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ESR Says Linux Followers Should Compromise
jpheasant writes "Eric Raymond argues time is running out to win over the iPod generation. To get there, he says the Linux community will need to make 'compromises.' For starters: 'Linux believers will have to reach out beyond self-absorbed geeks who learns Klingon and attends science fiction conventions in his spare time.'" From the article: "I mean that we need to be prepared to go to the rights holders for these proprietary codecs and say, we'll give you money, give us a license; and this is something that the Linux community has a huge antipathy to doing because we've got all this idealism about open source. And in the long run, I think that's true, I view comprising with the proprietary codec vendors as a tactical move designed to get us larger end user market shares, so that in the end we can push more things to the open."
Politically, technically, pragmatically, ESR is singing perfect pitch. There are warning signs indicating Linux, and OSS-related efforts could be relegated to backroom geekdom for a long time if some "commercial" hurdles aren't first overcome.
Five years ago I had reasonable success getting non-Linux users to at least try it for a while, about half stayed and have never looked back. I consider that pretty good marketing and return on marketing.
Fast forward to today -- first(ly), I'm more reluctant to recommend Linux to non-Linux noobs because I know how many more devices people connect to their computers today, how many people watch DVDs on their computers, how many people are managing pictures and music on their computers. And many if not most are moving to use wireless routers.
Linux comes up short in all of the above... it can handle some, but not all. I've as much as completely given up on even considering wireless configurations for non-Linux noobs. Part of my "price tag" for getting Linux(s) up and running in a home network includes some kind of wireless bridge.
As for connectivity for mp3 players, not so much. And people who would consider Linux don't when they find they can't hook up their players and go. "Plays for Maybe" doesn't cut it. Unless their choice for player also connects as a non-driver plug'n'play mass storage device, they're not interested in working through the quirks.
Managing photos? Another tough sell.
I love Linux more today than ever, it's matured into a top notch competitor in the server (and desktop in my opinion) world. But if some of the interactions with commercial devices: wireless; cameras; music players; etc., Linux today is a tougher sell than five years ago, and that just ain't the way it was supposed to be. Sigh.
I suspect I'll get a barrage of replies where readers describe "solutions" to all of the above. That would be great -- especially the wireless conundrum. But, I haven't found the suite spot yet... not where everything is easy to configure, easy to use. If readers have solutions, let's start a list, some repository, some "goto" place where we can all point and say, "There's your Linux desktop solutions."
I'm willing to pay. Friends and family I've talked with are willing to pay, heck they already pay dearly for Windows XX. If Open Source/Linux doesn't make some compromise to come more mainstream, what looked like a viable and potential option may be forced into niche-dom... and everyone will pay. Yeah, slashdotters can continue to get great use out of their Linux, but Linux is good enough -- it deserves better than just the cloistered existence among the technical elite.
I think more than finding some profitable additional customer base, vendors need other enticement.... How about getting out from under the behemoth that is Microsoft? If the Linux and Open Source community could hold out that carrot, not only would vendors open potential revenue, they could cut better leveraged business deals with Microsoft -- a benefit for all of us.
Why change? I love Linux, and if it changed to suit "the ipod generation," I would probably like it less. Why compromise beliefs so we can have a 8% market share instead of 6%? Who benefits?
While I totally agree that sometimes the (some of the) OS community is up to zealot like level on everthing oS..
and actually hindering the development of OS from development view and practical social view.
And we need to tame that sometimes.
However the answer to zealotry is not total "pragmatism".
