Open Source Worse than Flying

george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""

Comments

Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source stole his initials.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[jcr]

Seriously!

Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway? He's got the source, why doesn't he just fix the bugs?

-jcr

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems to me that he is mostly upset because software he does not have to pay for is not being developed in exactly the way he would prefer. i for one do not expect people to whom i am not contributing money or help to give a damn what i personally want from the software they are developing. but i prefer to not have to pay $300 for software developed by people who exhibit the same ammount of apathy towards myself as those who give their product away for free.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[jhoger]

People like you deserve what you get... PCs that are locked down tighter than a DVD player or X-Box.

What you'll get is a world where freedom means having the freedom to rent your computing time from the man as long as you don't break the EULA.

Sorry, that's not for me (or most engineers, for that matter).

-- John.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[BoldAndBusted]

They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore.

Yes, most people never cared about "any of that", now or ever. But, luckily for all of us, some people happily lose touch, and make interesting things.

If people are screaming at you, and you don't like what they are saying, you should probably hang out with some different people. Or at least walk away.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Lisandro]

So what you're saying is... you'd have no problem eating dog shit as long as you didn't have to pay the chef.

    So, what you're saying is that you have no problem eating dog shit either. After all, millons of satisfied flies can't be wrong.

    If you don't care about much more than using your computer (as you're well entitled to), that's fine. There's much more to the argument besides convenience, as i see it. Most OSS advocates are rather... mmm... fanatical :) in their beleiefs, but they're on the right track IMHO. OSS is more about using your PC in the way you see fit, and that includes being able to modify the software you're using or being able to choose among different software for the same task (open standards et. all). That you may choose not to is of little consequence, as someone might very well do it for you. And this not only applies to Linux as an OS, there's a shitload of perfectly good OSS software for Windows/OSX as well that works and works just fine.

    Now, you want your computer to "just work". In that sense, the Linux desktop has still a lot (a lot!) of work ahead in order to be as dumbproof as, say, Windows or OSX., but i keep finding that when it works, it works just peachy, and even better than their counterparts. I'm constantly reminded of this when i switch to Windows, f.ex.: for every thing that it makes much simpler, there's another that becomes impossible.

    And even considering that, nowadays Linux is damn useable as a "Joe-sixpack" desktop, specially if you choose any of the modern commercial distros available. They take a lot of care in rounding the rough edges, and trust me, you won't even have to bother about fixing/configing/updating it, or more than you would have to with Win/OSX atleast. You should try one - a LiveCDs, for example, lets you boot a complete Linux distro from a CD and take a look at how they work. They might not be for you yet, but i think you'll find them much more usable than you think. We're not all typing obscure commands in consoles all day, you know :)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Cougem]

So your argument is that he can't moan about open source because he has the choice whether to use it or not?
Fine, well then Linux users should never moan about Windows, since they obviously don't have to use it. And people should never moan about KDE or Gnome either, since they obviously have a choice.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[maxwell demon]

We're not all typing obscure commands in consoles all day, you know :)

Indeed, I'm usually typing obscure commands sitting on a chair in front of the monitor and keyboard. I would hate it to be locked into a console when typing obscure commands.

Ah, and of course I'm also not typing obscure commands all day. After all, I need some time to read Slashdot!

Now, having said that, the Slashdot interface clearly leaves something to desire, even when using Lynx. Why is there no true modular command line interface? I would think of something along the lines of

$ slashdot ls
Glide File Sharing Service Debuts
Your Rights Online: Consumer Strikes Back at Crooked Online Retailer
IT: Open Source Worse than Flying
(etc.)
$ slashdot st IT
slashdot: IT: ambiguous story.
$ slashdot ls IT\*
IT: Open Source Worse than Flying
IT: Security Flaws Allow Wiretaps to be Evaded
$ slashdot st 'IT: O'
george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the
bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be
the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and
its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting
here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus
Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that
something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""
$ slashdot sl 'IT: O'
total: 1
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/otto_fl y_open/ Accusing Open Source
$ slashdot cs 'IT: O'
total: 464
-1: 8
0: 102
1: 96
2: 173
3: 21
4: 12
5: 52
$

SCNR

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[TheRaven64]

I think what the grandparent post was, somewhat ineloquently, trying to say was that if he didn't pay for the software, or contribute in some other way, then he is not entitled to complain. If he is choosing a Free Software solution in place of a proprietary system, then he has probably saved enough money to pay for a few hours of developer time. If he created a list of his wants for the software, and offered this money to the person who fixed them, then this would be a valid complaint. I doubt he is the only person with that particular model of printer - if others have the same need, then they can add money to the pot to get a driver written.

