Slashdot Mirror
Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over
ZDOne writes "In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to analyst Gartner — which has up to now been fairly cautious, or downright negative, in its previous predictions about community developed software. '"By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms,' predicts a Gartner report, The State of Open Source 2008, which sees a 'stealth' impact for the technology in embedded form: "Users who reject open source for technical, legal or business reasons might find themselves unintentionally using open source despite their opposition.'"
"despite their objection"? who are these people who "object" to using free software and why? No one objects to email and the web, but they are largely run by free software, as is pointed out in the fine article by Taylor. This position and the way they take it for granted is baffling. Do the majority of people really care what business model their software is developed under? Are there really people who would pick up their pitchforks if confronted with Firefox? Do non free software companies really enjoy such mass support that people would never bother to look at options that could save them hundreds of dollars up front and all sorts of pain down the road?
"technical skill required to use it"? My two year old can click a mouse and my whole family uses GNU/Linux without missing a beat and has for years. Our TCO has been far lower thanks to free software - we use hardware much longer, don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for fundamental software like text editors and things just work.
Gartner people understand things are on the way but really the tone is hostile.
It would be nice if some people who wrote some cool legacy programs released the source on those under an OSS license. I could think of half-a-dozen super cool ones in my field alone.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Every enterprise "using" something just means it has over 0% penetration. Just because somebody in the company scripts in Perl (which is open source) doesn't mean it's taking over.
Wow. Twitter is actually making sense. Look out for pod people :).
I can see why they would avoid specific instances of open source for these reasons -- e.g. using source code from GPLv2 licenses. But I'm not aware of any good (or even reasonably bad) reason for any company to avoid open source as a whole, on principle. Not Apple, nor Microsoft, nor Exxon-Mobil, nor Wal-Mart. A sole proprietor might have some misconceptions about security or a "nothing good is free" (as in beer) attitude, but this is hardly an enterprise.
On the contrary, I think there is a vast field of tasks where there is currently no good solution, open source or proprietary.
The assertion that there's very few tasks left is equivalent to saying that progress has almost finished.
Of course, your point is well taken: useful things that are already written but are falling out of date will surely be re-implemented by somebody else, better, given time; and then the original source code won't be so useful.
Open source was created by humans. It evolved. It rebelled. There are many copies. And we have a plan.
...Does this mean 2012 will be the year of Linux on the desktop?
Why should I believe them now?
I'm in the middle of converting 3 people to Ubuntu from windows environments... they are having no problems adjusting at all LOLOLOLOL, once they got over the shock of having to ASK to install any software, they have been fine. I keep them locked down so they can't do any harm and always install anything they want if it is not malware. They just use it, don't care what it came from or the ideology behind it. They just want it to work like the games console, or the microwave. So far a small hiccup on the iPod and on a Canon camera.... other than that, no problems at all.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If all or most software is going open-source, how does a software company make money?
Don't say services because services don't provide real cash flow. What I mean is enough cash flow for serious new projects and research. Service work has a relatively low profit margin because there is no way to "ramp up" as it were. You need people to do work and their time is limited. Once a piece of commercial software is developed it can continue to provide profit with only maintenance costs. Plus you can sell upgrades.
Don't you remember the SCO saga? Gartner was among the clueless analysts in the media who paid more attention to press releases than facts.
I might want to hear this news. I might even agree with the prediction to some extent. For example, Microsoft won't just let it "take over", but they will lose much of their grip, especially if many people in government and industry transition to Linux instead of Vista.
But I'm not taking Gartner's word for it, nor do I think it proof of anything.
Given that the majority of the Internet is run on open-source today, I'd say this is a fairly accurate assessment.
No sig for you!!
It seems like most of the tasks so far undone involve improved integration, improved ease of use and wider use of things already being done.
MSFT was trying to sell litigation fear over Linux, all the while the BSA was handing out hundreds of thousands in fines. Maybe there's an IP risk for Linux but positively there's a risk of a BSA audit. I've never been in a Windows shop that would survive a 100% audit without finding something out of compliance. Even the Death Star security shops.
Product activation, DRM, dongles and a dozen other ways the proprietary model has shot themselves in the foot. If you need capacity on an open source platform, just stand it up. Fast and uncomplicated.
And the only machines I trust on the internet are my Linux boxes.
I'm starting my new businesses on Linux from the ground up. All the money I would have spent on software can now go to more productive expenses...like booze and strippers. Okay, that's not true but it's nice to have the option.
Unless they're deductible.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Businesses certainly do see the value in having access to source code and being able to modify it to add necessary features or fix bugs quickly, but that interest does not extend to the sort of "everything is free to pass around like friendship bread" concept people have about free software. Most people simply don't care about the freedom to modify software and redistribute it for free, because most users can't even read code in the first place.
Is that the sound of chairs splintering I hear?
Have gnu, will travel.
You really shouldn't try to game the moderation system, twitter.
We're talking about widespread usage of a very limited number of the total open source projects out there.
It's not like this means corporate America will fully embrace or even prefer open source products. It just means that LAMP solutions will be installed in nearly every company.
What is good about this is that it "pops" the bubble: open source software can successful. But I don't know that it says anything about whether it's an optimal solution for business. I think that's case-by-case.
I think what this is really proving is that there is a certain point at which a software product becomes a commodity. A word processor is a word processor, and for the most part, a browser is a browser. Certainly, a web server is a web server, and doesn't even differentiate on UI. Any changes to the basic template are going to be pretty incremental.
Open-source isn't exactly what you'd call the fastest or most direct method to produce a product. Nothing replaces real dedicated, paid resources. However, if it can create a usable product by the time the market turns largely into commodity, you're pretty much guaranteed adoption.
When they're all basically the same, free looks mighty good.
Yes, services! Services really do provide real cash flow. In fact, business like service so much they often prefer to convert to that model when they can. Service is an incremental cash flow that keeps on coming. Selling software is a one time sale.
Sure, you can sell upgrades. But you can also sell maintenance, management, and consulting service. You can even sell installation service (unless you make software that installs itself).
The risk of service work is not this lack of ramp up that you claim. Instead, the real risk is a higher level of competition. That is, you'll have a lot of others who can provide the same kind of service, including support service for open source software. Another risk is that if you identify a need to make improvements, you won't invest money in that effort since you can't use it as market leverage. By contrast, a service can be to sell the work of customizing the software to meet individual client needs.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Maybe Gartner meant Microsoft's version of open source.
Most of the stuff on
I don't think its that simple. As an experiment I wiped a spare machine of Windows 2000 (which my 10 year old daughter was so fond of) and installed a copy of Ubuntu 7.10 on it. After 1 month of struggling with learning the machine, she won't even touch that computer. I'm not downing the OS though, but my point is, I am willing to pay for software (and probably so is many others) that is easy to use. A lot of you may say that Windows sucks, and that may be true (Vista is defintely not winning brownie points with me entirely), but a lot of people find it simple to use. This is not to say Microsoft is the world's best software company, or anything close. But what Microsoft and other for profit companies do better than FOSS systems and software is provide easy user interfaces, which can be learned fast. Anyone who has used any version of Windows, can fairly (with a 2 - 6 hour learning curve) get up and running with little to no hiccups.
And while I'll tough it out (to my extreme dismay) and learn Linux and other free systems, truthfully, I just don't like them. Simply because most of the time they have a "programmer's" feel to them and not a "user's" feel. On a postiive note though, going back to the Ubuntu OS, I do see promise and potential, and I don't say that lightly.
Regards,
MBC1977,
LOTS of people would object to "free" software, if it drove their business model into the ground!
Geez... are you the only one who has not heard Microsoft practically screaming in pain this last year?
A bit off topic, but why does everyone call gnutoo, Twitter?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
What the Open Source community is really lacking at this point is news they do not want to hear. The news that filters through to /. is basically like the news as it ends up in China; passed through a dozen filters so that no one will find it disagreeable, and it will promote the glory of the republic. This is not a constructive way to deal with the world. Self-delusion leads to arrogance instead, where extra effort might be needed.
I am not trying to be negative here in any way, I wish the Open Source community all the best, but I think it's time to be more open minded here and not just listen to news as we would like it to be, if Open Source is going to move forward.
The reason for this comment is (besides numerous previous posts) the word "Admits" in the title of this article. If some analyst had predicted the victory of Closed Source, it would never have been labeled as such.. Please people, let's stay open minded so we can do what needs to be done, rather than celebrate while happily deluding ourselves.
Using open source != open source taking over. You might have a piece of software or two that happen to be open source and work well. The rest may well be closed source. That's not open source taking over, that's open source being used for various purposes.
I believe the author has some confusion about open source. Software development companies have positions on the openness of their own code. Most other companies just want software that works for a good price.
I suppose some software development companies "object" to open source code (especially to opening up their own code), because it threatens their business model.
On a side note, the nice thing about searching for "open source" applications as opposed to "freeware" applications, is that open source applications do not have trial periods. Try searching for "freeware tone generator" on Google and see how many trialwares there are. Now try searching sourcefoge for the same thing.
I hate trialware.
http://slashdot.org/~twitter
There was a story about a year and a half back about them switching to Aruba Networks wireless infrastructure. Guess what Aruba Networks routers and AP's run? That's right, Linux.
So there's more than one person in this world that dislikes Microsoft... this is news? I'm looking through the history here and it seems like twitter is a very adamant Microsoft hater. Maybe he has followers. Maybe there are more than a few people who agree. Is that hard to believe? I myself happen to dislike a lot of the moves they are making even today. So what?
Has Slashdot proven that these are both from the same IP? What makes you justified in comparing the two and spamming every post he/she/they make? What skin did he/she/they pull off your back? Is your life that meaningless that you have enough time to dedicate to this crusade?
I don't even know why I bother responding to an AC. How about logging in so we can have a meaningful conversation with your history and intentions known.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Well, some people are idiots. And idiots who shuffle money tend to get wined and dined by salespeople with good golf swings. What I find interesting about the article is the idea that bits of open source will become so commonplace, like bits of freeware and public domain, that it'll become part of the background mix of software. Sorta like how dosBox gets thrown in with re-released computer games these days, it's just that good that everybody uses it.
I've worked for several networking startups. Every one of which has used Linux as the OS for the device.
The large enterprise customers which bought it didn't need to be aware of the Linux under the hood. The management interface was a simplified CLI or Web-UI. But it was Linux.
In some companies, they asked us to not mention the Linux OS in the box, as that would create support problems for them. They just called it an embedded system, and it didn't raise alarms.
How about an adjective like "thinks", "suspects", or "predicts".
Nobody is admitting anything here.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The linked blog article is okay if you want a summary, but if you'd prefer, you can check out the complete document. Here's a PDF link to Gartner's full analysis: The State of Open Source 2008.
...in some very remote business partner's words... "who am I going to prosecute whenever things go wrong? How can you provide guarantee to reliability of postgresql dbms? Who are the hippies providing software fopr free?"...
Amazingly these people cope with poorly written and less supported software which is branded by well-suited companies that happily ignore them if things go wrong with no consequences.
Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance of one is others' bliss.
Oh shit, if Gartner's saying it, it must be wrong! Dang, I really liked open source...
What I've found works best on such people, is not the open source angle. Sure that's great for us geeks, but the main thing I express to them is that Linux is free. Next time they wanna update? It'll be free. Unforunately this normally only works for people with older computers (and hence an older version of Windows), as those with new ones generally got a modern copy of Windows with the computer.
