Slashdot Mirror
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."
Funny, I can't seem to find his name in any kernel commmits. Does he contribute under a pseudonym?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
He's right, it's our job to determine the best product for a given task given budget constraints, resources available, etc. But once we determine the best product, how can we NOT advocate it?
This following quote is very telling about the author's motives
Enderle clearly implies there was some sort of deliberate conspiracy to deceive by the people advocating linux. WTF? Does he really believe that?
I hate Linux Nazis and I don't think Linux or OSS is the best solution in all -- or even most cases. However, there are a lot of things in this article that are just wacky.
That said, Enderle does make some very good observations on community based works (that apply outside of IT as well) and some interesting comments on security. Just read him with an extra critical eye.
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
The term fud gets thrown around a lot. It seems if anyone says something critical about something else, the supporters of the attacked thing, cry fud. So this piece should be saved so that it can be pointed to as a great example of just what fud is. Fear Uncertainty Doubt. I mean he wastes no time, talking about a linux 'cover up' and how such cover ups can lead to disaster, bringing in global warming and the war in Iraq. That's some serious Fear.
Then his first 'point', "Is Linux a Myth?". This pretty much nails uncertainty and he is just getting started. The best part is he will lay down why he thinks it is wrong to 'abstract' linux, while his entire article rests purely on doing that, because it would be too hard to be more specific.
The doubt is spread throughout - "Is Linux Secure?", "Is Linux is(sic) 'Open'?" And supports this by saying he gets email that isn't nice and that means one can't honestly discuss Linux. (This is shortly after he criticized the open source community for in-fighting - these kind of contradicitions are so common in this piece, the mind boggles.)
I love the bugaboo about how a lot of linux contributors don't use their real names and could actually be spies. He compares it to Soviet Russia which dovetails nicely with his 'commune' question. Oh noes! Linux is the red menace!! (He's smart enough not to be too direct with this but it is rather plain to see).
Reading the comments that follow the article is just as much fun. Someone says when they can plug in a usb stick and it is autodetected, or intall a program by double clicking on it, they will consider linux. Apparently it's been a few years since he actually has seen a gnome or kde desktop. I do those things regularly and I'm running a couple versions behind on my favorite desktop distro.
This is fud, pure and simple.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Welcome to slashdot, news for nerds. If you want a blog aggregator step over to digg.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
1: Question authors background
2: ???
3: Karma!
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
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.
Remember, Enderle is the guy who's predicted the demise of the Macintosh more than anyone else. If there's a topic involving the Mac, Windows, or Linux, there's no question he'll be on the wrong side of it. It's amazing to see a pundit come in at a full 1750 MiliDvorak's on the Idiot Tech Pundit Scale.
But don't take my word for, as Google confirms the objective truth:
Rob Enderle insightful: 9,270 hits, Rob Enderle idiot: 32.200 hits
Anytime I read the phrase "Rob Enderle says," I know I can stop reading right there.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Yes, this is wacky:
The reason Linux has been abstracted into a concept is so it doesn't have to compete on merit. It can be anything, in concept, it needs to be to win a deal.
He then goes on to treat Linux as a concept for the rest of the article, which is so stupid it's not worth reading.
Linux is a kernel. Free Software is a concept. Both can be talked about intelligently. Linux can be compared to other kernels. Free software can be compared to other development models. The rest of his "arguments" are just as big a waste of time.
As someone else pointed out, this is the guy the NYT quit quoting. Now I know why.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
An "insightful Rob Enderle" -- a contradiction in 3 words.
What next, a "brilliant John Dvorak"... oh, wait, that was last week.
Sure, "discuss" all you want. But you wont be discussing with me and you wont get any response until you actually file bug reports and try to come up with solutions to the problems you find. That is what I consider to be constructive work and not just general hand-waiving. Not long ago there was an article called 30 days with Ubuntu posted on Slashdot. It detailed problems the author found in Ubuntu Linux. That is useful information and inspired me to submit a few patches to fix the authors problem. Judging by the number of bug reports submitted each day to popular free software projects, it seems others are too capabable of constructively discuss and help Linux improve.
Yours and this articles authors complaining, however, is dead weight. There is nothing I can do about a complaint such as "geek developed UI's." The reason those UI's look "geek developed" is because not enough people have taken the time to constructively critisize them. As a developer, there is nothing I'd like to hear more than constructive feedback on my UI's. But as commens such as that it is "wild assed" does not help.
Football Odds
The Five Things You Arent Allowed to Discuss About Linux
Posted by Rob Enderle on Monday 26 February 2007 at 7:44 pm
One: Is Linux a Myth?
Because "Linux" comes in so many different distros, he claims there no such specific thing as Linux. Just like there are so many different versions of Windows, that there's no such specific thing as "Windows"? Five minutes in the penalty box with a beginners book on set theory.
Two: Is Linux Secure? Based on his answer to One above, he proclaims that any technical analysis of security is impossible, but he will concentrate on other vulnerabilities unique to Linux. He then goes off on a tangent about "pretexting", which is a security vulnerability common to all systems, which at the end of the diatribe, he even admits. A few backhanded barbs about "commie spies" are included.
Three: Do Communes Work? First he answers "yes, it looks like it", but then goes off about how the commune isn't a happy fairyland where all the members get along (I don't recall any promise of that). He follows on with a silly tangent about the GPL sneaking into your office and stealing all your intellectual property. Yet another idiot who is offended that GPL isn't Public Domain, so people can't just take stuff released under it, polish it, and sell it proprietary-style.
