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Feature:The Two Towers
No-one can deny the astonishing jump in attention that Linux and Open Source have made. It's incredible, and all due to the hard work and diligence of some very cool individuals. But I'm here to doomsay, though it's not my nature, because I think it's vital that some important thoughts get thunk.
First, Microsoft is irrelevant. Totally. Ignore the man behind the curtain. Gates is just a ringwraith to the Sauron of unethical capitalism. We run the real risk that by concentrating too hard on killing Windows, we will become just like them. People are calling for 'feature parity' with the Office(TM, Pat Pend) applications to ease the transition of newbie users without once questioning whether that is a good thing.
Personally, I like the idea of giving all those potential new users a nasty shock to the complacency. (which is just above the navel, next to the spleen.) I don't want Linux to be "Just like Windows only Better!", I want it to challenge the basic assumptions that the Microsoft engineers have made. Windows is a poor copy of the Macintosh is a poor copy of the Xerox Star, now 20 years old. We haven't challenged the basic WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) paradigm in 20 years? Come on!
And have you ever considered what might happen if the stated Linux goal of 'Total World Domination" is actually achieved? And are you really prepared to accept the consequences?
I don't think you are.
Consider: Red Hat used to release a new version every few months. That has now slipped. The reason is rather involved, but essentially the Reseller Channel doesn't like version releases too often. Even once a year is too frequent, in resellerland. Two kernel updates a day wouldn't even be believed.
To get Linux onto everyone's desktop, the release frequency will have to drop down to that kind of timescale. Even if we perfect the Debian auto-update, people won't use it, even if we get the bandwidth. They don't like their software changing unpredictably from day to day. The hacker/early-adopter/mainstream model acts like a filter to keep bad or incomplete software off computers. (And consider carefully the possibility of a single buggy kernel module, sent out through the auto-update chain, taking down the Net)
First, accept that the commercialization of Open Source products is inevitable and necessary. Some people only attach value to things they have to pay for. This is the businessman's mindset. He believes in Money, with a capital M. It defines him, and his relationship with the world is interpreted in terms of the flow of cash. This is the work of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, which has long been wedged up Adam Smith's Invisible Butt.
And as far as commercial Linux vendors go, There Can Be Only One.
Microsoft has a monopoly, because commercial operating systems form a natural monopoly due to network effects, and they just happened to be the one ruthless enough to get it for the moment. If Linux 'wins', then it will become the monopoly OS. And it will be a plodding RedHat once-a-year release. Is that what you wanted?
Because sooner or later, Red Hat the Company will be owned and run by an economic rationalist with a legal obligation to increase shareholder value (as all publicly traded companies are required to do, or they get sued) using any and every means at their disposal. It happened to Netscape. Ask Jamie. Linux, in the wrong hands, is a big gun which someone will use to shoot Microsoft, probably in order to replace them. That is simply what will happen. If Microsoft is clever, then they'll buy that gun to shoot themselves in the foot, rather than waiting for someone else to aim it at their head. That is the consequence of Total World Domination. This is called 'Commercial Reality', and the only way to win is not to play the game.
Don't let the fact that 90% of the population wants to be spoon-fed their software distress you. People are weird. Accept it. Just remember that while a thriving Open Source community exists, the other 10% can get what they need. And if you care, then you're in that group. And the way to live is to do it on your own terms. Great Works can be done outside the corporate environment. We've proved that. We don't need them anymore. Independance is key.
Along the way, there are many traps. First, though copyright and patent law are flawed, it's still the law. Be very, very sure that the code you put into an open source program infringes no patents or copyrights, even though you disagree with the concepts. Don't use LZW compression, don't call your program 'Excel', and don't share code between your day job and your project unless you've got a piece of paper to counteract the other piece of paper they usually make you sign. If it becomes a crucial part of the system, and suddenly gets yanked because of a legal dispute, that's a very bad thing for the project, for whoever gets the blame, for all the people down the track who may have used your code in something else, and for the image of Open Source. Maybe we need a "100% pure Open Source" campaign or something, I don't know.
The second trap is commercial interests. Look at Silicon Valley. It's a case in point of what to avoid. The defining characteristic of the Executive Suit is the search for power. They look for the biggest game in town and muscle in at the top using the forceful application of money and the law. Can you say "Venture Capital"? I knew you could. As soon as you turn a technology into a company, or a patent, or something that can be owned, then it will be bought up by the kinds of bottom feeders who like to own things, because they're very, very good at it.
Open Source has got the attention of the world, now. And that means a million Suits are looking at Linux and asking "How can I use this". And they don't mean "How can I use this to make things cool and froody" but "How can I use this to increase my grip on Power and crush my enemies like the bugs they are!" and then they laugh maniacally and stroke their fluffy white cats while pushing evil buttons.
Well... maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, but you get the idea. :-) Effective executives are users, who treat every thing and person as a "resource". And some of them do have cats.
There's a saving grace, if you choose to believe it: Linux is a byproduct. A created artifact. The important thing is the community which created it. If every copy of Linux (source and binaries) could be magically removed from everyone's hard drive, (possibly the result of some evil Microsoft virus delivered by nuke-detonation EMP pulse and Tantric chant) we'd scream blue murder, and then re-write the whole thing in two years. Some would even count it a blessing, like the Great Fire of London, and how it made possible some proper town planning for once.
So, let them 'own' Linux, if we must. Let them gloat over the binaries, like some rare and sparkly gem. Just don't tell them that we can make another anytime we wish. Because then they might be tempted to try to own the community, and the process. And that would be awful.
But the worst trap of all would be for the Open Source community to deny what makes it so powerful: a global collection of individualistic, ornery, talented, and opinionated people who make things happen, knit together by a new communications medium that we built ourselves, which somehow keeps us moving in the same unified direction.
We have dangerously re-focused from being a hacker collective to taking aim at a product. The first can be described as an open-ended search for self. The second is a closed contest with a single winner, and then Game Over. Then what?
Sun Tzu said "Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will come through a thousand battles without harm". We know the enemy well enough... but.
Saruman looked too deep into the palantir. His wisdom gave way to the need for power, and in grappling with the Enemy on his terms, he became like him. His mind was warped by what he saw. Insengard was remade into a poor imitation of Minas Morgul. The Two towers. One a sad copy of the other. Both failed in the end.
Updated 01/19 09:22
Addendum: Writing for an on-line forum can be interesting. Within hours of the
article being posted to www.slashdot.org, upwards of 180 people had posted
public (sometime lengthy, but usually thoughtful) replies, and several sent me
direct mail. One ex-Microsoft product manager mailed about his experiences
trying to push Open Source while still there. One person asked for help
installing Linux. (And got it.) The majority of replies were positive, speaking
of a general feeling that yes, perhaps things had gone a little too far.
Another general thread was "the GPL will protect us". I'm not so sure. It's just a document. The real protection comes form the daily efforts of all in the community. I hold a deep belief that things will work out for the best when driven by people of good faith and good intentions.
Lastly, my mention of RedHat in a possible worst-case scenario means nothing. RedHat have performed a sterling service for the community, they're simply the most visible example of exposure to the commercial world. I wish them the best of luck in walking their fine line. Special kudos to the guys in the RedHat labs.
[Jeremy Lee is a Programmer/Analyst living in Australia. He is currently designing a new User Interface which will totally revolutionize computing as we know it. He does not have a cat.]
I used linux for about a year (3 years ago). I began to notice something from when I first started, to when I changed OS's... Companies like RedHat were starting to highly commercialize the product, and I haven't seen a change from that point.
I thought in Open Source there was not supposed to be anyone making money off it? I know the makers of the QT libraries took a flaming from this. how about Corel, 3rd party X managers, Star Office, etc.
Yup... I use FreeBSD now. Any sales made go directly back into the project to help pay for organizational, bandwidth, etc. costs as well as possibly purchassing support from other companies to get that 'last feature working'.
There are only a couple of paid employees working on FreeBSD (I know of only 1). And they work extreme hours for the tinyest of wages in order that they can help out in open source.
Your right... It's not GPL or QPL, but the lincense is basically the same (and much shorter to read).
Anyhow... Sorry about the spelling... (I'm tired, and sick, and trying to get this damn novell server to stabalize).
A few interesting points but there is really
too much simplistic good vs. evil, bad guy in
suit will take over Linux crap. There is also
a lack of supporting facts or even a plausible
means for this "doomsday" scenerio.
Linux is beating Windows because it is free
software/OS, if it were just technically better
then it would go the way of OS/2. Open is the
way of the future for "monopoly" software such
as OSs.
Who owns English? Merriam-Webster? Where
is the evil man in the suit with the cat who
is plotting to take ownership of English and
put a tax on all English speakers?
I've seen quite a few posts like this lately - ones that warn about how MS (or some other such company) is going to start fighting back at linux, how it will be commercialized, how redhat could easily be the next MS, etc etc. These areguments remind me of the bit from the Illuminatus trilogy. When Hagbard was asked about his politics, he was asked whether he was a liberal or conservative. His reply was that if they were directions on a number line, he would be a point off parallel to the line - something totally orthogonal.
This is what linux and open source is to traditional commercial software. is linux free (free beer) or does it cost money? the question is irrelevant. it's open, meaning that there's very little that the big companies can do with linux itself that can harm it (the whole embrace/extending of open standards is, OTOH, a different story, but we've still got a lot going for us on that front). if redhat gets bought out and starts releasing every few years like MS, then debian and slackware will quickly advance beyond - they're just a distribution, not the sole driving force behind the OS. the true driving force (i won't bother trying to explain it - esr did a much better driving force in cathedral and bazaar) is something that will always be around regardless of what the big corporations and money grubbers do.
Even if Linux gained 90% of the market, it would be imposible to get to 100%. We would have:
a) Hurd. After some years it will work.
b) Someone's else Linux-based OS. Hurd is based on Linux (look at its drivers). Linux was based in minix (and it disappeared).
c) Someone's else completely-different-revolutionary-alien-based OS. It might be REALLY technically better. And with builtin Linux emulation.
Of course, _open source_ will win unless the lamer droids do something. So all them would be compatible.
Quit saying Linux is the whole open source thing!
Red Hat is not a public company.
90% of what he's saying is wrong because the GPL assures that things can't happen that way. Stallman may be a weirdo, but he is also a genius who knew exactly what he was doing when he created the GPL.
Because the the GPL truly free software will keep on growing and getting better and there will be more of it. This is software that belongs to everyone and noone... everybody has equal ownership in it and noone can take it away from anyone else.
World domination is not dangerous... it is merely inevitable.
Touch screens are fine for kiosks, but they suck for day-long (or longer!) work. You've mentioned that putting the touch panel over the correct monitor is bad, but is it any better to have to spend all day leaning over it? Plus, if you can touch type (and if you can't touch type by now, shame on you! Learn the home row, and everything else will follow) you get screwed up by the flat screen, completely free of tactile points of reference. You can't feel where the home keys are, you can't even feel if you're pressing on a key, between two keys, or completely off the keyboard!
Also, as for adapting the interface to the application or context, I think you need to be very careful to adapt the interface without changing the device one uses to manipulate it. Secretaries learn touch typing not just because it increases their typing speed but because it allows them to look at the document they're supposed to be typing as they type it. Having to look back and forth between neo-keyboard and screen, or even neo-keyboard section and data display section, would be similarly annoying and painful...and a whole new host of "this ill-behaved app screwed up the control zone and then crashed, so I had to hit the reset button" or "this stupid program keeps flashing up alert boxes and changing my whole keyboard to a big 'yes' and a big 'no' when I'm in the middle of something completely different!". Like operator overloading in C++, this feature will get overused in very bad ways very quickly as soon as it appears...
What I'd like to see is a chair with good armrests and big keypads for the hands, big enough that you can get half a keyboard on each plus overlap in the middle (my left hand handles more than half the letters, and so does my right hand), plus programmable and context-sensitive function keys around the edges. Add either a thumb-operated or foot-operated trackball, and make the mouse buttons *real* handy, and you've got something...
/. does best with links its readers find and everyone commenting on them. These original content pieces are so very painful. I keep reading them hoping the quality will improve via osmosis or something.
The author made quite a few good points but I think he watches too much TV!
.. if it's done right.. Why can't we have multiple levels of interaction, so that the simple braindead tasks are made simple and braindead, while the tough tasks are made possible in a different level of interaction?
Tools are swell, when used for the appropriate task, and Linux is a wonderful tool for a plethora of tasks. Also, Linux is flexible enough to handle those multiple levels of interaction...
Idiots are not the problem. Idiots who think they're power users, now they're the problem..
People who whine about the commercialization of Linux do not appear to realize that Linux is as free as you make it. Anyone can start up with a commercial distribution of Linux. If you don't like the way someone else does things, CHANGE IT. Roll your own. If you don't like commercial softwawre, DON'T BUY COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE. There are plenty of free alternatives and because of the OSS paradigm, there will ALWAYS be plenty of free alternatives. Certainly, I think we must be vigilant to keep proprietary stuff out of the kernel and major packages, but the guardians of those essential items are already in place.
It's about time someone said what needed to be said. It gets old listening to 'linux doods' whine about microsoft and bg when they know damn well they'd love to have that kind of money and power.
;^)
Linux should be linux. Leave Windows (and MacOS for that matter) to those that don't love the closeness to the hardware that linux affords us. Some people don't care about the same things quote-unquote "geeks" do.
Be in the world, and not of it. Love linux for what it is - don't let it sell out just to overthrow something that will die in it's own good time.
late
/. longhair
Just for the record, you got the towers' names wrong. Saruman's tower was called Orthanc, and it aimed to imitate Barad-dur, not Minas Morgul. Minas Morgul was just a border-post tower. So the title "The Two Towers" doesn't apply here in the same sense it did to the Tolkien novel.
Plenty of people are making money off FreeBSD, since the BSD license allows the code to be included in commercial products without the requirement of releasing the source.
There are at least two "server appliance" boxes that run on FreeBSD code. I can't remember the names, but one of them was at LISA '98 last month. I'll bet you that plenty of Apple's new OS is derived from NetBSD.
No, it hasn't been deleted. It's just that its
"score" was reduced to -1. If you want to read
it, and other off-topic, aspersion-tossing,
content-free first-posts, all you need to do
is click the "down one" link at the top of
the page.
This is actually a useful feature, a service
provided by our kind moderators for those of us
with limitied time for getting through all the
posts.
Granted, it could be abused. But so far, neither
does it seem to have been, nor do Tacomeister
or the others seem inclined to abuse it.
Remember, we asked (begged, in some cases) for
this feature.
".....and i stopped using linux because it was getting too commercial, so i decided to use an operating system whose license allows any schmuck company to make it proprietary at any time."
WTF parallel universe did you fall out of?
hello? the fbsd core team split in july is the reason you no longer have a lot of the drivers fbsd used to. why? because the bsd license sucks. remember the end of 1998, when fbsd-current had like half of its drivers removed by some immature ppl in the core team? why? because the fbsd development model sucks. read the state of the os support by hubbard lately? read it closely. someone suggested that the core team should be elected by the user base, and the core team said "hell no".
sorry, but if i wanted to study the politics of communism id find another way to do it than run the most anti-democratic os out there.
Microsoft isn't going anywhere soon! In the mean time ignore the OS and continue your cause. Windows (commerical) and Linux (open source) can and will coexsist comfortably.
Heath
A true startrek-like (LCARS) interface would be very interesting to see, even if this really isn't what you meant. Gives me an idea for a new WM... there might be legal issues related to this, however. I remember when someone coded a shell for Win32 that would provide an LCARS-like interface. Viacom claimed it violated a few copyright laws and made the programmer stop distributing the app.
Good ideas but one thing not considered was the snowball effect.