Every so often you get lucky with the "but there's no spyware" on Linux angle too.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I've noticed that a few of twitter's alter egos DO, in fact, make sense.
Twitter man, listen. You could be a valuable member of the slashdot community (way more valuable than my in-and-out self) but give up the multiple personalities, and for all of our sakes, AT LEAST stop having full conversations with yourself. I believe in you and your ability to contribute. We all get hit with mod-trolls sometimes, just take the hit and move on. You'll get MY mod points for insightful, interesting or otherwise positive comments, so just be yourself and stop trying to game the system.
Naw. I'm a twitter sympathizer, so to speak, but the accusations of multiple accounts have been proven to -my- satisfaction, and I'm highly skeptical about things like that. twitter himself outright admitted it (though I don't have a link handy to prove it) while lamenting his (semi-valid) reasons for taking on multiples. He's been mod-trolled to Hell and wanted to get out of a hole. He took it too far IMHO though.
I agree, though... I don't see any proof that these are the same person. Hell, it could be four college roommates who all share the same mentality or a group of people that just click.
Outright calling them out without proof is like declaring your own "War on Terror" paramount to what our idiot politicians are doing grouping them into some kind of stereotype.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Most commonly used are;
- Macthorpe
-
renegadesx
-
dedazo
-
DAldredge
though there are others.GNU/Linux? RMS is that you???
but seriously, what you are really saying there is your family doesn't use youtube,ipods and that your kids don't play any computer games.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I read one post in his history that could be construed as such, but you could also read it as sarcasm. Ugh, either way. I'm not sure why it matters to me either. I have just seen a brutal spam campaign the past few days on these account IDs.
;)
For twitter, his alter egos and/or his followers... all I can recommend is if you are the same person, please stop. If you are not, spread out a bit. Something I learned from my multiple MMOs. Nobody likes an aggressive mob, but they hate a whole camp of them even more and will likely camp you.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'm a consultant, so I tend to be exposed to a lot of different non-software companies in a given year. Which is to say, companies that use computers and software to solve the problems of their business and not as their primary product.
All of them are running Windows and Office on just about every machine they have.
However, most of them are also using at least one Open Source tool to fill some need. For many of them, that's something like Subversion running on a Windows server and Tortoise installs for the devs to go with it, but still, they're using it.
Gartner has reached a new high in sublime humor here. It appears they are advocating the continuation of unskilled people running the technical systems of your business. In their minds, it is obviously apparent that one does not need 'technical skills' to maintain web servers, mail systems, DBMS engines, or 'demanding projects'.
These two bit shilling trolls are toeing the MS line, advocating running your business on insecure systems, with little or no experience or 'technical skill', and the business world is buying it - proving that just because one has money does not make one intelligent.
And they seem to forget that due to the volume of insecure servers maintained by non technically skilled people already existing in the world, we are plagued by spam, identity theft, fraud, and bot nets whose sole purpose is to be used as a shakedown ( pay up or we'll shut your servers down ).
Not only are they seemingly ignorant of the problem, they are actively advocating not just continuing the problem, but making it more problematic due to the cluelessness of the people running the systems.
In the one single paragraph, they have explicitly shown the world the main difference between Linux and Windows - Linux Admins know what the fuck they're doing - Windows Admins don't need to.
Thank you Gartner for that brief, though unintended, piece of honesty.
We've got several years of Microsoft and their "friends" doing everything they can to prevent this from happening - or trying to make the change to open source look like something that Microsoft was planning or has a part in.
Ultimately, the market will sort this out and choose the software that serves the public interest to the most. Microsoft has a lot of work to do to even be a bit part in the future...
I'm planning on doing basically the same thing for my parents. My dad was quite upset with XP recently, he was upset by how slow and finicky it was. Sort of caught me by surprise. I'll probably put Ubuntu or possibly Debian on, assuming that Crossover office is going to do the trick.
Most users really don't care how the software is developed, as long as they can learn to use it and it does what they want.
Most people would rather pay for support if/when they need it and get the program, updates and patches free, than to pay for the software, then have to hope that the company is willing to support the program at that time.
Personally, I'm happy to pay for non-open software if it allows me to export the data into an open format, even if it's just a decent XML defined one. It doesn't matter much to me whether it's handled like moneydance or crossover office. Either way I can leave if I don't like the service with minimal headaches.
You'd be surprised how often you have the "free equals worthless" assumption in key decision positions. It is sometimes hard to get it into the skull of MBAs that this can work out. They are far too used to offers that are too good to be true, so their train of thought is: "Free, more stable, more secure? Ok, where's the catch? Because if it was, why would anyone still buy software that's less secure, less stable and has a price tag?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I run Ubuntu and can use YouTube, could load an iPod until the most recent gen, (f* you Crapple) and I thought the EXACT same thing about games. I thought I'd NEVER get addicted to something that would run on my crappy old Radeon. Then I ran into Battle for Wesnoth and Angry Drunken Dwarves. (and and and... There are some GREAT webgames out there now, and I must indeed again be game-abstinent)
So, um, Linux does my desktop, and the only thing I've ever compiled was the new version of BFW. Period. And I'm both lazy AND a complete noob to Linux.
My little site.
I am fond of comparing Windows vs. Linux with the argument of VB vs. C in languages. In Windows, as well as in VB, you can quickly start getting stuff done. The learning curve is quite gentle, and you have quick success getting "something" up and running. And while the guy with Linux is still trying to get his networking up (or that C programmer tries to get that message loop sorted out), you're already surfing, playing and listening to music (or, in VB, you already have a nice looking interface that you patched together with a few easy mouseclicks).
After a while, though, it turns around. Frustration sets in, for the Windows user as well as for the VB programmer. A lot of the things you want to do simply don't work. Or are hard to pull off. You start to see the shortcomings in your OS (or language), you look over to the other guy and see how easily he can pull off what would be a major feat for you (try to do a full HD backup and compress it at the same time in Windows, something that's a very trivial matter with dd and bzip in Linux, or compare it to any kind of pointer operation in the programming analogy).
You start being pissed at your system (or language), you start envying the guy you belittled earlier for his choice of the "needlessly complex" tool. And generally, you'll be dissatisfied in the long run.
That's pretty much how I see it. Yes, the learning curve is still a bit more steep for Linux (although it has mellowed out a DAMN lot, especially with the advent of udev which makes the "now, which chipset do I have..." guessworking no longer the primary source of frustration during setup), but you'll be frustrated the first month of usage, then it's like floating on air. Not the other way 'round.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1998 called and they want their troll back...
Money is the root of all evil?
Well, if we're going to throw anecdotal evidence around... ;-)
A few months ago I activated the Linux partion on each of my twin 9 year old boys' computers that I'd created when I set them up (older P-IIIs that had Windows on them), and set it up so they could dual-boot.
They love it -- they were already using Firefox and OpenOffice on the Windows side, so that's the same. They got addicted to some of the built in games (especially SuperTux). They'll occasionally boot up in Windows for one of their old "edutainment" games (I haven't bothered testing them under WINE) but generally they prefer Linux (w KDE), and they're pretty fearless about experimenting with it.
-- Alastair
"Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over"
No. That's not what he says. He says that in four years, 90% of business will use open-source directly or in embedded devices. So in four years, if 90% of business have one guy with an Android phone, he will be right.
I don't see why I even come to Slashdot anymore. I used to like it because it was less bullshit than Digg, but now it's the exact opposite. What the fuck are the editors doing these days? Every other article I read is a quote taken out of context to mean "OPEN-SOURCE WINS EPIC LULZ."
I've been trying to write a coherent reply, but slashdot's new piece of shit comment system has lost the last three I wrote. The short, short version: twitter ~ Macthorpe ~ inTheLoo ~ gnutoo. 8/9 threads Macthorpe comments in, the others do. 8/13 for inTheLoo, 5/10 for gnutoo, 9/18 for twitter. Slashdot has half a million users and only a few hundred post in any given thread - this is extremely unlikely to be a chance occurence. Just throwing the data out there...
While "free equally worthless" is a common fallacy, there are other reasons to want proprietary code. I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use. If there's a bug I want to be able to outsource the patch in the form of paying for it. Furthermore, Vista is as secure as Linux.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
My friend, you come off as really ignorant. I suggest you try a modern distribution before you spout such drivel. My kids don't have iPods, though they all have mp3 players (and my wife actually has an ogg/mp3 player) that are supported by my Linux machines just fine. They also play all kinds of games and watch youtube. They have done so for quite some time.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
As for legal and business reason - that will be a sure way to be left behind and get excessive costs mounting without any gain.
One problem for open source in the future will be patent trolls. Maybe it's time to go troll hunting and see if they have collected a stash of gold that can be put to better use.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I work for Microsoft? Somebody tell Ballmer my check is late.
Your remark makes only sense for certain kind of software, means non-critical software. Would you like the code driving the autopilot of the plane you're in to be open-source? Or the next nuclear plant control software? Software is not just innocent desktop widgets, it can be very important, and errors can cause death. In all these cases, people have very good reasons to object open source. But as software stacks are getting always bigger, it becomes difficulter to know where open source is. I really think Gartner is right. Of course, open source can be included in some critical dev processes too, but it doesn't happen in a day.
For the average clueless nut that I meet, if I tell them that "Linux is open and you can change the code, but Windows is closed source so you can't modify it.", then they go into a tirade about "Oh my little son Billy is 11 years old and is always changing around our little Internet. He's a genius with them. You must not be very good if you're can't change around stuff on Winders.". From there any hope at salvaging the argument is lost. It's just not going to work.
"You can change many things, sure. But he can only change the things Microsoft lets you. With open source software, you can change anything you want."
For success: put the argument in their own terms.
I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use.
The sound you hear in the background is laughter coming from the vicinity of Redmond. Our software caused your database to fall down and go poof, and with it your whole company because you couldn't fulfill your orders? Gee. Too bad. Responsible? Read the EULA, dunno who, but certainly not us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the key problem i'm getting at here is even after all the claims, the linux desktop is still yet to work properly with he most common functions users want.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I'm calling bullshit.
I am a user of Windows, OS X, and Linux. I make my living as a Windows admin--which I do *damn* well I might add--have found Xubuntu to be a great option for very low end machines (I converted my neighbor to Linux as a fun project) and find OS X to be my OS of choice on a laptop. I have experience working with each of the OS's, and have used both Windows and Ubuntu Server products and I can say, without a doubt, that your statement is not only elitist, but very, very stupid.
Tell me, oh mighty AC, why it is imperative that I know how to manually configure AD structure by hacking my way through a tool like ADSI Edit, when I can just use the standard Active Directory snap-ins?
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to know precisely how to edit various INI files and the system registry to change settings, when I can just click something in a GUI?
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to write an incredibly long and painfully meticulous netsh command to allow something past my firewall when I can just click my way to network settings?
I won't because I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO!
Step back a second, and ask all of those questions with their Linux counterparts. The answer turns into "BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER RELIABLE AND UNIFORM WAY TO DO SO."
