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Feature:A Brave New World
So the suits have invaded your favourite OS, do you care, should you care ?
The answer is probably yes. A large number of people are about to collide with a community they don't understand which has a long history of its own independence, and its own shared cultural references. Think AOL meets the internet.
The very first line proves this. I can talk about "a suit" and most of the readership know exactly what I mean. The "suit" is a shared stereotype of many of the outsiders of the community. If you are what we class as a suit and are reading this by the way welcome, do come in , you don't need to hang around the door. We don't even have suits in general as the first people against the wall, although we do have places reserved for a couple of them.
Similarly things like "See figure 1"[0] , "What was your user name again ?" and suggestions for using dead chickens are something that has a common meaning. Userfriendly isn't terribly funny to some people because they lack the frame of reference to understand ISP's really really do work like that. I feel sorry for them because now that I've finally discovered it, I've found it is a great cartoon.
It is important that when the suits do things that don't fit the community that people gently remind them. It takes time and it has to be done right but it does work. The average AOL user has become materially more internet-friendly over time. The continual polite chiding for using HTML email on mailing lists has had its desired effect. Also sometimes you need to step back and try and see how they are thinking and why as well as their background. Don't just criticise but try and explain in their terms why things matter. "See figure 1" is not the productive answer especially if they've learned what figure 1 is.
In the Linux frame of reference most suits are going to be coming to Linux partly because everyone else is and partly because of its excellent price/performance, and to give them their own buzzwords back - Total cost of ownership. I imagine most of the people cheering happily at all the proprietary software and value added (or as Richard Stallman likes to term it 'freedom deducted') software are in this category.
If you want to teach them the reasons why Linux is better, faster and more stable do it gently. In time they will come to wonder why they are pricing a commercial email system for Linux when the one on the CD-ROM works perfectly well anyway. They will wonder why they are buying high price network management tools when they seem to get free ones. Eventually they will get the message. The barrier has partly gone, no longer is it "but thats free software", its "thats free software, excellent - will that package work for our needs".
We need to gently teach them that technical shows they should be paying for speakers, they need to show us that for marketing shows the talks are really advertising so they don't expect to pay for them. We need to teach IDG that registering Linuxexpo.com and causing confusing with the real Linux Expo in May is not the way we do things here.
There is going to be real turbulence ahead if history repeats (as always [1]). Certainly my own memories of the UK mainstream arrival of the show sold home computer, and even more the events way prior to that in the USA that Stephen Levy documents in 'Hackers' mirror the current happenings remarkably well.
Some vendors will probably vanish over the next two years while others disappear into big name companies and numerous new vendors spring up to take on new niches and angles of the Linux business. The whole business model is still in flux - do Linux companies sell Linux, do they use Linux as a tool to bundle software to the retail channel, do they sell custom systems built on Linux, do they associate with some vendors or do they stay application vendor neutral and thus avoid competing with application people ? All of these are unknowns.
Money too is beginning to influence Linux kernel development far more than before. Not at the moment in a bad way I'm glad to say. Free software reflects the needs of the userbase and their talents. This has always therefore focused on the hardware people really possess. You'll notice Linux 1.2 for example doesn't reflect 2Gig machines with multiple RAID controllers. The typical home hacker doesn't generally possess these. Instead we have the coffee-machine interfacing mini-HOWTO. The people who need these high end facilities aren't writing them however, they are using their own currency for contributing to the kernel. They are paying people or using their own staff to write the high end support and place it under the GPL.
There is always a risk that money will start to talk too much. "I know this feature is stupid but if we pay you $$$$ will you do it". Thankfully Linus is rather good at saying "no" to anything that isn't a good idea. That is bound to be an area where there is some friction. These people will also bring non Unix ideas with them too. Linux will probably gain from this because Unix doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas, it just owns most of them.
Do look after our visiting suits, they come from a strange land and have strange rituals like "Trade Shows". Be assured they find our rituals of talking about technical material in detail just as strange. They have been living under an oppressive binary-only single OS regime, and as refugees need sympathy and education. It's very hard to teach someone the value of freedom but please do try. And I'm told we do share some common rituals. Our "flame war" is apparently held in person in their land and called "project meeting".
Please be friendly and give useful directions any lost suits.