Once you get enough people with no central organization all with their own ideas,
you have no choice but to watch those ideas unfold. It's futile to try to sway the community away
from its present direction. The key is to set things up such that what we create is only
useful for being improved, not exploiting. Linus took care of many of these foolproofs
in Linux by putting it under the GPL which guarantees that anyone who messes with it must also
be under the GPL, and thus be contributing to it. He then ensured that the copyright for
the code is distributed as sparsely as possible so that if someone wants to buy it out and change the
license, they'll have to convince hundreds of contributers. Not just Linus. As for the distro's, it won't hurt to have
several newbie-oriented ones, or even make one commercialized one. Let them have it. We can always make more for whatever needs we have.
Have you ever heard of Fiver in "Watership Down"? They dissed him because he predicted the slaughter of his people. He had nothing but a dream as a warning. Jeremy Lee a hell of a lot more substantiation than just a dream.
Fiver and his pals took action and took a bunch of believers out of the area; the humans came and slaughtered the other rabbits in short order. Jeremy Lee will find a lot of people trying to figure out how to parry the invasion of the Corporate State into the open source community in ways we might not have thought of before. RedHat may become commercial (publicly traded) one day, and for that we should at least be prepared because in that scenario Jeremy is totally right.
The difference between a man and a sheep is the man thinks ahead, to the horizon, and spots all the different places from which the wolf comes. The sheep just cares to graze, and stares only at what's on the ground before it. Be a man, not a sheep.
Really, are you telling me that I HAVE to compile any new software to run it? What happened to .rpms with Red Hat?
Get a clue and stop spreading the FUD where people know better. People who like binaries can run binaries. People who want more functionality or control can compile code.
You're a joke and a moron.
I come from planet earth I'll have you know.
My statement was that the programmers weren't making the money, rather it was the corporation who makes the money.
RedHat is slowly but surely becomming Microsoft (under a new name). Look hard at whats happening to the companies internals.
I don't know much about the rest of them, but I'm sure more will follow in RedHats path.
You may have also noticed that along with the Linux Hype has come a larger percentage of commercially owned apps, NOT open source. I also gave examples.
Read before flaming please...
BTW.. If FreeBSD should change from their current route and began internally profitting as a corporation, I would not hessitate to change OS's again.
I also fully realize that BSD is in many commercially sold products. But, it isn't the core team which is picking up the $$$ from that.
Linus is a good man, over worked but linux no longer fits the idealism which many of you are pushing...
BTW.. I'm only an anonymous coward cause I'm too lazy to sign up for an account.
Such a movement has been ongoing for years. There are more and more "intentional communities" popping up, and I suspect, more will come along too. While "intentional communities" have been thought of as insular and isolationist, that is not true in every case. In fact, I would say that the Internet has much to do with creating these "intentional communities".
Take the First Millennial Foundation (and its twin, Living Universe) www.fmf.org/. This is a community formed by individuals reading Marshall Savage's book. It outlines a vision to create human off-planet colonies. This community extensively uses web sites, mailing lists, and newsletters to keep members in touch. Its products are members willingly donate time, money, and expertise towards this goal.
Look under "anarchy" sometimes.
But the principle is the same. Technology doesn't solve anything (no such thing as a dangerious weapon, only dangerous men)-- people do. The FMF doesn't thrive merely because of the Internet (though its crucial); it has members willing to contribute. The Open Source and GPL and whatever-political-religious-philisophical community thrives, not because of a license, but because there are hackers willing to use it.
I haven't heard that they are and haven't seen anything on their site to indicate such. I'd buy their stock in a minute.
I always thought the "Up one" and "Down one" moved me up and down the thread tree. I was always confused by the scores, and how people filtered them (I thought one had to have an account to use that feature.)
I'll have to give this threshold idea a try now.
Unforttunalety that's what RedHat is doing, as they know the immense value of having large parts of the community on 'your side'.
In the desktop discussions they did not show any will to find a solution, but they tried instead to split up the community and buy it cheaply with investments n another project. In the end, the blind trust of the 'believers' that were created in the progress was more valuable in the quest for Linux domination than any cooperation ould have been.
And what is RedHat now, clearly spoken?
A ruthless company that just wants to push the others out of the business
RedHat are not anymore the best distribution, but now they have enormous market power. The biggest danger, however, is that even interested developers like here on
I hope we all scrutinize RedHat's actions more carefully. It may be the decline of the Linux spirit 'as we know it'.
Socialism makes more, not less, sense when we're dealing with a limited resource. After all, if the resource is indeed unlimited, then why do I care how greedy someone else is - there'll still be some left for me. However, with a limited resource, the only sensible and fair way to distribute it is by sharing.
People assume that socialism can't work because of limited resources. But if someone is overusing a resource, then other people can simply refuse to supply them with that resource - one person doesn't have the power to make unreasonable demands. Unlike under capitalism, where some FRC (fat rich cunt) can buy up as much as they like of it, leading to all sorts of fun things like poverty and environmental destruction.
Food scarcity is a distribution problem, not a production problem.
My company's motto: "It takes people like them
to make people like us, and vice versa."
Both the original article and your post needed saying. I feel that Linux is very close to being profitable in the home market or attractive to home users as a free product, even it not preinstalled! The amount of coding needed is nominal, mostly simple script files to do the most common things homes users need in the way of configuration and maintenence (executed by clicking on icons) and better instructions on how to install from DOS. I use both Windoze and Linux and find Kde to be easier to use than the Windows interface. A large number of Xapps are easy to use - look at Xisp. Simpler than Windoze connect wizard.
The man in the street (meaning a large number of Windoze users who surf the net and are of above ave. intelligence but not geniuses) do know about Linux and they do want it because they think it's sexy, but they are afraid. Afraid that they are too stupid to use Linux. They are not, if Linux distros can make a small but significant leap in the area of configuration. Come on, the average home user only needs one user, root. That's just one example of what i mean.
I have been meaning to open a site for AOL members who want to use Linux. There are many. It's about half finished. It's like writing a book - lots of graphics, too. AOL may close the site down, the day after it opens (next week sometime) if there are enough hits. I hope not.
I don't see what we can do but to continue to use Linux and other open source stuff and make it available. While Linux is not immune to market forces, name me a Linux distro or company that is publicly owned today. Market forces are powerful, but there are other forces in the world beyond their understanding.
Look, I'm a veteran of the '60's "revolution". Do you think those ideals are dead? Not at all. They are alive in the OSS movement. Richard Stallmann is absolutely correct about some things.
Preach it, brother! This is not good vs. evil, but love and enlightenment vs. ignorance and darkness. Remember, Sauron was not always evil.
I strongly disagree with Jeremy Lee's contention that Linux should be only for the hacker / developer community. True, the goal of world domination is a false one, but it is equally false to exclude millions or hundreds of millions of human beings who may value the ideals of freedom that are imbodied in OSS but who aren't computer professionals. Yes, people are wierd. They may suprise you by not wanting to be spoonfed all the time. They may want our software more than you presume to know, regardless of its technical merit. A caged bird yearns for freedom!
John Califf
All this doesn't sound so revolutionary (StarTreck had it for decades;).
Problems:
Voice control: Nice toy, but useless with todays UI. Also not sensible in offices (noise) and for those of us who easily get a sore throat.
Touch screen: Dirty affair (get your finger off my screen!!), and uncomfortable, if you have to strech your hand to the screen.
My suggestion: Get away from the hierarchical way of thinking (filesystem etc.).
No visible applications anymore, just logical groups of tasks to be completed (represented by Corba services offered by the apps).
No hierarchical storage, but a chronological timeline, where you can look up what you've done when (e.g. it's usually easier to remember *when* you've done something than where you've stored it). In addition to that, it would have to be assigned to those defined groups of tasks. Technically this could be achieved by using an object-relational database instead of a normal filesystem.
*That* would be a new UI!
(i'm on a public access machine and can't create an account, but i'm not an anonymous coward)
interesting article, and well thought out and written, but one assumption there begs to be poked at a bit more in-depth. i agree that there can be only one commercial form of linux. and chances are that such a distribution would not be updated quickly due to the corporate structure, etc... but that's not important. ok, there's one MAIN STREAM distribution, and ok, it's sold for big money, and ok, it becomes the next Microsoft. So what? as long as it's linux, it's open source, and as long as it's open source, there can be other linuxes (linuxi?) imagine for a moment an alternative to windows that ran ALL THE SAME SOFTWARE, but which was updated a whole lot more, more stable, faster, more effecient....... and all that other good stuff. software makers would release good software for the windows distribution that the 90% of spoon-feeders use, but the other 10%, us, could still use that software with our better distribution of windows. this can be the case for linux as well. i agree totally that there can be only one high profile distribution (and let's face it, it's gonna be Red Hat). let's say it IS Red Hat. let's say they go big, they go mainstream, and they reduce the number of updates, bug fixes, etc.... i don't care. i can still run several other distributions, all of which are alive right now JUST with us 10%-ers, and WITHOUT any mainstream applications available (and let's be honest, of that 10%, who uses Linux ALLLL the time? furthermore, by how much would that 10% grow if there were more apps available?)
I guess you've never read the Apache documentation? Does DSO ring a bell -- maybe you should get your facts straight before start to challenge someone else's opinion.
Voice and no screen: call your computer up and have it do usefull things like find a special on pizza (and ordering it) while playing some truly random selection of Zappa while finding something non-sucky in th cable listings, etc. (phone interface I guess)
3D environmental overlays: backhoe operator can see pipes buried in the ground with finely tuned GPS (and GIS) recieving system. (lots of other applications.)
These are not as application specific as you might think.
I hope we're going to move more toward databases and away from messy file systems.
Red Hat is not publically traded, and is
privately owned by the founder of the company.
There are no stockholders.
That takes little time to investigate and find
out if the dumb ass writing the article had
spent any time researching facts before he started
spewing irrational nonsense about free software.
I started thinking this way over 20 years ago. We have developed and deployed much of the software that you are fantasizing about. It's at http://www.viewtouch.com
People who can't even spell UNIX are using it all day long, every day. Of course a few will flame me for mentioning this; c'est la vie. The important thing is that much of what you ponder works beyond your dreams, already.
The "Old Timer" is right.
There is a good deal of linux that is not well thought out, but merely a copy of whatever UNIX tool happened to be there. A lot of this stuff is arcane and counter-intuitive. (Why are files tarred AND gzipped? Why is the TCP/IP configuration spread accross so many files? Why does my delete key not delete?) Holdovers from the past.
I could see the distributions mentioned above happening (MS Visual Linux >).
I don't want my machine to be purely a toy. I want to be able to use it. I should be able to print something without going through all the hassle of learning how to set up lpd. I should be able to run xwindows without going through all of the XFconfig hoops (especially having to use a text editor.)
There are a lot of elegant things in linux, and a lot of cludge. Lets dump the mouldy oldies, and put together a sleek, usable distribution.
The following is a letter I sent to Geoffrey regarding his experience. I then figured that given the nature of the letter, it should be sent out to this list as well. If anyone can take this fuel and make it into fire, please do.
Hello, my name is Jonty Yamisha (joyamisha@vassar.edu. I am a student at Vassar College in New York, US. I happened to read your email post on slashdot.org and found something quit interesting.
The EULA you read clearly stated that the computer vendor would allow you a refund if you chose not to purchase the MS operating system. This is why you would have won a case had you taken this matter to court. This is a claim
made by Microsoft on the behalf of the vendor. On the other hand, Toshiba stated that under THEIR contract w/ MS, they were not permitted to unbundle software from their hardware. This is not such a big deal. Afterall, as it said in your post, people bundle products all the time. Besides, legality is still upheld even if Toshiba isn't allowed to unbundle Windows, as you, the consumer, are allowed to "unbundle" it and ask for a refund.... which the EULA says you can. What *IS* of interest here is the fact that Toshiba said that they couldn't reimburse you because Microsoft would not reimburse them.
Put the pieces together and we have the following: a MS contract that does not allow a hardware maker to sell a fully usable piece of hardware without an accessory. (This is like sony forcing Honda to use ONLY sony radios in Honda cars at an all or nothing deal.) THEN you have MS making a statement on the behalf of Toshiba, without Toshiba's knowledge (the statement that the vendor of the hardware system, in this case Toshiba, would refund you the cost of Windows), finally, you have the fact that while MS imposed the OS AND the contract on Toshiba, that it would not reimburse Toshiba for the consequences
of those actions. (This is like a big guy saying to a small guy, "I'm in charge here, you do what I say all the time", treating himself t dinner at the little guy's expense, then not even telling the little guy he had to pick up the tab... long example, I know.. sorry 'bout that.)
The reason I bring all this up is b/c the US Department of Justice is currently bringing an anti-trust case against MS.... the purpose of the trial is to determine whether MS is using unfair tactics. I dunno about fair or not, but I would think that 1) forcing a company into a contract w/o telling them (the EULA agreement of which Toshiba knew nothing, and 2) not willing to reimburse a company for such a contract could prove to be illegal...
Furthermore, I have been following the case fairly closely, and I have not yet heard ONE mention of this particular spin on thins. I DO know that the basic idea is "hardware makers could just turn their backs on MS... they aren't "FORCE" (in the way you and i aren't "forced" into working for food), but I have NOT read anything about microsoft imposing one contract, then using
another to basically screw over the hardware maker when the first is enacted. (Hence the sentance that MS would not refund Toshiba for a payment made to YOU that MS forced Toshiba to honor in the EULA.)
Have any lawyers or people in the US contacted you regarding this issue? Have you contacted any people in the US regaring this matter? I would think that news like this could lead other people to try the same thing...
Just as there are Linux "install fests", I could easily see "Windows unbundling fests"... the word could get out, and this could be one more nail in
the MS coffin.. and a rather big nail at that....
Just a thought.....
Why are files tarred AND gzipped?
IMHO, 'cause tarring is one thing and gzipping is another. you may not always want both at once. and if you do, you can always whack up a quick'n'dirty script to handle it. it's modularity, and though i often find un*x annoying, i love the CLI modularity thing to pieces.
Why does my delete key not delete?
GOD does that ever piss me off! i am with you, with you, WITH you, my brother! i think there are some shells that do it right, but i never have the time to track one down.
I should be able to run xwindows without going through all of the XFconfig hoops (especially having to use a text editor.)
Red Hat's Xconfigurator is really, really cool. it basically does that.
as for your XF86Config file, it is a very fine thing to have all system configuration in text files. it's nice to have a GUI front end for that stuff, but let it be a front end for text files, not some krazy krap like the "registry" in windows.
on the whole, i tend to agree with you.
I haven't been keeping track of FreeBSD, and their news section doesn't mention the split. Where might I find more info on this?
There's a few LCARS look themes for Litestep, a nifty shell for Win32... http://litestep.net/
-Not at work
There are problems with rewarding increased prestige for increased distribution.
One of the problems is that the distribution chain does not keep track of ownership. When you go to the market, you do not know (nor do you care) that the corn flakes were shipped to the market from the distribution centre by HaulCo Trucking, that they got from the factory to the distribution centre via RailCo Freight Train, etc.
You don't know, or care, that HaulCo Trucking is better than Rickety Rick's Cartage Company. You just want to eat the cornflakes.
Linux going mainstream faces a similar problem, I think. Prestige rewarding only works in a hacker culture. The average working stiff doesn't give a flying flip how well written/debugged/tweaked to the nines the word processor is. The main concern is can I get this spreadsheet printed by the 3pm deadline. They could not possibly care less about the internals of the thing, they just want to use it. Mainstream users want information appliances, like the telephone.
Prestige rewarding, or pinball rewarding, might work if one could arrange for the "hackers" of the distribution world (Eg. Snowman and The Bandit) to pass off cargos to each other. But there is an awfully long chain to get prairie wheat into the stomachs of third world children. I'm sure any working solution would be greatly appreciated.
No, it isn't owned solely by the founder and yes, it has shareholders, but not _public_ shareholders.
Intel, Netscape and the two vulture capital firms probably own 4.9% each. (Estimate based on the fact that owning more than 4.9% means the SEC starts treating you "specially" and the public statements that the parties are minority stock holders.)
Check your
Open Source *IS* changing the system.
Learning one new thing each day is the best way to improve your condition. Period.