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parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
The "collective decision" about the dominant operating system is going to be the decision about which OS supports existing applications. People switch OSes only if they'll run their applications. And that's going to be Windows Vista. The ace up the sleeve here is that, as with the 16-32bit transition, Microsoft will continue to support 32-bit in the back. The "different software suite" bit makes no sense to me - Microsoft had at that time a "pure" 32-bit OS (NT3.x) as well as the 9x line that balanced the 32/16 mix well. I don't understand why ESR is making this argument at all, because it makes no sense.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I don't see how playing to twentysomethings who have no power, influence, or deep pockets as being an effective strategy. Rather, I would advise pushing to the corporate desktop. Where business goes, the home will follow. If we can push GNU/Linux to the corporate desktop, conquering the home desktop will be easy. How do you think the IBM PC became the standard? It was at first a boring machine, with no color, no sound, and no appeal to anyone, save the suits who make the corporate purchasing decisions. And now, nearly thirty years later, it's evolved now everyone has it on their desktop. GNU/Linux must be positioned as a viable alternative to Windows in the corporate space first. The iPod generation is a useless distraction that can be dispensed with for the time being. If more businesses started using GNU/Linux for office workstations it would drive people to start using it at home as well. At least the media conglomerates have no influence (and in fact negative influence!) when it comes to the corporate desktop.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I agree, and I'm generally anti-Linux. I don't use it, I don't particularly like it, but I still have a huge amount of respect for what it is and what has been created.
Linux is based around a manifesto of rights (about which I disagree) created by Richard Stallman. Linux contributors may be pro-GPL, or ambivalent, or in some cases even anti-GPL, but they all agreed to work on a GPL operating system and gave their time towards that.
ESR is assuming that this is because they all wanted Linux to be successful on the desktop or to some new generation of kids.
I don't think that's why they worked on Linux at all. I think they worked on Linux to make a GPL operating system and to hell with popularity.
OTOH ESR's arguments are irrelevant. Any company can pay for licenses for these codecs and put out closed-source Linux binaries and sink or swim in the market. It's not up to Linus, RMS or ESR. It's up to the market.
None of this affects Linux per se.
Honestly, why must the goal of Linux be to beat Microsoft? What is the point of getting everyone to run our favorite OS if the only way to do it is to make it into something we find objectionable?
The OSI is supposed to be about the philosophy of Open Source, not world domination. The correct course of action is to try and convince the proprietary vendors that it's in their best interests to release the source to their drivers, not to abandon our own philosophy just so we can have their software. These vendors need to be convinced that we are a market they should get into, not that we're desperate enough for their crap that we're willing to give up the entire movement for it.
ESR is irrelevant, and has been for years. If his philosophy that beating Microsoft is more important than anything else reflects the attitude of the OSI as a whole, then the OSI will soon be just as irrelevant as he is.
was OSS about marketshare?
If you build it, they will come.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If you do things right, and hear out the users, eventually you will have a much more solid product. Focusing on marketing that much usually tends to drive tech-related stuff into the ground.
I believe that his views are quite insightful and maybe even correct. OSS zealotry might work for you and me, however, most people see their computer as a tool, not as a statement of ideology. Hardware and software vendors make their products to carter to most people. If OSS doesn't become a little more flexible to appeal to the masses it will never outgrow its niche market.
Eric's argument presumes there is a *need* to 'Win over' the iPod generation.
Is the clock ticking? If we don't get them on board, will Linux implode by 1st January 200x? Must we hunt down, corner and 'convert' that last Windows user?
Hey, here's a thing, Eric: What if we work on the basis that those who need or want Linux will continue to do so, those who develop and support the product for love or money will also do so and those that want to have a looksee will do so and and may or may not choose to use it? Simple!
Chill out - there's more important things to worry about.
AT&ROFLMAO
I'd rather see reverse-engineered open source software to do these tasks. If that becomes illegal in the U.S.A. then fine, let the U.S.A. fall behind the rest of the world. the rest of the world is hugely waking up to the dangers of proprietary formats and software, and the U.S. is already becoming less and less relevant in the world for a number of self-inflicted reasons. And this is not an unpatriotic position, the U.S. is taking the path of abandoning freedom and restricting rights, and this DRM business is just one more part of that.
ESR is starting to lose his grip entirely. Linux doesn't need its core geek constituency (including ESR) to change. It needs to attract new geeks who aren't quite as exclusively geeky. Whose hobby is hooking Linux to the rest of the world, including iPods. Who want to exploit the work of the geekiest to bring Linux's builtin power to the even less geeky.