When it comes down to it, setting up a Linux server in a nice, secure fashion is a royal pain in the ass. You have to type MILES of command lines and edit scores of
Furthermore, that lower learning curve to becoming a Windows admin has--you guessed it--created more Windows admins! If a Linux admin needs to worship at Torvalds' feet and perpetually keep an eye out for him on the street so he can give Torvalds the obligatory blowjob he deserves for creating such a wonderful kernel, that makes a good Linux admin harder to come by! Therefore, a competent Linux admin suddenly costs more money to hire because of his greater skill set and lower availability. If you can, however, hire a SINGLE Windows God in a medium to large business, who can delegate tasks to people who are lower on the food chain (like the ones who can click "Next..Next..Finish" but not use ADSI Edit), your maintenance costs go down...
Run a Linux server? No thank you. I'll take Windows---not because I'm an incompetent Network admin, but because I don't fucking hate myself.
Oh, that and Exchange.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I slammed together a really quite sophisticated robotic scanner controller processing unit for my own company, which I will now shamelessly plug in case any of you need to get custom 20-ton steel castings, give us a call, heck you never know. WHEMCO
My unit uses the V4L Linux kernel API to run a frame grabber unit. I don't know of any way to run it under Windows except writing some kind of customized TWAIN driver or somesuch bull that will never happen. My Linux system works *right now* and has been demonstrated to company executives who said things like "this is fucking amazing!"
I ordered some hardware to build the actual prototype, and IT has shut me down. They are whining about all kinds of things like "who is going to support it?"
Hey, when I welded together the robot arms, IT didn't ask me who would "support it." Why should it be any different with my brainbox unit. Face it, those guys will *NEVER* be able to write or understand anything like this. If the program has a cos() call in it, they are done.
Clickety Click
Since the linux scheduler is based on the Mayan calendar,.. how will the machines keep on chugging when we are all dead? I've always wondered that.
Companies who reject open source software generally do it because they have nobody to blame when it breaks.
The dev cycle is also very much different from commercial software and it shows. Commercial software design tends to have the roughly following phases: analyze the customer needs, design, code, test, ship and support, phase out, upgrade.
Open source software tends to only have: code, ship, phase out and upgrade. If there's any analysis of customer needs or design, it tends to only involve the person doing to coding rather than actual customers or development teams. Testing is usually done after shipping and done by the users.
That isn't to say that commercial software will always be better. Releasing early and often is a viable way to catch bugs and react to changing demands. Commercial software is just less likely to be DOA and more likely to match your needs out of the box with minimal tweaking. You can also be pretty sure that it is still actively being developed and will have updates. Not all open source products can say the same.
You don't care if the company sells you proprietary or open source code. You just care about guaranteed support and some penalties to the vendor if it is not provided. Open source companies have more incentive to offer support since they can not just sell the code itself.
That's why this opinion by this analyst at Gartner is so misguided. Open source code has already quietly taken over everything. And the analyst is not describing uninformed people from the future, he's describing himself right now.
I still use winblows for one reason. I like to game, and unfortently my game is on winblows. I just for fun checked, and think I might be able to switch that up. There is a team working on makeing it possable to play LOTRO on Linux. If I can get the only game I realy play, I will happily switch over. I don't do anything on winblows I can't do in Linux anyway. Besides, I want to go back to an old install I saw once, no start bar, right click for menu, and much cleaner desktop. Anyway, love life open source.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
"Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over"
"By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source"
Come on, there is a BIG difference between these two affirmations. Using SOME open source does not mean open source will take over anything.
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
The chair's in the mail.
90% of businesses using open-source...? Yeah, right.
Let's consider - this is *four years* from now. Even with exponential growth, looking at past adoptions of open-source, it won't even be half of that.
It's more than technical skill - it's familiarity. Think about the cost of changing a large-scale information system in a corporation. We're talking millions of dollars - most likely just resulting in a loss that would take many many years to repay.
There's the cost of implementation, there's training the technical support (which at the moment, is largely made up of support for closed-source software), training the staff, rewriting custom applications for the new system, setting new procedures into place - and of course, the inevitable 'dealing with problems along the way'.
Now unless the company was already planning to make a major migration and had to choose between a closed-source and open-sourced system, why would that do move to something completely different?
I'm also considering that the 90% of businesses that the analyst are counting includes not only the software being used at say, a branch, but the software used in the networks, the mainframes, and so on.
~Jarik
We use a code phrase to get around this in our office. Instead of describing something to the boss as open source, we tell him it's "a Sun product". Seems to work so far =)
I suggest you consult Mr P.T Barnum:
"There's one born every minute"
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Um. I just watched like an hour of glassblowing videos just to prove you wrong.
My little site.
I hope this happens for CAD, since the current state of that world is in a bit of chaos due to competing and incompatible file formats (not to mention profit-driven upgrade cycles, dubious UI changes and poor documentation).
The more time needed to be spent on figuring-out the latest upgrade equals less time available for learning/understanding the fundamentals of engineering. Some CAD software "enhancements" seem to be designed to make things easier for those that like to tinker with program settings or to more efficiently perform automated tasks rather than help people that actually design things.
Get off my lawn, but in the board days we didn't have the current fractured market where knowledge of specific software decided your opportunities. I'm hoping that open source CAD might at least force some standardization back into the field but I'm not holding my breath for this to happen.
"Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to know precisely how to edit various INI files and the system registry to change settings, when I can just click something in a GUI?"
One of the benefits of Unix systems when it comes to security models is that you MUST understand what the software is doing and how it affects your network to set it up. I personally don't trust black box security devices. I know what happens when I set up TCP wrappers (or their equivalent on the relevant OS), set up ipfw rules for each daemon, then set up filtering software for the logs. When you turn on a GUI "firewall", you can end up with mixed results. Case in point, OS X, whose firewall leaves "necessary" listening services completely open, thus really doing nothing at all.
Regardless, Windows is a bed of nails when it comes to setting up network and file rules. Having to set up the network backwards is standard, because MS's implementation of any given system is usually broken out of the box. On the entire server side, Windows is by no means a point and click affair. If you're try to do it that way, you will end up with something so full of holes and unstable that you would have been better off doing it by hand.
Personally, when dealing with security rules, I prefer the good old fashion written notebook, physically labeled machines, and hand set up. I don't trust check boxes, I don't trust default rule sets. Setting up a secure system is NOT going to be easy. If it is, it's secure as we see with company wide botnets sending spam to 100's of millions of email addresses every day.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Reliable and uniform -- not the words I would have have used in context of windows administration. The problem with windows administration (and I mostly mean 3rd party server software, but also Microsoft stuff) is that often the GUI is the only sane way to do things -- the cli interface, if it exists, is an afterthought. So automating anything is impossible or hard and debugging problems becomes a game of guesswork.
Yeah, that may be an unfair extrapolation from my experience that includes some fairly bad software vendors and it might even be outdated (as I haven't touched windows in years). Still, that is one of the reasons I prefer not to have anything to do with Windows, at home or at work.
Paid software implies a contractual obligation on the part of the software provider. I.E., if something screws-up, the manager that chose that software (even if s/he made a bad decision) can blame the software company. With free/OSS you can't do that credibly and managers are well-known for risk-aversion. What's that quote about not getting fired for buying IBM?
"Free, more stable, more secure? Ok, where's the catch? Because if it was, why would anyone still buy software that's less secure, less stable and has a price tag?"
/sometimes/ lead to better software. Photoshop, Visual Studio w/ .net, and some other pieces of software are genuinely better than anything OSS can come up with (I said better, not irreplacable).
Support? Seems obvious when you point it out.
Also, having a price tag can
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Are there really people who would pick up their pitchforks if confronted with Firefox?
Well, Ballmer throws chairs. Other Microsoft employees may pick up pitchforks. Firefox and open source to them represents the end of their stock price gravy train, the end of the era when they could produce any kind of turd and the industry would just fall all over themselves to buy it.
Actually, Microsoft's shoddy software has made a whole cottage industry of software developers, consultants, IT managers, and service providers very, very wealthy. Those people are Microsoft's marketing secret, and they will fight open source tooth and nail: they don't like that open source works better, and they don't want to have to learn anything new anyway.
In fact I would like the code to be open source, BUT I wouldn't want it to be developed in the traditional open source method. Doing so would let a lot third world countries that are rolling their own solutions benefit from being able to pick a first world software program to use instead.
Developing mission critical software is hard enough, we should defiantly be passing the code around for everyone to inspect, as the inspection process on that software can never be too critical.
Your rant somewhat relates to one of my other posts in this topic. Some people like tinkering with the machine more than they like actually accomplishing things with the technology. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but when futzing around with gizmos interferes with real work...
I wish you were wrong, I think this blame attitude in computers has gone on far enough. Everyone would be far more productive if we could all just admit that we make mistakes and focus our energy on fixing them. If you're reading this I hope you'll make a mental note to help change things.
I don't think rollouts happen like that anymore, at most a major migration happens over a set amount of years, first starting with all your backend servers, etc which your employees don't touch.
I'd be shocked to find any company doing a turnkey migration from any system.
I don't know what went wrong in your case but I have seen many children use Ubuntu with no problems at all. Actually I have seen children choose Compiz over Vista.
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to write an incredibly long and painfully meticulous netsh command to allow something past my firewall when I can just click my way to network settings? Because one day you may find that you have no choice - that something has gone wrong which requires deeper knowledge than that gleaned by clicking the button in the UI.
Now, these occasions are substantially fewer these days than they were 10 years ago, but I would hesitate to describe them as non-existent.
I think the OSS movement is strikingly similar to the free trade movement. Oh wait, we (the US) opposed Free Trade at first too...didn't we ;)
Looks like large software companies are playing government. Information should flow freely =)
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
While "free equally worthless" is a common fallacy, there are other reasons to want proprietary code. I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use.
Good luck trying that with a typical piece of proprietary software. In order to stand any chance of doing this you'd need to take the company to court and win.
If there's a bug I want to be able to outsource the patch in the form of paying for it.
Which is something you can easily do with open source. With proprietary software you face both technical and legal issues even trying.
Very succinctly said. Anything that is hackable* or complex has a learning curve, but it's worth it. I have another example to throw out. If you get past the initial steep curve of emacs**, it is quite a wonderful tool. I'm sure the same can be said for vi[m] and have no interest in hijacking this into a flamewar. In the past, I used anjuta and other IDEs. Being able to quickly split the screen to see code side-by-side in emacs is wonderful.
I'm sure you could do the same in IDEs but I have yet to find one that doesn't require a mouse. And I typically do run emacs in x-windows. It's just that a lot of things are faster with the keyboard instead of the mouse. CLI versus point-and-click is yet another example.
* I use hack in the traditional sense above being able to, what I call, tinker.
** this applies to microemacs as well which I actually use
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
On a side note, the nice thing about searching for "open source" applications as opposed to "freeware" applications, is that open source applications do not have trial periods. Try searching for "freeware tone generator" on Google and see how many trialwares there are. Now try searching sourcefoge for the same thing.
You tend to find the same thing on sites specifcially carrying Windows "free" software. There can be all types of shareware, nagware, crippleware, trialware, free only to certain types of users, etc. With what could be genuinely described as "freeware (including OSS) being in a hard to find minority.
A possible reason for people being uncertain about "free software" is that if they are familiar with software for proprietary systems "free" is a very much abused term.
Oh yeah, they'd do phased system changeovers. But for something as serious as switching from the Windows OS to the Linux OS, it *would* require a major change. You could try to phase it out, by getting Linux software running on the Windows first, then changing the OS, but either way, it'd be a big thing to change a company's primary OS.