:)
:). why not fly-fishing? computers may be great survival tools in Muncie, Indiana, but fly-fishing is a lot more useful if you get lost in the Klondike, at least in the summertime. and the best programmers talk about their experience of programming in exactly the same terms as really serious fly-fishers talk about fishing. i'm serious, they do. i don't think it's an accident, either. not at all.
:) there's actually a valid point buried beneath all the new-agey bullshit. for another example, the U.S. clobbered Germany in WWII by remaking its economy along the lines of theirs; eisenhower ended up calling this the "military-industrial complex", and he wasn't so damn sure he liked it, either. in some ways we've gained from it, but in many others it's been a real problem, not least in terms of inflexibility. it enabled us to dominate most of the world, but have we (the U.S.) gained anything at all from world domination that was actually worth having? i'm not so sure, myself.
." -- traditional appalachian lament
very true, but why should they learn about linux instead of something that they find interesting?
tell ya what, i'll learn one new thing each day about linux if you learn one new thing each day about Pound's Pisan Cantos, and/or late medieval northern italian Church history.
deal? deal!
hey, i love computers, too, but i'm a bit bothered by the assumption on slashdot that everybody must love them, or that people who don't are somehow inferior (i know that you, personally, are not saying anything about inferiority; you just got me started, that's all
or whatever, i mean, there's a whole wide world out there, you know? i mean, if my mom would benefit from a nasty shock having to learn vi, wouldn't you and i benefit from a nasty shock from having to learn something we don't care about? why should (voluntary, geeky) linux users be the only ones who get to do things the way they like?
at any rate, i do NOT care for the attitude that "we must hurt them to make them strong" -- it has a whiff of the technophilic cryptofascism displayed recently in the "ban mac users" thread a few discussions down the hall.
that was the only feature of this essay that bothered me; the rest was enormously sensible and a propos. small is beautiful.
he's right also about us becoming the enemy. listen to _relayer_ by yes, if you can stand it
if you fight their war in their terms, you run a terrible risk of becoming them, or at least absorbing some of their habits and attitudes. the thing is, we don't NEED to do that. all we need is the servers, and we're getting those without e or gnome or KDE. as long as we have the servers and a meaningful minority of clients, MS can't break the protocols. as long as the protocols are open and unbroken, we are free. let the market go hang.
"will the server be unbroken, by and by lord, by and by . .
Which part you refer to? The first part,
"jWAU(TM)æ*ßF®*øÀ"=A@ßF®*ßF®*VßC"
"The highest form of government is what people hardly even realize is there. Next is the one who is loved and respected. Next is the one who is feared. The last is the one who is despised."
Or the 2nd part that I do not understand.
"H£®*jA*£H*jC±y®*Q®C\®®**vA©m"ø*ß/MC"
Maybe you can let us know more what you meant!
And how many people who don't know how to recompile Apache are GOING to NEED this functionality.
Sorry, you're right on the facts but wrong on the implementation.
Ooooooh, scarrrrrrry Venture Capital Firms. I'm shivering in my boots. Who KNOWS what EVIL they MAY perpetrate? Who knows?
Intel, Evil God of Processors. Nasty Monopolist. Dirty Monopolist.
"RedHat is now part of one the worst behemoths in the IT business, AOL/Netscape. In no way better than Microsoft."
I have to agree with you on that one. Why, I went into CompUSA the other day and the salesman told me they DIDN'T STOCK DEBIAN. I asked if I could get a machine without an OS and he said that Red Hat mandated that every machine sold had to have Red Hat 6.0 installed.
I am seriously thinking about taking this to the DoJ.
I mean, so what if Red Hat allows me to download their entire package for free?
So what if they support development of Gnome?
I don't have any clue as to what a monopoly is so I'm just going to spout stupid shit out of my mouth about MS and Red Hat and AOL/Netscape.
Get a clue you moron. Red Hat is INFINITELY different from MS.
1. Red Hat does not have an OS monopoly.
2. The GPL ensures that Red Hat will not have an OS monopoly.
3. Red Hat is therefore incapable of using their non-existing monopoly to leverage the purchase of their other products.
DUH!!!!!!!!!
Slashdot agregate IQ dropped quite a few points when you started reading. Why don't you do us all a favour and drop out?
Or LEARN what the fuck you're talking about.
Some people's illegitimate children shouldn't be allowed on the computers.
Open Information is the fuel of Open Source.
:) for weighting
:) contributes to Open
The new way how information is available for
everyone, open for immediate discussion, that's
the third important tower which sustains Open
Source.
Am I the only one who has the impression that
we see an significant change _how_ information
is dealt with?
There are the old cathedrals of information
where the high priest speaks his prayer.
The faithful, deeply impressed by the authority
and full of respect for the dignitary, are
allowed to listen to the carefully thought out
words. But they are not allowed to speak. The
supporting principles are order and belief.
Here we have the bazaar, where information is
offered (sometimes re-offered
and evaluation. The environment is not so pure
and holy. But everbody can stand
up and contribute if he thinks he should.
The whole image builds out of single snippets
presented by the crowd. And sometimes the final
image looks pretty different than it seemed to
be at first sight. The ruling principles are
chaos, argumentation, disbelief and proof.
The information bazaar (and one important market
place is called Slashdot
Source as an place where ideas are bought and
sold and common spirit is available for free.
Doesnt matter how much I prefer bsd to sysv any more.. I refuse to run an operating system where little immature kids in grown-up bodies fight amongst themselves and cloister in some elitist club.
I ran BSD years before the whole CSRG lawsuit, but came to hate the post-lawsuit state that BSD lived in.
The choices today are:
FreeBSD - Politics come before prudence. And oh by the way, you're not invited to help choose the leadership of the development team either. NetBSD - Politics before anything else in life, and we have to adopt British spelling so we can appear superiour to you puny users. OpenBSD - No politics, but report a bug in the sparc port and Theo "the rat" will tell you to "fuck off". BSD/OS - Commercial. Disqualified right off the bat.
And I look at Linux: Unified, minor philosophical differences but that's *okay*. One cause, one kernel, one goal: world domination.
Politics are for politicians. Me, I choose software that not only works but which is guaranteed to be of the highest quality because the developers are modest and not "greater than thou" knuckleheads.
Go Linux, go!
Exactly! Well said. Apple made some great progress
with the WIMP desktop metaphor. M$ just copied it.
I like Linux because it is simple and straightforward. And it makes me independent from big companies. Linux can do *everything* I want!
There are just a few concepts to learn. And those concepts only have a few exceptions. Other OSes, like OS/2, MS-DOS and MS-Windows tend to have lots of complicated exceptions. Like for instance you cannot copy a 0 byte long file in MS-DOS using COPY.
Ok, so it's not pretty? So what? Who cares as long as it's good?
- Red Hat got chided for including an extra CD with proprietary software. They also got plenty of praise for GNOME and other funded GPL software projects.
- Caldera got flamed quite a bit. They mostly just take GPL software and add proprietary stuff.
- SuSE is "the worst" according to him. SuSE is like Caldera, only more so. SuSE installs proprietary software by default. SuSE mixes proprietary software into the distribution and does not make any distinction. Even the install/config software is proprietary.
Only Debian escaped unscathed.I don`t think you understand. You can use the BSD-copyleft code ind proprietary products, but that dosen`t mean the code is lost. The code is still there. In fact in the FreeBSDs case it is actually helping the development. Companies that use BSD-code are actively developing code, submitting bugreports and fixes because it is their interest that FreeBSD is a great product. If you do not want that everyone could use youre code, fine use the GPL. If you think your code could help the comp.world becoming a better place use BSD or whatever. Why is it that you linux-zealots can not accept that the BSDs, XFree and Apache hasn`t converted to the new religion: GPL?
The whole reason we like Linux is the fact that it's not simple. It's not pretty. To
achieve Linux on every desktop would mean giving up everything about Linux that
we love.
huh?? I for one sure as hell dont like linux because it's ugly (it isnt) or complex. I like it because it gives me power..I hope linux users in general aren't like you. I hope they move to freebsd like a lot of those who picked linux because it made them feel eLiTE already did, when Linux become too mainstream for them.
Isn`t it a better way of advocating lenux?
You linux die hards is going crazy everytime some mention:
1) Microslut. You all piss in your pants besauce of your Ms-paranoia. The "It is better to discuss MS than to write code syndrome".
2) *BSD. You all piss in your pants besauce the *BSDs has a more mature product and a better licence.
Wrong. Open Source means the source code is accessable, for free. It's irrelevant if some people would still like to pay, even when they can get it for free.
I know the makers of the QT libraries took a flaming from this
Troll tech made money from QT, which was not open source.
I use FreeBSD now
No kidding.. I wish more of you people would go there. The linux community is getting less and less clueless wannabees every day. They're all moving to one of the BSDs because they think that makes them seem more 'different'. When you dont have any real originality or talent all you can do is try to make it look like you do.
Your right... It's not GPL or QPL, but the lincense is basically the same (and much shorter to read).
uh, no, it's not basically the same. the main difference is that any company can take the bsd code and put it in their own products, without ever having to give back.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the idea of a 3-Dimensional Desktop. 3D accelerators are currently being driven almost solely by the game market, and the 3D drafting market at the high end, but why not apply this technology to the average user?
How about a *real* virtual desktop? Need to look up an appointment? Just look at the appointment book on your desk, which brings up the relevent application. And those files you need to keep on hand but rarely look at? Store them in a file cabinet a few feet out of the way. Ditto for other kinds of apps. What I am getting at here is more or less coming full circle. This is what the WIMP environment has been trying to accomplish this whole time, but instead of a cabinet we have the "file manager" icon or whatever. If you want a GUI thats easy to use, make it *look* like things that people are familar with. Anyone who has played starcraft for 5 minutes can figure out that "oh, if i move the cursor to edge of the screen, it scrolls over that direction on the map". How about a full 6 degrees of movement on your desktop? Its intuitive because people have already been working this way their whole life.
The Technology is there. Cards like the RIVA TNT already can do 3d in 1280x1024, and in a year or two, it will be trivial to run your GUI entirely in 3D, with enough horsepower to keep applications looking like they should under a hardware accelerated environment.
And, as a bonus, this would be fairly easy to implement in *very small steps*. Since most computer users are already familiar with the abstraction of files and icons, there will be nearly zero learning curve when you make them more like the real thing, and, at the same time when you click/touch/vocalize or whatever to start your word-processor app, it pops up full screen like you are used to seeing it, until you want it to do something different. Emailing a photo could be as simple as laying the appropriate object on the recipients page in your day planner.
On a final note, microsoft is already working on a rudimentary version of this, called GDI 2000, and last I heard was to be part of whatever OS came after NT 6.0 (when there was a 5.0). While it will be interesting to see if they come up with something worthwile, it is much more exciting to imagine what the Linux/open source community will come up with, considering the variety of Window Managers and GUIs we have available now.
then what I said doesnt apply to you. I was not bashing freebsd, I was bashing some of it's users.
I'm not a Debian developer (and certainly do not speak on behalf of Debian) but it strikes me that this is exactly where Debian is coming from.
I believe that the core Linux distribution should
be owned by the developers in the way that Debian
is.
People developing free software (obviously excluding people who are employed by a commercial distribution) should primarily target a free distribution with their releases. Let the commercial distributions form a ring around this free core and add value.
We cannot risk RedHat or any other commercial company taking ownership of the Linux standard simply by virtue of being the most common installation.
If developers target a free distribution with their releases then the further the commercial distribution deviates from the path the developers choose to take, the more work the company will have to do in order to integrate the new software.
In this way, the free software developers will retain ownership of the standards.
I've been using Linux for 5 years. I've been using UNIX for 12. Yesterday, I sat down at my RedHat 5.2 system and tried to install a Gimp-perl module for 3 hours, and failed. *FAILED*. Why? It required a version of perl (5.005) that was newer than what I had; a version of the Gimp that was newer than what I had (1.0.2); a version of several perl modules that I didn't have at all (PDL, Data::Dumper, etc)! This is not unique to this one package.
Rapid development is one of the strengths of Open Source. It is also one of the key weaknesses. Backward compatibility that is mindless leads to things like the Intel x86 architechture being propogated down through a decade and a half longer than it should be. But, shouldn't we at least be foucusing on making a new package play nice with what most of the people out there are using? This would drastically help harness that alleged horsepower derived from a huge developer base (it did in the past). Please tell me we can get this right, because if it wanders any further from useful, I'm going to have to recommend against using Linux on the business side of my life.
what's the matter, you cannot handle the truth of what your "leaders" are up to?
feeling a crisis of faith coming? reality is hard to swallow sometimes.
it's true! i read it on zdne^H^H^H^Hslashdot.
you're right about almost everything you said, but i disagree with the following:
:)
Linux cannot stagnate.
loss of developer interest is hard to imagine at this point, but if something better comes along (e.g. if HURD lives up to its promise) it's conceivable. in which case linux would stagnate.
of course it can't die, and it certainly would have a hard time "losing" -- because "winning", for linux, means being used by people who like it, and there's really nothing anybody can do to stop them, is there?
i'm more concerned about a decline in the average worth of free software developers, and the average quality of free software. when (if?) that happens, people will stop trusting the stuff. of course, that only means that we don't get to do the world domination thing, and i for one think world domination is a serious mistake. so i agree with you: the future is bright, and there's not much we can do at this point to screw ourselves irremediably.
. . . though i'm sure we'll try our best
Linux people love cats
i never knew that. that's cool.
also, cats like linux, too: my maine coon is absolutely fascinated by the red hat installer.
but no pictures of cats on homepages! no, no, no!
:)
look at Xisp. Simpler than Windoze connect wizard.
i'd love to look at it, but i searched freshmeat and didn't see it. wherezit at?
I have two things to say.
1. Microsoft are very relevant.
When I'm in school, what faulty OS do I use?
When I call tech support because my modem doesnt work, what do they say? (sorry, we provide support only for windows)
When I buy a new PC what OS am i forced to?
And if microsoft will dominate the web and i will need MSIE to view some proprietary-formatted page,
what will i do?
Microsoft are effecting out lives with their faulty products.
2. Redhat wont be Microsoft.
That the idea of distributions.
Redhat would be good for the boss who think that updates are evil and mean bugs.
If I want to get the latest thing, I will get debian or slackware or whatever.
Thats also why the owner will not try to raise the stock values by increasing prices or something like that. unlike windows, one can switch to another linux distribution in no-cost at all.
Another cat-feeding Linux hacker.
One example: When some Linux - politicians tried to kill KDE because of qt it was stupid. I think linux is more infected by extreeme politics than any other. Why can`t you Linux advocates advocate linux-quality rather than trying to spread fud about another free software-projects.
Searching and trying to find anything wrong?
And drawing the wrong conclutions? Looks like it.
Better luck next time.
Why don`t you relax Eric. Or are you nervous about our growth?
Happy user.
Standard-applications are evil. Standard-protocols and data-formats are the key (to a world where everybody is free to choose the OS and apps he likes, without beeing locked out from the other folks)
rob - still not having his passwd near him
Why not just let RedHat produce a dummy's release every year or so while the rest of use use something like Slackware, Stampede, SuSe, Debian, or Caldera? The neat thing about having so many different distributions is that each one can provide a different solution for a given task such as usability from redhat. In short, who cares if Redhat starts acting like MS - the source will still be there and we can choose whatever distribution we want. Maybe its time people leave their nice, comfy rpm/RedHat system for some other distribution that is not Commercialized like Slackware and Stampede.
The trolling I was refering to was my impression that you answered yourself just to make your point.
I`m sorry if I was wrong.
BTW John is still with us and is cotributing.
I am not contributing to the project but I intend to somehow in the future. FreeBSD is the greatest OS I have ever used and I use it for everything; both everyday and work. So you have to excuse if I sounded like I hated Linux. I do not. I have used it for several years and I think it is very high quality. But not my preference anymore.