Free Software is about freedom, not price. The development model is different - you pay up front for the features you want, and then you and anyone else you distribute the code to, can use them for any purpose in perpetuity. People coming in this late in the game and seeing twenty or thirty years of software funded by other people and then complaining that it doesn't precisely fit their needs, without actually being willing to invest any time or money in improving things are no use to the community. It's like people pirating a copy of Windows, and then complaining it doesn't have a feature they need - would you expect Microsoft to give them any sympathy?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[richlv]

"Windows is an unmaintainable car it has a steering wheel and a go pedal. When it goes wrong you throw it away and get a new car. That makes ownership quite expensive.

Linux is a highly maintainable car it has 4 steering wheels, 84 pedals and a little knob to tweek the engine timing while you are driving along. You have to know every damn thing about it before you can drive it and your constantly tweeking it. That makes ownership quite expensive."

may i offer slightly different analogy ? :)

now, you have two 'types' of cars. one is windows. it is produced by a single company, all spare parts are manufactured by the same company. it comes in slight variety, having several models. you are not able to buy older models, though you can buy a new model, trash it and use some older model.

if something breaks down, it usually is pretty obscure that you get a flashing "service now" that can be deciphered with a specialised hardware that is sold by the same manufacturer.
if some part breaks down, you usually have to change whole lot of parts as they come together and there is no way to exchange smaller parts (for example, no way to exchange wiper arm, you have to exchange whole block). as parts are manufactured by the single company only, they are pretty expensive and obscure (for example, central computer can be changed, but costs quite a lot).
the cars work well on good roads, though breaking down now and then unexpectedly. don't try going offroad, unpaved roads are very, very risku.
it is very easy to service these cars, as kid next doors is ready to help. quality of this kind of service is of a very low level, but readily available. well, sometimes you have to scrap the car after such a service, but it sortaworks most of the time.
all gasoline, windshield fluids, coolants are compatible with this car, though some of them result in breakdown of the car.
the car has some problems with isolation, so you get a lot of different bugs in the car that are annoying at low speeds and often are the cause for the crashes at high speeds.
this car is very easy to obtain, almost all retailers have it.
---------------------

then there's this 'linux' type. they have in common only the engine, all other parts differ. it is offerend by a bunch of vendors, and you can choose any one you like. this might seriously impact the performance, looks and other aspects of the car.
you can get constructor type of the car that you build yourself - involves welding and other obscure things. then you can get one that's pretty complete and polished.
most drivers have difficulties choosing, as there are so many subtypes and vendors.
there are less techies specialised in this type of cars, so their time costs more, but generally they are much better at fixing problems - much of it can be attributes to their enthuasism about these cars (they are builders, owners and drivers at the same time), but having complete information about the car helps a lot. it is also possible to get some handholding when choosing the correct subtype for your needs.

spare parts are available down to every bult&nut, though you have to wait some time for the shipment to arrive.
the car itself is extremly reliable and fast, it can be kept for decades with almost no maintenance.
most liquids are not compatible with it, but careful evaluation when shopping helps to find ones that work. even though gas is available in few selected tanks only, the car uses several times less of it than 'windows' type. also changing colant and other things are very rare.
the car almost never breaks down, and even if it does, it is very easy for a specialised person to diagnose it without that device from the manufacturer and fix it, in most cases even without ordering any spare parts (unlike the other type, where dumping the car is the norm).

also a lot of accessories are manufactured for the 'windows' type only - air refresheners and all that stuff is hard to install in 'linux' type of cars as manufact

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[DarkOx]

He is mostly crying about drivers. That is stupid the vendor likely provided driver software for the other platforms not their developers. He should be mad at who ever it was that made the printer not OSS they should have given him a driver for the platform if his argument holds up at all. I would say he should stop being an asshole and do some research before buying crap. You don't buy parts for your car until you know you have the right ones for your make and model. Why would you buy parts for your computer without makeing sure they are compatible with the rest of the system or if you do out of lazyness why would you come crying about it when it won't work?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kadin2048]

> And to the editors, please don't post any more articles fromt this guy. This barely contained anything about OSS (certainly nothing intelligent), and he's not nearly as funny and clever as he seems to think he is.

Seriously. I'm really beginning to think that we need some sort of moderation scheme for the articles. This one reeks of "-1, Flamebait" like nothing I've ever seen.

It's ignorant, it's uninsightful, and frankly we're not doing anybody any favors by giving it the additional publicity rather than letting it just slip off into the ether to be forgotten. I'm all for the whole 'marketplace of ideas' philosophy and debating down bad memes when they come up, but do we really need to have a 500+ post discussion ever time some fucktard has a brain fart aimed at Linux?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[indifferent children]

Unlike you I get windows shoved down my throat at work.