[0] http://spiffy.cso.uiuc.edu/~kline/Stuff/see-figure -1.html
[1] I am a great fan of the "History repeats itself, it has to nobody ever
listens" quote.
License: OpenContent
I've switched from using Linux, since kernel .99, to FreeBSD. I'm tired of the suits, marketing types, hype and "Me too!" that now prevails in the Linux world. The suits screw up everything. Every job I've had it was the suits that were 90% of all problems.
:-)
Let them pay the M$ taxes and keep Bill King of their desktop and server.
Alan, you and Linus and Richard are my heroes. You guys are cool. But I don't agree with you on this one.
BTW - FreeBSD is really cool. Am really enjoying it.
that's what im saying, too bad i'm a nobody to a lot of people.
on the other hand i'm the light that leads a few home. heh.
Lets face it: If Linux is to compete with Ma Bill and Apple, big money has to become involved, like it is starting to (IBM and Intel certainly qualify as big money). And if they are to become involved, they have to profit somehow, and that "somehow" is support, for which they will charge their corporate customers big bucks (look at what Red Hat is charging already). That shouldn't affect the individual user/programmer/geek who knows the system already except to perform the same support for the "average" user who wants to try Linux.
Now, if only someone with the bucks to do it would try an AOHell-type CD distribution to everybody known to have a PC of any kind.
Unless someone can get Linux (or FreeBSD or anythine else) to the masses, it will die a quick death. Remember GEM? Amiga? OS/2? DR-DOS? The're still around, but, except for an Amiga comeback, they're on life-support. FreeBSD will suffer the same fate unless promoted as well as Linux has in the last year.
Wise old saying: Money talks & bull$#it walks. FreeBSD is barely crawling.
I suppose it's an expert speaking here.
Yes, when I saw some photo of the Linux Expo,
;)
I saw a lot of people in suit and it make feel
weird, does our little baby is going corporate???
There a cost for freedom, but the cost is more for corporate, please we don't need an other Microsoft...
Well I know we are not like that, but still money is money and it can change a cat in a cow.
It make me feel strange to see people in suit, because that means that the hacker is begining to lose his toy, well me we are to old for it, no never. PLease Linus stand and don't change in a cow...
Maybe we have to adapt to this new people, but please let the freedom speake and let them listen.
Feel, From Montreal, Quebec
Free workers? Dont have to employ them. Just take their work and exploit it! Has to be a catch.. No, these people really are that stupid.
:-|
No wonder Suits like Linux and OSS. Hell, we are saving them hewge amounts of $$$$
My Free Software ==> Money for THEM
Yeah Alan. Expect suits. Lots of Suits. Lots and lots of suits. The wont hijack Linux. Hell no. Why kill the goose that gives them the golden eggs?
The core functionality of linux that we know and love is mostly(except kde, etc...) GPL'd, and as long as we defend the GPL, that's something the "Suits" CANNOT take away from us! Besides, all of the money flowing into linux just means more jobs working with linux, and more resources to do really neat stuff. Take for instance Dragon Systems Inc. They have been holding out on porting Dragon Dictate(I believe originally developed on a unix system) to linux because there's 'no market'. With the influx of suits into the linux community, you know there's gonna be a need for point and drool, and voice recognition systems! I think that IBM throwing money at linux may be the catalyst for such things as 3dfx--ya know, i bought a banshee, and took it back for a nvidia card, damn--supporting linux. But still, these suits cannot take gnome or xfree86 or xemacs or gcc/gdb or any of the things that make linux/GNU great!
.....Darkharlequin(too lazy to log in!)
So like the Danish King who conquered England, you
would command the tide of suits from coming in?
I tell my kids all the time to stop growing, but they never pay any attention to me.
You are obviously a suit. $$$$$ is it with suits. That's all that matters.
You also judge only by how something sells. I don't know how many *BSD cd's sell but just because no one is making $$$ on it doesn't mean it has no future.
All the exaple OSes you gave were comercial products.
This "Free" software is not about $$$$$$. You suits can't seem to understand that.
Aren't you the guy that I went to school with? The one who quit listening to They Might Be Giants solely because too many other people were listening to them?
And didn't you call off the wedding because your fiancee wouldn't seriously answer the question "Would you still love me if I were blue"?
Man, you are whack.
That has caused some discussion ;-) Luckily the newest QPL is GPL compatible...