This has always been true of Linux, even for the benefit of true geeks. We need people who will at least write documentation, or even just edit documentation to be read by mere mortals. We need capitalists who will produce interfaces, apps and packages for the lure of money. We need people who will make "developers' kits" bridging the raw power and flexibility of the open OS to the more limited imaginations and attention spans of the masses.
ESR would spend his time more productively by writing some documentation or some example code than by loudly eating crow in public.
--
make install -not war
I have no respect for a guy that pollutes the global namespace by defining 'timeout' as 'wtimeout' in a header as commonly use as 'ncurses.h'.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I think it's a point of view problem. The people who are keenly interested in the success of GNU/Linux in general (I would count myself as one of them) feel the passion for the OS that they do because of how many things they can do with it. Those things just can't be accomplished on other OSes with the same level of flexibility, style or possibly even at all. However, to get GNU/Linux to do those things requires more knowledge than the typical "Joe User" will ever have, so they will never experience the true beauty of the OS. Not because there's something wrong with them, or something wrong with the OS, but due to completely different cultures and needs. If you make a "Joe User" friendly version of GNU/Linux it's very likely going to be very uninviting to someone who is "hardcore" either on the technical or the philosphical sides.
To put it another way, you will never get the catholic church to agree to support a woman's right to choose whether or not she will continue a pregnancy. There is no compromising, and if there was then one side or the other is weakening their position to the point that they don't have a side anymore. If women said, "OK. We agree that abortions shouldn't be legal once a woman has had a total of three terminations" they would pretty much put a hole in any situation where a woman is repeatedly impregnated against her will by her father (fairly common in some cultures). In that particular instance, that woman would have no choice but to carry a child she didn't want unless she wants to break the law. Conversely, if the Catholics believe that God tells them that abortion is a sin but they turn a blind eye to a law that makes it legal, they are acting as hypocrites in the eyes of man. People opposed to Catholicism would be able to point to that issue as a hole in the philosophy of that religion.
It's quite the same with GNU/Linux and the acceptance of proprietary software just to garner popular support/adoption. You do this, and the notion of Free Software is weakened for a dubious cause. On the other hand, you don't accept the proprietary software and those who don't understand the philosophy behind Free (as in GNU) software say you're being disagreeable and should just accept that your doomed to failure. Really? In who's eyes? I'd say GNU/Linux + FOSS is extremely successful in that it leapfrogs the capabilities of other OSes in nearly every arena whether you're talking OS, Multimedia, Business, etc... With the notable exception of proprietary specialized software and hardware (which is only necessary in certain markets), there is nothing you can't do on a Linux box that you can't do on other platforms. And there is also a lot that you can do on a Linux box that you can't do on other platforms.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
and Microsoft's winning it. They want to close the currently open PC architecure and elect themselves as gatekeeper to what's left. They've got hardware manufactures adding features that prevent code without digital signatures from running. You'll need and incredibly expensive compiler and certification to get that signature. It'll kill Open Source deader than dead. You'll lose all the hobbyists (who won't be able to afford the software and certification), and with them the OSS community. Before long only a few big projects will survive, and those will only be relevent to large companies (because they won't be able to secure enough funding to do the smaller stuff). OSS software won't be able to offer the features it needs to, people will stop using it, and it'll die out.
What can stop this is getting a large enough base of OSS and linux users now that hardware manufactures won't abandon us when Microsoft comes calling.
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"Honestly, why must the goal of Linux be to beat Microsoft?"
To convince the proprietary vendors that it's in their best interests to release the source of their drivers.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I agree...
What has happened, is that somewhere along the way the philosophy of open source software and truly free software became popular. Unfortunately, much like religion, many of the people who became fans of the philosophy decided that it was not enough to simply live by it, but that everyone else in the world should live by it, too. The media, is always eager to pick up on any sort of rivalry, because it means polarization and ratings, and nothing sells better than playing off the emotions of the public. So now we have people who are willing to evangelize and peddle Linux like a religion, a select few of who would go so far as to shove it down the throat of the people, if they have to.