Ooh, that's a pane in the neck.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kadin2048]

I'm not sure why you got modded down; you're absolutely right in that I think that paragraph sums up what is apparently his entire worldview nicely.

I think that at the end of the day he and I (and I assume most geeks and a lot of computer users) have a fundamental disagreement over what he's saying. I do not think that people who want to dabble with the way the machine works are a "dying breed" at all, except insofar as the computer hardware and software companies are forcing such tinkerers out of existence through sealed boxes. That impulse to tinker is founded on an essential human characteristic, curiosity, which in itself might be described as a desire to simply understand things. Although it's obvious that curiosity is not something which the author possesses, at least to any appreciable degree, there are lots of people (particularly younger ones) who do.

His philosophy is frankly disgusting to me, because it seems to be embracing what I find most disturbing about our culture: that many people find it acceptable to ridicule another's desire to understand, and on some level we find a desire for ignorance to be a laudable goal.

While the "housewives" and "sorority girls" (I won't even get into his obvious sexism, it's too easy) of the world may have forgotten the solenoid, the scientists, engineers, and probably even doctors and lawyers have not, and I think one should carefully consider the place of his two example groups within the power structure of our society. Speaking only for myself, I would certainly want my children to aspire for and to have the ability to achieve better than that.

Sore PC

[yuckymucky]

He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.

Re:Sore PC

[(H)elix1]

He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.

I hear you can get that type of problem if you don't practice safe hex...

Re:Sore PC

[YU Nicks NE Way]

We don't use the phrase "safe hex" any more. The more PC term these days is "safer sectors".

Open Sores?

[Frogbert]

If your PC is giving you open sores perhaps you should stop rubbing up against it so hard.

Re:Open Sores?

[somethinghollow]

but UDP never felt so good!

Buggy Browsers

[zbuffered]

Open-source Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out, and it's decidedly less buggy than IE.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Dante Shamest]

I submitted a patch to fix the Firefox name bug, on the basis that it's hard for someone to tell that it's the name of a browser. I suggested renaming the browser to something more marketable, such as Internet Explorer Improved or Internet Surfer or even Free Money, Click Here!.

Got no replies. =(

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Evil Adrian]

Why do people like you insist that there's some kind of a major difference in professionalism between rank-and-file Microsoft programmers who write their software and between those programmers who choose to work on open source projects? ... Why is it some kind of a pro-open source argument to say that Firefox is on par with a program developed by an "evil corporation"?

Because a lot of pro-Open-Source people are uninformed and brainwashed by the drivel that gets posted here and elsewhere, and they think that any time you try to make some money by writing software you are somehow running a scam because you aren't donating everything you do to everybody else.

Go ahead and mod me down as Flamebait, but honestly what other explanation is there?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[zbuffered]

Internet Explorer has not been improved since the release of Windows XP (with the exception of lame popup blocking and minor security improvements as a part of XP SP2). FireFox undergoes active improvement and supports features (transparent PNGs) that IE does not. I did not make the larger OSS vs Closed Source argument, just that FF is much better today than IE is. And even more so with the release of 1.5.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[gnuLNX]

uh...dude have you used both browsers in the last year?

No seriously you are totally righ both browsers were developed by highly skilled engineers... No one is dsputing that. However one group of engineers (for whatever reason...boss said so perhaps) has not been competitive in the last 2.5 years...go download Firefox, you can see for your self.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

My first explanation would probably sound rather rude and that wouldn't really prove anything other than getting into a name calling fight. So to a more useful argument..

I am a big free software advocate. I am a professional programmer that invests much of my time and money sponsoring free software development. A single person could never create, or pay for, every single piece of software they might need to use in this day and age. By working with others we can share what software we can create, and pay for, so that we all benefit. THAT is the entire basis to the concept of free software. There is no rule that you can't also sell software. Obviously many free software supporters do sell the software to great profit.

What you can't do is continue to sell crap. Crap can be defined as software that doesn't work, can't be made to work, and can't be returned. THAT is exactly what the commercial software industry is. You buy a program and half the time it doesn't work well enough to acomplish the things the box claimed it could do. So.. return it and try something else.. oops that's right. They won't take software returns. You can't see the source code so you can't fix it. You're just fucked.

Please make free software and sell it. Make a profit. Hire more programmers. Sell more software. Make more profit. We, the free software community, want you to do this because it makes more software available to us. It makes better software available to us. We'll even help you add features and fix bugs at no cost to you. Maybe you won't be able to sell a poorly supported crappy product with no documentation for $300 but you will be able to sell a good product with good support and documentation for a reasonable price. Sounds like a lot more work for the buck until you consider that the customer will help improve, document, and support your product.