Bill - Gollum
;-)
But one question... is Dennis or Ken supposed to be Galadriel ?
rob - needs to get a PDA for storing passwords..
My entire point was that most linux users are pushing for totally open source, where it's all free and no profit is made. Regaining costs is one thing, but making a profit is completly different.
We all know that Microsoft is out to make money. They tell us that.
Linux tells us that they're out to help the community.. They are still slowly but surely making money.
I'd much rather use an OS that doesn't cover up the objectives than one that doesn't.
I use FreeBSD cause they do exactly what they advertise and promote. And I kinda hope that very few people switch from Linux to FreeBSD as it might destroy that sometimes unstable relationship (as you've shown.).
So, please use linux... But bewarned... What was mentioned in the article is Already Happening to the Linux community. Whether you can see it or not is another question...
I most certainly can..
BTW.. V3-Current is the pre-alpha source. It normally doesn't work, and the whole point of it is for people to test stuff out.
If the core team makes changes to drivers, it's too be expected. If they all of a sudden appear back again, it's also expected.
Would you expect that source always grows? If no one made mistakes, we wouldn't bother choosing an OS cause they'd all be perfect. Ironically, people do make mistakes.
The BSD teams work very hard at keeping the releases extreamly stable. In fact, I normally run betas and have never hit a bug that wasn't my own fault..
or relevant or witty or informed. john, take some pointers from jeremy.
Two technologies that are worth looking at are:
1)Wacom's pressure sensitive LCD displays http://www.wacom.com/productinfo/pl300.html
2)Immersion's Feel-It force feedback mouse http://www.force-feedback.com/feelit/feelit.html
Now, if only these technologies could be combined...
it was a great article.
interview with ballmer:
On the client, people say, "Should I do anything except require plain, drab old HTML?" The question is, Do you just paint HTML and do all the work on the server, or do you have intelligence on the client? If you do, that intelligence will be platform specific. And it will probably be Windows specific, because Windows is the dominant platform.
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue61/qa.html
I agree. The commandline may seem to have massive power compared to a GUI, but consider the simple act of copying 5 files from a directory to another directory. In commandline land you have to type their freakin' filenames, while in GUI land you can just multi-select them and drag 'em across to another filemanager type window.
Another example- who can say that icons do not make a huge directory full of shit easier to visually grep than text, (even if color-coded text) ?
Also, GUI apps allow for much easier and (dare I say it?) intuitive frobbing, tweaking and tuning of parameters while a program is running.
IMPORTANT BIT:
The lack of power in a GUI only happens for example in Windoze when you stop getting commandline tools to do anything useful and HAVE to use the GUI to do everything.
Even so, you can get a lot of useful stuff done in Windoze if you use djgpp and the excellent port of BASH.
1. Someday Linus will become tired and wish to devote his life to other pursuits. Who watches over the kernel then?
2. Someday Microsoft may not be the dominant monopoly operating system, unifying all other software companies into temporary forgoing their proprietary OS's and supporting the only alternative, Linux (an alternative because it doesn't cost them any major R&D dollars)
3. If and when there is no longer an OS monopoly, all the other major software companies that have been spending billions on R&D, patents and copyrights since the 70's (such as HP, DEC/Compaq, Sun, SGI, DG, IBM, SCO, etc) may see renewed opportunities to cash in on their investments
4. If and when these many wealthy companies send their patent lawyers after free software programs, saying that the GPL on this or that is invalid because some portion of it was actually patented/copyrighted years before
5. Who will have the deep pockets to stand up to this? A distribution company like RedHat or Caldera? Or wouldn't it be cheaper for them to license the disputed technology and stop distributing the source code?
6. In short, perhaps we are better off with M$ than without it.
I like your ideas, but I would allow users to
view and organize files (documents, whatever you want to call them) both hiercarchically and by date. Sometimes I want to structure things hierarchically. Don't let po'mo crit crap and its insidious influence talk you into thinking that hierarchy is a bad way of organizing things. We use it all the time - object-oriented inheritance hierarchies, outline mode in emacs, etc. Even recursion and call-stacks imply a hierarchy.
Also, in Unix, a "file" is a very flexible concept. Everything is a file, include directories, which just contain pointers to other files. The fact that this is recursively nestable
(a directory can contain other directories) creates a hierarchy.
The unix shells intercept and expand all sorts of things like "*" and "~" rather than just passing them through to programs and letting them .o" -- "do you really want to remove all files?". You can't do this. This may seem like it's not
/" makes all files inaccessible. INIT can inherit an open unix-socket to all descendant processes, where messages like "please open file ..." can be placed and the newly open filedescriptor can be transmitted back. Only a patch in exec() necessary, and a new libc and a ld.so which on finding 700 / links the new libc.
deal with it. (Really simple example: "rm *
all that important but there can be times when you really want to do it. Also if you want pass stuff like this down to say a lower shell
script using say $1, then it's too late. Unless you make the user put quotes arround it. But then quotes get removed and it gets expanded
at the next step if you not careful. and so on. All this is assuming that there are not so many files in a directory that your shell can't cope
with the size of the strings produced when * is evaluated)
->SO you check if there are all files in the directory are matched by one on the commandline. Even better: It doesnt matter how you typed it in, IF you ever delete all files, youre warned!
Really, really, inflexible file access control system. (ie rwxr-x--- type stuff). Sure it's easy to implement but there is just so much stuff you
can't do. For example: people in group "coders" and group "testers" have access to this directory without having to make a new group
"codersandtesters". Even windows NT has ACL's.
-> "chmod 700
Well, here's how it looks. Open Source has gained a lot of attention. The people who want to use "Open Source" Linux as a silver bullet to put an end to Microsoft are not the people who are the least bit involved with Open Source or Linux.
/pub/incoming, and let people have it. No fuckin problem. Now, it's like there's this gigantic "Open Source" vs "Everything else" attitude. Where did this come from? And just how open source is it all, really, in this day and age? Sure, you have the whole set of linux kernel source code. Sure, you can get the source code to all the thousands of utility programs you need to make it work. But, how many people, of the initial hundreds, to perhaps thousands at one point, are actually contributing useful patches on an extremely regular basis?
:-) But that doesn't seem to slow down Alan Cox. Who else is responsible for Linux now? All I've ever ehard about in the last 6 months that I've been paying attention to Linux again, is how Linus is the man who will challenge Bill Gates, and Alan Cox is just plain God.
Hell, back when I was coding frequently, there wasn't any thought given to wether something was Open Source, or why something was Open Source. You wrote a program, and if you wanted someone else to have it, you sent out the source to an ftp
Linux has slowed, not necessarily because anyone's trying to make it a viable commercial operating system. Linux has slowed because it has gotten too big to release updates on a daily basis. Gone are the days, when 200 people every day submitted a patch. These were days when the poeple who used Linux were the people who wanted to make it work with all these different hardwares, wanted to add all these ddifferent standards, and other protocols, and all that. Now, Linux has all of it. What more is there to do with Linux, honestly? What more, as a non-specifically-tailored-to-one-user-option, is going to get added to the Linux kernel? Or to it's base set of mandatory utilities? full 64-bit operation, i'm sure. Eventually 128-bit optimization, i'm sure. As hardware comes out, it appears to be taken for granted now, that someone writes a driver for it. That never used to be the case. If you wanted to make a brand shiny new piece of hardware work in LInux, you either (a) wrote the driver yourself or (b) found a group of people and you -all- wrote the driver.
This is why Linux has slowed down. There just plain isn't much more that can be added on a day to day basis. When someone comes up with something earth shattering to add, then I'm sure it'll be a patch a day every day for a while. Presuming that Linus isn't slowed down from the old days, by his super-secret job.
What I'd like to see is a group of people take the Linux kernel, and create a non Unix operating system out of it. That might be interesting. Of course, Linux is defined more by Unix than Unix defined by Linux.. so that might be a bit improbable.. but I'm sure someone could do it. Something that was totally new. Like BeOS. But with a kickass kernel underlying it all.
Damn, I'm rambling. blackmagik@ameritech.net
No harm came of it. At least you 'fessed up :-)
Live and learn.
The fundamental strength of the UNIX interface
is the fact that is based on small, single-purpose
programs that (for the most part) obey a
stadardised interface (stdin, stdout, and command-line). This is why a monlithic GUI interface a'la Micor$oft seems crappy by comparison.
If anyone is interested in a really GOOD graphical user
interface, I suggest they peek at the Plan 9 page
at 'plan9.bell-labs.com' and download a sample system, and try it out. The programs (especially Acme) simply allow you to use existing UNIX-like software in a more effective way. This style of
interaction could be used effectively on UNIX systems as well.
I disagree with some of the stuff in here. If Redhat became like that, remember that we still have the GNU license. Another company would take over and pick up the slack. I believe that the diversity of linux is part of what makes it what it is, and people WILL have choices when it comes to linux. Slackware will never succeed in the real world market because it is not user friendly, but IMO, it is the best for people who like to do it themselves. I see Redhat and S.u.S.E. taking over here, along with several other user-friendly ones. IF THIS EVER HAPPENS.
The fact that everything is GNU, however, WILL allow other people to get into the market. There WILL be competition.
And, on top of that, even if some publicly traded company bought Redhat, we would STILL HAVE THE GNU license. We will be able to make it. Microsoft cannot be duplicated because of the fact that it all is commercial. You can't duplicate it. Linux is different.
The Linux community has only one thing in common and that is the Linux source code. There are no financial, legal, national, racial, religious, or any other ties binding this group of people to Linux.
In order for some evil corporation to "take the GNU out of Linux" they would have to gain international rights to all the code ever contributed to Linux, either by leveraging patents or by simply enumerating every person who contributed anything and then giving them money or prestige or something in return for the rights to the code.
In order to gain this leverage over the Linux community they are going to have to spend a LOT of money, and the return on it, as you said will be NOTHING. Why nothing? Because the force that made Linux strong (us) can also kill it. If they want to invest in Linux, they will have to do whatever possible to make it a profitable investment, and that includes not ailienating the community.
I find the whole notion of Linux being vulnerable to commercial pressures laughable. Linux is a reaction against the commercialization of fundamental technological "rights". We don't WANT to be owned by Microsoft or Macrohard or Redhat or anything resembling it.
Perception is reality, if "they" can convince us to work for them for free then we will. But if we remember to keep our efforts centered on what WE need and want, then we will have no problem.
It hasn't been deleted (at least if it is the post I think you're talking about). It's been graded "-1" so you need to change the page threshold. This feature has been around for quite a while now, and was discussed ad nauseam before it was implemented, so it shouldn't be news.
If you're talking about the post I found, it doesn't contain the word 'garbage' but I do agree with its rating. And I certainly wouldn't call it a critique.
Painting broadly, this essay is grounded much more in emotional than rational appeal. While I tend to agree with a couple of points (Microsoft is generally irrelevant), the homoginization and "owning" of Linux are, IMO, a very slim possibility, as Linux and OSS are born of GNU, early and frequent release cycles, and a high level of transitivity among vendors. No one vendor "owns" its customer base -- I can switch at low cost between Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Debian, or direct ftp downloads. This is a feature, not a bug.
I tend to agree with those who find the original content at Slashdot lacking. There are the occaisional highlights from Alan Cox and other core developers. Jon Katz can be a good read. I'm finding myself less drawn to Commander Taco's "Stuff that matters", and far less to the discussions, than nine months ago.
Slashdot hasn't sunk so much as it's failed to push itself to the next level - whatever that might be -- while its competition continues to evolve. This is being reflected in the news feeds of choice at sites such as particularly following some questionable editorializing by a /. editor. I don't know what Rob's plans are for this corner of the Web. It's been real and it's been fun. The question is: what will it be?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
commercialization brings up a quote from the Art
of War. I guess TNT timed their playing of "Wall
Street" better than they could have guessed...
"Greed is Good"... =)
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I think Linux is simple AND pretty. Linux is a piece of cake compared to the incessant, hopeless and frantic clicking while trying to reload or configure the Windows OS. Furthermore, I have a richer multimedia experience on my Linux box than on any Windows machine I've ever seen.
:P
I agree that the way things were and are is not a bad thing... however, I'm not gonna deny Joe Sixpack (*hic*) out there his chance to use Linux either.
M$ can stay in the software business - they just need to surrender the OS business.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I'm not trying to fan the flames of conflict but... wasn't Microsoft the ones who reverted to subversion? They want to take free and open protocols/standards and embrace/extend them to the point where they are Microsoft proprietary. All in the name of denying Open-Source projects and competition entry into the market? Oh Yes, they are the enemy all right - because they chose to be.
:)
How we react to Microsoft is what counts and here is where I agree with you - we need to be proactive rather than reactive. We need to take the torch from thier stumbling hands and leave them far behind. We cannot allow them to take control of the Internet or Open Standards. We cannot afford to be complacent. We need more great reasons for people to switch to Linux!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
This happens to all projects. The guy who used to do IDE stuff under Linux left under a similar cloud. So it's hardly a BSD problem. It's a people problem, and you're never going to solve them
I see no reason to get rid of the keyboard. It's faster than handwriting and easier for the computer to handle. What might not be a bad idea would be to position the touch screen so that the distance the hand would have to move from the keyboard to the touchscreen was minimal. Instead moving hand from keyboard to mouse and back to click on commmand buttons one could tap the buttons with one's finger an avoid breaking the rhythm of typing as much.
"The argument that as Red Hat gains market share, it will become more like M$ is certainly valid, IMHO."
Why is it valid? Microsoft did not become more amoral as it grew richer. Microsoft was amoral right from the start. MS's ethics have more to do with the personalities in charge than the money they make.
Posted by planders:
I think the author mixed up his Lord of the Rings references a little bit. Bill Gates isn't a ringwraith; he's Sauron to Evil Capitalism's Melkor.
Hello Linuxers, *BSDers, and all free/Open Source software enthusiasts. Are we forgetting the Internet? Are we forgetting the GPL? Why do I see more and more articles by people who are afraid that mainstream acceptance means that Linux will no longer be a hacker OS?
While I agree that IP Patents/Copyrights are a very serious concern that we need to be careful to guard against, I don't think Mainstream acceptance is as much a threat as it is purported to be. One of the biggest fears I hear repeated regularly is that the hackers who CREATED Linux will be subjected to use the operating system exactly like the work-a-day Joe Computer user who wants to email his grandma, read stock reports on the Internet, write some emails to his football buddies in Colorodo jibing or alternately grieving the victory/loss of his favorite team to the Broncos, et al. I think this assumption is ludicrous -- hackers will still hack, that's what they do. And even if Red Hat/Caldera/S.u.s.e./(your-favorite-commercial-dis tro) dominates the other commercial distros., we will always have free distros like Debian, Stampede, etc. The GPL guarantees (in as much as any legal device can) that our hacking freedom will always be there, and the Internet will continue to be our developer's center.
The real issue is whether we are willing to share our freedom with those who can't/aren't willing to hack. Just because they can't figure everything out about the syntax of .*rc or *tab or init* doesn't mean they should be forced to endure crappy M$ operating systems. The first time I used Linux was ~1995. I was using a 386,4M Ram. Needless to say, it regularly crashed under Win3.1, and I durst no put Win95 on it. I did however put Slackware on it, and was absolutely Euphoric at how stable it was.
Fast forward late 97 and 1998 -- At various times and sundry places I have been forced to work on M$ Win95 Machines. I remember one job in particular -- I was working at a large law firm in Cleveland, OH doing a little bit of VB developement (Nasty language, if you ask me, but OK IDE) for some jury-rigging programs. I would do a couple hours of coding, then someone on the other side of the building would sneeze, the network would burp, and my Win95 machine came to a screeching halt. I'm sure many of us have stories just like that. It's a frustration to constantly be interrupted when your working by computer problems, especially when you know that these problems are trappable by a good OS and don't need a reboot.
Now to get to my point, although M$ slowly (think geologic ages) is improving their OS's stability, it would be great if we, the technical elite, could break the technocracy of the proprietary software world, and deliver the fresh air of freedom to the world at large. Technology should be used to enhance the lives of the many, not increase the wealth and power of the few.