Hell, there's a reason banks are still using mainframe software over 30 years old. It's just too hard and expensive to changeover - plus, so many systems have been added on, that it's almost impossible to *just* change the mainframe, without changing everything that communicates with it too. Apparently a lot of it isn't even documentated. =/
~Jarik
You know what else brings maintenance costs down? Not having to hire clickers because you have sane software! You may be knowledgeable in Windows, you are profoundly ignorant of Linux, but you are not a good sysadmin. Because you think having people doing the work of computers is something that shows the superiority of your platform of choice. Of course large tasks require teams, of course you have to make it work and this is how its done. But don't come to a professional forum proud of holding your system together with chewing gum.
Yes, sysadmins delegate. When you delegate to the computer, you're doing it right. When you delegate to humans, you're doing it somewhere between half-wrong and wrong.
Furthermore, the very distortion of your perspective that led you here is the result of the use of your baroque, under-engineered, single-user platform. Finally, the notion you propose of a Windows God running a large business system's is hilarious. A Linux God, MAYBE, and that's because *nix was designed for such use. You might as well claim a mechanic god can fix all the cars in the world. And btw, i know enough Windows administration to assure you that occasional trips to the registry are unavoidable, Mr. Windows Admin.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
Actually, Microsoft's shoddy software has made a whole cottage industry of software developers, consultants, IT managers, and service providers very, very wealthy. Those people are Microsoft's marketing secret, and they will fight open source tooth and nail: they don't like that open source works better, and they don't want to have to learn anything new anyway.
Probably especially the software suppliers who's business is selling the types of programs, including simple utilities, which come as "standard" with Linux distributions.
Um, you can. Pay a programmer to fix it
(Hell, that business model might work quite well for a programmer - how many people would be willing to pay £££ to have bug n fixed?)
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
You're reasoning is also a very common fallacy...
Software almost always comes with NO GUARANTEES, wether you pay for it or not (read the license agreements)... And the supplier is under NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER to fix any bugs.
With proprietary code, you have a single vendor who *could* fix the bug for you, but they are under no obligation to do so or to charge you a fair price for doing so. They can turn around and refuse to fix the bug, or charge you a billion dollars for doing it, leaving you with no other option.
By contrast, open source code can be fixed by multiple parties, assuming you bought a supported package of open source software from eg RedHat you can go there first... Failing that, you can *always* pay third party programmers to fix the bugs for you.
While your requirements are completely valid, the logical course of action with such requirements is open source.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Why should you pay for the software *and* the support?
Why should you be forced to obtain support from the same company who wrote the software?
You want supported open source software? Give IBM, Sun, HP, SGI, Novell, RedHat, or many other companies a call.
And since theres multiple vendors, there's competition, and competition is good for the consumer.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
In the one single paragraph, they have explicitly shown the world the main difference between Linux and Windows - Linux Admins know what the fuck they're doing - Windows Admins don't need to.
The bluring of "user" and "admin" roles has always been part of Windows. In some ways it appears that with Vista Microsoft have actually started to realise that this isn't such a good idea.
If anything you need a more skilled admin for Windows than you do with Linux. Someone able to cope with the complex permissions system and software which expects to be run as a privileged user.
Okay, we will :)
Go submit a slashdot story about it.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
That doesn't even add up to circumstantial evidence though. It could just as well be 4 users with similar interests, you have to admit that among a million Slashdot users there are bound to be thousands of these coincidences.
It looks like you're out on some kind of witch hunt. Don't you have anything better to do with your time than analyse Slashdot posting patterns and compare them to twitter?
Q: How many Microsoft phone support people does it take to change a Microsoft Lightbulb for Windows(tm)?
A: Why, what's wrong with your lightbulb? I have the exact same copy of your lightbulb right here, and it works fine.
It boggles the imagination how you could possibly think that because you know some people who like Ubuntu, there must be something wrong if there exists someone else who doesn't like Ubuntu. Did you ask what sorts of applications GP's daughter uses? What programs she had been used to on Win2000? Why she didn't like Ubuntu? Whether she often used other machines (e.g. at school)?Actually, people do give a very big damn about people like the GP and his daughter, since they are the ones that will determine the place of desktop Linux in mainstream computing, and how much hardware manufacturers will pay attention to the demand for Linux-compatible drivers.
Not to mention that the extra effort you put into being sarcastic in your post would have been better used for generating about 3 ergs of non-fossil-fuel-based energy. Yes, I know you're trolling, and that right now you're masturbating to the fact that someone's actually answering you. I just want to make sure people like the GP and others know that it is indeed useful for the Linux community to know about their experiences with Linux and what can be done to make them better. Hope your account (isn't a nick like "nguy" tantamount to saying "I'm a sock puppet"?) gets downmodded to hell.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
My daughter is 11. I installed Edubuntu on the "pony" she got for Christmas, her first computer. She loves it, Edubuntu has plenty edutainment software for her to play with. I highly recommend Edubuntu for children and educators.
That's bloody hilarious. I'd recommend anybody who believes this to go read a few posts from those accounts, compare them, and then get back to me. I have nothing to hide, so I won't try and deflect your attention from doing so with "ohnoes this is a hatefest you must have no life" comments from one of my so-called 'sockpuppets'.
Here's a hint to go with it - I don't need more than one account to get my point across, because I don't lie and my karma isn't in the toilet.
Enjoy yourselves.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Please note, that it's not Macthorpe that he uses, it's Mactrope.
He copied my account name for reasons best known to himself, so I'd much rather it didn't work and people didn't confuse me for him.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Now that is funny.
All your source are belong to us.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
Oh, and PS... it slows me down to take my hands off of the keyboard to use the mouse
Yes regedit will generarate that file for you for the registry... but if you need to change firewall rules on all of the computers, you can't beat netsh
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
"I won't because I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO!"
unless it breaks and you'll have no clue how to fix it.
I've seen windows brake to often in ways which did not have any simple solution and some didn't even
have a hard solution.
In Linux/Unix where everything is just a file, where rsync backups can keep a history of file changes...
it hardly breaks and if it does it's as simple to solve and it was to setup.
Which isn't to hard if you have some knowledge how it works.
Windows backups are mostly all or nothing, which is just insane.
You lost 1 very important e-mail in Exchange, restore it for me from a backup please.
Unless you paid thousands for your backup solution or keep pst's, you won't be able to.
I use Maildirs thank you very much.
New things are always on the horizon
Vista IS slow...
open source software is not free. Although it often comes without a license fee it imposes restrictions on what you can do with the source code and in some cases (gplv3) steals your patents or (gpl affero) forces you to release your trade secrets.
open source is apropriate for infrastructure code like mysql and apache, but be careful using it higher in the value chain where you might be tempted to modify it. Also make sure that you read all the licenses.
open source developers are extremely litigious, many a company has been hauled into court, it's a minefield.
If you are going to use any open source software hire a consultant and a lawyer first.
My god after a 20 year marriage looks like someone got caught between the neighbor's thighs. Who gets the dog?
I see it all the time. I just wish that those people would do evolution a favor and stop breathing free air.
/sometimes/ lead to better software.
> I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use.
> Support? Seems obvious when you point it out.
If just one of you said it, I would think you were joking. But it seems some people actually believe that proprietary companies provide better support and accountability for their software. As a rule, of course, they don't. But even if most did (some do, but certainly not most), that would be no reason for a blanket "No software allowed if you can see the source!" policy.
> Also, having a price tag can
Yes, some software is worth paying for, even if it is closed source. Again, that is no reason for a blanket "No software allowed if you can see the source!" policy.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Ah, look on the bright side; at least they've stopped claiming that Linux causes cancer in puppies and demands that you sacrifice your first born to Satan.
The way I see it, the world is moving slowing but inexorably towards Free Software. Analyst groups like gartner are basically hanging onto the coat-tails of Corporate America and pulling as hard as they can trying to slow the process. The interesting thing ,however about Gartner and their ilk is that they can't get too far from the consensus viewpoint
of the corporate decision makers that they're trying to manipulate, or else they start to lose credibility. So we see
them being dragged long in the wake of the big migration, kicking and screaming as they go, all in the hopes that they might yet be able to exert some influence.
They appear to have been dragged as far as admitting "Yes, it's going to happen, but you enjoy it much, so there!". I think that speaks volumes about how corporate attitudes are changing.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
A company may have 3000 Windows systems running Office and one Linux-based router, and they will be 'using open source in direct or embedded form'.
Except that they're too late. I doubt there's a business in America that isn't using open source, one way or another. Even if they have nothing but Windows in-house: (oh, and what the hell are the "technical, business, or legal reasons" to reject open source?)
The issue is not the lack of tools to modify configuration files in Windows.
The issue is whether or not a windows sys admin *understands* what they are doing.
Having a (fancy) GUI to let you type in (or would that be click?) the options you
want is a convenience, but it does *NOT* require understanding of the underlying
OS.
As an example, what happens if for some reason a configuration file in Windows
gets corrupted? Do you know where it is? Do you know the format of the file?
Can you manually repair it because the fancy GUI tool is now borked and can't
read it?
I don't use windows, but I have heard of the "registry file" which is a central
location for all configurations which of course is in a binary format. I have
heard that on occasion it's possible for the file to get borked and then
the OS won't run until it's repaired. What's the usual procedure for
repairing the system?
Reboot, Reformat, Reload. Why is that? It's because if the sys admin doesn't understand
what they're doing, it's easier to just follow the 3 R's.
And why wouldn't a window sys admin not understand what they're doing?
Because the convenience of those point and click gui tools does not
require comprehension to do their simple configuration.
Yes, I'm fairly confident that there are in fact very competent
windows sys admins who do understand what they are doing. But that
does not invalidate the assertion: It's a lot easier to be a clueless
sys admin with Windows that it is with any other OS. If you can't see
that or understand the history of how it came to be with Microsoft's
dumbing down the administrative tools, well, I'm sorry. I've tried to
help you see what the problem is.
Open Source is finally gar(t)nering momentum!
Hell, even twitter himself sometimes makes sense. Sometimes he even writes something insightful and not entirely offensive.
However, due to more alter egos I can readily remember, even the positive moderations he gets might get turned over if I get to metamoderate them.
As far as I'm concerned, he can eiter grow up and learn to communicate or suffer the consequences of getting on my nerves.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The use of OSS is increasing, but very few companies give donations to the software projects.
Analyst finally admits to herd of elefants in the room.
Film at eleven.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Webmin?
Nicely summarized. I've also seen it written as a single line: "VB makes the first 90% easy by making the last 10% impossible."
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"Are there really people who would pick up their pitchforks if confronted with Firefox?"
Actually, yes. I know a professor who refuses to ever use Firefox. One time he called the university technical support. We told him that he would not have this problem if he used Firefox. His response was: "That is unacceptable." He is not the only one.
You are killing me. I most certainly want it to be Open Source. I want that "critical" piece of software to be poured over by thousands of programmers. I want it to be scrutinized to the highest degree. I certainly don't want to trust that SOME company's peer review policy is good enough to trust my life to(yeah I know, dangling). I'd prefer that the entire world look at it and determine that it works and that it works well.
Well spoken! Or, as I put it quite often, "Stealth bombers have more sophisticated controls than tricycles because they can fly!"
A lot of decision makers do not necessarily assume that free equals worthless, but rather that if it is free, then there is no accountability when stuff hits the fan.