I REALLY say this to hardware companies. Make your product with good, open source, drivers (or well documented specifications) and I'll buy your products. The drivers don't even need to be for my OS of choice (Linux). If they're open source I'll port them myself if needed. I'll pick your product over cheaper products if you do this because I won't need to worry about the product not having drivers or having drivers that suck or no longer work in the future. (I've had to many bits of perfectly good hardware stop working in Windows because the company didn't release drivers for the new version of Windows.) Money is not a problem. I spend a LOT of money on electronics and software. I just want to know your product will work when I need it to and to me that means having the information to write or fix drivers.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Yes, it's a more modern browser. However, this had NOTHING to do with the fact that Firefox is an open source project. Look at Opera. It, too, is more "modern" than IE6, and that's as much a corporate-produced closed-source program as IE is.

If you really want to start comparing closed and open source accomplishments and try to use web browsers as an example, don't you think that the better comparison would be between Opera and Firefox? I think so. In this case, is Firefox really more advanced? In my personal opinion, it is greately inferior (I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions).

In other words... BE FAIR.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[SuperBanana]

Open-source Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out, and it's decidedly less buggy than IE.

Funny. I just got through restarting Firefox 1.5 because, like every other version of Firefox for OS X, the keyboard shortcuts stop working.

Strong words aside, the guy is right. Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself", and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain".

Then people wonder why reviews of open source distros get panned, why people try it and often run right back to Windows, etc. Open Source software, at least many of the Linux distros, present a rather half-assed front to the user. I've used Linux since about 1995, and I still can't stand all the -bullshit- that's necessary to get hardware working; I last used Linux as a workstation back in 2000, and a few months ago I found not much had changed.

Want an example? I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. When it finished installing, X came up, but at a resolution and frequency rate the monitor didn't support, so I could barely read the screen. I got that fixed, then discovered OpenGL wasn't hardware accelerated, so I installed the nvidia driver package.

X windows promptly locked up on the next reboot, and did so until I removed all the nvidia-related packages. I downloaded drivers from Nvidia's site, and installed them by hand, and it finally worked.

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

There are some truly brilliant, talented people working on linux and open-source. Unfortuntely, they're bogged down in nearly useless work, or busy infighting. My favorite time-sinks are the incredibly obscure security holes that are so impractical nobody could ever exploit them...

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

Ask yourself this as well: when was the last time an open-source project you help out with surveyed its users to find out what was most important to THEM? And then based your efforts off that survey? The m0n0wall group just did that, and I was very pleased to see it happen.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Exaton]

My apologies, but it definitely seems to me that you are omitting some essential points in your comparison between Microsoft and (for instance) the Mozilla Foundation. How about :

• Economic pressure to "get the thing out the door" ? Sure, Microsoft deadlines get as bad a treatment as those of Open Source projects, but the stress is surely much heavier on the individual programmers (keeping one's job, etc.).
• Political guidelines / doctrines, by which Microsoft intentionally does not implement some feature sets, or keeps some mistakes up out of principle or backward compatibility considerations.

Open Source programmers are as free as their code, Microsoft employees (be they eminent experts) are not. OK, so the top-level engineers are still defining the main specs, but the setting is not the same : the corporate environment probably does, in my opinion, cause more bugs to arise.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ambassador Kosh]

I have been using free software for a long time also. Actually my business could not run without it. I challenge you to find another web app server that has even close to as good of a security system as zope does. I have looked very carefully and it is the finest grained I have ever run across. It is stable, fast, secure and easy for me to add new features to.

There are many excellent pieces of free software that I use every day that don't even have closed source equivalents. Python is a very good free software project and I have not run into any other closed source equivelent that is even close to as productive for me. A big one would be kde. I don't know of anything even close to that for the kinds of things that I do. The KDE io slave system means that from any app I use I can open and save to almost any kind of resource possible. So I can use sftp to open a file remotely in my editor and then just save it all transparently. However that is not all that kde has to offer, kde has a great component system. I configure spell check ONCE for all my apps, I configure how my editor functions ONCE, I configure proxy settings ONCE etc etc. These items are reused all over the system and no other environment I have run into so far can do that.

Koffice is also an excellent piece of software. For what I need an office suite for I don't care about word compatibility and I don't need a huge list of features. I just need to be able to make documents and turn them into pdf files and it does a very good job at that and with very low overhead.

If you don't see any good free software out there then the problem is with your outlook now with the software. People that don't think something exists can't see it no matter how much evidence is given.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Cryptnotic]

I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions.

The extensions are the whole point of using Firefox. Adblock and SessionSaver are great. Plus things like gTranslate and Moji and rikaixul are actually amazingly useful things for aspiring bilingual web browsing people.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[einhverfr]

When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Photoshop vs Gimp, OpenOffice vs MS Office, etc), the open source version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead. What is the reason for this? One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development.