Don't be afraid hacker's, it is your destiny to hack, and hack you will. That doesn't mean it's a Bad Thing(Tm) to make the system easier for the rest of man-kind (after all -- if everyone hacked, no one would eat). If you read this article and feel frustrated that people won't learn more, but want to use computers, feel assured that I sympathize. I am currently a helpdesk jockey, and I get plenty aggravated that people won't learn the basics. But there is the hitch -- people should learn the basics, but I don't blame them if they are intimidated by linux, *BSD, et al. They can be basic to use, once setup properly, but definitely not yet basic to setup/configure.
Jeff Schmidt
Posted by planders:
My understanding is that gzip handles compression *only*. The reason you need tar is to handle storing files and directory hierarchies along with file system information like permissions and timestamps.
Posted by bmcdaniel:
Regarding the comment about how Red Hat must legally be committed to maximizing shareholder value: As a matter of law, appropriately chartered corporations don't have to maximize shareholder value. For one thing, there are nonprofit corporations, which don't even have shareholders per se -- just people who serve as directors and oversee the corporate purpose. For another, even for-profit corporations need not be soley committed to maximizing shareholder value if the corporate charter specifies other goals and other mechanisms to achieve this. For example, newspaper publishers such as the WSJ and NYTimes have corporate governance structures in place (such as dual classes of stock, restricted voting rights, statements of corporate principles) in order to both maintain the editorial integrity of the newspaper, but still allow for profits.
I don't know any of the details, but I would imagine that Intel's investment in Red Hat doesn't require dividends or repayments. In spirit it was probably closer to a donation, rather like how IBM donates money to the Media Lab in exchange for access. Of course, Intel had its own agenda: the presence of an alternative OS arguably bolsters its position. But Intel's purpose, though different, can be complementary to the OSS community.
The message to take away from this is that corporate charters are simply contracts, and as the GPL so ably demonstrates, if the plain-vanilla law doesn't suit you, whether it be copyright law or corporate law, then you can contract around it. There is no reason that Red Hat, or anyone else commercially committed to OSS, need be antagonistic to OSS ideals.
Brian McDaniel
PS I *am* an attorney who practices corporate law, and if someone out there wants help putting some of these ideas into practice, I am willing to help.
Wow. This has to be the most coherent, non-through-rosy-glasses article on Open Source in general and Linux in particular, that I've seen yet. Excellent work.
The cautionary nature of this article is a point well taken. The Open Source community must remain focused on developing outstanding, truly free software. Simply bringing down Microsoft is a narrow-minded, unworthy aim. However, alongside the dislike for Microsoft, there is also too much fear of a successful commercial entity using Linux to its advantage.
The hypothetical ascendancy of Red Hat as "The" commercial linux vendor is just fine. The great thing about linux is that it can't ever be owned by anyone, yet at the same time anyone is free to try and make money with it. Red Hat can't own the OS as such, but they can sell it with things that they do own, and they can sell support for it. So much the better. Better software is a good thing for everyone, however they get it and regardless of who profits monetarily from it. If Red Hat gets out of hand, the Open Source community will still be there and will still be an alternative - all the more so, since the difference between Red Hat Linux and everyone else's linux will be far less than the difference between Windows and Linux is now.
Microsoft became a juggernaut because they not only created a new environment for software development with Windows, but they fought to become the only developer in that environment. They have succeeded, and have now stifled competition and innovation in the Windows world to the extent that no one wants to develop there any longer - the only choices are failure or assimilation.
On the other hand, a commercial-grade Linux (TM), however much the thought of that grates on some of us, is good for everyone. A well-known distributor with established support channels is absolutely necessary for serious commercial development on Linux to take place - that point is eloquently made by Jeremy. The common fear is that this would turn Red Hat into the next Microsoft. But there's no guarantee of that. Even if Red Hat is the biggest Linux vendor, it isn't the 1000-lb gorilla that Microsoft constitutes. Just because RH produces the most successful distribution of the OS, doesn't mean that it will dominate application development for the Linux platform. Indeed, because the OS is open, it doesn't even give them a particular advantage. They sell the OS, and the applications get a level playing field on which to compete - which is as it should be.
Well written, too. The most telling part, for moi, is this:
Personally, I like the idea of giving all those potential new users a nasty shock to the complacency. (which is just above the navel, next to the spleen.) I don't want Linux to be "Just like Windows only Better!", I want it to challenge the basic assumptions that the Microsoft engineers have made. Windows is a poor copy of the Macintosh is a poor copy of the Xerox Star, now 20 years old. We haven't challenged the basic WIMP(windows, icons, mouse, pointer) paradigm in 20 years? Come on!
Using Linux can make you smarter. Most important. I know, I know, most people just want to use the 'puter, they don't give a rat's ass what's inside or how it works. Okay. But. Linux gives you a change to LEARN. How about that? Learning one new thing each day is the best way to improve your condition. Period.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Point by point:
1)Please be more specific. You might try enumerating what (you think) the problems will be if and when Linux hits the problem, and what you think we should be doing to prepare. Vague warnings (except for "if they can buy it, they will", to which I refer you to the GPL) don't help.
2) The reason we haven't moved beyond WIMP is that no one has thought of anything better. Linux already has a best-of-breed CLI, mate that with a good GUI and you're set in the interface department. I do make the prediction: when the next UI appears, it'll appear on Linux first.
3) Choice is good. Not only can there be more than one Linux distribution, there should be- for the same reason there should be more than auto maker, or more than one soft drink. The myth that there can be only one OS controlled by only one company or person is perpetuated by the Microsoft apologists as an excuse for the monopoly.
Caldera et. al. are the ultimate defense against Redhat being bought out- or even comming down with a case of the dumbs (like Apple seems to have fits of). Choice allows you to choose _differently_.
4)You're confusing the development releases with the distribution releases. Simply because Linus released a new kernel doesn't force Redhat to do a new distribution. This is a common mistake made by people just discovering Open Source. The 1351 builds that occurred before NT 4.0 was released where never seen by the public- but they still existed. The only differences are that Linux makes the interim kernels publically available, and generally has fewer of them.
This is part of the value the distributors add- they "gear down" the release cycle to something the channel companies can handle. Just translate "Redhat 5.2" in your mind to "Redhat 5 SP 2", if it makes you feel better (how fast did NT 4.0 SP 1/2 go by? 98 now has how many service packs?).
5) Copyright and patent are laws that can cut _either_ way, as AT&T found out when it sued UCBerkley. Avoid patents and lawsuits (where possible), yes- but this is a means of our defense as well as, via the GPL. Microsoft cannot buy Linux even with all of it's billions- copyright law prevents it.
You mention LZW (which is patented). When the patent came out, FSF learned to it's horror that the unix utility compress was covered. So what happened? After some research, an unpatented and _better_ compression algorithm was found, and thus gzip was born. Similiarly, gif's are giving way to png's. Patents are a threat, I agree, but a managable one.
And the situation is not as bad as it was a decade ago. If a patent lawsuit cropped up, you'd better beleive that Caldera, Redhat, et. al. would help fund the defense. And rumors to the contrary, justice in America is _not_ for sale to the highest bidder (as Microsoft's current legal woes richly testify- as do the previous successfull litigations against Standard Oil and AT&T). This is one place where having money grubbing capitialists as allies helps.
6) So long as you can continue to use Linux to produce "cool and froody", why do you care if someone else uses it to make money? Heck, you may want to use it to make money someday.
7) Now that slavery is abolished, how do you "own a community"?
And finally:
8) Linux isn't Saruman, it's Tom Bombadil.
I've thought about that myself. I think screen placement is really task and user specific. One good way is to place it into an architect's drawing table (adjustable angle). For other users, an easel would be preferred. The ideal would be something that could manage to place the screen like either of those. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with that, though it might be quite heavy if it's high quality.
What makes you think that? The folks running RedHat most likely will end up with more money in their pockets by staying private than they ever will by issuing public stock. Besides NetScape and quite a few others has proven what a bad idea taking a private company public can be. I don't see RedHat walking down that road anytime soon....
If it wasn't for guys like this, there wouldn't be a Slashdot. If only TV could be as nihilistic. The urge to rant while in college is a direct result of our confinement while in college.
I think we should give up WIMP when there is a compelling reason, we can spend a lot of time thinking about it but until we have some better ideas I don't think we should discount it. STAR is 20 years old?!? Big deal, verbal communication is 50,000 years old, should we switch paradigms?
Come to think of it, writing and language are ancient, it's time to move on...
Voice dictation is a key, it's on the way but it's not a paradigm shift. I think that as long as we are visually displaying information (and being the visual animals that we are this trend will probably last quite a while) be it on a screen or in a holographic form or whatever there is going to be a tendancy to touch it or point at it, to group it visually, to move it around, and that stuff is all WIMP ideology. We may change the way things look or change their names but the ideas are still the same. You can replace the mouse with a trackball or a touchscreen or even something that tracks eye movement but it's still the same paradigm and I don't think it's very bad for the technology we have.
even is startrek they still have screens with data divided up and grouped (windows) and buttons to push to do things (icons).
Before everyone starts lamenting the loss of the lost days of yore, remember: Open Source means Choice. It doesn't matter if Redhat or Caldera put out a Microsofted Linux; you can always run Slackware. Choice cannot and will not be extinguished in the Linux camp, allowing each to go his own way. Keep those teeth ungnashed and those fingers moving!
Make no mistake about it, Open Source is a Movement, a social and political movement as much as it is a technical movement. The reason that the Open Source community is seen as the ONLY threat to the dominate monopoly is that we don't play by the same rules as they. Things that are created with love and the model of power-with will always be superior to what the corporations can get their slaves to produce.
We have come to a turning point, however, in which we are actually being noticed. In the battles in history between those who follow the Power-Over model and those who follow the Power-With models (usually refered to as Patriarchial and Partnership models), admittedly the war-like patriarchs usually win. Even if they don't win outright, they win in a more subtle way: you have to become the enemy to defeat the enemy.
This is precisely what I DONT want to see happen to Linux. When we start to talk about and worry about market share and what IBM is porting to Linux and what shall become the "standard Linux desktop" and start to change the operating system so it fits into a Corporate world view, we are becomming the enemy.
I am very much wish for the open source movement to survive and flourish and give the world a new model in co-operation to follow. I have advocated it at my college and it now runs on all our servers and dual boots in our labs. I am hoping for a day when we can run our college on only open source software, that it becomes the new model for the development of new software.
But we must be mindful not to become the enemy. I think that we should be mindful of the points mentioned in this article and take them to heart.
Whenever I read an article like this I wonder
what the author wants me to do about the supposed
problem. Am I supposed to erase Redhat? Stop advocating Linux among the heathen? Give up on GNOME or other make-it-user-friendly projects? What?
Otherwise I don't see anything I can do about what
other people choose to do with Linux. Hey, do
you think that could have been intended from the beginning?
Nice job on this article. I'm not a big Open Source Activist (I do support it whole-heartedly, though), but this article does a good job of pointing out the things that our community should not forget in our push to get Linux into new software arenas.
keep acting shocked and move slowly towards the cake.
If someone DID delete your comment, why then, can one read THIS comment? The system isn't perfect and shit CAN happen.
You got distracted by the last few lines of what you call trolling. The point was _not_ that Linus, and all the other kernel developers can't be unfair tyrants. The point was that the Linux kernel developers can't throw a hissy-fit and yank big chunks out of the kernel. Once source is released GPL, you can no longer make it proprietary--not so with BSD licence. (Well, you *could* make a proprietary release of code that was previously released as GPL, but ONLY if you are the copyright holder, and even then you couldn't revoke your previous release under the GPL.)
----
----Daniel Pearson of the UMBC LUG
When you are using WINE to mix Windows apps with Linux apps, use WINE's -managed option to make fvwm2 handle such things as window focus.
Consider your problems solved.
----
----Daniel Pearson of the UMBC LUG
All this Tolkein-referencing is becoming very bizarre. Earlier today I was working on a Visual Basic project for school and came across a sub-chapter entitled "What has it got in its pocketses?" . . . very bizarre
Sean
RFC2119
The danger of linux becoming big isn't really about redhat being an actual monoply. The other commentators are right the GPL protects us from that.
The danger is that as more and more software, sometimes even free software is written as part of commerical development teams the social esteem and social pressures that cause people to write free software start to disappear. If the code is getting written by well paid profesionals it isn't worth it to you to devout your time to make their job easier.
Moreover commercial companies MUST perver tlinux to a much more user friendly form to gain market share. This isn't a problem now gnome and other addons to make some things easier do no harm. But the vast majority of people are scared by that which they do not understand, and the unix propmt is surely one of those things. We may see the power and flexibilty we value in the linux system being subverted as the paid programers will only write code to expand the market.
If necessery someone must split the tree and keep powerful 'hackish' operating system alive even if 90% of people are using open source SimpleLinux
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
I once wrote a review of the Unix-Haters Handbook. Briefly, my opinion was that many of the complaints were about little buglets that could be fixed if you had the source code (and some of them *are* fixed in current GNU/Linux distributions), some were valid criticisms (X Windows, poor security model), and some were religious issues (filenames being case-sensitive).
We can increase the standard of living of everyone on Earth if we extend the concepts of the GNU General Public License beyond the software industry.
Imagine having designs for all the technology necessary to maintain human life made freely available to anyone who wants to produce these goods. This would be a huge aid to developing nations, such as in the former Soviet republics, Latin America, Indonesia and many others.
It may turn out the Stallman's GPL will prove to be a turning point in human history and the process of cultural evolution.
Long live the GPL!
As I stated, "Imagine having designs for all the technology necessary to maintain human life made freely available to anyone who wants to produce these goods."
Were talking about information. The physical goods have to be produced, but the designs for the goods and the designs for the equipment to produce the goods, and the designs and knowhow for the tools to build the equipment to produce the goods.
Scarcity is a myth. Ever since Thomas Malthus completed the first comprehensive inventory of the earth's resources in 1810, people have bought into this idea of scarcity. If Malthus were to be brought back to life and preform his survey again, he would reach the opposite of conclusion that he reached in his time. Remember it was Malthus who pointed out that "Populations increase geometrically while the resources to feed them increase arithmetically. Malthus would reach the conclusion that scarcity is myth, part of an ideology. Since the invention of refrigeration, preservatives, bio-engineered plants, genetic engineering, we can already produce, package, store and distribute enough food to feed the world's population today and for many doublings of the population to come.
I'm glad this article was written.
./ a couple of days ago that the most successful free software is written to meet a pressing need on the part of the author, rather than to tick off a feature in comparison with a commercial vendor's offering.
It's been bugging me for some time to read things like "Linux must do X to beat Y".
I don't think there is a "Linux must". There is just a bunch of people writing code that pleases them, meeting whatever goals that they as people have.
Once we stop focussing on writing code that meets personal needs, we get locked into stupid dicksize wars. It's OK if beating MS is a happy side-effect, but making it the goal is really dangerous. Microsoft's goal is to beat everyone else, and look at the code they produce...
It has already been observed on
We should stop wanting to beat Microsoft (or Oracle, or Sun, or whomever) and begin wanting to write great free code (or if you don't code, help people who do.) All else is distraction, and dangerous.
One word.
FrontPage.
I spent an hour yesterday with a customer who had just bought FrontPage 98, which relies on having an IIS server to talk to and MS' own proprietary implementation of SSI.
(No, I don't want to install the FrontPage extensions to Apache)
The customer believes it is our fault, of course.
The Hurd can't be based on Linux because it's older. (Look at the "Linux is obsolete" flamewar where the Hurd was cited as a reason why there was no point developing Linux). It also has a very different architecture underneath. The drivers from Linux are presumably just for compatability with PC hardware, which I don't think was the platform that the Hurd was originally intended to run on.