It actually goes back a long way. Linux got SMP by 2.0 because someone in Caldera gave me a Dual P90. This is at a time where home users didn't really care about SMP (I sure didnt except as a technical challenge). More and more high end stuff that isnt of 'geek interest' is likely to be done by funding.
So long as this doesnt change the Linus saying "that is stupid go away" filter system it is good.
More linux jobs 8)
Why should Linux compete with Ma Bill and Apple? I hear this sentiment repeated, parrot-like, often around here and I don't get it. You remind me of drones.
Start 'thinking outside the box' and ask yourself honestly, "Why should Linux compete with Microsoft?" Competiting for market share is an idea purely from the land of the suits. Talking like this means you are half-suit, if not suit completely. If you ask me (and you need not believe me, ask yourself,) one should do something well because of pride or sensibility or because you can, but definitely not because you will be rewarded with "market-share."
If you want to compete with Microsoft, if you want the average user to use Linux, fine. But acknowledge that this is a business decsision.
So, I'm really just suggesting that you be honest with yourself. Either
Please define "working for a living" in a way that excludes programmers but includes all other desk jobs.
Luckily the influx of suits has not destroyed the element of choice. Use FreeBSD if you want--you are FREE to do so.
Religious fanatisism will kill Linux as surely as the worshiping of the "God GNU"
Dont imagine for one second that IBM or any of the others give a rats ass about Linux. They are only here to make money. M O N E Y.
The best way to control fanatics is to leave them to rant and rave and party and stuff in a quiet corner where they will do no damage to anything other than themselves. Meanwhile, exploit them.
Linux and Open Source is COMMUNISM all over again. Except that this time its controlled by those making money from it.
This is just software. This is not religion. You will have plenty of "free" time to hack; especially when you are unemployed.
People have always done things for fun and given them away. I guess they always will. The corporate thing though is sometimes a bit misunderstood.
...." and isnt rude, obnoxious and has read the documentation chances are I'll reply. If someone
Firstly a lot of suits want to pay money for things. THey have a problem not doing so. I have talked to people who are basically saying "I want to use Linux but the boss needs me to pay some big name support company lots of money for it".
Secondly the business relationship is a bit different anyway. If I get random mail from someone saying "I'm having a problem with this and
from IBM or Linuxcare comes along saying we've got this problem then they'll get quoted business rates. Money in, money through, money out. Anything else would be unreasonable.
Similarly its important vendors doing fixes hand them back to the free projects that may be supporting them. Even if you aren't going to pay for development of something the least anyone can do is hand back the fixes they did.
Alan
Running a Linux "portal" since 1994 8)
Stop Trolling and go back to Microsnot. They like your anti-Linux FUD tactics.
What did YOU do for Linux today? Nothing of course, except to attack Alan. For me and many others, Alan is our HERO! We need more people like Alan to inspire us to work harder for the common good. Under the leadership of visionaries like Alan, all wealth will be shared equally in a truely Open system. Me? I want a fast car as I wrote an email utility and am more deserving. Others will get stuff too.
Stop Trolling and go back to Microsnot. They like your anti-Linux FUD tactics.
What did YOU do for Linux today? Nothing of course, except to attack Alan. For me and many others, Alan is our HERO! We need more people like Alan to inspire us to work harder for the common good. Under the leadership of visionaries like Alan, all wealth will be shared equally in a truely Open system. Me? I want a fast car as I wrote an email utility and am more deserving. Others will get stuff too.
Treat the suits gently, describe things in their language. Some of them are still human and might eventually see the light. Like it or not, Linux ultimately needs the approval of the suits. This may not matter for those of you who are still in school and have the freedom to choose what you use because nobody else cares, but for those of us in industry who have been fighting tooth and nail to gain the acceptance of alternatives to the ubiquitous MS crap, it is vitally important.
On the one hand, we need the suits to start supporting linux, because that will drive up demand, which will then give us access to all the hardware specs that are currently being kept proprietary.
On the other hand, I think money has the ability to turn this freedom loving open source community into just another corporate rat race. Suits don't just throw money at you without expecting something in return.
We could say that what they are getting in return is a better OS. But the OS is only better for the suits if it runs the applications and hardware that they need. I think we are about to find out just what the open source community is really made of and just how well the GPL stands up in court.