Ok. How much better was Office 2000 compared to (the proprietary) StarOffice 5.2? How much better is Office 2003 compared to OpenOffice.org 2.0? What is the trend here?

More importantly, how do lesser known productivity suites compare against these two offerings. My point is that you can't compare the market leader against something with a different development model and expect to get anywhere. Otherwise we end up with statements like:

"When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Apache vs. IIS, OpenSSH v. SSH, etc), the proprietary version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead. What is the reason for this? One reason is decentralized design and customer-centric development, concepts that (from my understanding, at least) are in conflict with proprietary software development."

The basic issue is simply that the market leader has an advantage in terms of pace of development/resources. While I think that Open SOurce is more efficent in this regard, so each user counts more than in the proprietary world, you can't readily compare Microsoft Office (which arguably has market/monopoly power in the industry) and OpenOffice which commands a very small market. The fact that OOo is not falling that much further behind is actually what is noteworthy here, and this spells trouble for Microsoft.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

"Well, in that case, comparing Firefox with IE6 is like comparing the intelligence of a 30 year old to that of a 13 year old. "I'm way smarter than you because I've had more time to acquire knowledge!""

I don't get what you are saying here. Are you saying firefox is better because it's been around longer? IF so that's wrong. Firefox is mostly new code with very little left over form netscape.

As for other software it seems to be mix and match. Gimp is much better then photoshop in terms of scriptability but it falls behind in other areas. This is because scriptability is very important to a gimp users.

OO started way behind as anybody who ever used the original star office could attest but it's improving faster then ms office is. The question I have is this though. What does MS office do that open office doesn't? It seems to me the only thing it does is open MS office files better, that's it. I have been able to everything I have ever wanted with open office and more (save as PDF, save as flash, text art etc).

On the backend it's MS who is playing catchup. WIth every release SQL server adds features that have been around in postgres for years, visual studio still hasn't caught up to eclipse, IIS is pales in comparison to apache or zope, asp.net has just caught up to where j2ee was year and a half ago (wow we have embraced XML descriptors!)

So you see it's all about priorities. Open source software is more advanced then MS software in the aspects that are important to the open source developers. Once corporations start adopting open office on a larger scale they will pay for features they want by either sponsoring developers or paying bounties, same with all other software.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ookaze]

When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Photoshop vs Gimp, OpenOffice vs MS Office, etc), the open source version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead

Your sentence is true only if you specifically focus on the features where the FOSS projects play catch-up.
It's completely wrong otherwise. For example, the Gimp has numerous features and plugins more powerful than anything on Photoshop (like the one that remove seamlessly objects from an image, better raw support, ...), same for OOo (PDF, works native on Linux, repair MS Office files, ...).
What you say border to the straw man, as Gimp is not an Open Source version of Photoshop, nor OOo is one of MS Office (they use very different ways to handle the document for example).

What is the reason for this?

there is none because it is a straw man.

One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development

BS. Look at Inkscape and how their goal for each version, look at KDE and Gnome for some examples too, and then stop the BS.
I look at Pango, and the focused design was not incompatible with the development.

As the original article pointed out, open source development is usually obsessed with things that, frankly, don't usually require that level of obsession, while ignoring things that actually do need to be looked at

What are those things ?

Yes, it ends up GREATELY excelling at the things it obsesses with (security is usually the big example being touted)

BS again, security is not the greatest thing FOSS focus on. Stability, efficiency, accuracy, interoperability, i18n, accessibility are other areas that FOSS is obsessed with. You say all of this does not require such a level of obsession ?!!

Wow, what an ass

[Zencyde]

Isn't it the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to provide drivers? Perhaps I am just crazy...but aren't generic drivers a godsend in themselves?

Re:Wow, what an ass

[J. T. MacLeod]

It could be argued, but honestly, all that's needed is a published specificatin or adhering to a known standard. Not that hard.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Osty]

There really is no reason for every damn product on the market to need a custom driver though. There should be one interface for a printer, one for a camera, one for a video card, one for a joystick, one for a modem, etc. The consumer needs to demand this.

There already are such standards: printer = postscript, camera = FAT (filesystem for flash memory), video card = VESA, joystick = USB HID, modem = Hayes, etc. The problem is that these either cost way too much (postscript printers, real hardware modems) to be viable in the current consumer market (different from the business market, which is why you should have no problem using multi-thousand dollar "enterprise" printers but can't use your $50 inkjet), or they don't let you use the advanced functionality of the device (video card, joystick). In the first case, consumers aren't going to go back to paying $500 for a printer or $100 for a modem when they can get a $50 printer and $10 modem that work with the 90%+ majority OS. In the second case, while you may get your hardware working, you're going to bitch that you can't use higher resolutions at proper refresh rates or take advantage of all of that hardware acceleration in your $200 video card, or that you can only use two of the ten buttons on your joystick. There's simply no way to design a standard driver that will allow designers to continue to advance their product and still remain competitive (even "standards" like OpenGL allow for extensions, because if it didn't it would've been dead years ago).