Is Linux more stable than Windows? Is free software more secure than proprietary software? When will Linux take over the desktop? In my opinion, these questions are utterly beside the point. Open source doesn't exist in spite of, or because of proprietary software. It exists because someone, somewhere decided to give their hard work to the world, and there is absolutely nothing that can stop or change that.
If you become your enemy in order to defeat your enemy, you may have "won," but you won the opposite of what you were fighting for in the first place.
Libertarians aren't worried about whether we get screwed over in the process (and seem oblivious to non-market, non-greed forces, even when they're more important), they just want marketshare. Means? Ends? They don't matter; if you're strong (rich) enough, you just screw over anyone you want so long as they're not stronger (richer) than you to take whatever you want.
/dev/null as befits them. I tell the computer and the software what to do, I will *NOT* stand for it doing that to me. And if a system ever forgets that, it can expect to face as many debuggers, hex editors, screwdrivers and soldering irons as it takes for it to remember who is boss here.
Yeah, I'm being glib here, but it doesn't feel like it compared to some of the libs I've talked to. I swear some of them read the Rules of Acquisition and think they're a good idea, not unlike Quark's line of "we don't want to end exploitation, we want to become the exploiters."
Anyhow, I'll side with RMS on this one. I want freedom, not compromise, and I'll help code it if I can, but DRM, software patents and the like can go to hell, or
Well, how exactly are you a market if you refuse to pay for licensing their product? Isn't the whole idea of being a paying customer is that one... pays for the services?
Why would Microsoft release MS Office for free under linux, for example? The standard (and lacking) response I hear is that they should released a crippled product, then charge for tech/customer support.
Pardon my ignorance.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
The discussion was about drivers. In the case of drivers, I'm paying them for the hardware. So, open sourcing their drivers opens them up to new markets.
As for other non-hardware-related proprietary software, most of that will probably never be open sourced. These software companies have a business model that depends on their product being proprietary, and it's a little much to ask them to change their entire business model without a clear profit motive just because of a philosophy. But that's where this whole debate comes in. I don't need Microsoft to open source all of its code. If they want to, they can do that, but I'm not going to force them to abandon their current philosophy, just as I wouldn't abandon mine just to get their software on my preferred OS.
What is this obsession people have with linux being accepted mainstream? What Raymond claims is true, if linux (and FOSS in general) wants to be adopted mainstream it's needs to compromise it's ideals.
But maybe linux doesn't need to be mainstream. Operating systems tend to be developed to accomodate the lowest commond denominator. Microsoft has a lot of grandmas and grandpas with eMachines to satisfy. Apple has a lot of clueless art students to "empower". If linux's lowest common denominator is a bunch of Klingons, that's a good thing.
If linux's demographic was magically expanded to include grandma, grandpa and emo art students that aren't willing to learn how to compile a kernel, it would have to contend with the point-and-click, plug-and-play mentality of it's clueless user base, meaning that developers would be forced to spend time making linux idiot proof instead of optimizing, debugging, enhancing and advancing.
I, on the other hand, would encourage linux, and all open source projects to minimize their user bases. I'm not suggesting that FOSS should be kept a secret, but you certainly don't have to waste resources buying an idiotic full page ad in the New York Times. A good open source project (like a good democracy) demands an educated user base, not a herd of people who do things because advertisments tell them to.
That being said, there's no reason you can't have linux for stupid people (ubuntu (no offense, I use ubuntu)) and linux for smart people (freebsd, ha). That's the beauty of open source software.
In summary, if you already use linux and you still bought an ipod instead of the countless non-DRM, usbstorage friendly media players that are better and cheaper, then you are stupid and you should probably buy a mac. If you already own an ipod and you want to get into linux, life sucks, get started reverse engineering iTunes.