First, I didn't mean anything negative by it. I really wonder whether RedHat says, "Hey Alan, I know you're real interested in xxx, but do you think you could work on yyy first and get it done before we package up our next release?"
I did reread the article after you suggested it, and it seems to me like Alan is exactly talking about money paid for kernel-work. In fact, the tone isn't completely optimistic. Although, he seems to say that "as long as the work is gpl, it can't matter what direction it heads," I wonder if he's concerned that a slippery slope has been encountered. I wonder, too.
The notion of any sort of unified "hacker culture" with shared goals, values, heritage, and history is largely a myth, as even the most cursory glance at any of the Linux-centric online forums will reveal. The Linux community is an extremely diverse group of people who value free software for many different reasons, and people who pretend otherwise just because they get a kick out of fancying themselves members of some half-imaginary subculture end up doing more harm than good (like encouraging stereotypes like "hackers" and "suits").
Regular, ordinary human interaction with people outside of one's circle tends to dispel such stereotypes real quick. Which is why it's always a little disturbing to hear people over the age of, say, 21 talking about "us" (whoever that may be) and "the suits", or any other stereotype. I can sort of almost understand a little bit of stereotyping based on what sort of job someone has (hence all of the lawyer jokes, or Dilbert), but even that's a bit naive and immature.
If being an idiot is a capital offence then you'll
soon be able to run slashdot over a modem
I would have to agree with alan on the spirit of his article but I think that there is a bigger picture here. Linux has taken a far different path to fruition than most (if any) other software product.Its principle power comes from the coalition of individual minds that have created an OS for themselves-that is a very difficult thing to infringe upon (the "suits" will try). This community ,as individualistic as it is, will probably do any contrary thing that it wants. The ultimate power of this community and of linux is that it changes to create what is the reflection of its members and that is a great strength indeed. This movement will only destroy itself if we let it by feeling manipulated or defeated-- we have the power the suits have none.
"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" -Benjamin Franklin
I could swear I saw this very post earlier. I'm glad there's an watchdog out there warning all of us about trolls.
Oh I will ad a PS to this one btw
o Nobody is stopping you writing software of your own that is "No suits allowed" (yep we just invented the NSA license).
o What difference does it make if 8000 people use your free software whether they are part of the 'hacker' community of now, or just pending imports into it.
I tell my kids all the time to stop growing, but they never pay any attention to me.
it works.
:)
yes!
Right. There's nothing wrong with wanting freedom and quality to proliferate.
However, you will probably have to sink to a dangerous level to achieve this proliferation. In a way, it will be like forcing people to do something unpleasant because it's for their own good. Like learning their 'rightmetic' tables. Most people really don't give a shit if their software sucks or not. We do, but remember, we are the weird ones.
It's good the way it is.
We like it.
If nobody adds to it or takes anything away from it for a thousand years, in a thousand years we will still like it. Old code never dies. Old programs are often better than the newest greatest dumbed down versions. If it all is put into a vault and locked away for a thousand years on CD and one lone programmer finds it in a thousand years he may think it is a fabulous antique but he will still be able to add anything he wants to it and make it do what he wants. If you are a programmer you can do that. You can take the minimum amount of resources and put them right where the rubber hits the road and you're done. I know a quick basic programmer who has a 200 line quick basic program which he trades futures with and he beats the pants off of all these know nothings who buy all these expensive multi media trading program collossuses they sell for Windows these days that are "extremely easy to use". Because he has 30 years of experience and has payed his dues.
And any hacker can do the same. It's all free and open, there are no restrictions. And we don't need you suits, we don't need any critical mass. All we needed was for the very first line of code to be free and all the lines after. We don't need your industry support. Free code never dies.
Ummm, 3Dfx just announced massive support for Linux. 3Dfx Quake has been running on Linux natively for years. 3Dfx just released all the specs for the Banshee to the oss community. You can find them on their website. They've also pledged massive support for developers who want to write games for Linux using their hardware. Don't knock 3Dfx. They're doing more for Linux than you can possibly imagine.
DOS/Wincrap wouldn't have become universal without corporate support. Apple hasn't taken off as it should because it did not have that corporate support, then it lost the educational market that it had wrapped up because once kids learned to use a Mac, there was noplace to ply their "trade."
If Linux, FreeBSD, or any other system doesn't go to the corporations, then it won't go to the masses, then it will die.