Not only will it give us choices as to what OS and software we use with these products but it'll also make computers a lot more stable. A lot of crashes and other common problems are the result of minor incompatibilities between different drivers on the system. Standard drivers can be well tested. A mish mash of random drivers can't be tested well at all.

We'd also be stuck in the early 90s, technology-wise, because nobody could or would advance the state of the art. Standards are all well and good, but you have to be able to extend them for them to remain viable. Look at HTML for example -- the deliberate snubbing of standards by Microsoft and Netscape forced the standard to move forward. Yes, it resulted in crap like <blink> and <marquee>, and it caused a lot of compatibility pain (do you use iframes or layers? IE events or Netscape events?), but if that hadn't happened we'd still be stuck in the days of HTML 3.x, using tables for layout and not having anything close to CSS (or worse, we'd have Netscape's javascript-based style sheet language instead).

Standards are defined by committee, which the absolute worst way to innovate.

Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing that is goat-rendering awful is this story.

Linux will never progress very far

[Anonymous Coward]

When the ones developing it are the ones using it all the time. The closer to things you are, the easier it is to lose track of how bad they suck (there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11).

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[nukem996]

Whats so bad about X11? Im using x.org right now and everything is working fine. If I loaded KDE on here I could customize it to look basicly like OSX. I never understood why they took out X11, seems like it would make more sense to keep it.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Milo77]

Wow. I kinda think that this post proves the previous guy's point exactly. Specifically, where you say that you can configure KDE to basically look like OSX. If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly. If it's "good enough" for you, then you are exactly the person too close to things to see how bad they suck. Further backing up the original guys post is the fact that you are modded so high. I am not sure there is an easy way to cure what appears to be an epidemic of "bad taste" among *nix users. I don't think there is a pill or anything :)

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[jcr]

If I loaded KDE on here I could customize it to look basicly like OSX

The phrase "lipstick on a pig" springs to mind...

-jcr

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[harmic]

Amen to that.

Back before Windows had terminal server, and before products like Citrix got popular, we *nixers proudly declared the advantages of a network-transparent display system. The world has moved on: Windows has it; plus a host of add-ons that make the whole thing seamless, efficient and fast.

Meanwhile I find it is faster to use VNC over a slow link than raw X protocol... what's with that? VNC is just sending raw graphics updates, you'd think X would be much faster since it could send drawing commands.

In reality, although the X networking was originally designed to allow sending of drawing primitives over the wire, most toolkits work these days by rendering everything at the client end and sending it as bitmaps of one kind or another to the X server. This is largely because of the lack of standardisation and old-fashioned extension methods X makes available.

Sooner or later it will be time to chuck the bathwater out. The baby long since grew into something else.

what a flamer

[John Frink]

"The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." I'm a pilot who happens to like flying as well as open source so screw him!

Accusations.

[Southpaw018]

Exactly. Accusations. He doesn't really know what he's talking about...and his article speaks for itself in that context. He really comes off like a fanatic, but I would say: you have an "open source PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do. So...either you're doing something wrong, or perhaps you're a rambling, fanatical curmudgeon. Regardless, have you bought Windows?

Oh, it doesn't appear that you did. At least, if you have, it isn't good enough for you to mention.

Ah, the smell of a failing cause

[schmidt349]

This article reminds me of a fake letter in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Anyone with a good knowledge of politics in the UK at the time should get a kick out of how its tenor is very close to this article.

Dear David Jacobs, East Grinstead, Friday. Why should I have to pay sixty-four guineas each year for my television licence when I can buy one for six. Yours sincerely, Captain R. H. Pretty. PS Support Rhodesia, cut motor taxes, save the Argylls, running-in please pass.

one thing's for sure...

[pohl]

If this were fark, this would be the perfect thread to link to the 'attention whore' girl in the bikini doing hand-stands on the beach.

Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[CyricZ]

Who exactly is Otto Z. Stern? What is his background, credentials, past software development involvement, and so on?

Re:jeeesus

[Comatose51]

I deserve to be heard because I'm an idiot too so mod me up!

All I have to say is close source is better than getting branded by a hot iron. If it was a choice between close source and being branded by a hot iron, I would take close source. At least proprietary software have progressed faster than hot iron branding. Hot iron branding have progressed little since the days of cowboys. You still apply fire to a piece of metal that gets applied to the skin. Proprietary software has definitely progressed beyond that stage.

Okay, WTF is going on?

