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Where Does Linux Go From Here?
With the success that Linux is currently enjoying Linux.com (also owned by SourceForge, Inc) asks the question, where do we go from here? With such a high level of success and greater corporate participation (on both the consumer and provider fronts) will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over? "Linux is surrounded by proprietary IT firms. Some of them view Linux as a profit maker, others as a threat to their profits. Both sides represent a challenge for Linux in holding to its ideals of freedom and openess. The first large IT firm to really grok Linux was IBM. It has a long and mutually beneficial association with Linux, Apache, and other FOSS projects. The company has learned the language and the mores of the FOSS world, and has made significant code contributions as part of those projects along the way."
will the spirit of freedom and idealism remain true or will the ever-present corporate bottom line eventually take over?
How much do we have to worry that something will "take Linux over"? No matter what corporations do, they'll always have to release the source code, which means people can always fork it. Wasn't that the point?
2. Use the latest desktop-oriented distro.
3. Did I remember to say buy supported hardware?
There are always people trying to make non-supported hardware work on Linux, who are trying out various arcane command line incantations, alpha-quality reverse engineered drivers and hacks like ndiswrapper to make it work with Linux. If you do not want to be part of them, you must accept that said card will not work under Linux. No, you can't expect every piece of hardware, working as it might be in Windows, to also work in Linux. I don't want to have to use some install manager or try to figure out how to get some script to run from the terminal in order to install an application. I simply want to be able to click and launch it, and have it install. "britney_spears_naked.jpg.exe [Open] [Save] [Cancel]" is the biggest source of viruses, trojans and malware on Windows. I go to "Add/Remove programs", type in the name and install and it's as easy as can be. Almost all the good software is in distro repositories, can you tell me what it is you'd like to install, that isn't there? Particularly when you include the multiverse repository (Ubuntu, but others have similar) which tend to have all the free closed-source software as well. And if you desperately wnat payware, click-n-run is better than downloading random executables any day.
Would duplicating Windows' method be any problem? Hell no, I see it every time I run "wine setup.exe". Linux has it's variation of that too, but I prefer the distro way. It's not like a distro is anything like a monopoly, consider it more like a megamart with a searchable index. Why you'd try to chase down random snippets of code to run *and* and the same time claim you want mainstream userfriendliness, well it just doesn't compute.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hmm, let's see...
And of course the usual suspects like Sun and IBM.
Free Software can most definitely be an important part of a business strategy. For example, the company I work for uses it to leverage testing resources of the community. We also get bug fixes back from the community. We think it makes a lot of sense for a large community to share core development responsibility, the sort of stuff you find in university textbooks that is not proprietary in any way.
In the future, companies aren't going to make money selling operating systems, word processors or basic compiler implementations. They're going to make money modifying the OS to run well on custom hardware, selling plugins to do fancy document formatting and developing new compiler optimizations that make all of this run well on their proprietary computer system.