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Oracle Linux Adopters Suffer Backlash
atbarboz writes "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat. 'Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.'"
Users who call up a company they have no relation to in order to tell them their tech decisions are bad are complete morons. Linux is an OS, not a religion. If a company wants to run Oracle Linux, Red Hat, BeOS, Windows ME, or Mac OS 7 is completely their choice to make.
It's idiocy like this that gives any advocacy a bad name.
Look, guys, going around irritating users by calling them idiots, who are really our customers and should be treated as such (whether commercial users or not) is the kind of thing that makes the Linux community look like a bunch of elitist snobs who shout things like 'RTFA' at every question.
Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux? If you're one of the people calling Opes a bunch of idiots, look in the mirror.
My blog
Linux users would never be THAT stupid, it's just Microsoft's guerrilla PR tactics aimed at discouraging linux use. Ballmer probably made half the calls himself... oops it's guerrilla not gorilla. My bad, Ballmer wasn't involved at all then.
I can even see the marketing campaign to accompany this "Beyond idiocy - Windows vista".
Another aspect I don't get in all of this is the preference for Red Hat over Oracle. Red Hat is a great company that has contributed a lot to Linux, but to be fair, they are also a company that does not provide free access to downloads of their signature product (which is why we have CentOS), and a company the CEO of which once stated that Windows was a superior alternative to Linux for desktop users (admittedly a few years ago). Oracle, on the other hand, makes Unbreakable Linux freely availible to anyone who wants to download it, and additionally, also gave a major boost to Linux when it started supporting Linux as a platform in the late 1990s.
To be clear, though, I am not saying that Oracle has a better record than Red Hat, rather, that the two have both made contributions to the Linux community, and for a large number of people to attack a company for using Unbreakable Linux as opposed to RHEL is, in my opinion, retarded.
How dare you not drink our koolaid!" /froth froth froth
We use Linux for a lot of things here where I work, but if we moved to some other OS, or some other comapny changed platforms, I wouldn't take it personally. I only care if they offer inferior service or compromise data, which is more a matter of ops.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
As a Red Hat subscriber, I can tell you that their support is complete crap. I'm required to have Red Hat so customers/partners can't say that their apps don't work because I'm not on the same platform, but I'd never have it otherwise.
Their support people aren't helpful. In the time that it takes for them to help me with something, I can look it up online(not on the Red Hat site) and figure it out. Anybody who's not a Linux expert knows that figuring out how to do random things in Linux on your own can be quite a painful process, so I think that conveys my message quite well. In addition, their hardware support is terrible.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is by far the worst Linux I've used and I don't blame anybody for going with something other than Red Hat.
Seriously, this is what gives Linux a bad reputation. To take time out of your day to harass a company for changing Linux support/distro is just insane. People wonder why getting companies to switch to LInux is so hard? It's this crazy rep that Linux has of being filled with "maverick/crazy" users. Way to go guys in further perpetuating a negative Linux stereotype. Thanks for helping get Linux accepted in the enterprise as a professional system(s).
This is not good at all for getting Linux used more often. It seams Linux are the most difficult users to please. If each "getting-Linux-implemented-somewhere" project is backslashed like this one, it becomes harder to get Linux implemented anywhere.
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
What on Earth does anyone think contacting some organisation (that they probably have no contact with in day to day life) to tell them that they're idiots is going to achieve? More to the point, if it's not a public sector organisation and the people calling aren't shareholders, what the hell business is it of theirs?
A common selling point of open source is "if you don't like the support, you have the freedom to go elsewhere". Reading between the lines of the article, it seems like Opes have done just that. So as soon as someone decides they don't like the support and they want to go elsewhere, this is what they get? One thing I'm sure of, it certainly isn't going to encourage anyone to adopt Red Hat.
I bet the reaction would be totally different if they moved to Oracle Linux from some other commercial Unix.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I hope this isn't the same procedure those Heaven's Gate guys had to go through. Different cult.
I bet Microsoft had a part in the calls...
'who are really our customers'
Maybe they are your customers but my customers earn that classification by giving me some form of payment. Customers are someone you have an obligation to. Nobody has an obligation to these guys except Oracle.
Linux is an OS, not a religion.
That is where you are wrong.
It appears that the need for religion is hardwired into human beings. If they reject religion, they tend to find a new one. Some believe in global warming. Some in their political party. Some in Linux.