This is the smarmiest post I have ever read. GNU/Linux users on this forum have been forcefed this ZDNet-style pablum for over 10 years. "Beware everybody, Linux could [insert some dreadful consequence here] unless you learn to compromise." Nothing bad has happened yet. Quite the opposite. ESR has proven himself to be a pretty unstable figure over the years. It takes some significant hyperbole for him to even get in the news anymore. Why does his latest 180 degree utterance even merit notice?
an ill wind that blows no good
It seems like Eric has lost his religion and is caving into the closed source community. Perhaps he has forgotten that OpenSource is a wonderful "alternative" to closed source. Perhaps the fire has gone out.
OpenSource users provide a large and rapidly growing market that desperatly needs to be attended to by hardware manufactures and by software developers, both OpenSource and closed source. This market *will not* shrink in the future. OS software developers should act like it. Plan for it. Act like they understand what's going on. There is profit to be made with OpenSource. A lot of it as RedHat and others are demonstrating.
Rather than whinning about being left behind, OpenSouce advocates should stand up and become leaders, organize and be developing marketing strategies, agressively marketing OpenSouce alternatives and showing hte for-profit community how they can profit from continuing to develope OpenSource approachs to their businesses. Show them in plain dollars and cents language how it is in their best interests to adopt OpenSource methods and use OpenSource software.
Lets face it when it comes to marketing the benefits of using OpenSouce, these folks who claim to be "OpenSouce advocates" have been d*cks, small and downy soft ones at that.
Just how much does OSDL spend on medium advertising whether it be TV, radio or otherwise to extoll the value of using OpenSource? Why don't they?
When was the last time RedHat advertized nationally? Why not?
For that matter, have any of the others who make good quarterly profits marketing OpenSource software spent any significant amounts of national advertizing? No, they haven't.
This, plain and simply, is stupid and ignorant on their parts. Is it greed or lack of insight or both that prevents them from setting adequate funds aside for marketing budgets?
Why do we as users put up with such banality? Shouldn't we as users and even developers expect more and better from those who claim to be advocating for OpenSource and/or profiting because we produce and even use their/our products? What's it going to take to motivate us to jump in their sh*t?
It was never about payment. Getting things legitimately without paying for them is a nice bonus (and as a matter of principle, since I'm not in the habit of buying a lot of software, I'd rather run applications you're not supposed to pay for...) but the whole "philosophical" question here revolves around software freedom.
In that regard, I think the greatest contribution of Free Software is that it raises the bar of people's expectations. Commercial photo editors have to be better than GIMP. Commercial 3-D mesh editors have to be better than Blender. Commercial GUI systems have to be better than KDE. Commercial compilers need to be better than GCC. Maybe that's not a difficult thing, really, but the free software is making all this "baseline" functionality free to anyone. Without that influence, I think the bar for "standard operating system" would be lower, and all kinds of things that are standard now, you'd have to pay some amount of money for.
In the Microsoft Office example - the thing is that the Office suite is basically a de-facto standard. For that reason, Office on Linux would be an asset to those who want it. It has value and it's something Microsoft could sell. But the situation of trying to sell commercial software for Linux has never been a great one for various reasons - among other things, the lack of consistency between different distributions, and the fact that many Linux users, I think, aren't used to buying software. (It's a bit hard, when you're used to everything being cost-free. But I think it's important to recognize those times when a piece of commercial software really is valuable, and be willing to buy in that case.) Probably the reasons Microsoft hasn't released Office for Linux is because Linux (as a platform) benefits from that more than Microsoft does - they don't need to draw Linux users into using Office, they can just use the fact that a lot of people already use Office to try to guide people toward using Windows.
Going back to hardware drivers: the incentive for hardware makers to provide drivers on Linux would be to sell hardware. Looking at this from the perspective of a Linux user who just wants to use a particular piece of hardware, binary, closed-source drivers would be fine: but personally I hope to see more drivers get released as Free Software, as this allows more flexibility. Drivers released as Free software could be adapted to run on new architectures, or under significantly different versions of the kernel, for instance. Leaving that kind of thing in the manufacturer's hands means that the future usefulness of that piece of hardware is tied to their willingness to keep those drivers updated for new circumstances. That's a situation I'd prefer to avoid, though obviously not everything is going to work out that way...