A lot of process re-engineering requires you to have accountability at various levels, and when you have free software, that accountability becomes iffy (or it becomes your responsibility, which is also a bad thing). I mean, take a CPG or an insurance company - why should they spend money on having an open source development team? Their core business is not technology, it is retail or insurance.
Most IT budgets (in most places, 95% and upwards) is spent on IT maintenance, rather than on new technology. Given this, do you really think that they are going to take responsibility for maintaining that code themselves? They wouldn't, and they shouldn't have to.
That is why even in Open Source, companies like Red Hat (which charge a fee) are preferred. Even from among free software, companies would rather pay money and have something than have something free (unless it is from a well-known, well-established organization, say The Apache Software Foundation.
Accountability is assured (in one way or another) when money changes hands. And accountability (which sometimes translates to CYA) is what a lot of decision makers are looking for.
I don't know about you I've been using Microsoft products since DOS 5 and Windows since 3.0 (or 3.1) including professionally, I started learning Linux as a hobby and in about half of year I learned more about its details and I know to configure and administer it better than I know Windows, is that coincidence?
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Those people exist. My last 2 jobs I suggested FOSS alternatives and the immediate response was "If we aren't paying for it, then we have no recourse to bitch at the supplier if something goes wrong."
The firm I work at is developing a local national website for a large, well-known hamburger empire. Their official policy is "no open source." I don't know why this is (no sufficient support? not American enough? I'm guessing here) but I think it's a fairly stupid and ignorant, even naive standpoint. As the article points out, we're all using open source anyway, and to go with closed source for the hell of it seems dim. It might just be that some open source tool is the best for the job, and they're completely ignoring that. Weird.
(posting anon for professional reasons)
Quick question. I have a Windows 2003 server and the partition where my major file shares & user's roaming profiles are stored is getting quite full.
.. Microsoft's KB recommends doing modifications to the registry to offer this functionality (yikes!!) and the end result is just *copying* the files, which I don't think allows me to keep all of my network mappings configured (for the record, if I changed the position of a share on a unix box, I can modify one file and do a search replace, restart the sharing and I'm done .. let it be one network share or thousands..).
On a Unix machine, I can add additional storage, run rsync to sync all of the files & permissions to the new location and then I run rsync one last time and remount that new storage space at the same location as the old space so all the network sharing configuration stays the same. From the users perspective, access to those shares is interuppted for less than 1 minute (keep from them updating files while the final rsync makes sure everythings up-to-date).
On Windows, I can't seem to figure out exactly how to do this. The default copy does not preserve permissions, there is no rsync type tool that comes with Windows. There is the recommendation by certain websites to use the CLI based xcopy (which doesn't seem to offer any file sync capability and most likely will puke on copying files that are currently in use)
When it comes down to it, setting up a Linux server in a nice, secure fashion is a royal pain in the ass. You have to type MILES of command lines and edit scores of .conf files to accomplish the same best practices that takes a couple of clicks and 2 minutes on a Windows machine.
/home/domain.com
/home/$j
/home/$j; done; done
Furthermore, that lower learning curve to becoming a Windows admin has--you guessed it--created more Windows admins! If a Linux admin needs to worship at Torvalds' feet and perpetually keep an eye out for him on the street so he can give Torvalds the obligatory blowjob he deserves for creating such a wonderful kernel, that makes a good Linux admin harder to come by! Therefore, a competent Linux admin suddenly costs more money to hire because of his greater skill set and lower availability. If you can, however, hire a SINGLE Windows God in a medium to large business, who can delegate tasks to people who are lower on the food chain (like the ones who can click "Next..Next..Finish" but not use ADSI Edit), your maintenance costs go down...
You know, it may be bad form to call somebody out (but then this is slashdot.org, so what else is new). . but as a professional systems administrator for over 7-8 years now, it sounds like to me that you are not a very experienced sysadmin - or even one to begin with.
One of the key skills that any systems admin (IMO) should know is being able to automate repetitive tasks, which will involve some sort of scripting language. Of course, just writing out the initial script and debugging it will take some time, however, in the end, it'll save you and whatever company you work for time to be used for more important* stuff. For instance, if I were to write the script to add a site to apache, in the end, it'll look like this:
addsite -site domain.com -home
The beauty of scripting (especially on Unix and Unix-like systems) is that you can write one-liner scripts on the fly; so in the above example, if I need to add a whole bunch of sites, I can either rewrite the above script or I can do:
for j in `cat listofsites`; do addsite -site $j -home
Or if I have a list of servers to add the same site, I just copy the script over to those machines this:
for i in `cat listofservers`; do for j in `cat listofsites`; do ssh $i "addsite -site $j -home
That part of the reason why Linux is kicking Microsoft's behind in the server space - it is so much easier and cheaper to scale up without adding additional person-power to your organization*. So in your example, the large MS shop will have to add more people for support, while a Unix shop would continue to hum along with 1-2 administrators. . and maybe consider adding person just so that they have somebody available in case the other people goes on vacation.
Just to make things clear, though. . . I am not saying that the above can't be done with MS systems. You can use existing MS scripting languages to automate tasks and scale. It *harder* to do, but it can be done. And even if the MS administrator may not good enough scripting background to do that, there are third-party tools that can allow to automate tasks from a single interface. So for you to view hiring lower-skilled admins to perform maintainance tasks tells me that either:
1) You don't understand the concept of ROI in business.
2) Don't want to take the time to learn and scale up.
I will say this, though, that yes, it may cost more money to hire a competent Unix/Linux administrator. That is true - the reason why is that there isn't that many to begin with (This is also true, to a certain extent, for Windows). I help interviewed many candidates for our Unix/Linux positions and we are surprised at the number of candidates that can't tell us how much memory is there on the machine, check the disk space, look u
This, of course, assumes that each of those half a million users are equally active, that is, they post comments with the same frequency. Otherwise, it could simply be that these four are amongst the active few and share the same interests, making them likely to comment on the same articles.
You'd really need to make an in-depth statistical analysis to figure out if this is truly an anomaly; and even if it is, it doesn't neccessarily prove anything - with half a million users, one chance out of 10,000 should happen about 50 times.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
OK, you can login to 10000 PCs and use your GUI and do each it turn. A Linux admin would write a script, then use a distribution command to push it out. No extra third party tools are not required like script logic. While you get to PC 50, the xNIX guy is done.
Tripe, FUD. You haven't installed a Linux (LAMP) server recently have you? You can setup Linux and never use the command line other that to confirm install. At the end of install have a secure server with LAMP running. Just add content.
But unlike MS-Windows, you don't have to blow all the CPU on screen savers and the like, once running you can change one line in one config file and give 100% of the server to services and not the GUI.
Also, I have a friend who bought a Windows Home Server when they first came out to backup important documents. Ever since the file corruption bug was confirmed, he has put it in a closet until the bug is fixed. I told him about the Ubuntu server I use as a music/web/ftp/samba/backup server and how well it works (yes, I know I'm a Ubuntu fan.... but hey, if it works it works). He's said that next time he'll bring a box over and would like to have the setup I have.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Windows 2003 is pretty stable, and so is IIS6. But a lot of the problems with using Windows, aren't specifically the OS itself but things like:
* per seat licensing for lots of apps. At one place we had 500k deliverable mail addresses, so conversations would go like "X per year and our per-seat cost is..." "Bye! <click>"
* many apps want admin to run, so even if you know how to secure the OS, you're relying on the competence of application programmers who are encouraged to get code out of the door.
* apps each keeping their own copy of a DLL. what is the fucking point? why not just link it statically?
MS need to start kicking some arses in respect of sane programming standards. That would help considerably.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I don't think its that simple. As an experiment I wiped a spare machine of Windows 2000 (which my 10 year old daughter was so fond of) and installed a copy of Ubuntu 7.10 on it. After 1 month of struggling with learning the machine, she won't even touch that computer. I'm not downing the OS though, but my point is, I am willing to pay for software (and probably so is many others) that is easy to use.
So, you're saying you're taking an eight year old computer and you erase the operating system that your daughter likes and replace it with one that you yourself hate, that she has never used and didn't ask for, and that probably doesn't run any of the software she likes or is used to. And then you force your 10 year old daughter to use it. And because she complains about that, you conclude that Linux is less usable than Windows.
Your "experiment" tells us nothing about the relative usability of Windows and Linux. All it tells us is that you really aren't very smart.
Are you working for Reader's Digest?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So you will intentionally metamoderate *falsely* just to stick it to Twitter? To me, it doesn't sound like HE's the one that needs to grow up...
Keep in mind, you really have no evidence at all that Twitter is any of those people, and yet some seem more convinced about it than I think the evidence warrants.
For the sake of the intarwebs, please take a step back, look at it from a bit farther away, and decide something:
Regardless of whether or not Twitter is all of these accounts, are you willing to censor someones beliefs based on an assumption?
Just because you don't like the truth, does not make it false.
And here the chauvinism of managers kicks in. "There may be fools, there may even be fools in management positions, but certainly the majority of us is NOT stupid!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your "shortcomings" come from not understanding the tools available. To use your examples if you wanted to do a full backup and have it use compression- you're in luck- every backup uses compression. Want to do it from the command line but don;t know how? Try "command line backup" under help and support. Want to use pointers in VB. Look at byref, if that's not going to accomplish what you want do a google search for pointers vb ( or vb.net if you prefer) however pointers are inherently unsafe (which is why they are more difficult to implement in VB since there is no real need for them) but they are available should you have to use them to interop with com objects that require pointers.
Linux in general is needlessly complex, to use your example knowing that dd can be used for backups is a battle in itself. googling for "linux backup" dd doesn't make the top 5 hits and one hit from linux magazine (linux backup primer) says "Linux backups can be quite intimidating
It is a shame but there are companies today that will not use any open source. I mean as far as monitoring and web servers and such. A company I started at recently will only use iPlanet, Blue Martini, and Big Brother because they can get commercial support. The unix admin I am working with asks me when I download Cygwin on my laptop if I have my virus protection on. "You never know with that open source." I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. I understand the needing a support channel but these guys are WAY over the top. Then they laugh about people using open source tools. Funny thing is a lot of the network items and other devices they use have roots in open source or even based on it. Linux kernel being in load balancers and whatnot. They are funny..... I have to work there. I guess I have my work cut out for me taking over UNIX administration and getting them to move out of 1994....
Here you have greed working against you. Since it's OSS, you'd have to release the bugfix into the world, i.e. you pay for something that your competitor may benefit from.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not an assumption.
And I wouldn't metamoderate falsely.
As you may be aware of, the metamod application does not show the author; if, however, I got to recognize twitter, I will lose my usual positive bias (I am more likely to disagree with a negative moderation than a positive one) and approach the post in question more critically.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Though while the process will take decades,during which open source picks up the quality and useful user-design ideas,Its will replace anything commercial.
Its free,licensed as free, and can be modified for any purpose without the ghostly fear of copyright infrigment or IP theft(which are ridicoulous concepts anyway if you analyse them deeply).
Well .NET is a pretty decent class library as far as those go. Microsoft has never denied that it was strongly influenced by java's class library, but it is still rather difficult to design a good class library at all, let alone one usable in multiple languages, and a common run-time system. For what .NET it does it fairly well.
As for Visual Studio, it is a damn good IDE, and is arguably slightly nicer than even the best FOSS IDE, Eclipse. (Though it is also lacking some of Eclipse's nicer features). The truth is though that the FOSS community does not use IDE's very much, so having one that is excellent is really not a top concern.