Also, remember that since the 60s we live in a society where rudeness is rewarded.
What the Baby Boomers taught us was that you can be a total jackass and if you claim it is for a good cause it is not only excused but celebrated.
What a nice selling point for Gnu/Linux. "Choose our software and when you switch vendors we will summon the power of the fanboys." This is insane, I use free software as much as I can, everywhere it fits. Behaviour like this just states that while OSS is ready for the enterprise, the community is not. Grow up, let Unbreakable Linux either thrive or die. Either way the community improves for it. You really think it's impossible for Unbreakable to contribute back to Red Hat, or supply something different with the same software, maybe just maybe these guys went to Oracle not because of the cost of support, but because Oracle just so happens to support integration with, you know a particular enterprise application that's been a market leader for a while now?
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Linus >= Jesus, therefore [insert convoluted defense for childish behavior here]. Mods, mod this insightful.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Deleted
That is a very good point. I'm sorry I'm out of mod points. I don't think I've very met anyone that wasn't a religious about something, even the atheists/ agnostics I've known. Of course my limited experience is not statistically significant in any way, but that observation seems to confirm my experiences.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Hardware support is going to be an issue for anyone that chooses to run Oracle Linux. Hardware vendors certify only certain OS makes and models on their boxes, and so far I haven't seen Oracle Linux on the certified lists. It's no fun fighting with your vendor for support and being told you have to install a supported OS before they'll acknowledge that the error you're seeing is caused by their hardware and not the OS that you chose to run.
Oracle might think they're onto something here, but I doubt it's going to catch on until they either A) sell their own hardware and support the entire stack from top to bottom, or B) get their OS certified by most or all of the major hardware vendors -- including card manufacturers like QLogic, EMC, Emulex, and Intel, who like the box vendors, only certify to certain OSes.
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That's half the reason people shout RTFA at every question and call people idiots for using other distros. We DON'T WANT people who can't RTFA clogging up our support forums, and we don't give a shit how widespread Linux becomes. We like being elitist snobs because we hate idiocy, and elitism keeps out all but the elite by definition.
Hang on for a second... I thought that one of the MAIN REASONS that Linux people push Linux so hard is because it avoids scary lock-in. Linux is Linux, right? Switching should be no big deal for customers, since there's no worry about lock-in using Linux... right? I honestly have no idea because every time I've tried Linux, I've never gotten it set up to the point of being functional.
I don't respond to AC's.
Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux?
Like have time to answer that for you. You know how to google, don't you? RTFA! Damn newbs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
People who make generalizations are stupid.
Kind of off topic, but related.
Why does the disto seem to matter so much. I'm a developer and I get the idea of linking to some extent, but why is that I can have a Windows app that was desinged for 95 that still runs fine in 2003, but when I get a binary of for an older version of Linux I have to recompile it for newer other distros.
We recently wanted to run Snort, but we didn't want to use a support distro. We ended up recompiling the code, but it seems like a bit much to me.
Part of Windows draw is the installers. I know the RPM and Debian packages are a favorite amoungst Linux advocates, but installers still have their advantage in being accessible.
Why is it that Oracle neeeds to be worry so much about the distro's it will support.
A true Linux user has a moral responsibility to spread awareness of Linux and all its wonders to the wandering souls of the world. Were it not for the Enlightenment brought forth from these Disciples of Torvalds we would all be condemned to an eternity in the fiery pits of welded-hood doom. Amen brothers!
The sales rep from Microsoft now cruises in. Cool, calm, collected, laid back. "Hey, if you want to run a mixed environment, more power to you. We respect that. We'll just do our best to prove to you that Microsoft can handle all of your needs." He says with a wink and a smile. Meanwhile, long-haired Gnuzealots sharpen their stakes and light their pitchforks.
If you are a suit, who are you going to trust?
This is just an operating system. Like the other person in this thread, this is not a religion or life necessity that must be defending with fanatical defenses. Oracle has some good support personnel but that is somewhat a biased judgment since I used to work for them. However since I left I have no idea what support people are left since most of I used to work with are gone now. If you don't like Oracle Linux support you can always go back to Red Hat or someone else. Harassing people for just a simple view point is dumb.
Near the end of TFA is the important reason for them to get their support from Oracle:
They're running Oracle's application server and database on some of the mission-critical servers.