An old-timer's perspective
I have been using linux since early 1994. I have already seen major changes. There seems to have been a major shift in the focus. When I started using linux I used it for a reason (I used Unix at Uni and need to be able to work at stuff at home). Linux with all it's crap provided a much better working environment than windows 3.11. I also bought Windows 95 and MS Office 95. This was the right decision. I have no problem saying that. I was using LaTeX to write my reports etc and even as an experienced user with my own customised macros it still cost me a lot of time. Time that I could not afford. Using windows and a word processor saved me as much as 50% in terms of time. And since time is money it paid off quickly. I did it all because I wanted to get stuff done. I didn't do it because it was fashionable or becuase I wanted to be cool. Most people who used linux in those days were the same. Linux was a get-things-done OS. News Groups were filled with other people doing things for reasons. (This is not to say that many -- including myself -- didn't enjoy the challenge of learning and using Linux.) That Linux seems to have been pushed aside.
The new order
These days linux has a different personality. There are hordes of people who run linux becuase it is cool. People are more driven by gimmicks and fashion. People spend all their times downloading, compiling and tweaking and no time actually doing anything. Their computer and their linux install is mearly a toy. These people flock to the latest gimmick and skew the development of stuff. There are now heaps of window managers that can be configured to look incredible but lack some basic usability functions. Newsgroups and other forums have gone to crap. They are filled with wankers who want to be more-geek-than-thou. You get more idiot politicians who carry on with everything-must-be-free without doing something about it. Developers/Web sites who try to give something back get flamed by these idiots. The respect and caring etc is being drowned out. Ditributions come out maith major and glaringly obvious bugs (like Red Hat 5.0 did) but with basic functional tool are not included. I found going from my trusted old slackware install to a new shiny glamourous Red Hat that there where heaps of glamour gimmicks but valuable tools had gone and I had to download and compile them separately. Gimmicks not functional tools sell CDs.
The upside is that this first flood has also brought more useful people, new and useful software and more knowledge. But it's not the same friendly, useful linux it always was.
The coming flood
The mainstreaming of linux is going to bring another flood. If you look at windows news groups you can see the people who will be joining us. The windows community that once existed is as good as dead. Even crappy shareware propgrams cost money. Newsgroups are filled with selfish idiots. There are hordes of slimy parasites who think they can get rich. People demand answers to questions that they could have answered with a minute's thought. Reading the manual is for losers. People talk as if they know stuff when they don't.
These people are coming. I don't know how we will cope. The differences in direction that exist now will be amplified. Therre may need to different distributions for different groups. Debian for people who develop, Red Hat for the common public, Caldera for business and MS Visual Linux for losers. I can see some of the hard core geeks jumping ship to quieter OS's (like the BSD's, Hurd and commercial alternatives). I don't know. The code is open. Linux can go it's different ways. There are advantages and disadvantages. If unity means hanging round with dickheads and using a crippled (but pretty) system count me out.
Linux Sucks
50 idiots will say it doesn't. If you doesn't think it does you don't know it well enough. (+ I wanted an attention grabbing heading ;-) Many of it's users use it because it sucks less (including me). (Analogy time: Linux is like stepping in a dog turd. Windows is like tripping over and falling face down in a dog turd. It could be that somewhere exists with clean footpaths.) Linux's Unix heritage has tied it to a lot of brain damage. This compatibilty helps at times, but really sucks at other times. There are a lot of traps that get even experience users, lots of things that are inconsitent, lots of things that waste my valuable time. A major drawback with free software is a lot of it includes faithful replication of other people's mistakes. It would be nice to make a clean start and do things differently. I'm keeping my eye on a couple of alternatives, but don't really have the time to help.
After all, at the end of the day what matters to me is getting useful work done (even if "work" is ray tracing and Alife experiments). I should help out more though.
I feel better now.
---- Backwards compatible -- If it's not backwards it's not compatible
A good place to start here is to refer you to The Unix Haters Handbook which was compilled by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise and Steven Strassman. Published by Programmer's Press/IDG Books in 1994. ISBN 1-56884-203-1. While some of it's complaints are about old version of unix and some are just nitpicking, there are a lot of valid points in there. Every serious unix user should read it. Here is a web page with some little excepts. It also has a link to some stuff with the blinking cursor thing.
I did have some good bookmarks here that would been good to include here, however I can't seem to find them. If you look arround the net you might find some of them. The sites are still probably out there. One site that occassionly has interesting unix problems is the Risks Digest. Occasionally security sites have stuff like this too.
Some quick points. There a lot more than I've got here and some things may be open to taste and religion. Other people have done a much better job than I'm doing here. Much of unix was written as series of quick and dirty hacks that worked for the simple case but does does not scale to the general case. Any way - some points
- A lot of the programs that come with it are inconsistent, they take different flags, take their input and output through different means, etc. This can be a real killer on occasion when you accidentally use the wrong flag and trash something. It also make using them more work, since you have to learn all the different flags and behaviours. Some programs even interperet them differently ie "foo -bar" may be the same as "foo -b -a -r" or it may be different. The pieces just don't always fit together.
- The unix shells intercept and expand all sorts of things like "*" and "~" rather than just passing them through to programs and letting them deal with it. (Really simple example: "rm *
.o" -- "do you really want to remove all files?". You can't do this. This may seem like it's not all that important but there can be times when you really want to do it. Also if you want pass stuff like this down to say a lower shell script using say $1, then it's too late. Unless you make the user put quotes arround it. But then quotes get removed and it gets expanded at the next step if you not careful. and so on. All this is assuming that there are not so many files in a directory that your shell can't cope with the size of the strings produced when * is evaluated) - Shells are a bastard crossbreed of command interperter and scripting language. And don't do a great job of either. Fortunately Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum wrote Perl and Python
;-) - Relics like man (1) persist even though they suck for what they are supposed to do.
- BSD v System V incompatabilities.
- Really, really, inflexible file access control system. (ie rwxr-x--- type stuff). Sure it's easy to implement but there is just so much stuff you can't do. For example: people in group "coders" and group "testers" have access to this directory without having to make a new group "codersandtesters". Even windows NT has ACL's.
- Core files. Yeah, I really wanted a 20MB core file from an application that I an not devolping and don't even have the source code for. Unix treats everyone as if they are a developer.
- X windows, where widget chaos reigns. Different programs behave differently and "mode confusion" is a matter of course. And soooo much of it is ugly and tricky to use. GNOME and KDE may help, but there will always be apps that are exceptions.
- It's mostly built on C which is another area of serious brain damage (and is also talked about in the haters book). A lot of the standard libraries have serious safety problems.
- Curses and termcap/terminfo. Basically this involves moving the terminal driver into the application rather than having the operating system do it for you. Ditto for graphics. There should not be a program that is directly accessing the hardware (and thus can screw your whole machine if is crashes). GGI/KGI are fixing that.
- Unix style file systems including ext2 can be incredibly fragile. I had a flaky hard disk controller. Under windows individual files got corrupted. Under linux huge chunks of the file system failed. Sometimes fsck was like pouring petrol on a fire. (It did teach me to back up regularly
;-)
So many people don't even think about these things. Often they don't know anything else. There are some really cool things done under things like the Amiga etc, that are next to impossible under linux. But people who haven't used (or read about) these features don't miss them. I used the Mac a lot and while they were not power-user friendly they did have some features that I really miss. But by the same token there are a lot of cool things you can do under linux that you can't do under other operating systems. And for me the cool things you can do under linux outweigh the other systems and better enable me to do the things that I want to do. I would just like a new OS that had all the good stuff and I don't have time and patience to write it.---- Backwards compatible -- If it's not backwards it's not compatible
??? How is NT scheduler better? I happen to like having a range of priorities, not just 4. I admit the realtime stuff is nice, but it can be done w/ linux... Mind you I don't know much about the NT scheduler, so I may have just put my foot in my mouth :-)
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
That's a damn good article needed saying.
/surfing? Whatever else you might think of Windows or Mac OS they get the job done for the average user.
I think people need to recognise that for Linux to be the operating system on the systems of normal non-technical users - the world-domination scenario - there is inevitably going to be a money issue. Whether or not the system is open source isn't terribly relevant, because the amount of people who have the know-how to download such a system and assemble it is only a fraction of the amount that would be far happier to pay for it and not have to worry about it. Most people are less concerned about the politics of what they are using, just does it get the job done or does it get in my way when I'm working/playing
The distributors such as Redhat will make money out of support and packaging and use that to differentiate themselves, maybe go for niche-markets; web-serving, homeuser OS, graphics, 3D... and more. If one of those niches (probably homeuser) proves to have even a slight margin of profit potential then all hell could conceivably break loose, there'll be a lot of competition and there's always a looser in these situations. Hopefully that won't happen, but...
And what if one of the established Big Players decides to back a distribution? Even if they didn't make money on it then at least it wouldn't be in the hands of the wrong people - that's how those guys think, and they'll throw big marketting bucks at it. Didn't Intel recently give support to Redhat? It's always in the interests of these big guys to have less players rather than more. It gets messy otherwise.
If people make a lot of noise about Linux and it gets even more mindshare than it has now (so that The Man In The Street knows about it and wants it on his PC) then as Jeremy Lee says it's going to come down to money in a big way - it has to. People will see it and want to make money on it, open source or not. He is absolutely right. Less noise the better.
Linux is not immune to market forces. If you give away something for free then someone is losing money on it, and they'll do something about it.
On a very much related note, very recently I noticed that there was some concern in the Linux community that Sun/AOL are very likely to see Linux as a problem, same as MS is. But while everyone is carefully watching MS, the other guys are probably scheming as well. If anyone has any comment on that I think it would make for an interesting discussion.
--- Just make it crash, I want to see.
Napoleon hated them. Caesar did. Hitler did (IIRC). This was the only thing basically and fundamentally wrong with this editorial!
Cats are too independent. No herding them.
Linux people love cats. It's something you can bet on. I've seen it over and over again!
Someday someone should set up a web page about Linux and cats, Linux lovers and cat lovers. With pictures.
-- LaTeX, The Best There Is
Anyone care the translate the rest of that famous poem into the O.S.S. analog? I don't think I could.
A few lines in every article can always be good for the soul...
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Three OS for the BSDs under the Berkeley,
Seven for the Microsofts in their boards of intel,
Nine for Unix Servers doomed to die,
One for the Great Linus on his wired throne
In the Land of The Net where the Hackers lie.
One OS to rule them all.
One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all,
and in the darkness bind them,
in the Land of The Net, where the Hackers lie.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Lots of good things said more eloquently then I could have put them. We definitely need more Taoist quotes in articles too! :)
Go read the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, especially Chapter 17.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
The Linux community flocks together through cooperation without commitment. By solving every possible problem at once, we route around damage before it can even occur. We have no direction, because we have every direction. What heirarchy we have is bottom-up, as easily replaced as it was created.
Corporations pose a threat, but a different one than you envisage. We can flow around a corrupt disributor, or a corrupt leader. Two things threaten us. Firstly, fragmentation of our ability to share. With an ever increasing panoply of OSS-compliant licences that won't mix, our community can be forked and forked again to the point of impotence.
OpenSource is good, it's a foot in the door. But, unless we can start synchronising the licenses, we will be left worse off than before. A mature OpenSource program can't be re-licensed - too many people have contributed and cannot be traced for their permission. We would be free of monopoly companies, but not free to share our code.
And there's a second threat - mimics. By careful license design, a commercial company can create what at first glance looks "open" but with a sting in the tail - for example a "patches only" license that lets the company re-release the program under a closed license, trapping the open-source version in the form of a dated master file and a growing mess of patches.
This is why I find myself in reluctant agreement with the "license flamers" on slashdot - this is our greatest weakness, and the only true leverage point corporations have against us.
Jeremy Lee suggested that "To get Linux on everyone's desktop, the release frequence will have to drop done to that kind of timescale" (ie, about once a year).
In fact, Multics (Unix's papa) permitted continuous maintenance: a friend worked on it. It's a solved problem in computer science to support continuous change. It is addmittedly hard enough that it wasn't considered as a goal of Unix, and so has been lost from the collective memory of the industry...
The unsolved problem is getting people to pay for something they can't see. Even now, Microsoft has to change the box, play with the user interface and add "features" in order to sell folks their box of bug fixes to Office every few years.
davecb@spamcop.net
I don't appreciate having your words put in my mouth. Gawd knows where they've been... *ahem*
I like linux because it doesn't *force* simplicity on me. I think it'd be great if someone were to put out a distro simple enough for my mom to install and use. Because Linux is GPLed, there would be other, less-restrictive distros for me to play with. Everybody's happy.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
And in regards to the command-line, it's all those small yet extremely powerful utilities that are at the heart of any unix system (the sort of things you miss if you ever go back to a DOS prompt) and the clever flexibility of the standard shells that really make unix what it is. The command-line is advocated so strongly because it puts the least between the power user and those utilities, and in fact facilitates their usage. For me a GUI is simply a way to have graphics instead of just text, display more text, move around from text to text, a way to easily accomplish repetitive actions, and make it all look good. Well, maybe that's not so simple. :P
logan
We all use Linux because it's difficult? Nobody is supposed to make money off Open Source? It's wrong to only use stable versions? RedHat can somehow own Linux and prevent Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds from releasing new kernels whenever they damn well please? If we (as a community) are going to worry about something, let's at least pull our heads out and worry about real threats.
Read RMS. Read ESR. Becoming complacent and allowing a little commercial code in the kernel, or allowing Big Company to violate the license a little, now those are threats to Linux. Commercial success alone isn't.
My single point of agreement with this article is that we may be focusing too much on Microsoft. Even if you think RMS is a religious zealot, you have to admit he has a point. Would you contribute code to the Linux kernel if M$ had the legal right to modify it, and then sell it as proprietary closed source software? I wouldn't. That's why the GPL works. That's why even those who don't program benefit because they get more robust software with better features because it was written to scratch someone's itch, not to satisfy marketing's checklist.
Free software is about choice. To say that only morons want stable systems that don't change very often, and that this shouldn't be allowed in the free software community is completely ludicrous. If you believe that someone, anyone, should be able to dictate what everybody wants, buy Windows. You agree with Bill Gates, you might as well line his pocket with you cash.
Not me.
M$ wants to turn the Web into one giant VB app. (shudder) Hence, all the proprietary extensions (such as "data binding") built into what it refers to as "DHTML". Yuck. Okay, so it DOES do a fairly decent job on implementing CSS scripting... it's just all the other crap M$ sneaks into its implementation that bothers me. Once again, I say: Yuck.
As for FrontPage: If I've said it once, I've said it a million times -- why the hell does anybody want to use a so-called "authoring tool" that purports to know more about what you want to do than you do? I started out building sites using it. In less than 90 days, I'd learned enough about what I was really doing to become thoroughly disgusted with it -- to the point where I permanently exiled it from my system and went back to a text editor (until Dreamweaver came out, that is
Sure, M$ supports standards, but only while it sees an advantage in doing so... just long enough to try to hook people on its "extras"... Then -- ta daaah -- it's back to business as usual, above board as well as below.
Fsck Micro$oft. I still don't trust the bastards.
Zontar
(somewhere in tenn.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I hope we all scrutinize RedHat's actions more carefully. It may be the decline of the Linux spirit 'as we know it'.
Vigilance is the price of freedom, my friend.
As of right now, Red Hat has produced nothing but free software. They have not compromised their "main" distribution. ( their commerical offering does contain non-free software ). As long as Red Hat continues to produce and promote free software in their GNU/Linux distribution, no one should worry.
If Red Hat has made a design or implementation decision in their software that you cannot live with, there are plenty of other distributions that probably agree with you and have not made those decisions.
As for Red Hat's cohorts (Intel, venture capitalists) money, it should be noted that almost all of that is going into new facilities and support technicians. Neither of those things are detrimental to GNU/Linux.
As for the real danger Redhat poses, I just can't see any. They're not like MS because I have the _choice_ to use another distro if Red Hat upsets me. It is when this choice is revoked that Red Hat becomes a problem. And as each distro caters to a certain crowd, I have no fear that Red Hat will ever be my only choice...since I have the choice to fork off a distribution of my own at any time ( cf. Mandrake distro ).