Four: Is Linux Pro-Developer, or Pro-You? Ill-formed argument-- a continuation of his GPL rant above, really-- claiming you can't make money at Linux because it is not a Ferrari, it's a Ford? Then a weird rant about how the recent reduction in outsourcing is making UNIX and mainframes the hot new thing? This guy's all over the map.
Is Linux is Open? He says Linux isn't open because every time he opens his mouth and says something really, really stupid, everyone calls him an idiot and tells him to shut up.
Once again, proof that there's nothing so irritating as a dumbass who thinks he's smart.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The Five Things You Aren't Allowed to Discuss About Rob Enderle
--------
One: Is Rob Enderle a Myth?
Two: Is Rob Enderle Secure?
Three: Does Rob Enderle Work?
Four: Is Rob Enderle Pro-Developer, or Pro-You?
Five: Is Rob Enderle is Open?
Discuss....
Thank you for posting the article text. Now I can rip it apart bit by bit without waiting for his server to come back. Please keep in mind I'm speaking to the article's author when I say 'you' after this point, because I'm replying to the article text.
1. We don't need to talk about a Linux company to compare it to Microsoft. We're not comparing a company to a company. We're comparing the products of many companies and individuals and the advantages and disadvantages of that vs. Microsoft's products. Many users of Linux don't depend fully on one company for updates, fixes, and support. So to say basically that because Microsoft ties us to one source for these things that means that we must fall into the same trap for other operating systems is narrow-minded at best.
2. Any reasonable IT person will tell you that security is a process and not a product. Having a more secure base to start with is part of that process. Having code review is often part of that process. Running programs that aren't meant to make system-wide changes as users not authorized to make system-wide changes is part of the process. Most Linux distributions do a better job of _supporting_ these processes, and since it's open and editable, can be made moreso by many parties.
3. The FSF is not a hippy nudist farm commune, and the GPL is not a "do your fair share" agreement. The GPL allows people who have a purpose of their own to take a working system and do just the work they need done to support a change to do so instea dof writing a whole system from scratch and duplicating that parts that already work the way they need. Meeting your own needs and giving a little back for others having given you that opportunity is not communism. It's smart in a capitalist marketplace to take the lowest-cost route to your goal. Companies buy pre-existing parts to make their products all the time. Disney takes fairy tales with no copyrights, then copyrights the new work based on it, then lobbies to get those copyrights extended. Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds may have their differences, but they both want you to be able to use their work to do your work. They're not askign for the keys to your car. They just want you to treat their work a certain way if you choose to use it. They don't even care if you don't give out changes you make. They just want to make sure you give out the sources of any binaries you make from _their_ hard work.
4. Employees are not valued on the price of what they work on. They are valued on the amount of money they make the company and the rarity of their skills. The only reason a Ferrari mechanic makes more than a Chevy mechanic is that fewer people know how to work on Ferraris and that the shop owners are able to charge more because the end customer can find fewer competitors since fewer shops work on Ferraris. The goal of the Linux community is not to drive up costs at an employer. It is to do the exact opposite. It's a freely available system which is meant to lower barriers, not raise them. The fact that it does the job of commercial Unix so well for so much less and has built so large a base of trained and experienced administrators and developers that the labor rates have dropped is a positive thing. It means Linux actually has a lower TCO, which is a good thing in a capitalist society. It's a point Microsoft tries to claim. Doing more business with fewer employees who need training that is easier to get is a goal of all good capitalist companies.
5. Linux is open entirely. The minds of some of its proponents are not. Please do not confuse the issue. Blind IT advocacy is bad, but some IT advocacy done with care is a wonderful thing. If Windows doesn't serve a department's needs, the IT department needs to make that clear to the people writing the check. If Linux doesn't meet the needs of a particular project, IT needs to advocate against Linux on that project. If something makes your job much easier and much less stressful while saving your company money, you should always support it vociferously.
Oh, but Enderle is a great writer! Look at the grammar in this sentence:
... and then this:
... but it was immediately followed by this:
... you might be tempted to think of the phrase "double standard". Perhaps even the word "hypocrite". However, once you saw that the author was Enderle, you'd realize that this was not, in fact, a double-standard spewing hypocrite. Rather, you'd realize that this was another ingenous attempt at postmodern critique of double standards themselves, made using the language of hypocrisy. In doing so, Enderle attacks the concept with itself. It's meta-linguistics that he's playing with here. Utterly brilliant.
"Presenting the products and companies in abstract was actually rather brilliant, however, I can't find a Steve Jobs-like person I can congratulated for this excellent work."
He's such a good writer that he can laugh in the face of a comma splice. He is so good that he can make up new rules (like "An independent marker word can join two independent clauses because I say so.") and people will think all the better of him for it. He deftly taunts us with our normal grammatical expectations and then pulls them away at the last minute, leaving us awash in a sea of sophomoric writing -- trapped in his world, right where he wants us.
On this same thread, he's pioneering the way in new lines of logic. For example, normally, if you saw this:
"If we are actually doing an evaluation we have to evaluate what we are actually going to end up using and it isn't generic "Linux.""
"Do your assessment with a real product against real metrics. SuSe and Red Hat are both capable enough to compete without cheating."
"The easy path here would be to present the different security models for the different distributions but, for this purpose, I'm going to leave Linux in abstract and talk about the unique security problem it represents."
Carry on, Enderle. Carry on.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.