With Oracle supporting both the application and the OS under it there's no time and money lost to finger-pointing when something gets hosed. Instead a single team buckles down and fixes it immediately.
(Presuming they ever need service. One of the comments from Red Hat indicates that they may never have actually had to USE the service contract. Take THAT, Microsoft! B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At one time I lived and breathed tldp.org. The enormous pace at which Linux accelerated coupled with the massive increase in software offerings, though, has left it a little bit dated. Yes, a good portion of the material is still applicable, but just seeing a last modified date that's five years old might be acceptable for a textbook--but it doesn't leave a good impression for a HOWTO.
At the same time, though, if all of the HOWTOs were updated to be in line with current kernel and software versions, they might cease to be instructional and educational HOWTOs and become little more than dinner recipes.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
As a suse user (pre Novell purchasing i will add) Last year I informed the general email users list why i was leaving to go to another distro because of the announced m/s novell deal and thanked them all for any hints and tips for the 'hobby version' they occasionally supplied. I was rational and adopted a calm term in the message.
I was later accused by some more vocal 'open suse' users on that email list that my objection's where irrational and would i please shut up.
I did just that and i moved on successfully. As to the Microsoft fan boys i found - i must admit i was surprised to find them there.
Anyhow - rational is hard to define i suppose
How do we know it was Linux zelouts? RedHat? Microsoft?
Anyone has a right to bundle and sell a Linux distro and more choice is better for the future of the platform. I venture a wild guess that with Oracle Linux, you might have less problems installing Oracle software. Let RedHat come up with some other advantages.
Mod orig poster Flame-bait.
They might be stupid zealots, but I'm not sure I'd liken them to slaves.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
RedHat support is some of the worst support I've ever seen in the marketplace. Indeed, it is far worse than Microsoft's (which is pathetic). All the companies that I'm affiliated with use Suse if they want support nowadays. (and I HATE the patent deal that Novell did with Microsoft, but Redhat is so damn miserable at support, there isn't much of a choice).
Novell's support isn't great, but at least they call you back. I don't think I've ever gotten Redhat to call back on any support issue over the 4 years I was a customer. (The only reaction I've ever seen from their customer support is to quietly close my tickets that stayed open for more than a year -- without ever putting in an explanatory note or fixing the problem, of course)
If that company wants to go with Oracle so they can actually get real support, more power to them. They could switched to using Microsoft Windows. . . but they didn't - and for that I'm glad.
Surely if people feel strongly that something someone is doing is wrong they should be able to talk about it and protest about it?
There's a lot of talk here about "How dare they tell Opes that they're being idiots!" Like there's something wrong with making your opinion of something heard.
If people only took an interest in something that directly affected them, this world would be a far shallower place. Surely inconvience is a price to pay for the chance to say what you want to say? As far as I can see, no one's being a jackass - there's no direct impairment of the companys trade - people are simply calling them up and telling them they're idiots.
It's called freedom of expression.
Bah! Simpletons! Infidels! Heretics! Everyone knows that the one true religion, computingwise at least, is the Church of Emacs. Repent!!!
Religion is just one particular type of ideology.
The Raven
I recommend the Cardgame of Belief. It's a quartet game, you can have GNU/Linux against Heaven's gate for example.
Really, it depends on the exact libraries used, but most apps written for one Linux distro work in another - and frequently will work under BSD.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And only four production. Why is this news even relevant? Is this the BIGGEST RH -> Oracle transition yet? I mean, eight servers... please, that's a pretty damned small Linux environment. On top of that, they even had a good reason to switch. I think the whole article is meant as flamebait. Of course none of you read it...
Meanwhile, McLaren told ZDNet Australia Opes had acquired Red Hat support subscriptions with the purchase of two servers from channel partner Dell. The hardware vendor then was responsible for providing Red Hat support to Opes.
I guess nobody reads the articles anymore, but appearently they weren't even RedHat customers. The ran RHEL but only by way of Dell. It would seem to me that if they wanted the best support maybe they should actually have tried paying RedHat for a frickin support contract. RedHat is a mighty generous company but they're not going to call you up out of the blue and offer you support just for the hell of it.
