasn't a technical fallacy; it was an attempt to mislead by exploiting the logical gaps in the terms of his opponent. The strategy is simple, but you have to be smart and have the force of personality to control your opponent. You look for something that is at least a tiny bit vague in his assumptions or definitions and repeatedly demand he make it more and more precise, until he inadvertently leaves out whatever it is he has in mind that's important to him. Sooner or later, this has to happen because every edifice of human reasoning has at least some rotten timbers in it. You then build a logically unassailable but sophistic argument based on his own definitions that leads away from where he wants to go to where you want to go. If your opponents states, preferably forcefully and emotionally, that an animal is a crow if and only if it is black, then you go on to argue that a black cat is a crow. It's easy to spot the falsehood, but hard to discredit the source of the falsehood if it was yourself.
The argument in this case is closer to the strategy the cigarette companies used on tobacco's addictiveness. In that one you pick an arbitrary definition of your own -- a straw man -- then quickly move on and hope your audience doesn't have time to realize the definition you've used is loaded. You help this process by passing over it quickly, or by referring to it without ever stating it explicitly, and moving on to emotional or inflammatory rhetoric.
The distinction is this: in one case you force the other side to provide you with the faulty definition. In the other you rely on the other side carelessly accepting a definition you supply.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You see, the more people go into Open Source the more fragmented it gets :)
"But if a customer modifies the source code, [Red Hat] can't help you [without charging you extra]. They have to lock things down to provide value," Matusow said. "As open source becomes commercialized, it becomes less open."
This is BS. If you know enough to modify the source you know enough to make your own distro for internal use. And you *don't have to pay Red Hat for permission to use it.
All together now...
;)
Fud glorious fud,
Nothing quite like it for stirring the blood.
So follow me follow, down to the press room,
And there let us wallow in glorious fud.
Sorry but I can't be arsed to paraphrase the rest
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Linux is truly open. If you want to make changes, there's the source, there for your to do what you want. If you wish it to be included, get with the program, post the patch to
the kernel developers. If the code is worthy it will get into the kernel, if it needs work you will here about it from your piers.
Folks I have made changes to Linux code, Redhat code, IBm code, and etc.. At no point did I pay to be allowed to change that code.. Its about as true as the MS opinon that Eclispe lugins and using Eclipse IDe costs $100K.. I will even go further he is outright using the Same President Bush tactics to LIE! Be carefull folks MS wans full access to your wallet without your permission..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Gee, talk about the "Whoosh!" effect... Some moderator managed to miss both the metaphor (and a fairly common one at that) AND the sarcasm.
Please metamoderate the "Off-Topic" moderation of the parent as "Abjectly Clueless".
Thank you.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm going to start my own FUD campaign against Microsoft. They aren't really rich. They're another Enron, cooking the books to make themselves appear successful while they flounder around desperately in their tar pit watching the rest of the world leave them behind in favor of new technology. I love watching them lash out in anger... it means we've won!
That still doesn't mean you can't mess with the source on your Oracle server.
/home/vadim? I'm fairly sure they don't.
Let me try with a practical example. The cp command is very nice for batch files, but once in a while I'd like to see some kind of progress, like when copying large things around. Now, turns out I'm not the only one who noticed this, and Gentoo comes with a patched cp, which adds a parameter to show a progress bar.
So, will Oracle stop me from taking the source to cp, the patch from Gentoo, building my own copy and placing it in *my home folder*? Why would Oracle care about what random stuff I have lying around in
Notice how I can still manage to benefit from Open Source without coding anything myself, and without touching one bit of the Oracle install. That's where I see the greatest value of OSS, not in replacing libc, but in being able to adapt things that are *almost* right, but not quite. And if somebody else likes it, well, even better.
Open source is not that open, because if you take Redhat and make a completely different product out of it, Redhat won't support it. Painfully obvious, but fair enough.
Closed development is more open than open development because... you... can't.... uh.. make the changes.. at all? Smoke some more crack there, PR droid boy.
His point is, quite literally, "Freedom is Slavery". Astonishing.
Why exactly do we give this FUD nonsense the time of day as if it's a relevent opinion in some rational debate?
doesn't make a whole lot of sense.. but whats free from the get-go, is free for everybody.. anything that has a price tag, is meant for one type of person.. the type of person with money.. so ya can't give it to your friends.. ya can't let them experience the greatness and the potential computers and their software can provide for humanity.. you can't truly network with the world because not everybody in the world can pay $200-300 for the good version of their operating system.. yes Bill, I appreciate your generosity in fighting and researching Malaria.. i wonder how much easier and cheaper research for these major diseases and other world problems if open source computer software was fully developed and embraced??
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
"An IT manager may look at this argument and conclude there is no advantage to open source solutions, in that there is no point having solutions that are not supported. The manager may conclude closed source is a better choice; while no self-modifications can be made, at least the system is supported in its entirety."
With Open Source you can.