So, when's it worth making compromises? I'm not really sure. Promoting Linux for the sake of promoting Linux - increasing the user base, etc. at best means that Linux will become a more widely supported program, with more commercial software releases and less tech support BS along the lines of "you use Linux therefore you can't use this {ISP|camera|whatever}". But other than that, I'm fine with it being a system by and for programmers.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
And because you don't care you can't choose. You're forced to pay what THEY want you to pay, to put up with the quality and support THEY want to provide you.
Congrats, you're a good consumer.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
1) The idea is not to shove Linux down the throat of people, but to make it attractive to people so that they want to use it.
2) Currently, Windows is shoved down the throat of all of us. And no, the argument "if you don't like it, don't us it" doesn't work for several reasons: as long as Windows is the de facto standard OS everywhere there won't be many viable alternatives with sufficient hardware support etc, and as long as customers refuse to run anything but Windows because that is all they know, I have to run Windows myself. Even when it is not the best tool for the problem.
For me this is nothing like religion and all about practicality. I haven't really RTFA, but from the summary that seemed to be the theme of the article as well.
It will take somebody who's prepared to buy the rights for those technologies on behalf of the Linux community and then distribute them as a product.
Apple isn't selling the rights for those technologies to anybody. If anything, Linux actually has better third party support for iPod and relatd products than Windows at this point.
To get there, he says the Linux community will need to make "compromises." For starters: Linux believers will have to reach out beyond "self-absorbed" geeks who learn Klingon and attend science fiction conventions in their spare time.
All major Linux distributions permit, and even support, the use of proprietary drivers (e.g., for NVidia), proprietary CODECs (e.g., MPEG, RealNetworks), and proprietary programming platforms (e.g., Sun Java), under proprietary licenses. Vendors like RedHat and SuSE are even bundling for-pay applications with some of their distributions. And users are paying for those Linux distributions.
The fact that there aren't more proprietary codecs and drivers on Linux isn't the fault of "Linux believers". Linux believers are constantly "reaching out" to commercial companies, begging and pleading for drivers and applications to be ported to Linux, even closed source. I myself have been doing that for as long as Linux has been around. It's the lack of response from many vendors that has forced geeks to reverse engineer things and come up with their own solutions.
And it's the lack of response from commercial vendors, as well as their haphazard product lifecycles and support even on so-called "supported" platforms, that has caused people like me to increasingly prefer all-open-source solutions whenever we can get them. In the end, not having iPod support is less important than having to put up with yet another poorly supported driver or having to wait for months until a vendor gets around to updating a closed source library to work with the latest version of the OS.
In any case, if ESR's vision of the future is a sort of mix of commercial and open source software, with some commercial entity paying for licenses for proprietary functionality, that already exists: it's called an Apple Macintosh. And for what it is, it's not a bad compromise. But Linux users haven't moved en-masse to Macintosh because, to many people in the real world, iPod support is ultimately less important than reducing the various business risks associated with depending on vendors of proprietary software components.
my friend Rob Landley and I have done an analysis which we're going to publish very shortly suggesting that there is a critical window of vulnerability for changing the dominant operating system. And that is probably going to close in 2008.
I don't want to "change the dominant operating system", I want to see operating system dominance disappear completely. A world in which 90% of the machines run Linux is almost as bad as a world in which 90% of the machines run Windows or MacOS. The software industry should be built on a diversity of systems, unified through open standards, not a sequence of OS monocultures.
I agree with the parent: by showing the hardware vendors that the OSS community is a significant portion of their market, we can gain some clout and be able to take advantage of hardware. Who wouldn't love to be able to tinker with ATI or Nvidia drivers to get them to perform even better? And isn't it great that my newly bought Linksys WRT-54GL router has a OSS firmware replacement that has a SSH daemon and can run shell scripts?