This is called capitalism and a free market, something computers have not had to face since the Microcrap juggernaut started.
I'd like to second this. I've held several different jobs in the corporate world. And, quite frankly, the fact that software is free is a major strike against it. I've had bosses refuse to let me use, or even install, free software. (While windows went happily along, crashing about once an hour...)
So the major selling point here is not the cost of the software but its reliability and features. That fact that it blows windows out of the water is a really big issue for the suits.
Second, I'd like to do whatever I can do to encourage the "suits" to adopt and use Linux. This is from a purely self-centered perspective. That windows crud is *everywhere*. And, even when I have a unix programming position, I spend far too much time fixing the secretaries win95 boxes. (It won't let me print. I can't access the network. Etc. Etc. Etc.)
Lately I've started using a new tactic in this war. I've found it immensely entertaining to go into major retail chains, and ask which of their computers come with linux pre-installed. When they tell me that they don't sell any computers with linux pre-installed, I look really somber and sad, say "Ohh. Thats too bad.", and leave. Eventually, someone is going to get tired of losing business...
Look, I want 90% of the systems in the world to run Linux. That is an avowed ideal of mine. Why? Because I am lazy and greedy.
I like projects like KDE/GNOME, Applix/StarOffice, and the whole lot. They look cool, and I use them to get a lot of work done. I enjoy them.
But I couldn't imagine KDE being written in '93. Not because Linux was immature - it worked pretty darn well and X is far older than Linux anyway. I can't imagine it because the Free Source types didn't have the manhours to put in a project like that.
So, if 0.3% of the people running Linux get an idea in their head and implement it, then the more people are attracted to it the more cool stuff I get to use, at a minimum of work to me. And it lets me work on the ideas I have that I can give to other people for them to enjoy. And it'll decrease the number of people putting out programs built on Microsoft's shifting sands, which works for me too because that program is useless to me.
So don't think of Linux as a weak cow, with pin-striped vultures circling above. Think of it as a flame, and the suits as moths.
The GPL provides legal protection. It doesn't protect the culture of openness and freedom.
I am an ex-mathematician who now works in financial markets. Many of my colleagues have also moved from academia to investment banking or funds management - and their attitudes have become much more commercial. (To be honest, the same thing is probably happening to me.) It's very hard to work inside a different culture without absorbing its values.
Of course, this might just be some form of natural selection - the ones who are really cut out to be mathematicians stay there.
We need to adapt these people not adapt to them. People are easier to program than perl, and not dissimilarly tangled.
I think that my line of work would qualify me, in the eyes of some of the people I see posting here, as a suit of the highest degree (worse yet, as a "marketing guy"). On the other hand, I have been using Linux and free software for about four years (a relatively long time even for members of the Slashdot community). I don't think that my knowledge of Linux is limited relative to most other people who post here. I do consider myself a member of "the movement" whatever that actually is.
Why, then, does my line of work make me any less valuable to "the movement?" More importantly, why do you think that members of the professional business community are incapable of adding to the momentum and strength of Linux with their own unique talents and capabilities?
Marketing, finance, and business strategy are fields of knowledge that are just as credible and difficult to learn (well) as computer programming, networking, and other technology specialties. The proper applications of these fields could do as much for Linux as any imagined harm you can think of.
This is especially true now that Linux is being considered by the larger MIS community as a (somewhat serious) contender to Windows. We are at a time that Andy Grove would call a "strategic inflection point" and the strategies employed by our loose federation of companies, non-for profit organizations, and individuals at this precise moment will be critical to widespread acceptance of our "product" (if that is, in fact, our goal). This is an area where experienced, well trained "suits" can definitely help.
Please remember above all else that the force (business) can be used for good as well as for evil!
with my timing. I returned the board because I thought it would take a long time for support to get to it. Guess I should watch what I pray for eh?
I have a serious question, which directly relates to this.
I am part owner of a very small software company that writes applications for the ms operating systems. I have been personally watching Linux for the last six months and I'm just amazed. I want nothing more then to throw ms out the Window, and go all Linux. Unfortunately, I need to eat food, and my wife likes to eat too.
I almost have the other owners of the company interested in Linux. Their concern is, will we get beat out the door because of the free software concept of the community? We obviously need to charge for our software because, if we don't, we don't have any way to afford our homes. And some us have kids to think about.
Now, the option of forgetting the company and returning to the "real" world is always available, but then I'm back right in the middle of the suits, which is the reason I started this company in the first place! Do you see my dilemma? How do you people who code for free survive? I assume you are students, or have other professional jobs?
So, the question is, are we welcome in your community? I hope so, because I sure do want to remove my windows partition from my computer.
Please advise,
Jason Wonase
(By the way, I use Linux as my #1 OS at home, and hope to start contributing to Open Source once I get up to speed.)
Anything anti-linux, cry FUD! TROLL!
Get a life, get a job, GET REAL
Linux is competing with Microsoft - or rather, MIcrosoft's products - not for marketshare, but for mindshare.
The bigger the "market" share there is of Linux, the more app developers - free/share/shrinkwrap - will develop for the Linux platform. This gives Linux users more choice, which is good.
Example: my daughter uses a lot of educational software - learning games and such. I'd love to be able to get (buy, even) stuff like that for Linux rather than Windoze or MacOS. Unless Linux gains significant mindshare amongst developers of such software, that just isn't going to happen. The adoption of Linux by Mexican schools is certainly a step in that direction -- but she may have to learn Spanish...
Uh, How has Linux, *BSD and GNU gotten to where they are now? What has the suits contributed up to this point?
Linux has doen well enough without the suits. It has gained and will continue to gain the support of hardware makers without big corps selling and making big $$$ off of it.
Linux, *BSD and GNU will not stagnate because IBM, DELL or Compaq doesn't sell it. They exsist because people have shared what they did to fill their own need.
Well, be a good little soldier and march in a straight line. Those of us that are whacked will go our own way.
I do not need your suits, I can think for myself.
Do you buy toothpaste because someone "nice" on TV said you should? That was a suit fool! That is their contribution.
My opinion is if the suits want to play in our game, let them. But the game isn't about money. It is about hacking out the best code we can. If they think we will change to the money game, they can just stay with the fscking redmond empire they are so fond of.
(BTW, FreeBSD isn't doing all that bad either...it's a better operating system than many you have to pay for)
Hey, hackers can wear suits to.
Kinda convenient actually - lots of pockets.
If someone who calls himself a hacker can't wear a suit and speak the language of suits, he's kidding himself about how smart he is. Just think of it as part of a really weird API in programming the suits to do what you want them to.
There's one huge conflict here. It seems that many of the non-suit types, including those that answer my Usenet questions at 3:00AM on a Tuesday morning, are motivated by accomplishing a task... or getting their coffee machines to talk to their Ethernet..or playing games. Corporate types, OTOH, are motivated by making money. In Linux they see an opportunity to make a few bucks. It does not matter that their get-rich-quick-by-jumping-on-the-bandwagon approach could cause problems in the long run.
So a huge corporation invests a sum of money in Linux. No apparent problem here. But what happens when they can start pushing their influence or dictating outright the future of the OS? Or, what if the company then starts pushing their own proprietary "standards" onto the community with their own restrictive licenses? Or, consider that the Red Hat user base is large; if a large investor *influences* RH to not ship a competing Open Source application then the community loses.
Ideally there would be a Suit Branded distribution amongst a throng of smaller distributors. Lots of choice. Yet, this image of an emaciated penguin sitting in a cage while some suit-types gorge on the Linux profits (prophets?) keeps coming to mind.
The diverse code pool is Linux' strength. Will corporate investment in one or two companies kill off the smaller distributions? I hope not.
Kwan
PROPOSITION-: Free code never dies.e ss)-: (mathmajorspeaking)-: If you want to know the truth, follow the money. Watch the markets. The markets know the truth. Or at least their part of it. Look at Y2K. This code was supposed to be all dead 30 years ago. It's still here. It is not free. Hekba: there are still 5 million new uncut punched cards being sold each month in the world.
PROOF-: (notanactualproofbutpassesforoneinscienceandthepr
Now you are trying to propose/Imeantellme that free code will die? That free code needs anything other than it's own existance in time and space and its freeness to survive? Get bent.
found at http://www.threegraces.com/high ermormon/selfreli.htm
That's a pretty short-sighted attitude. I'd love more than anything to ignore the suits and keep on hacking... But I have to make a living too. I'm a sysadmin, and if it weren't for stuff like what's going on at that silly trade show I'd be stuck beating my head against Windows NT for a living. I, and many others like me benefit directly in terms of sanity and happiness from the suits' attention to free software.
This issue of library compatability probably deserves a separate discussion all its own. One time I downloaded a program source (can't remember what it was now). I had to upgrade one of my libraries to get it to compile. When I did, it broke tons of existing programs for which I had to download upgrades. It took all night. Yeah, I could have re-compiled the library in question into a private area instead of downloading the binary RPM, but that kind of defeates the whole purpose of a system like RPM. If this situation doesn't change, people who distribute end-user binaries will have no choice but to ship HUGE statically linked bloats.
Richard Stallman says that "Free software" means free speech not free beer. Unfortunatley from what I've seen many of the free OS users mean "free beer".
I think there is a place for commercial software in the Linux/*BSD/GNU world. But it is going to have to do something nothing else around does, or do it alot better than what is available that is free $$$ wise.
See what is already out there, see what you can do alot better and ask people what they need.
I would think porting other companies games to Linux/*BSD would be a good thing to look into.
Good luck!
Only reason I care is so Linux, FreeBSD, etc. get more hardware support. My goal is not to destroy Microsoft. I don't want Linux changed with packaging tools from hell, libraries stacked so high they would eat a 9 gig drive, and 1 meg programs that do nothing but display pretty icons. I liked Linux the way it was.
Also, many people will NOT use free (free beer) software. I know people who pirate Photoshop before downloading The GIMP. These people HAVE Linux and are no where near being graphics professionals. What Photoshop gives them is a sense of security. A steel wall. Cost-less software brings quick hacked-up (buggy) software to their minds (and I'm starting to get those pictures too after seeing some of the latest cost-less software).
I do believe Linux should be easier to use. Applications should interact and share data with each other. But dumbing down Linux hurts us more than helps.
I think it would be easier to create a new operating system than to dumbdown a UNIX-clone. All of this dumbing down is just hacks piled on a UNIX OS (Does RPM always work the way you want it to? I hardly got it to do what I wanted without --nodeps.).
Another thing, software developers in the Windows world will not release GPL software. Lets face it GPL is not very money-friendly (Please don't reply with "Red Hat does it" because Red Hat doesn't sell software. They sell support.). If you want proof look at Word Perfect, Quake, Quake 2, and in the near-future Civ3. Take a peek at Real Player. The only reason Netscape released Mozilla source is because they were practically giving Navigator/Communicator away for nothing. Now they can get more features without investing more in hiring developers. This way they can stay afloat with Internet Explorer around.
IMHO, I don't care whether people are still using Windows or not. People are ALWAYS going to be using different systems. Like many people use FreeBSD, others OpenBSD, some NetBSD. Some will use Macs, some will use Alphas. If Linux gets "the suits" then it will get all the software (closed-source at that). And if hardware companies decide to make binary-only drivers then only Linux will benefit. Linux will have a monopoly on everything (open-source developers too).
Because suits are motivated by profits. Period. You do not care if the product is what the customer needs and if it is the best product that you can provide. You just care how much your gonna sell and how much profit there is.
This is true, but unless there's absolutely no choice, new features should be added in a way that maintains compatability with the original calls so that the "breaking" of older dynamically linked binaries is minimized. Even the bozos at MS have been able to do that - I have windoze 3.1 binary programs from 8 years ago that still run with current MS DLLs even though they don't use the newer features. New features - yes, but as Linux starts to become popular with turnkey users, backward compatability will become more important.
Isn't Jini supposed to solve all this hardware stuff?
Isn't Jini free code?
And besides, Go get SystemCommander and have Windows and Linux on the same machine.
Problem solved.
What's all this xor it's either Windows or its Linux thinking?
Just get a Linux 2D and a 3D accelerator for Windows. That's what I'm doing.
And I think that somebody should put out some free software that highly automates the process of making a new hardware driver. So that anybody who can code C could throw one together. Come On. Can't this vaulted free software concept come up with something like that and solve the hardware problem? And don't tell me it's not doable. Break your head in half and do it. Get out of the box.
Linux doesn't need you. Open software doesn't need you. Linux doesn't need to solve your problems. You have to solve your problem about Linux, BSD,
hardcore GNU. Linux will live whether you or the suits like it or not because Linux has a soul: us.