A. Modify nothing had have full support
B. Modify somethings and have support on what you have not modified.
C. Can fix problems or ad features yourself and get them added to the distro.
D. Support yourself if you have the staff since you have the source.
E. Find an other vendor that will give you the support you want since Linux is "multi sourced".
With Windows.
A. You can not modify or enhance Windows and you get the support that Microsoft will give you at the cost they want to charge but only as long as they are willing to provide it.
It was traditional that "Big" companies would avoid single source products like the plague. That is why back in the day Intel would let other companies manufacture Intel chips. That is how AMD got in to the X86 business. The fact that Linux is not single source has got to be a big deal. If Red Hat does you wrong you can go to Novel. If Novel isn't your cup of tea then jump to what ever Mandrake is called this week. Choice is good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I use Fedora. At some point, an upgrade to the ACPI subsystem exposed a bug in the gnome battery monitor.
I downloaded the gnome-applets srpm and installed it.
I fixed the code, created a patch and rebuilt the rpm.
I installed the rpm, and reported the bug and the patch to the gnome bugzilla.
Eventually the patch was integrated into the gnome development branch and made it into mainline Gnome 2 (IIRC).
Unless someone rewrote it, it's stil there, and probably running on every distro.
A) I was able to fix the bug without too much trouble and integrate it into the system within a few minutes.
B) It eventually made it into Gnome, and likely everyone's distro including Fedora and RHEL. While I don't use RHEL, there's no reason (AFAIK) that I couldn't have done the same thing if I was using it.
I'm not what I would consider a gnome developer, just a Linux user with some development skills. I didn't pay anyone to get the patch included. While not everyone can be expected to modify their code, an experienced Linux system administrator usually can.
There are a number of advantages to this sytem:
1) Since I have the source, it's easier to identify exactly what the problem was (in my case a botched parser)
2) I can get a fix as soon as I fix it.
3) Presumably, other people are doing the same thing, so fixes are coming in from everywhere. It's to my advantage to get the patch included, so that I don't have to keep appling it myself. This, in theory, leads to better software.
If you never plan on trying to locate problems yourself 1) and 2) don;t apply. 3) might, depending on whether you believe it.
Seeing how both of your examples require outside intervention in order to be created or improve. Nice to see that ignorance and ineptitude isn't restricted to the supporters of intelligent design.
P.S. To all you Flying Spaghetti Monster posters, the horse is dead, flogging is no longer required. Pointing and laughing is still okay, but perhaps it's time to start using a TLA to encapsulate all the wittiness that has preceded your post.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It will never stop until either Microsoft or open source goes away.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
We have 2 servers running mandrake corporate server in a hosting environment. We modified the apache code and recompiled apache to change the suexec default root. Later we had problems with apache displaying code on some pages instead of the rendered page. To make a long story short. We called Mandrake support and even though we told them that we modified the Apache source they still helped us. We sent them the code snippet that we modified and they determined that it was not the source of the problem. It turned out to be a mime types issue with apache mod_mime and they helped us fix the problem. So I say in my experience I still get help with modified system. So i guess it just depends on your vendor.
Outstanding link! I actually heard sometime ago (at a lecture) from a molecular Biologist (and well respected and accredited in all their journals) who began speaking out about Irreducable Complexities (and the existence of them). He was soon branded a heretic by the Evolutionist Church (and his colleagues) and pretty much excommunicated from their journals (much akin to doctors' JAMA and the like).
/. It's like sifting through garbage most of the time here, but stumbling upon a post like yours is like pulling an unscathed pristine novel from the heaping smoke and ashed ruins from a Nazi book burning.
It's a shame Science has "evolved" so far these days from it's purely Philosophical origins, when you just asked "why?" (in the innocent pursuit and unbiased interest of understanding), instead of "why should I?" as is common in most fields today.
Thanks for the refreshing and intellectually honest opinion here at
thx.
p.s. Ah! I've just seen you've been modded a troll. lmao. Now you know what Petrarch or Gutenberg of the Renaissance felt like while helping their peers migrate from the Dark Ages...
Smells like FUD to me...
AC
We'd have dependency problems and bloat like those found in most Linux distros.
Blame the user, not the software.
You don't have to pay redhat/suse to change the code. If I see something I don't like in the linux kernel(or elsewhere), guess what? I can change it, recompile the kernel, and reboot. When a port uncovers bugs in underlying code, just fix it. If it needs to be propagated, bitch about it.
All progress in code is made by people that look at it and think:
1. what was i thinking?
2. what were they thinking?
3. damn aliens with their mind control!
This is why we have the GNU to uphold the fundamental ideals of our movement, but to whom we strike a spake in the heart everytime we say 'open-source', betraying our truths for a term that is merely a buzzword to industry, who have little concept of what it means.
r eedom.html article is a good one explaining why we shouldn't use "open-source" in stubborness, but appreciate our freedoms 0 through 3.
The http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-f
The point he is trying to make is, you can't patch for example the kernel of a SLES or RHEL installation and keep the maintenance contract.
This is apples and oranges, and he can't be so dumb to not know it.
The GPL says you can change the code in whatever way you want as long as you pass the source code on if you pass any binaries on. Not more, not less. The GPL does not require commercial distro makers to support any arbitrary code changes a costomer may want to make.
Counter-question: does Microsoft support a W2003 server if the customer changes any of the code?
Duh. Just FUD and spreading of misinformation to ignorant "decision makers".
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Even if you have to pay for it, at least you CAN edit it. Which is more than can be said for Windows, correct?
Those guys are really party blower. No wonder everybody goes to Google.
No sig for now.
so RH (or any other commercial distro) will not at random accept your changes to the code and support them, but guess what - most companies don't even want to do this.
still the products are open, because the companies will have the freedom to switch distros as they see fit without any fears of components not working together. oh, they can even switch between hardware architectures if they would so please.
then, for companies with the knowledge in house, they will most likely not buy RH/Suse (or their support) and adjust the parts they want and support it on their own.
you see, it's freedom anyway you look at it...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Applesauce. Just read the terms and conditions of the support contract if you buy support. This is what you do as a commercial user.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
The guy raises an interesting point when he says that it's impossible to get support for heavily patched code. That's true but he misses the most important rule of Free Software Development: get your patches included upstream.
You won't have to do as much maintenance work and can concentrate on new features or a different task. And of course, you don't have to patch all installations once you want to upgrade to a new upstream version.
BTW: Try to get that done with proprietary software (given that they let you modify the code at all).
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
according to http://news.com.com/High+court+wont+hear+programme rs+appeal/2100-1047_3-5939704.html?tag=cd.top
everything you bought and have a physical copy of is open at least for your own use.
"In both cases, the judges found that Titleserv was not at fault, because under U.S. copyright law, it's legal for people to make changes to software, provided that they own a physical copy of the program, the changes constitute "an essential step in the utilization" of the program, and the software is used "in no other manner.""
I had to dig a little to find the main main page, because Google didn't come up with a direct link. It's the second hit on yahoo, both searches with "nethack vulture's eye" as the keywords. I didn't try any other engines.
I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but the first twenty minutes went well (until I fell in a pit). There are a couple minor differences in the default keyboard setups, but for the most part I was able to install it and just play.
I've had good sucess with GHB and Anaesthetic ether.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
After reading most of the discussion here, I'd like to point out a few things:
A lot of you are complaining that MS is not listening and getting it all wrong. To me it seems that that's what most of you are actually doing. Matusow made some comments that can be interpreted in various ways, and most commenters take the interpretations that don't make any sense and thereby proof what a moron he is. That's neither fair nor useful.
From the posts (including the one who says he heard the speech), the links and Matusow's own blog I'd gather that he merely pointed out that OSS cannot fulfill all expectations of openness that it's attributed with. He did not say that MS does it better, nor did he say that OSS is in reality no more open than MS.
Personally, I think that's true. This is not to say that OSS is without benefits, but there are some serious misconceptions going on about what these benefits are. If you tell somebody he should be using OSS because he can modify it to meet his requirements, that's generally wrong. The mere fact that this guy does not know and you have to tell him usually means that he does not understand the implications and is probably not up to the task. Even if he has the programming know how.
View it from an IT manager's perspective. Assume he needs to decide whether to put his IT infrastructure on Windows or Linux going forward. Assume he decides on Linux because his staff will be able to make modifications if necessary. What would happen? First, he'd loose support for the modified parts. Next, he'd loose support for some enterprise applications that are certified for a certain distribution. Finally, he'd have a whole lot of patches that need to be maintained until they are no longer required. This includes testing, patching updates, recompiling everything for every new release, recompiling code depending on your modified code... What once looked like a nice little solution for a specific problem turned into a maintenance nightmare. No IT manager wants this.
So what's left? Most people just install their Linux distribution like they'd install Windows. And never touch the source code. The wild days of OSS are over, it's no longer about hackers turning everything inside out, but about enterprise IT infrastructures with truckloads of dependecies that need to be considered and managed. The people that once played with Linux are still there, their absolute number might have even increased. But as a percentage of the Linux user community, they are getting fewer. That's an imperative consequence of OSS entering commerical and enterprise business, and not necessarily a bad thing. It's also no reason NOT to use OSS. It's just a fact that one should be able to point out without being flamed.
(I do understand that the real advantage of the OSS process is the way the software and the distributions are created. I also understand that this is a powerful thing. Note that I'm not speaking against OSS at all.)
So is Linux getting more commercial? Sure. Is MS getting more open? I do think so, although they are nowhere close to where Linux is. But they did learn a few lessons, and they seem to be willing to learn some more. The OSS community has always pointed out that MS will lose in the long run if they fight OSS like they used to (successfully) fight their commercial competitors. Is is so hard to believe that they are beginning to understand this message?
One more thing: I'm reading comments like "greatest M$ troll ever" and "the guy's full of it" here, and the rude commen