We don't necessarily have to overthrow Microsoft for this, but simply demonstrate that it is advantageous for the hardware vendors to pay attention to us.
On the other hand, I also agree with the grandparent: the achievement of this objective should be done without compromise; otherwise we go down the slippery slope. RMS's philosophy is stringent and painful to follow, but I'm not sure that we can afford not to follow it.
We want clout with the hardware vendors, but we shouldn't compromise our principles to get that clout.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
last I heard, Vista wasn't going to be released as an upgrade, and the install process would be hardware specific images. Microsoft's biggest customers are OEMs, who are desparet for something to move units with. Besides, with 95% of the market, Microsoft can say to hell with inertia. I mean, what are you gonna do, buy a Mac? Not when Dell'll sell you an entire computer with a 19" flat panel for less than $500 dollars.
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So if Linux is useful for the desktop then it's fine, else I'll move to a different system.
I think the point of OSS is that if you feel that way, it is time to get coding, or testing, or documenting, or making wikis, or helping out on mail-lists, or whatever is that you do well. Linux will be useful on the desktop when contributers decide they want to make it that way.
If you don't want to contribute but just want a cheap OS that does what you want, then pay somebody to make an OS work the way you want it to work (doubt they'll be able to make it much cheaper than Windows/OSX/whatever).
What I hear a lot of people complaining about is the fact that people choose to donate code under licenses that make it very difficult to couple the code with proprietary software. What they don't get is that this is an intentional design decision on the part of those writing the code. And, since they're the ones donating their time, they're the ones who get to decide what terms their time is donated under. Many of these devs really don't care if anybody actually uses their software - at least not to a degree that they are willing to compromise their principles regarding proprietary software. If I held copyright to a chunk of an OSS project, and some vendor wanted me to relicense it so that they could use it in some bundled closed-source app, then I'd be happy to work something out, but it wouldn't be for free. If they want to make a buck on my labor, then they ought to pay for the right.
I guess what it comes down to is the fact that many OSS contributors don't really care that desperately if linux succeeds on the desktop - even those who make desktop-oriented software for it. Sure, they want to succeed, but only on their own terms - even if it means ultimately not succeeding except within the community.
Well, you can't really get any support from vendors until a large number of people are using Linux actively. Right now, it's on servers, and virtually nobody uses it as a desktop machine outside of uber-geeks and a few of their family. That's tiiiiny. That number is so small that any hardware CEO that decides to spend any significant amount of money on the Linux market should be fired.
You're not going to get that kind of market share until it's easy to use (I put a DVD movie in the drive, and it plays).
Personally, I think that Linux will always be relegated to geeks and hobbysists and geek hobbyists. I don't see it solving any significant problems that Windows has, because Windows is so mature at this point. There's very little reason for the average person to use it, other than saving a hundred bucks. Most sane people aren't going to put themselves through that for $100, and if they do, then they are the kind of people who wouldn't shovel out a few hundred bucks for a new video card, anyway.
The guy does have some interesting points. And I know that the Linux desktop community does need to change and adapt. I'm not saying we have to pay for Linux. I am saying there is a change needed.
Linux should be under it's own License and not GPL.
Linux needs a Foundation whose sole purpose is to acquire the licenses needed to propel it onto the desktop more rapidly. It will be supported by corporate grants, linux community, and finally donations from the companies profiting off the Linux kernel.
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I don't speak Klingon and I don't attend science fiction conventions at all. Nor have I ever done so. I'm not a programmer, I'm just an advanced user. I'm a surprisingly normal, well-adjusted 35-year-old female. I use Linux because I happen to like it. Hence, I find the attitude in this article highly offensive. It's like saying all black people love fried chicken and watermelon.
Mr. Raymond is trying to tell us what's so wrong with Linux and the Linux community, but he just proved he was both ignorant and bigoted on both subjects. Bigotry is for fools and I don't suffer fools gladly. Nor do I find ignorance pleasant.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.