My personal opinion is that they are going from one bad support situation (DELL) to another (Oracle), but it's their business and they have every right to make dumbass decisions. As for people calling them out of the blue to tell them how retarded they are, I have to call bullshit. I don't think anybody knows or cares who these people are or what distro they run.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Speaking as someone who has an interest in alternatives to Windows (ahh, Vista), I'm warded off Linux by its cheersquad. For serious, I don't care about the various flavours of Linux and whether one is better than another, I don't want to be targetted by sections of the community for doing things a particular way (I'm thinking of emacs vs vi here), and I don't want to belong to a secret club because of what operating system I run. It's just a computer, and I want it to be stable, to work first time and to get out of my way and do whatever I'm doing. (Tinkering with the operating system is usually not My Thing, although sometimes screwing with the registry is worthwhile.)
I also don't appreciate all the Windows cracks. Yeah, Vista, but XP's treated me well from day one so it makes me think that if Linux users think there's something terribly wrong with Windows maybe I'm not the sort of user that should be using Linux.
Well, all that and command lines. That's what we have GUIs for.
I wonder if can get a Mac with a right-click? I'd probably be happy with that and Bootcamp.
I don't think it's quite fair to condemn Oracle for supporting national ID cards. There are some privacy/anonymity violations that I think are serious problems, but the national ID card doesn't seem to me to be much of a problem. The GPS tracking devices required in everyones phone for the obviously bogus emergency call excuse, cameras being installed everywhere to track peoples movements, RFID tags in car tires with readers on overpasses, and treacherous control platform chips and remote control firmware being built into nearly all new computers are all serious problems. But national ID isn't significantly more invasive than the current state ID card system.
I was actually kind of disappointed when I found out they weren't going to be putting digital signature chips in the new cards because that would have been the only thing that would have made them hard to forge. With a digital signature from the feds the cards would probably be impossible to forge. The only way to create a fake ID would be to hack into the key server at headquarters. Cards could still be copied but it would be hard because the forgers would have to hack into the chip to get at the private key. Of course criminals might still be able to get real cards by bribing DMV employees. Without the chip and the benefits it would bring to anti forgery and therefore crime control then what's the point?
Of course an unforgeable ID card does transfer a significant extra chunk of power away from the people and to the government. Maybe it's bad for that reason.
And how many of these were actual customers ? I bet few, if any.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Linux is far more than a religion for a number of people. I know, because I've had to work with the bastards. Some of the stories I have involving these people are quite absurd.
Back in 2001, I was working at a web hosting company. They'd wisely built their network on BSD/OS. If you've ever worked with BSD/OS, you know just how goddamn stable and reliable it was (and still is, for many users). In short, if you've got a system running BSD/OS and it's working, just leave it alone.
Well, that's not what this one Linux administrator at the company thought. He insisted that we switch those BSD/OS systems to Slackware Linux. He was under the impression it'd boost their reliability and performance. We'd considered his request, and after some analysis we found, for a variety of reasons, that it wouldn't be a wise thing to do.
So when we presented our findings to some of the managers of the web host, this Linux administrator threw a temper tantrum. But he wasn't done yet. This freak basically said, "If you don't agree to switch to Slackware, I'm going to shave my sack hairs off right here and now." And do you know what he proceeded to do? He took out a disposable razor, took out his scrotum, and started shaving his balls, right there in the meeting room. We couldn't believe it.
One of the managers of the hosting company was a former Marine, and you should have seen him verbally unload on the Linux administrator. I don't know what happened to that Linux admin, but the next time I was consulting for the hosting company he was long gone.
I have other stories involving such Linux administrators. None are that unusual, but some of the others get pretty close. And I've only ever seen this from Linux administrators. Those who advocate the use of Solaris, HP-UX, OSF/1 (back in the day), Tru64, *BSD and even Windows are never as fanatical about the OSes they prefer.
Yup, we atheistics are all exactly alike, all believing exactly the same, reading from our Atheist Bible, and listening to Atheist Andy on A-TV.
While I am sure that some folks who choose not to believe in a deity have beliefs that are religious in fervor, the fellow travelers I have met simply refuse to believe in fairy tales. This does not render our disbelief into some sort of alternative holy writ. Religious believers tend to worship in groups, reading from some common tract. I personally think they do this to help overcome the fantastic nature of what they are trying to make themselves continue to believe - it's easier if you do it in groups. Atheists tend to be relatively unique, coming at the topic as they do from a lack of belief, rather than a commonality of belief. It's often hard for the religious to really understand that there isn't some book you go read and study to become a non-believer. All you have to do is start thinking about the ones you've already read.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Actually, Windows XP and all the other flavors I've used are emotionally abusive, as is the company that produces them.