As far as quality of the compiler itself, the GCC compiler family is unquestionably superior to Microsoft's compilers.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Start then with openoffice on windows. And show how to save in messed up formats ;)
As a Windows Admin....I call BS. You're right that the GUI is powerful, and you can do a lot with it. But its not the be-all-end-all of system administration like you make it out to be.
Using the ADUC snap-in is a good way to get some things done in AD, but its not always the fastest or most efficient way of doing it, especially if you have to perform an action on a lot of accounts. ADSI Edit or a windows script can do that just as effectively and save you time in the long run.
Same goes for netsh commands and half a dozen other administration tasks. You can do the same thing with a login script that calls WMI functions. The point is...if you're only admin-ing one or two windows boxes, the GUI is probably going to be all you know. You won't need scripting because it will take you longer to write, test, debug and use the script as it would take to go to the machines and make the change in the GUI. You still need to know what is going on behind the scenes when you run the script so you don't end up with an unexpected problem.
But to say that I, as a windows admin, do not have to go into INI files, edit the registry, or write a script means you have never had to do the finer points of Windows Administration.
My Sysadmin Blog
LOL... Gartner couldn't see the biggest economic meltdown in decades coming... but somehow they are going to be right about "OMG TEH FOSS TAKEZ OVAR TEH WARLD!!11!!"? Yeah right... give me a break.
Gartner was wrong about the economy, and they're wrong on this. FOSS will have exactly as much penetration has it's had for the past 5-10 years, which is... um... hardly any at all.
Tivo has effectively circumvented the GPLv2 and robbed users of their freedom. Linus Torvalds stubbornly clings to GPLv2, just to accommodate those corporations who want to circumvent the spirit of the GPL. "Open Source" means corporations can take your freedom. Free Software is different. Freedom is the priority. Free Software will quietly take over. "Open Source" amounts to a transitional marketing campaign, not a relevant or coherent vision.
Freedom is free.
You have a few excellent points here. The issue with windows is that it is very easy to be an incompetent admin, and there are some problems that even a competent admin really cannot handle, such as a corrupted registry. The simple truth is that there are very few tools for dealing with a corrupted registry, so the vast majority of the time the 3 R's is the only reasonable way to go. It is much more rare to have anything go so wrong on a GNU/Linux setup that the only reasonable choice is the 3 R's. The only hypothetical situation I can think of off the top of my head is too many drives dying at once in a RAID setup and backups are not available (perhaps this was the server that held the backups, so it is unlikely to have a backup of itself, and even if it did, you cant access it).
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Being an amateur, I just set up an wins server on my Ubuntu machine here at home and connected my girlfriends, two laptops to it. (something she has asked me to do before).
... hmm..
It took about 10 minutes and that is only because I was reading a howto, on a forum. The one thing I realized when doing it, is that instead of having a list of options, like the smb.conf file. The windows machines had an endless series of gui's. I don't think that the windows way was any easier, actually it seemed a bit more confusing at times, but I could understand that if I did it enough times I could get used to it.
The truth is I think I could sit here and go through all of your points and none of them seem to make any real sense. I don't see how an endless set of dialog boxes are any easier than a series of lines that you uncomment and fill out.
I did use a gui (http://www.fs-security.com/) to open the port in my firewall. I didn't use a netsh command because, like you said, "I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO!.
In fact, I have a backup server here using CentOS, and I don't remember doing a lot of command line operations for that either.
Just my 2 cents..
once more into the breach
In regards to you not metamoderating falsely: The reason I assumed that is due to the bolded parts above. I can see your point, but I try to (and know that I can't really succeed at, but trying is better than not trying) to come at metamodding from a critical viewpoint fairly often. Too many people (even beyond Twitter) have 2 accounts, and will use one to moderate the other. Whether or not they are Twitter, it is something to watch out for.
Just because you don't like the truth, does not make it false.
Well I would have no issues *using* open source products in my company, but I would have issues following any licence agreement that required me to *release* the source to anything I modify.
The software that my company creates is useless without the hardware we also create. Releasing any source we modify back out into the community would only serve to reduce our competitiveness. The open source community in general would never use or benefit from what we write.
I'm speaking now solely of the business my company is in - other companies may very well benefit from releasing source code community wide.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
music: software:
or will we somehow all become so software savvy that we can get software the way we get music from iTunes: we pick the tracks we want and they all play just fine on our virtual machine?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
It is sometimes hard to get it into the skull of MBAs...
Just use a dremel.
I think it is impossible for any enterprise to avoid using Embedded Linux. It is everywhere. There are billions of embedded Linux devices out there.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Free MS Software: Internet Explorer, Outlook, Mediaplayer...
Now which thick skulled MBA do not use those?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
A couple of releases back, I sent OOo $45 and feel quite comfortable that this was appropriate, both for how much I use OOo and how useful it is to myself and my family. When they get a bit more features/integration with other apps, I will donate again. I feel this is a good program that comes with tons of support and very good update releases.
I'm still having trouble with some specific products that have not yet supported GNU/Linux and either do not work well under Wine or have no F/OSS alternatives but that is no problem. I'm teaching the family to check for software when making their buying decisions in the future. This is something you might want to teach your parents. The Internet is all you need to find out if anyone else is using product XYZ with what version of Linux. I remember when you had to do that for Windows too so I don't find it a pain.
Way back, I remember waiting for workable windows drivers for lots of things, even for any drivers for some products. DOS was supported, but you had to wait for Windows drivers... sigh
To some, this seems a step backwards, but sometimes you have to step back a bit and restart to get around the wall you ram into.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think you'd find that it's not ease of use that makes you daughter desire Windows, At least not the inherent ease of use of Windows itself.
It's probably things like
1) She wants to install iTunes and there is no iTunes for Linux
2) She wants to install MSN Messenger and she doesn't know about Pidgin
I suppose you could call it "ease of use" that you can just go to the iTunes website and download it and install it if you're using Windows, but that's not because of some special Microsoft ability. That's just because Apple only makes their software for OS X and Windows. It seems unfair to credit Microsoft for this "ease of use".
You don't need scriptlogic to write Windows Scripts, although it is helpful. You can write one on your own using Notepad (or your favorite text editor) and the WMI documentation on the MSDN site.
My Sysadmin Blog
......and my karma isn't in the toilet. But it soon will be the way that post was modded.I have seen you sig before and I think its pure drivel. So what if twitter has multiple accounts. Why is it any of your business?
If you just want to declare you hatred of someone, do it using the friends / foes system, that is what it is there for. And that way those of us who could not care less who your foes are dont have to look.
I also think that a great many of Twitters posts make sense. Ok, he posted some drivel, but so have I, so have you, so has everyone from someones perspective.
Now, I have another suggestion: You are an MS sock puppet who also posts under multiple accounts and gets paid to trash what could be an interesting debate about the future of open source software.
I have no proof of that, but who cares, you obviously do not when it applies to other people so why should it matter to me either.
I dont read
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to know precisely how to edit various INI files and the system registry to change settings, when I can just click something in a GUI?
Maybe I'm just clueless, but where's the GUI for enabling AutoAdminLogon, or for adding Run and RunOnce commands? Where's the GUI for creating a regedit file that deletes a key or value? I'll admit Microsoft is slowly making things better, but it generally takes years for significant improvements. Consider msizap, which used to be the only way to remove hosed MSI installed programs. Well, now (as of sometime this or last year, as far as I can tell) there's a passable gui frontend to it. Yay for microsoft. I still think there are plenty of tasks that are better suited to a text editor than to a gui. Search and replace and regular expressions are two good examples of why.
Do you use email? use google? use the internet? then you are using open source. In fact I don't even know of any closed source DNS server software? Or
Plus as the article alluded to there's a good and increasing chance that your wireless router, cell phone, settop box, dvr are running open source software.
In short, bitches, we've won. You dinosaurs in the closed-source business world just haven't figured it out yet.
You'd be surprised how many companies do object. About 2 years ago, during the beginning of Microsoft's "We're gonna sue you for using open source" campaign, my boss came to me and asked if we used open source anywhere in our company. I told him a lot of people use firefox, but I'd really like to move to an open-source database and/or software PBX servers since the proprietary ones cost so much. He told me that wasn't going to happen, and further that the reason he asked was because a large potential customer told us that they would only sign a contract if we didn't use open source. Yeah, my boss (and everyone else in the company) has the "free means worthless" attitude, but one of our clients actually had the "free means microsoft will sue us into the ground for using their patents" attitude.
I have no proof of that, but who cares, you obviously do not when it applies to other people I have plenty of proof that Twitter has multiple accounts, from analysis of his posting methods and language to admissions from twitter that he has multiple sockpuppets. You have none whatsoever, but apparently that doesn't stop you from bringing yourself down to what you seem to perceive to be level. so why should it matter to me either. I don't know - you're free to foe me and ignore me, and if you don't like what I say according to you that's the best option, so why don't you go ahead? No skin off my nose. I read
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Sometimes I read a particularly insightful post, and then find out it's by Twitter (I usually find this out because the next post is usually "twitter, why don't you shut up with your 5 sock puppets" ;-)). I find it a bit scary that he/she uses multiple accounts and seems to be always angry (at Microsoft usually), but I have to admit that sometimes his/her comments are just completely right on target, providing clarity to the discussion at hand.
It takes skill to detect, dissect and criticize a flawed argument, and all comments of the form "just ignore him, it's only twitter" don't really detract from that.
On the other hand, if I am clear-headed enough to detect him/her spouting crap, I'll gladly mod him/her down if I happen to have mod points.
I figure if you have this kind of skill with words, you should use it for good, and not to poison the minds of your fellow people.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
despite their objection"? who are these people who "object" to using free software and why?
I can't believe you actually think that. I know people, software developers, who have said to my face,"I won't use open source software because I believe people should be paid for their work." Granted that's incredibly stupid, since one is always free to pay (donate) to any project.
Nearly every large business I know has all sorts of strict (idiotic, but strict) rules about not putting any open source or freeware or shareware on their machines and networks, because, you know, commercial software is soooo much safer and free from vulnerabilities.
We are a very long way from getting the PHBs of the world to understand what software is, let alone how to evaluate the usefulness vs risk of any given item, be it commercial or open source.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
There are actually only very few companies in the world who sell software -- for all the rest, paying someone to fix a software bug is a cost just like having someone come over to repair your central heating system:
Your job may yield the central heating mechanic enough profit to buy better equipment, so he becomes more competitive, and repairs your competitor's central heating system for less:
better wait until one of your competitors' heating systems break down too, and then get yours repaired afterwards for less money!
P.S. I recommend that ESR essay "The Magic Cauldron", it's fun to read, and even on-topic.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I just looked through your post history. You seem to look for posts by Twitters alter egos and runnish them all. Are you conducting a concerted campaign against him? Do you spend your entire time looking for Twitter posts to try and rubbish his points without reading them? That is how it appears to me.
Is Twitter the only reason you read slashdot? Personally I read it for interesting tech related news stories and the occasional decent debate but looking through your recent post history you look like Twitters stalker. Do you have any idea how goddamn sad that makes you look. Get a life.
The pair of you probably have a lot in common, ever thought of proposing marriage?
I dont read
I use the Apple software that came with the device and upgraded to 10.5. I purchase a game or two for the MacOS. Everything else is open source.