I can assure you it wasn't me. (I don't even have direct posting rights, let alone deletion abilities.)
If you've still got a copy, feel free to send it to me directly.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
(1) Er, specifically, I think we should generalize. :-) Seriously, the intention was to say that things are going fine, don't get sidetracked. Here are some hypothetical ways to get sidetracked, so don't do 'em.
(2) It's easy to be best of breed. That just takes research. Here's a quick idea to improve even our CLI: I use JBuilder a lot at work and have come to depend on it's Code Insight features. (if you type System.out. and wait, you get a list of the methods. Type ( and wait, and you see the parameters and types. Ironically, didn't this first turn up in a MS product? Delphi does it better, though.) Extending a shell to suggest parameters, or maybe bringing back recently used values, might be fun. I'm always having to hit the man pages for less-used programs like ipfwadm.
(3) Choice is good, but sometime is less valuable than standardization. Multiple variants of HTML, to pick a random example, could be annoying.
(4) Yes, I was overstating. But it made a good lead-in to the kinds of changes that occur when you decide to become commercial. I'm concerned that the whole linux community doesn't understand what commercial dominance would mean.
(5) That's exactly the example I had in mind. It distracted the FSF from coding. Same thing happened to GIF's. Remember the sheer miles of verbage that got spewed over that one? I couldn't handle one such 'issue' a month. Besides, big companies are not adverse to pushing a licence agreement to breaking point for their own benefit, since they have laywers specifically for that job. The Sun/MS/Java case in point.
(6) I care if the focus of the community shifts to the point where it destroys the ideal. I like money. I like not having to care about it.
(7) Talk to some behavioral psychologists. You'd be amazed. The easiest way is to create a popular leader. Hoomans are weird.
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
Once again my "dissenting" opinion has been erased from this site.
This is very disturbing. I did not use profanity, or insult the author in a personal manner. I did say that the article was garbage - is this what the Slashdot Politburo considers offensive?
Please, do tell.
Mad props to ya. Needed to be said.
Can the question be formulated?
I'm not awfully worried about the commercialization of Linux. On the subject of Red Hat Linux: Note that while they are not putting out more than N releases per year, the updates directory goes on and on. One way to work well with a marketing department is to put the procedures in place to ignore them successfully at just the right moments.
The author is quite right in saying that the community could rebuild Linux from scratch, and it might even be an improvement. The essential resource is the community, and you simply cannot own that community. Not when it includes plenty of people who are actively annoyed at the concept of being owned. It won't happen.
In fact, there are quite a few people in quite a few organizations who are beginning to understand that the community is the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs. Expect them to become quite vocal when that goose is threatened. We call these people 'converts', and they show up in the most unlikely places.
Finally, let's not fall for what I call the 'Gates Fallacy.' This is the fallacy which says that our interests are the same as those we pay money to. This could also be referred to as the 'exit poll syndrome'; it's demonstrated when the major networks do exit polls on election day which affect the course of voting, because people vote for the perceived winner, often in contradiction to their own best interests.
How do you avoid the Gates Fallacy? Simplicity itself. Remember that the software industry could fall apart tomorrow and there would still be software. We don't need Corel or IBM to write professional, usable software. That's been amply demonstrated. Indeed, even Microsoft doesn't always need its own software; look at the number of Linux and other Unix boxes in Redmond.
Everybody is a user of software, but not everybody is a seller of software. Remember.
begin 2 cents here:
I have only one comment concerning the Eventual Domination of Linux.
Say Linux does become somewhat of a Standard, commerical product. Say RedHat is the primary vendor with their once a year update. I think this will be a good thing, because people who want that kind of OS (and there are quite a few) will get it. And it will be good.
For those of us who like the latest and greatest, who could not live without our development kernels, we'll still have those too.
I see these future 'Production' relaeses as a stable, snapshot of a given kernel release and all the other cool open source apps out there. But the point is, it is a collection from the open source community, a derivitive. So for those of us that like to be at the heart of the development, it will always be there, un-commericalized, un-tainted, free for all. No matter what.
end.
Goliath has ALWAYS been running scared.
Just listen to Bill Gates et al sometime. They're terrified of being subjugated by some new technology like the Internet or Java.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you".
I don't remember who said that - but it describes Microsoft very, very well.
D
Didn't the FrontPage extensions have some fairly well-publicised security holes?
I can understand someone not wanting to install them on that basis.
D
I thought in Open Source there was not supposed to be anyone making money off it?
As I understand it, the concept behind Open Source is "you can compile it, hack it, sell it or give it away for free -- but anything you do with it, you must allow people to see what you did (make the source freely available) so they can have the same freedom."
The reason it challenges "closed source" is that since they control the source, they decide what features will be added, what bugs will be fixed, and how often the two happen (and how much they can gouge you for it). With Open Source, if you have the technical know-how to fix the problem yourself, go right ahead. (And if you do, please share with the rest of us who might have the same problem.)
If Redhat wants to sell a commercial Linux distribution and only update once a year (to please the corporate types who see rapid updates as a bad thing -- you know, "how stable is this stuff if they keep updating it all of the time?"), that's fine. If you can't wait, then get the new source when it becomes available and do it yourself.
I thought one of the advantages of having commercial resellers was that those of us who are not hacker-types but want to use Linux can pay to have someone do much of the grunt work (and provide tech support). If I want to do it myself, I can. If I want to pay someone to do much of the work for me, I can. That's the freedom of Open Source.
Jay (=
It's good to see someone hit the nail right on the head. I still use Windows quite a bit, and I agree that the commercial world at large is going to be quite a shock if and when Linux finally hits it big.
There are a lot of complexities in the commercial market that Open Source software simply doesn't have to deal with. The lawyers and the lawsuits haven't infringed much on this territory, but once there is big money in Linux, they WILL be there. And with no central authority, who is going to handle them?
And as always, ease of use is still a big factor, even with the advances being made. The little old lady down the street can't even install her own Windows software - even when it just means running setup.exe and accepting all the defaults. What will it mean when she has to compile it as well?
Just some things to think about amidst the screams of "World Domination."
- Slarty
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
FreeBSD-current had some old drivers removed that were no longer maintained and were not compatible with some new architecture decisions. In the process, some drivers that shouldn't have been removed were.
This was a mistake. It was acknowledged, and they were restored.
Yeah, the timing (over Xmas) sucked. People make mistakes. They get over it.
I'm not a member of the core team, I'm just one of the 160 or so people that can commit direct to the FreeBSD source tree (remind me again: how many people can write to the Debian tree, or the RedHat tree, or the Slackware tree?).
Nevertheless, why would electing the core team make any sense? The core team oversees the architectural direction in which FreeBSD is going. I want competant engineers doing that, not people who win popularity contests.
N
Cool. Neither can the *BSD developers. Firstly, because the license doesn't let them (once its out there as BSD license someone else can't relicense the same code with a more restrictive license, such as the GPL).
Secondly, because the code's in CVS repositories mirrored around the globe. cvs checkout -r mumble gets you the code before it was yanked, and cvs commit mumble puts it straight back in the repository.
Easy. huh?
N
Some NetBSD code was imported in to the tree and the copyright notice was inadvertently ommitted. NetBSD complained (Jason Thorpe, if I remember correctly) and the ommission was put right as soon as the FreeBSD committer in question (Doug Rabson, possibly, but I forget) was informed.
Big deal. It was dealt with. People screw up. They recover from their mistakes. That's life.
N
Well, given that the root cause was lack of communication, perhaps you'd actually like to read the "State of the Union" message. I'm paraphrasing (and anyone who wants to can see the original at http://www.freebsd.org/news/sou1999.html but;
Seems clear enough.
And at the end of the day, the person with final say is David Greenman, as FreeBSD's principal architect.
Gosh. One person with final control over FreeBSD. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Oh. Wait. There's only person with final say over Linux as well.
Sure. When are you going to get the chance to vote for Linus, or Alan Cox?
You're not, right? They're there because of technical ability. Funnily enough, so is the FreeBSD core team (and the NetBSD core team, and the OpenBSD core team).
If you thought that it looked like E0.15 sucked, would you try and vote Raster away from it?
No. Didn't think so.
N
The Macintosh (or Windows for that matter) is not a POOR copy of the Xerox Star. Yes, they borrowed a few ideas from it (like the mouse, and the use of windows), but each OS has made significant advancements. Have you ever seen one of those things? The windowing system doesn't even allow multiple windows to overlap each other! Apple engineers took the very basic ideas that were invented at Xerox PARC and made them a lot more usable with the Lisa systems and later, the Macintosh. -Sol
Some interesting points, but the idea that Linux can replace Windows, with Red Hat becoming the new monopoly, is pretty far-fetched, even as a hypothesis. Microsoft will be the last major monopoly of its kind. If they fall, things will be much more diversified - with Linux, BSD, Mac, Be, etc.
But the very nature of Linux and its community means that if RH tried to pull any tricks, the backlash would be extremely vicious. Even as it is, with RH's current benign form of capitalism, there are people who think they are the already the next Evil Empire.
And WIMP is, unfortunately, necessary. The wonderful thing is, in Linux, it's an option rather than something forced down your throat.
blackers
It will be interesting to see where Linux ends up in the long run. Unlike the BSD folks, Linux folks tend to work very hard at proselytisation, and are a lot more likely to work hard at features that will convert Windows users, rather than other Unix users. (I'm not saying that this is better or worse, just different.) Thus, Linux is a lot more well known, despite being younger, and is indeed headed towards being what Windows is today.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
The OS underlying NeXTStep was originally 4.3BSD. I expect the 4.4ised it at some point, and more recently Apple certainly grabbed a fair amount of NetBSD code to use in it. (This was quite a boon to the NetBSD project, because they contributed back a pile of bugfixes and whatnot.)
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
Actually, I was just having a quick look at a copy of The Unix Haters Handbook the other day, since I'd not read it in years. I only read through a couple of dozen pages scattered about the book, but even then, something became apparent to me that never struck me four years ago when I first read it. The implication is around in several places, but it's blatently stated in paragraph 3 of page 128. Essentialy what it says is:
What this system really should do is transfer code from the server to the client and execute it remotely.
Well, looking back on the last few years of Java holes, macro viruses, and the ActiveX disaster, I think we can pretty safely say that this fellow was quite lacking in foresight. So enjoy the book, but take it with a big grain of salt. It's turning out that some of the things that seem horrible about Unix aren't as bad as one might think.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
>We must get our hands on RedHat's shareholders >**NOW** and educate them that we are NOT going >to allow them or their childish market to >restrict how often our kernel evolves
:)
Better yet, those of us that have the funds should become the shareholders. Even if RedHat/Caldera/(name your commercial distro) is not your favorite, it would be in the Hackers best interest if hackers held most of the shareholder control.
I'll start building up a hold in the major commercial vendors, even though I personally prefer Debian
Do you get paid to spread this sort of material? Doesn't anyone find it odd that the more successfull distributions are coming under so much attack lately. Especailly groups like RedHat that have done so much to actively support the Free Software movemment.
These attempts to divide the community need to be seen for what they are, and resisted.
The really wonderfull thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
This is the kind of down to earth article that we (the Linux community) really need to consider.
Sure, Linux on every desktop, Microsoft out the window, and Bill Gates living in a cardboard box would be a Good Thing(tm), but come on people...
The whole reason we like Linux is the fact that it's not simple. It's not pretty. To achieve Linux on every desktop would mean giving up everything about Linux that we love.
I don't know about you guys, but I prefer the Linux we have now, and M$ still in business, rather than no more Microshaft, and a crap, stupified, updated-once-a-year, no more home made solutions Linux.
That was truly a fantastic article...it voiced everything that's disturbed me about Linux in maybe the past year, but which I haven't quite been able to put my finger on.
Many people (including a lot of people that have replied here already) first got into linux because they used Unix at work or school and wanted the same functionality and utilities at home. Most of these people quickly hit the greatest stumbling block of running Linux - dealing with the dominance of proprietary file formats and technologies. Nobody wants to be stuck with his thumb up his ass when he receives a binhex encoded Word document with lots of embedded GIFs attached to an email. So we create dual-boot systems, install Wine, buy WABI, etc.
From an idealistic perspective, this is a disgusting compromise. From a practical perspective, it's a necessary one - until and unless open formats achieve dominance. At least users "guilty" of this kind of compromise still know why they want Linux (while acknowledging the need for some proprietary software).
That's one level of compromise, one that was common even two years ago. Lately there's been a far more disconcerting kind of compromise in the OSS community, specifically in the user interface realm. It started with fvwm2-95 and continues today with GNOME and KDE. Most linux desktops look like Win95 with lots of graffiti sprayed around. Big cumbersome toolbars with masked Start buttons dominate the screen, and from them belch forth menus with 20 nested levels, listing every userland executable installed on the damned machine.
Why? What is the advantage? I thought UIs were supposed to be about speed and power, about the ability to quickly display needed information, organize it, and then make it go away. If a commonly-needed task can be automated down to the click of one button, then by all means let there be buttons. If navigating through seas of buttons and toolbars takes 5 times as long as typing a simple command on the console or in an xterm, why put up with the clutter?
The downfall in the mindset of Linux users can be directly seen in the downfall of usage of the command line. The command line is the origin of everything great and powerful about Unix in the first place.
So what I really fail to understand is the mindset of competent hackers who are listening to the demands of whining Windows converts - people scared by emacs or VI and who long for Notepad. Why are competent hackers catering to them? Why are you slowly but surely hiding an OS whose power and allure resides in its speed and power behind an inferior shell? What is gained when the community gains incompetent members?
The cheap thrill of seeing a cute penguin graphic plastered everywhere will wear off quick. Encouraging users to convert to Linux by means of a "friendly" and weak interface will only create liability, not strength.
I miss TWM - and for more than nostalgic reasons.
Jeff Zapotoczny
One Slackware-running, libc5-dependent, package manager-free motherfucker.
First of all, this is a wonderfully written and compelling article. It moved me and battered me around emotionally. Kudos.
Second, the other day my dad saw my GIMP book that I recently purchased (I don't really need it, but I like supporting the idea that you CAN make money from OSS Software.) He asked me what GNU was and I gave him the three minute run down. The first thing out of his mouth was an incoherent rambling about how he could make money with it, then the barrage of questions hit. He's one of those Get Rich Quick Scheme types that likes to jump on the bandwagon then jump off just before it crashes in effect helping to cause the crash.
He was astounded that I have been using OSS/GNU/Linux for about seven years now and demanded to know why I didn't tell him about it earlier.
I suppose that my point is (there's a point?) I have been using GNU software for a long time, regardless of what MS has been up to, and after the OS wars are long over and BOTH MS and Linux have faded to obscurity, I will still be using GNU/OSS Software. Let the corporations do their moneygrubbing - it affects me not.
RMS - Gandalf
Linus - Frodo
Dennis R. and Ken T. - Tom Bombadil and Galadriel
anyone else?
It's not easy being green. -K.T.F.
The thrill of linux is not that it is messy
or doesn't "look nice." That's absurd. One
of the biggest thrills of linux to me is that
it gives me OPTIONS. I can choose from a dozen
different distributions, a dozen different
window managers, for a complete desktop I can
chose KDE or GNOME. I can scale Linux. It can
run on my Palm Pilot, or my Screaming P450 server.
I personally do want to see linux dominate the
world and crush microsoft. The beauty of Open
Source is that when that happens, even if it
happens through a company like Red Hat becoming
more mainstream, releasing a new version every
two years, giving in to the shareholders, etc.
Even if they were to become Evil and if Bill Gates
himself were to own Red Hat, even then, we'd
still have the source.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Linux is not Tom Bombadil, it's Gandalf who will
smite Microsoft's ass with fireworks.