[Pantero Blanco]

Is someone just trying to provoke Slashdotters into an absolute frenzy lately? I've been seeing a flamebait, as-offensive-as-possible anti-F/OSS story every couple of days, and not the same one over and over again.

I'm all for showing both sides of the fence, but damn, choose people closer to the center instead of moonbat extremists.

Re:jeeesus

[JanneM]

The Register runs this kind of stunt from time to time. The whole point is just to boost readership. They don't care if people come there for something insightful or because it's utterly moronic; the page hits are the same after all. And it works too - as I write, they're probably high-fiving themselves as they see the hit counters spin from the slashdotting.

Re:jeeesus

[David M. Sweeney]

it's just the opinion of one idiot. what the hell is it doing on slashdot?

Man, you MUST be new here.

A self-righteous asshole

[symbolic]

or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.

Excuse me, but isn't it the vendor that's respsonsible for providing drivers? If you want to place some blame, jump on their ass.

Linux contributors have tried to pick up some of the slack, but because of the fact that everything that isn't open-source is most likely proprietary, this is not an easy hurdle to overcome.

It's obvious that the Register was looking for filler, because this article wastes a good deal of space with absolutely NOTHING of substance.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[pavera]

I agree what is the obsession with printers?
I mean yeah I guess he's a journalist but wait he's on ONLINE JOURNALIST, how often does he really need to print?
I haven't printed a page of paper since I got out of college. Even then at least 75% of my work was handed in electronically.
My company delivers invoices electronically, we pay invoices electronically, we have 1 printer for 100 people, and most of the time it just sits there idle.

The Open Source solution to printers is to get rid of them and make everything electronic. That's where everything is going, and his rant is calling for open source to stay compatible with 20 year old technology, not move forward to the 21st century. Right now I'm working on a document management system for law offices that will make it so they don't have to have a single piece of paper. If I can get rid of paper in a law office, I can get rid of it anywhere. This should be the goal, not making it easier to make more paper.

I don't know

[rsilvergun]

I've read studies where Hot Branding compares favorably against Microsoft's latest license agreement. But maybe they were funded by Hot Branding Zealots.

He hits the nail on the head

[Clockwurk]

Whats the use of pointless eye-candy (like compositing and transparent xterms) when the underlying windowing system (X) is more broken than a New Orleans levee. The big problems in Linux won't ever be addressed because you can't get enough people to agree on a common vision and work to achieve it (well that and the hostility towards commercial developers).

Linux is a lot like windows, each new version is a little bit better, but it is chained to doing many of the important (and broken) things the same as every version before it. Linux won't ever be great when it gets developed a lot like a katamari, layers of hacks that get thicker and thicker as time goes on.

Only Apple (and Steve Jobs) has the guts to throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk) and replace it with fresh new ideas (quartz, launchd, xcode).

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ChaosDiscord]

...throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk)

What's wrong with X-Windows? The old "It's too slow"? Because locally it's working all in memory, no network, and nice and zippy. What's wrong with the start up daemons? There are lots of them, but you can tweak and tune them. The typical daemons started on a system configured for "workstation" or "desktop" tends to be similar to the number of processes I end up running in Windows XP or Mac OS X. Or is it the method daemons start up with? I find it no more or less confusing the mess that is the combination of Windows services and startup programs. Mac OS X has something similar; it may not be rc scripts, but they're launching stuff like Samba and CUPS just like my Linux box does. Unix copy/paste? What's wrong with it? I copy stuff to and fro quite happily. Or are you whining about the "select is copy, middle click is paste"? Because while you were apparently sleeping, the mainstream stuff all started supporting Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. Select-paste still works, but if you don't like you don't have to use it. GTK? Ummm, right.

The reality is that you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Hah. Name these horrible, life-threatening flaws to linux/X11/whatever that you see going unfixed because of "lack of common vision".

I'd like to hear them.

Re:Full of hot air

[KylePflug]

Having said that, I'm commited to Firefox and had nothing but great luck running Apache (on Windows, not Linux ;-) - so OS is slicker than glossy marketing materials from M$ in many cases, but my experience with Operating Systems is to treat them like guys in suits carrying Bibles and ringing my doorbell.

You spray your operating system with mace and call the police?!?

Re:jeeesus

[pchan-]

You have it wrong. The Reg is a very Open Source friendly publication. They often post about the evils of Microsoft and others. This is just their way of balancing out. Instead of posting an anti-open source article every so often, they just post one huge flaming pile of crap to get it all to balance out in the end. It's like when you help a dozen old ladies across the street, you get to murder one bum and your karma breaks even.

Re:jeeesus

[1u3hr]

The Register runs this kind of stunt from time to time. The whole point is just to boost readership. They don't care if people come there for something insightful or because it's utterly moronic; the page hits are the same after all.