I have converted so many people to Ubuntu and open source. My family, my friends. My mother has mental problems so she has issues learning new things. She uses a Ubuntu laptop setup I configured just for her. She never has problems that she cannot figure out herself. I know if I put Windows on her computer.... oh thats just a nightmare to even think about!
I make everyone a deal. If they want me to work on their computer, I will do so for free but only to backup their files and install Ubuntu. I install Ubuntu and any program they want and ensure they all work or a linux version is installed. Any time the computer doesnt work, I will fix it, all for free.
Its amazing because I never have to help them after a week or two of using the new system.
In My Opinion Open-source took over a while ago
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Perhaps you might want to read the article next time.
Much of what they're talking about concerns things like embedded systems where the user is totally unaware of, and indifferent to, the platform which the device employs. Do you think people using recent Linux-based Motorola cell phones know or care that it runs Linux? How about commercial firewall routers that have an open-source OS embedded in silicon? How about those Barracuda anti-spam appliances that run a version of SpamAssassin? As I read TFA, the Gartner piece was suggesting that most every firm would have something that ran some open-source application or OS somewhere in the firm. Frankly, I doubt that's really all that far-fetched.
That's leaving aside the already-existing proprietary software that incorporates open-source code like Microsoft's use of Kerberos.
And after you modify your source version of the code, congratulations, upgrading to the next version is at best case going to require careful thought and planning, and at worst case a lot of time and effort on your part.
The danger of customizing your open source product is the same danger that companies face modifying products like SAP. Once you go so far down that path, upgrading is prohibitivly risky and costly.
I'll give this one a shot, perhaps she will have a better experience with it.
Regards,
MBC1977,
No, the spare computer is a P4 3.6ghz machine (with 2 gb of RAM). She only uses the internet (for her websites like funbrain and etc.) The built in games she likes quite well actually. But when a website (Playhouse Disney) started asking her to install flash, which she knew how to do very simply on the Windows machine. And could not duplicate in any reasonable fashion (she attempted to read and understand the directions for linux for 2 and a half hours). It took me honestly, roughly 2 hours to install flash for her, (to include switching accounts several times, and a trip through the Linux command line, which I give all Unix and Linux users my respect). This is when I know it is not ready for prime time. Again, for a programmer or a user who is skilled in Unix / Linux, I'm very sure it is a good OS. It does have some intriguing features, (some of which I wish were duplicated in Windows), but unless the system as a whole becomes easier to use it will have problems dominating the desktop.
On a side note, I persuaded her to try and use it again (at a rate of 2 dollars per hour) so maybe she will tough it out now...
Regards,
MBC1977,
MBA: "That's not free! That comes with Windows!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On either system you can set things up entirely through the gui, modern redhat comes with graphical tools for configuration etc...
The difference is that you're typical unix admin is a step up from the typical windows admin, so you have a greater chance of a unix admin being competent enough to do things by hand if they want/need to.
And then there's the fact that doing things by hand gives you more power and control, and more highly skilled people are more likely to want and appreciate a higher level of control.
Aside from that, doing things by hand is often a lot easier on linux than it is on windows, text based configuration files are much easier to manipulate using standard text editing tools (of which there are many).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
But when a website (Playhouse Disney) started asking her to install flash, which she knew how to do very simply on the Windows machine. And could not duplicate in any reasonable fashion (she attempted to read and understand the directions for linux for 2 and a half hours). It took me honestly, roughly 2 hours to install flash for her, (to include switching accounts several times, and a trip through the Linux command line, which I give all Unix and Linux users my respect).
The Adobe Flash player is part of the Ubuntu distribution; you install it with the package manager, like everything else. It takes less than a minute to install.
You can't blame Ubuntu for the fact that Adobe puts the wrong instructions on their web site.
Generally, just remember this: only install software using the package manager and you'll be fine.
This is when I know it is not ready for prime time.
Well, then Windows really isn't ready for prime time, because a large fraction of software installations fail or break something. I just spend several hours trying to get a supposedly Windows-compatible cellular modem to work on Windows and it's just not working properly (I'm going to return it).
Again, for a programmer or a user who is skilled in Unix / Linux, I'm very sure it is a good OS. It does have some intriguing features, (some of which I wish were duplicated in Windows), but unless the system as a whole becomes easier to use it will have problems dominating the desktop.
Oh, please, do you make this stuff up? Millions of laymen use Linux every day with no problems. Ease of software installation and maintenance is a big advantage of Linux over Windows. The fact that you can't figure out how to install Flash for your daughter doesn't make Linux hard to use or limited to "programmers".
What doesn't work is if you try to do stupid things, like install software "by hand" or using unsupported hardware.
On a side note, I persuaded her to try and use it again (at a rate of 2 dollars per hour) so maybe she will tough it out now...
I don't see why you bother. You obviously don't like Linux, you obviously aren't willing to learn about it, and she clearly isn't happy either. Just stick with Windows and stop complaining about Linux.
Which is why you submit the code back to the original project. Then an upgrade just works. It's not a terribly hard concept to get.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Yes, absolutely...
When something is safety critical, i would like the code to be completely open to third party inspection...
I would also much prefer that a single rock solid piece of code is developed, rather than multiple companies reinventing the wheel... It makes no sense for Boeing and Airbus to develop their own autopilot code completely independently, instead they should pool their resources to ensure there is as much safety checking as possible.
They are going to develop the code, and thoroughly audit it anyway... Having third parties looking at it is a good thing, even if they don't accept external code submissions. And ensuring that the standards are as high as possible, and that everyone is up to the same high standards is important too.
Much better than some smaller manufacturer in a country with less strict safety rules, who is far more likely to take shortcuts when writing their own code.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There's always someone to blame, wether the code is open or proprietary...
And in both situations, blaming them usually won't do any good, because they are simply under no obligation to care about your problems.
As for users doing testing, open source has that option but you don't need to make use of it... Noone is forcing you to run beta versions. Commercial vendors do the same too.
And with active development, sure open source projects die, and commercial products cease to be developed too... There are thousands of dead commercial applications out there and just as many dead open source projects. The difference is where you go when the software you use dies...
If a proprietary app dies, you probably wont be able to buy more licenses if you need to deploy it on more systems, not a problem with open source.
If a proprietary app dies it will be completely unmaintained, and noone is going to fix anything for you, you will have to migrate away from it. If an open source app dies, and it's sufficiently important to you, there's always the possibility of employing or contracting programmers to maintain it for you.
If you do decide to migrate away, a proprietary app is far more likely to be storing it's data in proprietary formats, whereas an open source app will more likely keep it's data in open formats which are much easier to convert to a format supported by whatever you migrate to.
Obviously it's not a great situation to be in, to have a piece of software you use cease to be maintained, but the problem is much worse if that software was closed source and proprietary.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
They're not talking about desktop software, but open source as a whole...
If you deploy an Apache webserver, you're using open source...
If you buy a wireless access point running an embedded linux, you're using open source.
If you buy a firewall based on linux, you're using open source.
It really is everywhere, wether you realise it or not... I'm surprised it's not 90% of more already, it's many years since i went to a business that wasn't running at least some kind of open source based application somewhere... Even Microsoft run wireless access points based on an embedded version of linux.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is a common misconception...
First, you can buy open source from IBM...
Second, software virtually never comes with a guarantee, you can shout as loud as you like about some commercial company selling you garbage, but you already waived your right to any comeback when you agreed to their terms. If software makers were accountable for bugs, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt years ago.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Wait... you couldn't figure out how to install Flash on Ubuntu 7.10 after TWO HOURS?
The 5th result when you search google for "flash ubuntu 7.10" is this. You read through it, enable the Restricted Repositories in Synaptic, and then just install flash.
I think you may find that this is enlightening. It boils down to this: Linux is NOT Windows. Trying to treat it like Windows sets you up for failure. You don't try to drive your car like you ride your bike, do you?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I've been watching Rick Astley on 64bit Kubuntu 8.04. Flash works fine on Linux.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I have three girls all 'raised' with Windows 2000 - 2007. When they were 10, 11 and 12 I started using Ubuntu w/Gimp, Open Office, and a variety of other productivity apps. I had built a few websites for school activities/groups using Joomla and while they all thought they were 'awesome', they had not realized they were not Windows-based, until relatively recently.
They would balk at using "mom's old PC with Linux" - that is, until they really had to start using a PC for projects requiring more than Word Processing/simple apps that were interoperable, flexible, fast and with more sophisticated features (Middle School and High School is when this really became an issue).
After having "mom's old PC with Linux" save them from not being able to complete their projects more than a few times (after Windows issues (version differences, software limitations, Vista-crash-burn/compatibility issues, media/format issues, etc.)) they quickly began appreciating open source.
The upside is that they can save their project work in just about any format using the Ubuntu machine. They can create just about anything using it. They can be confident that when they get to school to present it/turn it in it will actually work/be available/and in the format they intended.
The downside is that now their friends come here when they can't get something done on their Windows PCs and the girls are on my machine so much, I rarely can get on it if they are at home.
So, over the next few weeks I will have to backup two of our Windows machines and install Ubuntu and apps. I'm going to install Hardy on one as my son says it is "awesome" and has not had any issues with it since installing it a few months ago.
Actually, my father thinks all things Mozilla are the devil for some reason, and refuses to explain why. He's one of those people who doesn't understand the difference between a desktop icon and a link in his favorites (Just as an example), and gets really mad if you try to explain anything for longer than two seconds. I'm just glad he doesn't throw chairs.
I couldn't figure out how to post a new comment, so I thought I'd tag this on to yours as it is a sign that open source has been embraced my much of the corporate world for years AND a certain hold out is scrambling to play catch-up (reminiscent of the browser wars, only this time there are 1,000s of 'Netscapes' who are already very well established and profitable, in place). Only a few of the numerous examples available: Google http://code.google.com/opensource/ Adobe http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home IBM http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/opensource/ Yahoo! (MSFT is threatening to go to stockholders directly they want 'in' so bad) http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ (all of these and more large, commercial, entities have open-source research and development projects and sponsor other open-source projects and programs) And, the 'icing on the cake' http://port25.technet.com/ Microsoft's recently launched Open Source site And, then there's the whole 'server' thing and Vista fiasco (those MSFT memos were a laugh riot).
"Would you like the code driving the autopilot of the plane you're in to be open-source?" It already is used in medical equipment (patient monitors, delivery systems, etc.), aeronautics, and numerous other mission critical apps world wide.
Good point actually. Sorry, didn't think of it like that.
Macthorpe may post in response to basically every twitter+ post, but (iirc) he didn't start doing it until (someone who was ostensibly, or was at least using the same posting pattern as) twitter registered the name 'Mactrope' in an apparent attempt to imitate him.
From what i've read of Macthorpe's posts outside of twitter oriented discussion, he seems to be reasonably critical of Microsoft, Apple, and *nux OS platforms.
Your proposition sounds reasonable, but anyone who has paid attention to this little dance for a while will see there is background here.
Of course, we could all be a single sad kid having conversations with himself from his mother's basement.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
"Here you have greed working against you. Since it's OSS, you'd have to release the bugfix into the world"
No, you don't.
On one hand, not all OSS licenses are born equal (as privative licenses are not born equal, either). It's obvious that what it's true regarding BSD doesn't need to regarding GPL so please, refrain a bit about talking absolutes about OSS: to many of them won't hold water.