Celebrate the finer things in life
How about having a keybord with keys that have small displayes on the function keys, number key pad, and perhapes others. This way applications can begin to once again use these keys to do something useful. I know that I hardly ever tough those keys. Back in the DOS days some very good user interfaces were designed around those keys except that you to memorise what those keys did, or use a cheat sheet. The small displays would solve this problem.
Actually, one of my friends is an electrical engineer, and he was telling me about this nifty device that UPS wanted built to save them next Christmas...
Turns out that Dragon Systems had a bunch of their people port their voice recognition engine to the StrongARM-110 platform running VXworks, and UPS kept throwing money at the project until they were getting 4 or 5 nines (99.999%!) reliability. No more mobile keypads! The device was intended for use in the UPS regional distribution centers, where it's pretty noisy, but some guys on the project wrote all sorts of nifty audio filters to remove all the crap from the signal. Turns out that they can get extremely reliable voice input using a 30 cent electret headset mic :)
I've also seen similar technology used in the WildFire platform; they wrote their own ridiculously expensive audio filters for a really moby computer telephony agent called WildFire. I've gotten very reliable results yelling into my cell phone, in a bowling alley, on league night, during fleet week...
The problem is that all these solutions are too damn expensive (6, 7 digits) for the sort of work you're thinking about doing, unless you want to put together a Silicon Valley startup, heavily commercialize the idea, and partner with one of those companies.
-- thalakan
Hmm, the venture capital company that plopped down $750k for a minority stake in us actually *convinced us* to go open source:
http://www.zope.org/Information/BusinessDecision
Another point to remember: some companies (like ours) want to have employee ownership interest. Employees should have a right to realize success from their endeavors and provide long-term financial security for their families. This isn't a Bad Thing.
We have found a powerful business model and an enlightened venture capitalist. We hope to knock ColdFusion upside the head this year. So hey, it isn't all that bad!
Ye know, I'd really love the idea that Linux becomes mainstream. There is no way that Linux won't be 10x more stable then Windows in the end. The Linux core is just 10 times better then window's....
/dosc becomes possible while still being able to play games ;)
Commercialized or not, Linux WILL stay 10 times better regarding stability/up-time.
Fats,
Someone who's egerly waiting till rm -rf
Excellent piece! You've capably captured
the essence that motivates 3-piece bottom
feeders.
Oh, come on. Just because linux becomes the mainstream OS would not mean that it is no longer the hacker OS - Redhat may be kept down to a yearly kernal upgrade but that by no way means that noone else can download upgraded development kernals.
The primary reason that Red Hat is slower now on releases has little to do with "corporate anything", and a hell of a lot to do with a goal of improving the releases in terms of how well the parts work, and the whole works together.
If all you want to do is throw a lot of software together in a package & call it a distribution, great - you can roll out a new release with every new kernel version. But you'll take a lot of flack for the failure to check that everything works.
Red Hat has _greatly_ expanded the beta program, and taken other steps to ensure that all the parts work together as well as possible.
Jeremy, an interesting article, and an interesting attempt to raise some concerns. Unfortunately, you seem to fall victim to a few traps along the way, and they detract from your basic points.
The "traps" I'm referring to include the demonification of capitalism as an enemy in some way to open source software, the assumption that, in your words, "There Can Be Only One" commercial vendor for Linux, and (despite your comment in the addendum/update at the end) specifically selecting Red Hat as an example. I'd like to briefly comment on each of these points. (Like you could stop me, right! Ignore, possibly.)
Demonification of capitalism: You include a number of references to capitalism & corporate actions that both label them as evil, unthinking, and uncaring about areas beyond their own pockets, and imply that they're one and the same thing. Your little Adam Smith quote & derogatory remark is a good example here.
Capitalism & Corporate economics aren't the same thing! They get confused, and politicians mix the labels freely, but that doesn't change anything: calling a skunk a rose won't change the smell, and labeling corporatism as capitalism doesn't either. Most corporations are fully avowed enemies of any approach to Laissez Faire economics and capitalism. Look at the amount of money they spend to encourage special laws which only act to increase their power and income. Fair competition is the last thing they want.
Adam Smith pointed it out, and no real refutation of his basic points have been made. Every economic decision, at all levels, has consequences in the rest of the market. We don't really understand what those consequences will be, can't plan 'em, can't really do more than recognize them and attempt to deal with them realistically. Look up Ludwig von Mises and Praxeology sometime. Markets aren't just about money; you can be paid in pride, dignity, self-respect, external respect, admiration, any number of other "currencies" which are important to you. Corporate structures and values arn't really about markets; they don't believe in markets, and damn sure don't believe in unintended consequences - they think they can predict consequences and control them. This is one of the reasons companies go bankrupt all the time.
Bottom line here is that the attack is polarizing and detracts from your basic points.
"There Can Be Only One." Pardon me for saying so, but bull . This is based out of the old fashioned corporate economics you denigrate in your article, and fail to recognize the paradigm shift involved in the whole open software concept. It's a marketplace of ideas, and the ground rules as laid out in the GPL and other "open copyrights" (or copylefts) are changing the way the game is played. You're applying the old rules and expectations to a new game.
Now, part of the reason I liked your article, and appreciate your concerns is that when you change the rules there will, again, be consequences. Along the way to a new outcome, things can get rough and some of the things you express concern about might be attempted.
In an open market of ideas, such as Linux and the GNU, BSD, Berkeley, and other copylefted material you cannot "corner" the market. You can try to capitalize on the situation, but there are no guarantees. Note that Caldera, backed by Ray Nordla who has buckets of cash on hand, isn't doing quite as well or growing as fast as Red Hat, which started on a shoestring by a guy who was spending all his time hacking Linux & not getting paid for it. From a corporate viewpoint you'd tend to suspect that Caldera would be the fastest growing distribution. It's good, but it's not the fastest growing or even best recognized, is it?
"Red Hat the Company" "Because sooner or later, Red Hat the Compay will be owned and run by an economic rationalist with a legal obligation to increase shareholder value (as all publicly traded companies are required to do, or they get sued) using any and every means at their disposal."
Bad shot, from many viewpoints. One, you tend to turn people who like, support, and defend Red Hat & it's distribution off so they ignore value in your ideas, and Two it was, again, an unnecessary attack. You could have used a fictionalized company name to make your points.
In any case, there is a fundamental difference in businesses, such as Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, LST, and others; and traditional, product-oriented companies. The product is basically free. The GPL was drafted by attorneys, directed towards a specific goal, and is, I suspect, not quite as fragile as your concerns imply. Additionally, what these companies are doing is making a pittance on the direct product (the distribution), and attempting to make the real money for themselves on the services.
MicroSoft, as one example of a traditional company, sees it's product as the software. Hence, closed source, high prices, rapacious acquisition of competing products, etc. (If they saw the product as service, then quality would be more of an issue there, instead of the creaping "featurism" that they display.)
Service is the ultimate market product in many ways. It is directly, and only, based on customer satisfaction. It depends on reputation, and failure on the part of the seller to provide satisfaction would eliminate the reputation (and destroy the value of the product) in very short order. The certification programs that Caldera and Red Hat (amoungst others) are starting now are a part of that product, and also help to act as a control on those companies, also. How so? If I want to start up my own company, selling service and support for Red Hat, Caldera, (whatever) Linux, and I have their certification, it would be hard for them to apply FUD to reduce my marketability and to abrogate it to themselves. They would have a hard time claiming I was unqualifed, if they, themselves, have certified me as being so. In any case, the model they seem to be assembling for support is one where they supply training, testing, and certification, and then a loose alliance with service companies in local areas. They will take the request for service and hand it off to the nearest local agency which is a member of the alliance. Such a model would give Red Hat and it's associates an advantage, but not dominance, since vendors selling hardware locally can also be certified, and can sell maintenance contracts with the hardware package.
Just a thought.
Red Hat has chosen, knowingly and specifically, to remove all non-open source software from their distribution. If you review the contents of 5.2 you will note that the BRU backup software, Metro-X, and all other commercial software has been removed from the package.
Even most of the books related to the distribution are copylefted, and available for download. Want the installation guide? Download it. Want to learn more about the RPM packaging system? Download a copy of "Maximum RPM" by Ed Bailey. Follow the links for more documentation.
They've funded open software. They've started paying creative people so they can spend full time hacking Linux, like Alan Cox. The work done by these people goes directly to the communit, not to Red Hat first.
You make a big deal out of the desktop wars and Red Hats actions related to that issue. What Red Hat did was not to denegrate KDE, but to take a simple, consistent position that no Red Hat distribution would include non-open source software in the core distribution. Period. Then they contributed money, personnel, time, and web space to Gnome, the open source alternative. You also choose to ignore the fact that a lot of people, myself included, have tried KDE - and don't like the approach. I applaud the effort of Mattias Ettrich and the KDE group. I regretted the choice of Qt until they started opening up the license for the libraries. But even if KDE had chosen to use GTK+ as a library, I still don't like the look and feel.
What's so evil about having choices? What's wrong with having Gnome and KDE?
Like the Grinch, I suspect your shoes are too tight, or your heart is two sizes to small. Take off your shoes, open a good beer, remove the necktie, join those who let their karma trample selfish dogmas. 8^)
What if (after the DOJ trials are over) MicroSoft wanted to take over Linux? How would it do it?
It might well buy the private corporation most publicly associated with Linux. RedHat is perfectly placed to be bought by MS. MS's even got a close partner inside already. Who knows, perhaps they're even influencing them by proxy (RedHat Certified Engineer, hmmm?)
MS might then throw some of its unemployed NT programmers onto the kernel project to give it that real Windows BSoD look, might use the company to push divergent kernel versions to divert energy from the main community, special Intel-only features, perhaps? WinModem driver?
In the end, what would it profit MS to do this? How could they make their bucks?
Well, if we look at history (IBM's monopoly preservation tactics) when one part of the monopoly is undercut, you start giving it away, and making your profit from another part. So I think you could expect to see people paying more for Word, Excel and such - they're how MS established its hegemony in the first place. I think, also, there could be more profit in hardware (at least that's how IBM used to play the game, switching from O/S to H/W profits.)
The best defense against this seems to me to be vigilance, yes, but also plurality.
It's great to see RedHat raising Linux awareness, putting on a suit and tackling the big end of town. When they've tasted the system, some will hopefully move to where the real system is (shameless Debian plug.)
In the interests of that plurality, I think it'd be really nice if RedHat gave some of its voting stock to the FSF. That would be fair, and it would enable them to act in the public interest before they list, which eventuality would make it illegal to do so in some situations where the public and shareholders' interests diverge.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
I was greatly suprised by the tone of your article. Linux's Doomsday? I'm not exactly sure that I see that. The only concrete example that you gave of the doom of Linux was that RedHat's slipping release schedule. What makes this the harbinger of doom? RedHat is not the only distribution of Linux. Or of Open Source software. If users don't like this release schedule, they can try another distribution.
This is also what will make it so difficult for Venture Capitalists to grab control of Linux. There is no monopoly on Linux. No handle for anyone to grab hold of. If anything, VC interest will be a boon to the Linux community. There are other ways to make money off of software than just selling the software. VC interest in Linux and OS will open the door for service companies, consulting, custom software development.
Lastly, I am suprised that you are against making software that will ease the transition of people to Open Source software. You seem to have spent a great deal of time working with open source software. Now, you treat the use of OS software like some kind of club where everyone should devote the same amount of effort as you. I thought the goal was to make software as accessible as possible to everyone. That getting involved in OS development projects is a means helping everyone. Not just the technically elite.
But enough of my ranting.
Perhaps it is time to have some new UI style. After reading this article, a silly little idea that I had been toying with a few years back came into my head: touch screens with reconfigurable control displays a la Star Trek NG and beyond. Naturally, voice dictation and control would also be a part of this system. Three years ago, such a system would not have been very feasible. However, with recent advances in voice dictation and display technologies, it may be a possibility.
The display itself would be context-sensitive, depending on what application(s) are running, the content they contain, and also on the user's preferences settings.
However, there are a number of critical problems with this that would need to be overcome:
1. The current cost and quality of touch screens. I haven't looked into either of these issues yet, but low cost, and a fast and accurate response to the touch would be necessary.
2. Placement of the display. Current systems with a touch screen that goes over the monitor would be uncomfortable for extended periods of use -- having to hold your arms up to tap on the screen would be a pain. While voice control would help alleviate some of these problems, physical control is still an important aspect. A desktop or slightly angled LCD panel with a touchscreen surface would be a better alternative display than a touch screen over the monitor.
3. Voice control accuracy. True, most voice dictation systems are pretty good, but there is room for improvement. Since the traditional keyboard and mouse are gone, editing text would be somewhat more difficult. Given that, a 100% accuracy rate is necessary. No tolerance for mistakes, ever. It could be tough to do.
I'm curious to hear some other views on this and why it would or wouldn't work...
Personally, I like the idea of giving all those potential new users a nasty shock to the complacency... I don't want Linux to be "Just like Windows only Better!", I want it to challenge the basic assumptions that the Microsoft engineers have made...
Choice is good. Linux should support LOTS of different user interfaces, which should all compete for user mindshare. However, since the cost of retraining far exceeds the cost of continuing to upgrade to the latest M$ bloatware, there should be at least one interface available that mimics as closely as legally possible the UI of Windows and Office, and is capable of reading and writing M$ file formats! Unlike developers, who enjoy constantly learning new things, most people can't be bothered to learn ANYTHING new. I know lots of people who are perfectly content to continue using their Windows 3.1 and old M$ Office, 'cause upgrading would be too much money and hastle...
As far as the other points in the article: No, Micr$oft is NOT the enemy, and if we focus on Micro$oft, it makes us reactive, not proactive. One of Micr$oft's main problems currently is that it focuses entirely on the latest perceived threat, making it almost entirely reactive, then never completely follows through because a new threat inevitably comes along before they have finished implementing a solution to the old one... do we really want OSS to operate like that???
The argument that as Red Hat gains market share, it will become more like M$ is certainly valid, IMHO. However, even one other company entirely motivated by profit that can compete on an even footing with M$ would be an improvement; it would keep Redmond honest, and force them to rethink their strategies to provide more value to the consumer. In the end, it's not important that M$ wins or Netscape wins or even the Linux wins... what is important is that the consumers win, by being given access to the latest innovative ideas in software at a reasonable price. Also, OSS itself acts as a moderating effect on Red Hat's behaviour. How much more responsive would M$ be to their customers, if all their source was freely available, and disgruntled customers could simply fork their source tree and start shipping their own version of Windoze?
Micro$oft will always be with us, in much the same way that IBM System 370s and VAXen are still with us... they are still in use, but nobody is buying new ones, and all the exciting, cutting edge development is being done on newer platforms. Micro$oft has learned a lot from IBM... have they learned enough to avoid following the same path?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
To those of you that think a touchscreen angle into the desk is bad, because you have to lean to look at it: I went all through school leaning to see my books and notepads. How is this any different? Why not just mount the touchpad with enough degrees of freedom so that you can put it anywhere you're comfortable with. The real problem with a touchpad is that you have to clean the thing regularly, especially after working while eating pizza... ;-)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Bravo! Ok, FrontPage sucks. But it may fall under the rule "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity." In other words, it may suck because of a sinister plot to trick people into building web pages that can only be hosted on IIS and only be viewed by IE, or it may suck simply because it's implementors are lazy and ignorant. Choose whichever you wish to beleive. I personally feel that M$ breaks compatibility far to often to be purely coincidental, but unfortunately they do it in such a way as to leave enough doubt that intentional malice could never be proven in court. Then again, I could be paranoid...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The less we think about Microsoft the better we are. The more we use Open Source products the bigger the statement we are going to make. If you buy a PC, return the Microsoft license agreement and get your money back. Install Linux. Help the developers. We can build a community bigger than it is now. We just have to work on building our community and not destroying Microsoft's Borg Ship. We can beat them with our minds and with our software. Give back for what you take. Make some software, join development, submit bug reports, throw rallies. Put bumper stickers on your car. Do it by being better than Microsoft. Be better. -Nick
Squarepusher? Who's that?