The Register does run articles like this -- as a joke. And regularly they're picked up by irony-deficient Americans and posted as if they were real. Otto Z Stern is basically a combination of Hunter S Thompson and Jerry Pournelle. Look at the tag to the story:

Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.

My Issues With OSS

[Jekler]

I love OSS. At least half the applications on my computer are OSS, I'm writing this from FireFox, in the background I have Eclipse and OpenOffice open too. But I still have some issues with OSS.

It's not the quality of what OSS projects produce, it's the difficulty of getting involved. It's like a rite of passage. You can't just open up a compiler, read the source, and start typing code. Getting started is a complicated process. There are numerous OSS projects I'd love to get involved in, but actually setting up my computer to have a functional environment is frequently more work than I can stomach. In comparison, designing and writing code is far easier than configuring my system to prepare to join an OSS project. Some people have said that it's no more difficult than understanding the system at a commercial project, but I disagree. Any commercial projects I've been involved in usually have their computers already configured so you can just start working, no break in stride.

For the most part, the thought of how much work it's going to be to get started keeps me from even taking the first step to get involved. I spent many hours just trying to configure my system to get involved with the Mozilla project, and didn't even get to the point I could review the code because of build problems. And of course real life intervenes so the amount of time I can spend at once trying to configure my system is limited.

Maybe this is a necessary hazing ritual, but in my opinion, the day that software developers don't also need to be System Configuration Experts, the progress of OSS will skyrocket. If there were simply an executable file that you run and it setup a complete environment where you can just start typing code and contribute, OSS would progress at light speed because much less capable developers could still contribute with small bug fixes, or even clarifying comments, adding comments, or just restructuring code modules.

Some people might think that's a bad idea because complete idiots could try to participate, but there's numerous ways around that like ranking/priority systems attached to code reviews (i.e. Positively ranked developers would have their code reviews take precedence over unknown developers, and trolls who not only didn't produce anything valuable, but even wasted reviewers time with complete nonsense pseudo code could have rankings knocked down so they wouldn't even be visible to review)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Get a life, man ... and contribute

[haraldm]

The Good Thing [TM] with Open Source Software [TM] is - nobody requires you to use it (least of all Microsoft). But you are heartily invited to contribute. OSS is a community thing, not a "I buy this CD and I can blame the vendor for everything else" thing. If you want a product that you can blame a vendor for, get Windows, and hell, there's a lot to blame Microsoft for in Windows. Maybe you like this game better.

Next time do some research before you buy the hardware, and support those vendors that provide working and recent drivers, and tell them about it. Even if you can't program yourself, that would be supporting OSS. As long as you buy stuff from vendors that don't even manage to release the specs (because they are afraid that somebody could clone their crap), shut up and buy proprietary stuff.

For crying out loud

[Cally]

What wrong with you people?! don't you know irony or satire when you see it? Oh, ... wait. No 'Private Eye' in the land of free speech... Just think of it as IT journalism by Monty Python. I'm really looking forward to seeing the "FotW" and what the Register cha;ps have to say about this mass sense-of-humour failure. Let's just say that I think they might just be ever-so-slightly slightly taking the piss out of the Slashbots...

You know, I think this inability to distinguish irony from sincerity explains a lot about the success of Dubya in hoodwinking Americans into voting for him. He'd've got nowhere in Europe, because he's obviously a clown - obvious to anyone equipped with a sense of humour or of irony, anyway.

Re:jeeesus

[arkhan_jg]

"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."

I think you've missed that The Register is a british publication. This article is sarcastic satire, nothing more. It might raise page views, but it's not meant as a troll to be take seriously.

I laughed when I read the article. I laughed even louder when I saw how many slashdotters have taken it seriously and leapt to linux's defence, and I say that as a user of linux for 7 years. I mean, come on -

"Meanwhile, I'm sitting here typing away on a 128-processor Unix SMP armed with an ultrasonic file system and jet-fueled partitioning system, wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate" - how could anyone NOT see this is a joke?

Re:Oblig. Spelling Nazi

[Reverend528]

Cars produced by apple all have 2 engines, one big one kludged onto a smaller one. Apple's cars have many of the features of a linux vehicle, but you wouldn't know, because everything is hidden under a dashboard that can only be removed with excessive force. The only thing that drivers are granted access to is a steering wheel, which is located in the upper left corner of the car. Because there are no pedals, all apple vehicles drive at the same speed all the time. Apple drivers insist that the speed is "fast" because there are two engines, but many windows and linux drivers debate this.

Despite the absurd usability problems that are created by having only one poorly-placed steering wheel, many Apple users insist that their cars are "more user-friendly". They also insist that they are "thinking differently", despite the fact that all of their cars look exactly the same.