I find that in general, the free software community is not emotionally abusive.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I never said all atheists were alike. Much the same as all theists are not alike. I was referring to the preconceived notions that *some* atheits have towards theists, and the fervor in which they respond. Its that fervor, and a lack of understanding that is similar to the approach that *some* theists have with respect to atheists or anyone else that does not believe what they do.
And trust me, everyone is a lot less unique than they think.
Now take a big breath and relax....
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I know a lot of people in the linux community (as well as being a LUG pres.) and I've only run across one person in the last 15 years that was a complete asshole about using Linux and nothing else. Actually, he didn't limit that idealism to just linux - it was basically whatever he was doing was the right way, and everyone else was wrong. That's a pretty small percentage of nut jobs. Take a good look through Bruce Peren's petition*, you'll see the exact opposite of what Opes is talking about. This is also something that has upset and angered a lot of people, but the vast majority of signees (3000+) have kept their comments reasonable. This seems to be more in line with the Linux community I know of.
[*] - http://techp.org/p/1
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The evil overlord laughs a good belly laugh. I don't mean a glance and chuckle, I mean a belly laugh. Not "ha ha", but like.. MU HA.. *blinks*.. HA.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
What if the company had switched to Ubuntu? Or Perhaps SLES 10? Or even CentOS? Would there have been such an outcry? Probably not.
Oracle now makes a Linux distribution that is 100% identical to RHEL. And so does CentOS and White Box Linux and a few others.
Guess what. That's what the GPL allows. Get over it. Everyone was going to "abandon" Red Hat when they discontinued Red Hat Linux. They were all screaming and cursing how this was going to ruin Red Hat's dominant position. Everyone hated Red Hat back then for "abandoning" the core Linux geek.
Now Oracle comes along and everyone is mad at them now for trying to destroy Red Hat.
Jesus people! Save your energy! We need to stay focused and be mad at Microsoft!
The problem is this. In the United States, RHEL is the standard Linux Distribution for business. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts. They have the market penetration. They, as a company, survive off of support licenses. This is for patches, upgrades, whatever. This includes the guarantee to backport security fixes into dead software (Have RHEL3 and support, you are getting fixes for packages that the original coders have long since abandoned as they've moved forward with releases). It gives you the ability to tell your boss that 7 years from now an RHEL 5 system will *STILL* have vendor support for all security issues. That is something that Microsoft isn't doing. (Want a DST patch for Win2k - you'll have to pay MS for it, even though it is only a 7 year old OS). The problem is. Unbreakable linux is *NOT* a distribution. It is a support agreement to provide support for RHEL systems. They are directly support RHEL3 and RHEL4 via a separate patch path. This undercuts Red Hat and their pricing, basically taking a company that while strong, is hardly rock solid (I believe they made somewhere around $450 million dollars and had a $50 million dollar annual profit). The fall of Red Hat will also (quite obviously) mean the fall of RHEL, and quite possible the Fedora project (Their supported test ground). Where does that leave Oracle? Oracle will no longer have anyone to support, since they are basically using the GPL to abuse the Red Hat porting process and merely paying for an alternate distribution path. When Red Hat dies, Oracle Unbreakable will die as well. The end result? They kill the goose that laid the golden egg. This is why the move by Oracle is dangerous. Getting into the business is one thing, but they are taking direct aim at Red Hat, and abusing the GPL by taking Red Hat code modifications and redistributing them via their own network and charging for it. This is also why there is a general disdain for what Oracle is doing among the linux community. Now, how much of this paragraph turns out to be true, and how much is fud is where the crux of the issue lies. Perhaps Oracle will have their own teams doing backports, and perhaps they will eventually move off of RHEL support onto their own distro, but until they make this move, you can be certain the RH crowd is going to continue these unfortunate tactics.
You might be joking, but thats why I first went into Physics.
What really gets me is that the ire was caused by a single company switching to another vendor's Linux. It was most likely determined more by vendor support and contractual issues than anything technical. Of all the arguments to take on, the critics sure picked a weak one.
No single OS is the best choice for every situation. Find the situations where Linux is the best option and push for it's implementation. Don't become blind to the alternatives, commercial or free.
" ... is the kind of thing that makes the Linux community look like a bunch of elitist snobs who shout things like 'RTFA' at every question."
Ever asked an innocent question about OpenBSD? Ever looked for the info first and see what happened to the people who *did*?
Example: look for information on how to turn off OpenBSD's IPv6 support - it sure isn't an option in rc.local ...
Its a very bad thing that some people called them idiots, but at the same time its the communities duty to inform companies with decisions they think are wrong.
For example I was watching something on the chocolate companies in America were hiring companies in other countries that use slave labour to pick the coco beans. Now if no one did anything or complained the company wouldn't do anything about that, but because someone, somewhere has complained then "something" is being done.
Now this is a completely different situation from my example but some people feel (very strongly) that this is a bad decision for the company to take. Probably because something will go bad (ie licensing, Microsoft FUD, etc) and then there will be news everywhere saying, "See! Linux Sucks because Microsoft Linux (Micronix? Linusoft?) screwed over this company!!"
Also there are people on slashdot who say crap like "you want people to support Linux but then complain when they do". These people don't seem to realise that there are many different people saying many different things. Both are not the same people.
If you want a true null belief, that's agnosticism.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Froth != religion.
-josh
When Real Money(pat. pend. tm) is on the line, two things count: stability AND SUPPORT. Those of us who compile the latest kernel and mess around with our configurations just because we can, certainly do have the right to be cavalier about what distro we use, and are certainly able to be more forgiving when things break or don't work.
But were talking about an active business concern here. They already know that linux provides the stability, reliability and uptime that they need. But when things break...well...they need support and they need it fast. As per TFA, the only time they heard from Red Hat was after they dumped them.
NOT the way to manage customer relations.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Linux is a religion. It has a pope and a bunch of cardinals and a moral structure whereby everyone who doesn't conform to the ideology is damned to hell.
BSD is a whacko cult which is forbidden from viewing mainstream media and must live a subsistance existence within isolated communities. Occasionally some hippies borrow the more romantic parts of the doctrine and practice them without all the dirty and difficult parts.
Couldn't resist.
I don't therefore I'm not.
People who make generalizations about people who make generalizations are stupid.
Bzzzztt - there is no need to "believe" in global warming. Just look at the facts. See also here. And see to it that nobody archives your "belief" (not "believing" in global warming look quite religious too, when the facts suggest otherwise). Might well be your grandchildren ask you some day "granddad what did you do about it? why did you continue using your SUV when practically everybody else knew what was going on? And why did 4% of the world's population produce 25% or the carbon dioxide? What the heck went wrong in our country? "
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Why? Because they're a bunch of fuckwits, that's why. All that sort of blind "evangelism" does is make teh linux community look like a bunch of raving loonies with no idea when it comes to actually getting things done in the real world. I'm quite sure no one at the company in question *cares* about the technical merits of redhat vs oracle's distro. It's a question of having ONE source for support, and not playing telephone tag with a couple of vendors who keep handballing the problem to each other.
In the real world, being able to deal with ONE vendor for support on your mission critical database is a godsend...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
... after being slashdotted, the company received a lot of calls with people saying "sorry".
You get cheersquads for just about any OS. Why don't you just ignore the cheersquad and try it anyway?
If it works for you, great, if it doesn't move on to something else. If you have a problem with the first distro you try, then try at least one different one unless the problem is unsupported hardware. If you don't like it that's fair enough, but if the only reason you don't use it is because you don't like some morons that also happen to use it, then that is a pretty lame reason.
Actually, it makes you wonder whether it's a clever anti-Linux campaign by one of the big vendors. But then, I've seen enough rabid Linux fanboyism here to know that there really are people out there who'd do this; a minority, admittedly, but a vocal minority who make the rest of us look like stupid narrow-minded zealots.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
There are 'cheersquads' as you call them for everything -- even Windows. Heck, there are still rabid DOS, OS/2 and Amiga fans. (No, really.) All I gotta say is this: "Hey! People! It's an OPERATING SYSTEM not a RELIGION!"
And yes, you can plug any 2-button or even a 3+ button USB mouse into any Mac with USB ports (i.e., all of them that have been made since USB came out about 10 years ago). Some applications will take advantage of the right click, others won't.
My blog
The few hundred (thousand?) bad apples showing the world why the open source community is viewed as elitist idiots who only lash out at problems rather than solving them.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
mode debianita=on
Change to Debian!!!!
mode debianita=off
If they like Oracle Linux then it's ok, I think outsider users doesn't have anything to do with this kind of decisions...
ghostbar page.
Look back to the start of this thread. Religion in the context of this discussion is an overzealous set of beliefs not supported by scientific facts. Like People calling up companies and complaining about their choice of a server operating system. That is the sense in which this thread was started. I think this thread pretty much proves the point.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Looking at it from an objective point of view, one of the reasons Linux gets so much press space is precisely because there's always some non-technical brouhaha going on. Either it's the GPL or some skirmish between members of the community. Compare this with BSDs, which keep cooly advancing and perfecting their products, without all the noise. However, without all the press, too.
So fanboys are really a great marketing technique, as any religion with fanatics will demonstrate.
Personally, I find this sad. This fanatic attitude is also keeps part of the open source software community from evaluating products with objectivity (e.g., OpenSolaris, Ubuntu).
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
But, whenever anyone provides any evidence that global warming may not be totally man-made, they're dismissed. Instead of reviewing their research, they're treated almost as heretics. A lot of the more fanatical folks like to blame everything on global warming. It's getting warmer in the US, it's global warming. It's getting colder in eastern Antarctica, global warming. The sun rose 4.82 seconds earlier/later today than it did yesterday, global warming.
I'm not here to argue for or against global warming, I'm just playing devil's advocate. Should we take better care of the environment? Of course. But, let's not run around burning people at the stake, simply because they believe something that is different from that which you believe (especially if they have evidence).
To what end would any company with a credible mind space make public announcements regarding their internal corporate decisions in any department, especially IT. Quite frankly, these are intelligence matters which should not have been revealed. If I had an employee who got sucked into making such an announcement for my company, I would fire him/her on the spot! One of the first lessons companies need to learn is discipline in their external communications. If you are a private company, keep it private! Release only positive information, keep the communications focused on product & service benefits, and ROI. Don't reveal whether or not your VP of sales picks his nose in public, or you use Linux and what flavor of the day.
Just like atheism is a religion when you go once a week to your CASH meeting to be with other "like-minded" people and give support, yada yada yada.
An interesting, but bogus argument.
You're leaving out the (probably) larger group of atheists who aren't "religious" (under your definition) because they don't treat it like a hobby. They simply hold a personal opinion that god doesn't exist. The impication is that some atheists are religious and some are not. Sorry, it has to be one or the other.
Southern Baptists (for example) are considered by everyone, including themselves, to be religious whether they treat it as a hobby or not (whether they go to church or not).
Are you saying that there are really two classes of atheists: those who are religious and those who are not? That, truly, does not compute.
Whoever did it deserves a reality check.
But as it could have been an idiot thinking that somehow they are helping someone in the Linux world (and here I fail to see wich twisted logic would allow for this) what about somebody doing it just for the kicks of giving Linux adherents a bad reputation?
The kneejerking of blaming immediately derided Linux supporters is understandable, but it logically follows that other people would have something to gain in different ways by protrying Linux supporters as unreasonable people (which most aren't).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are mac users that love anything apple makes, and those that only use the best tool available. How is this any different?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
These sorts of flaps happen over and over again in connection with Linux.
They also happen purely because of the Stallmanite worldview a number of Linux users have, which incorporates the idea that it's both possible and acceptable to bully other people into adopting your perspective via exactly this kind of radical "activism," as well as an intense level of fear, particularly of Microsoft.
Get rid of the Stallmanite ideology, and you'll get rid of all traces of this kind of vicious, intimidatory behaviour...because that is exactly and exclusively where it comes from.
A religious atheist would be one who doesn't just not believe in God, but who believes there isn't a God. If God suddenly appeared before a "non-religious" atheist and somehow proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was real, the atheist would do a quick religious 180 and shout hosanna. A "religious" atheist would stay in complete denial, probably shouting him/herself hoarse denying miracle after miracle.
Just junk food for thought...
Get a better computer. Or read what you yourself wrote:
Southern Baptists (for example) are considered by everyone, including themselves, to be religious whether they treat it as a hobby or not (whether they go to church or not).
Just as there are athiests for whom god does not exist and hold that as a personal opinion, and there are those for whom atheism provides a structured world view that replaces a theist religion with a non-theist one. No difference.
Then take the comment not directed at you, but at the whole thread? The point stands that mere froth does not a religion make, and there is a corrolary that religion does not require froth, although that one is much harder to convince people of.
-josh