On the other hand, even talking about copyleft OSS, like GPL, it's untrue that you have to release the bugfix to the world. As long as you don't redistribute binaries you don't have to release the bugfix either. Please read the GPL and see it by yourself.
"And after you modify your source version of the code, congratulations, upgrading to the next version is at best case going to require careful thought and planning, and at worst case a lot of time and effort on your part."
And even then you end up on a wining position.
In the first case you would have a relaxed upgrade path (hey, we all know all privative-licensed programs are always a breeze to upgrade, don't we?) *but* the software *still* will have the bug: remember that the case was about a privative-licensed software whose owner didn't want to provide a bugfix vs. an open-licensed software whose primary provider didn't want to provide a bugfix.
In the second case you still would have two valuable options:
1) Provide the bugfix to the upstream vendor *even* if it didn't want to produce it itself. The upstream vendor might want to patch the main line after the hard work is done (after all, it will probably benefit their other clients).
2) Assess a cost-benefit analysis: is the bugfix valuable enough for all the hassle of patching new versions? If it is valuable enough, you still win versus the option of no bugfix at all, and if it isn't worth the effort you still are no *worse* than in the very begining.
So, again, even using arguments from closed-source minions open source arises as a win-win proposition.
"The danger of customizing your open source product is the same danger that companies face modifying products like SAP"
This is quite off-topic, but HA! is SAP what you are talking about? Is there any company that uses SAP as-is? Heck, is even SAP meant to be working out-of-the-box in any case? Of course upgrading will be expensive but in the case of SAP it is out from a well thougth strategy where SAP is more focused on SAP itself and its consultants, knowing they work by their side about getting enough gullible CxOs to make their day. SAP is *all* about being expensive and CxO marketable.
My corp was afraid of unprotected legal liability mainly.
And they wanted to have a vendor to scream at if the product didn't work.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Millions of troll post marketing one thing or another, millions of other posts attacking one idea or another. Like that whole twitter thing, there obviously seems to be far more going on in the background than is reflected in the posts. Those posting squabbles, whilst attacking and promoting ideas and people often do seek to hide what is really going on and create a false impression of the underlying reality reality.
I will always remember the microtrolls who haunted Linux forums and attacked newbies attempting to drive them away while pretending to be peguinistas. Gartners take on the issue is reflected in the word it choose to use, a stealth takeover, somehow sneaking up on the customers with out the customers choice, an attempt to create a negative out of a positive and extend the life of proprietary monopoly extortion.
The reality is FOSS is out and completely in the public, it's direction is driven by it's users, it is naturally forced in the direction they prefer, else it lacks users and contributors. FOSS simply makes clear economic sence, in the case of windows and M$ office, it simply means that those revenues will remain with the end user and not get siphoned off and wasted, and much more importantly costs associated with the unrequested upgrades, retraining, free beta testing often 10 to 100 times the cost of using poorly implemented proprietary software will largely be eliminated.
Perhaps a slashdot poll on the whole 'twitter' issue might bring to light some interesting and humorous stories.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Why yes, he does. This is part of the astroturfing effort to make it seem like Linux is hard. It's not, and the poster knows it. He's trying to make it look like it is hard, and it's a stretch. He would do better if he had actual experience in the subject.
We're going to have to get used to this. Microsoft has a whole staff in Calcutta trained in how to make their posts look like genuine issues. If you read them carefully though, you can see their issues are read out of an old book.
At least they're using proper English now. It used to be horrible.
Often these days the best clue is they dare not make errors in their typing.
I suppose we could counter with a staff in Bangalore that does the opposite but somehow I can't bring myself to do it. It seems dirty.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My daughter handles Linux just fine. She'll soon be two. It might be a PEBKAC issue.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
The problem is that the converse is not true. Proprietary software costs money, but you usually won't find accountability at any price, other than reinventing it in-house.
BZZZT! Wrong! Read the EULA and weep.
However, it is possible to assure accountability -- by spending money -- on open source. You mention Red Hat, but I assume you're not talking about CentOS or Fedora -- you're talking about a subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, meaning you actually get to call Red Hat when something goes wrong. And you can find this kind of support for just about any sufficiently popular open source -- it does confuse me sometimes why Red Hat is preferred to, say, Ubuntu, for which support is also available.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Erm... I'm calling bullshit on that.
Because I don't know exactly which best practices you're talking about, there's not much I can say, other than that I suspect that the "couple of clicks and 2 minutes" is once you know how to do it, and the "MILES of command lines and scores of .conf files" is because you don't. A trivial example:
And I now have a webserver running. And that's just on a single machine -- if a thousand of them need webservers, it's not really going to take me any more time.
He can also manage more machines. And if he's good, he can do it better and faster than you can.
And you claim not to hate yourself?
Now, what you've said suggests that a Windows server may make sense to a small-ish shop, where, for whatever reason, they want to do everything in-house. Such a Windows server may well be easier to learn to setup than an equivalent Linux server.
But on that scale, honestly, your admin skills are pretty much obsoleted by Google Apps and a Linksys router, as soon as they decide they don't need to do everything in-house. Why should a small business owner run Exchange or store documents in-house, if THEY DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't know about PostgreSQL, but MySQL is now owned by Sun, and it had a proprietary component before that.
So just tell that business partner that if they need a guarantee of reliability, go talk to Sun. I'm sure they can find a contract somewhere.
And did they actually talk about "hippies"? Wow.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
wtf is a check? Is that cockney slang for a bumming?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Well, let's see the list of things you'd want to do as a non-technical user but are pretty hard in Windows...
How about adding a new HD after the old one got too small and you want to move all your programs over to the new one without reinstalling them? Or at least adding the HD without having to reconfigure half of your software (which assumes the DVD-drive to be D:, which now automagically became E:)? How about restoring a boot record that went poof after an update (EvE players know why you'd want that as a non-tech player)? Or, how about backing it up in the first place? How about having a sensible way to boot up when somehow your system got fubar'd (don't say repair console, ok? We're talking non-tech here)? How about "cloning" your system cleanly when you move to new hardware? Or at least a sensible way to remove a driver consistently when it happens to clog your system, making it unbootable?
I do admit, most of those things deal with maintainance, repair and upgrading rather than the normal flow of operation. But that's usually when the average non-tech person needs a technical person, because the tools you get for those matters in Windows either don't exist at all, or if they do, are rather limited in their abilities.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've never met anyone who doesn't have a vested interest with huge $$$ at stake (i.e. Microsoft) seriously object to the concept of open source. I've seen some companies express reservations about support, which is sometimes justified, but not unreasonably so. A software decision always involves risks and tradeoffs, but I've never seen anyone reject software a priori because it's open source.
So instead of seeing all the gears and cogs of the OS, you'd rather poke around on the outer shell of the thing looking for some way to coax the proper behavior out of it?
That's what I would call hating yourself.
As for costing less to run a windows server, you have to buy the OS and software as well as regular upgrades, which would fully negate the salary of the competent linux admin you would have found for the job.
And almost all of those things can be handled by either buying a $49 utility or taking it down to the store... which, come to think of it, is how I handle the repair of all of my other APPLIANCES.
"I'll take Windows--- because I'm an incompetent Network admin"
.conf files to accomplish the same best practices that takes a couple of clicks and 2 minutes on a Windows machine."
There, fixed it for you.
Because:
"When it comes down to it, setting up a Linux server in a nice, secure fashion is a royal pain in the ass. You have to type MILES of command lines and edit scores of
just fucking proves it, moron. You know absolutely nothing about sysadmin.
"despite their objection"? who are these people who "object" to using free software and why?
lawyers.
Do you use Google for your searches? I guess you probably think that the people at Google who run 1000's of Linux servers are all a bunch of idiots. That they love to create more work for themselves, what the hell do they know? Right? They've just created the fastest, most thorough, most popular search engine in the world....and they're doing it with LINUX. You're an arrogant idiot and I doubt very much you Admin anything very well.
"Your "experiment" tells us nothing about the relative usability of Windows and Linux. All it tells us is that you really aren't very smart."
This is the biggest problem with Linu - most Linux fanatics are dicks.
or did they mean "take cover" ? :p
I've used this site for quite a while:
http://www.nonags.com/menu-s.asp
It's a decent resource
If all or most software is going open-source, how does a software company make money?
Sort answer: They don't. They go extinct, or shrink down to shadows of their former selves and serve niche markets.
Let me explain: It is entirely possible that "software as a product" could be supplanted by Free, or at least open-source, software. The business model of selling a box with a little plastic disc in it on a store shelf, or even pay-per-download or pay-per-activation, will become obsolete.
There used to be companies out there like Underwood or Olivetti that sold typewriters and typewriter accessories and that was their business. Then computers came around...and then word processing software and decent printers. You might as well ask "if all or most writers are going to computers then how are typewriter companies going to make money?". The answer was, indeed, "they don't". The aforementioned companies did not "get" PCs. They may have tried to make electronic typewriters or whatever but they all eventually went belly up, shrunk, merged with struggling competitors and what not. None of the old names exist as independent businesses anymore and none make any notable revenue from typewriters--they've moved on to make printers, fax machines, portable electronic gadgets, etc.
So to make money in an age of Free and/or open source software domination a (closed/product-oriented) software company has to change into a different kind of company, or close up shop. Simple as that.
Don't say services because services don't provide real cash flow.
Okay, I wont, but that is one of many ways a software company can re-invent itself.
The whole 1st world economy is becoming service oriented! Las Vegas is built on services (people go there, spend thousands and come back with LESS--they paid for entertainment SERVICES). Some auto dealerships make more money on SERVICES than on selling cars!
What I mean is enough cash flow for serious new projects and research.
Woah you are WAY off there. IBM makes serious money from open source, and re-invests considerable amounts in R&D. Furthermore, Free software promotes large-scale collaboration. By building a business around Free software you can amplify the returns on R&D. For every innovation you contribute to a project you could get many more in return from other contributors.
Service work has a relatively low profit margin because there is no way to "ramp up" as it were.
Services provide, in the long term, FAR more profit than product sales. You can only sell so many widgets before you hit a wall in terms of growth. Customers want service constantly.
Once a piece of commercial software is developed it can continue to provide profit with only maintenance costs.
"Maintenance costs" are the issue. Do you think MSFT makes any money at all on hotfixes and service pack releases? Of course not...it is one of their biggest EXPENSES. With closed software customers have already paid sizeable money so they expect to have defects addressed for free. If software ceases to be a product in and of itself and is viewed for what it really is--a "consumable" commodity like hand tools or paper or fuel or whatever--then the revenue stream is the service.
This addresses end-users needs far better than on-size-fits-all-badly packaged software. At the enterprise level especially, the real bread is in integration, customisation, migration, training and so on. Even at the consumer level, services are where the money is. Telecom SERVICE providers make the big bucks on the SERVICE, not on the phones they pretty much give away/sell at cost (where the device maker has to deal with slimmer margins).
Plus you can sell upgrades.
You must have never had to do that, because you make it sound so easy. There has to be a value proposition in it. It is inevitable that you reach a point of diminishing returns, where the "innovations" provided by upgrades become
Of course, we could all be a single sad kid having conversations with himself from his mother's basement.
/. is some sort of figment of my imagination talking to me? I'm not sure whether to be happy that I have the central plot device of my next story, or sad b/c my imagination is puerile and hates me...
Wait, everyone else on
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA