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Five Things You Can't Discuss about Linux
gondwannabe writes "Here are Five Things You Aren't Allowed to Discuss About Linux. With considerable chutzpa, an insightful Rob Enderle takes on what he considers five dogmas in the OSS community and explains why they're wrong. Examples: Linux is secure, "communes" actually work in the long haul, and that Linux is "pro-developer."
I find it interesting that a commentator so thoroughly discredited as Rob Enderle would get a hit on Slashdot.
The NY Times has a policy of not using his quotes in stories.
Maybe someone should take away the admin privileges of the "editor" who put up this article
I never get used to these constant resurrections
I'm not a coder, I'm a scientist. Sometimes I have to code. Getting the tools to do so is many times easier (faster, cheaper, less confusion, etc.) for me on Linux than on Windows. A colleague recently suggested I try quantlib. He also mentioned that they require Boost which can be a real pain in the ass to get compiled and installed on an XP machine. I went home and installed both of these libraries in 10s of seconds with Synaptic.
So for me, Linux is very "pro-developer".
Given GPL3 cannot be applied to the Linux kernel, I can't see GPL3 killing Linux in any way except possibly in being so much better that an alternative to Linux that is licensed under GPL3 gains massive popularity, in part due to licensing.
Which is not impossible, BTW.
Personally, I don't care about the long term survival of "Linux". Linux is a kernel, and not even a particularly interesting one. What I care about is the long term survival of useful Free software. If Linux takes a bullet because, for example, Solaris has a better Free software license, then so long Linux. Nice knowing you.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Exactly. When Linux started to become mainstream, I took some time to step back and evaluate why I liked it so much, to make sure that I wasn't just jumping on a bandwagon. The truth is, I prefer Linux because I preferred Solaris when I was in college. Why did I like Solaris so much, though? It wasn't my first OS - the Commodore 64 "OS" was my first (and it was very gentle with me). I did DOS for years after that before a kindly soul who lived in the university computer lab opened my eyes to that tiny room of Sun terminals hidden behind the huge lab of PCs. Solaris - that is, Unix - just "clicked" with me. Everything was designed to work with everything else in a holistic, hard to characterize way. No longer was I working around deficiencies in the design of the system - the system was working for me. Going back to DOS (and later Windows) was just painful. When I graduated and discovered that the only jobs available to a non-top-ten university CS graduate were programming DOS or Windows, I wept. When I discovered that if I wanted a computer at home, I could choose between DOS or Mac, I gnashed my teeth in frustration. (I graduated college just about the same time Linus started coding kernel 1.0). When I first started hearing of Linux (Debian was my first distribution... and it was not gentle) - by all that is holy and good, it works like Solaris did! I have a C compiler! (The same C compiler I used in college, in fact) It's right there! It's bundled with the distribution! And look - there's vi! Ah - I was home again, at long last.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
(I also am a Solaris aficionado, to the point where I'd consider taking a pay cut to work in a Solaris environment over Windows. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to be necessary, if anything the opposite)
1. Is Linux a Myth?
There is no "Linux", talk about Red Hat or SuSE or whatever, not Linux in general.
2. Is Linux Secure?
Despite what I just said, talking about general Linux is convenient, so I'll now do it myself. Then go into a rant about "spies" with an off-topic swipe at PJ of Groklaw, while not saying anything at all about security in the OS sense.
3. Do Communes Work?
Community efforts never work. Just look at the debate over the GPL3, which by the way is "anti-business" and a threat to intellectual property everywhere.
4. Is Linux Pro-Developer, or Pro-You?
I'm not smart enough to understand open source business models, so I'll imply you can't make money giving away software, then throw out some FUD that Linux equals outsourcing. But I'll close the section by acknowledging that Google is making money using Linux, to pretend to lend some balance to my analysis.
5. Is Linux "Open"?
If you say Linux isn't ready for the desktop, you will be fired, receive death threats, and be sexually harassed.
Wow, what a brilliant article. We should stick this guy in a room with Katz and Dvorak and see who can come up with the most idiotic BS.
Rob Enderle doesn't offer criticisms. He offers flame trolls like you accused this person of being.
Never once has Rob offered any good insight- only name flinging and transparent bullshit. It's so
bad that his pet name in some circles is Pretenderle. His articles and papers aren't really very
good and don't have very many of these things called "facts" behind them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The day IBM or HP or Red Hat start complaining about the licensing of the GNU tools MIGHT be the day I take that position seriously. Until then, sounds like typical FUD. It's not like those companies haven't had time to consider a position on the GLP 3 draft. More so, remember Sun has considered licensing Solaris under the GPL.
Just a simple fact: if it weren't for the GNU tools, the Linux kernel would not have been possible at the time.
... it was the GPL license that gave Linux its edge over BSD ... it was politics and idealism ... dreaming of a better world. ... which now happily hack together on common projects (like Linux itself) ;)
If it wasn't for Minix, then the Linux Kernel would not have been possible. What if Minix had chosen to use BSD's tools instead?
I say to you
GPL contributed to a sort of common ground between companies
No, it was BSD's legal troubles that gave Linux the edge. If Linus had chosen a different open licence then Linux still would have been a success. Most people just wanted a working, free (primarily free as in beer) *nix on x86 that didn't have any legal questions hanging over it's head. Maybe a few GNU zealots wouldn't have joined in, but then I seem to recall a lot of GNU zealots at the time saying "wait for the HURD", even with Linux's GPL licence. I really doubt the licence choice had that much to do with Linux's success.
I'm not certain how much the "Communist Manifesto" style crap (like your "dreaming of a better world" bit) hurts Linux and the rest of the FOSS community, but I really, really doubt it helps.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
First section, fairly accurate really. Linux is always talked about as one great thing, it isnt. Some are god awful, some are dedicated to a single task, some are home user friendly, others are command line. Just as he says this pretty much makes Linux perfect at everything, even though that is often far far from the truth because there is no single Linux platform that will accomplish all of the jobs a particular person requires.
He is right the comparisons are often deeply flawed because they do not compare Ubuntu to Windows or Red Hat to OSX they compare Linux or sometimes even just *nix to the competition. You might as well compare the traits of one person to the best selection of traits from a thousand other people. That one person is going to feel pretty awful after that.
This isnt just a bash on Linux because he is also right that there are distributions that can stand up to some real comparisons, its just more often than not they never get the chance.
Second section. Starts off well his previous point stands and its all too true that if someone doesnt know what they are doing you will always be running things insecurely regardless of which O/S your using. He does go a little astray here but there is still an important point, in an open community where people are expected to get help from the army of other users (This is often touted as a benefit of using Linux, and usually thats very true.) maintaining decent security is going to become a mine field. Its a little paranoid, its probably not a common occurence but there is a risk. Though I think the whole thing can be summed up in saying that net security is only as good as those securing it.
Third section. Again pretty much spot on, the community behind Linux has produced some awesome stuff but it is impossible to ignore the infighting that is going on nearly constantly. The GPL3 being an excellent example of this. He quite clearly isnt saying that the community is wrong and it should be disbanded his last statements want the users of Linux to actually get more involved. Id expect people to be supporting this much. There are some distinctly anti community events going on and that is what this section is pointing too.
Fourth section. The money Linux makes is undoubtedly fairly small. Ive seen a lot of people argue about how open source can make money, thats probably true but its rare. Very rare. Red Hat is one of the largest open source companies ever yet you scale it up, or scale MS down and youll see a huge difference in profits. There is simply no way you can take such a slash in profits without that having a knock on effect to the employees.
Im no financial expert and I dont have enough figures but a lot of even this section appears to make sense.
Fifth section, and here is the prophesy. I know this guy has a sketchy past with these articles, I know that there are flaws even here, but by in large he makes some really good points. You would not know this from the endless insults and put downs streaming out of this thread. Ive no doubt that everything he has said about those who are even more extreme is true as well. Linux has become like some kind of religion to some people and it virges on being genuinly frightening at times.
Hes proven it right here. There must be about a half dozen comments on this thread that have actually attempted to discuss his points, or citisize them properly. Most are more content to just slag him off, or quote obscure parts and strawman him. No one, no matter what there opinion, deserves some of the harrasment these people have to endure.
Ill probably have annoyed some people just posting this, and in case they have been annoyed then try take a moment and remember. Its just an operating system, this is just an opinion, relax.
It's clear Enderle provokes a strong reaction from the rabble (I'm one of the rabble, back up there), but the blog entry is a good one, worthy of discussion, even as framed.
If Linux is to be taken seriously and adopted within large corporations, it does need to address those five points specifically. You can't convince upper management of the merits of your argument by using your Crazy Fist Number Eleven Slashdot Flame technique, so address those concerns rationally and in terms of business concerns, or you'll lose.
Widespread adoption among consumers should be ruled out categoricallly, until you can download a distro in one shot, and have it find your wireless adapter, Bluetooth adapter, and all your laptop goodies, without once have to su-su-sudo a single command line. For any laptop coming out of Dell or Toshiba, sold at Circuit City or Best Buy, and so forth. And there ain't a single distro that can do it today.
-BA
Yet again I found myself in a situation where I was able to finish off a little side-project or curiosity in a short amount of time purely because of the fantastic availability of open-source software. Then I read this article that tries to be very objective about the "open-source mythos" but completely misses what is for me the main point. Open-source software, including Linux, is empowering in ways that continue to boggle!
I found myself resurrecting a 15-year-old project simulating a double-pendulum and exploring chaotic motion. I did this project as a student, and wanted to restore aspects of this now that I'm a professor. But most of my original code was lost (I had some source code and a binary that worked in DOS) and I didn't have much free time to rewrite it from scratch. But with the virtue of open-source libraries like Glut and the GSL, I was able to make the simulation live again! And beyond that, by using public documentation on a FITS image standard and some astronomical image analysis software (SAOImage DS9), I was able to go even beyond the original project with a minimum of programming fuss and create some beautiful fractal images that delineate between chaotic and periodic motion of the double-pendulum system. It's a great teaching tool now.
This was probably the 100th time open source tools and libraries have benefited my work in ways that could not be replaced by anything else. And that's not even counting high-level languages and their open-source interpreters like Tcl, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.
If you overlook the synergies in open source software, you miss the point of it completely.