Jason,
Just as many of the "suits" have to think on their feet and fast, and sometimes completely change the business they are in, so you as a small business owner must do as well. The horse and buggy business had to adapt or die, so will the proprietary software business.
I framed houses for years, and have been through the recessions of the late '70 and early '80s. Had to change careers when prime rate went way up. Sucked.
Here is my suggestion: don't offer a "software product", offer a "software service". Think about it: the only real market in software products is in the MS realm, and that will go the way MS goes. Right now the industry is aligning itself against MS, using free software. No one compete with MS at their game, so the game is going to be changed. A lot of little folks are going to get squashed.
What other services do your customers need beside a "software product"? Have you asked them?
Wish you all the well. My own piece of research code has been forked into a dozen different mutually exclusive proprietary codes. If I am able to ever "free" this code (not my call yet), I will OWN this market. Flat out own it. You may very well have a similar opportunity. Pretty scary eh?
Yup, must people need food, housing, etc. I've been running Linux for ca. 5 years now and have been contributing to OSS for 3.5 years. Still this has primarily been possible because I'm a student. Starting to see the end of my studies, I get worried.
:)
I do agree that OpenSource is by far the best development model (if handled correctly! It's _all_ about the "moderator"), but it's very hard to keep a living out of this (we can't all be writing books or setting up systems).
I would like to see some of the people here being responsible for a business (making sure the programmers can have their paycheck every month) - perhaps their views on "all software must be free" - usually hiding the need for it to be gratis rather the actually having the source.
Giving away our work is possible (and makes you feel good!) as long as you can still eat and aren't living on the streets.
Oh, and I enjoy wearing shirts, suits and even ties - so sue me!
Enough rambling - this subject isn't going to die untill replicators become every-man (and woman) possesions.
I agreewith raistlenne. However, for a long time I used Linux in our corporaate offices to do things like fire serving and network monitoring. When NT 4.0 came out and a few of the suits used it at trade shows and other places and then came back and told me that I will haft to get my MCSE and replace the dinos with NT. Well I passed all 6 MCSE tests and the suits have replaced all servers with NT. I hate to say it but now I spend more time at work just playing because configuring and setting up NT is only a few mouse
click away in most domains/workgroup setups.
Since the suits replaced all the systems with NT they have also been more happy because now they don't haft to rely on me for everything. NT makes things so easy that non techno geeks like suits can do many things on NT do to it's easy of use.
I say bring on the commercial vendors and suits. It will help make my life easier if Linux gets backed by people that will change it into a system that the avarage Joe can use without years of UNIX experience.
HEY ONE OF YOU suits needs to fund a project to create a disk managment program like NT's for Linux.
Hopefully my bosses will replace the NT boxes with Linux boxes if it becomes as user friendly as NT.
Also, why are the non-techs sub-human?
I've often wondered this myself...
A is A.
Yes, so you can work at something you like.
It's the same for Smalltalk programmers. We have to fight to gain more acceptance in order to create more Smalltalk jobs out there so that we can work at the jobs we like. The jobs that we Must have. Like crank heads.
I have gone the other route. Taken control over my own capital and decided for myself what I will use in house-: Smalltalk.
And so far it's working out good.
I would suggest the same for anyone who cares more about what they are doing than the money. And being an owner will tear both you and yours out of the mud of having to work for a living rather than the fun of it in the long run. The first 10 years are hard but then it gets a lot easier. Helps to have a kooky wife.
Once upon a time the internet was text based. One could move about and read Usenet and ftp files with a 2400 baud modem. A 9600 was a real speed demon.
Now the internet has graphics. Lots of graphics. I have a 56k modem and it is too slow. I need a much faster connection. Why? Banner ads. Advertiseing. Business. Suits stuff.
Yes I like the graphical nature of the web these days. And it is mostly driven by and fought over by the suits. They rule. Again. As they always do.
I guess time will tell what these guys will do to our OS. Maybe it will be nice like the graphical web. Maybe it will just require more hardware to, read the ads, so to speak.
GNU would be dead if it wasn't for the "overnight success" of Linux. Weren't they trying to push something called "Hurd" as a UNIX clone a while back. Where is it now?
3Dfx only published the 2D Banshee specs (and why would I want a really expensive 2D-only card?). They're the best of a bad lot. I'll be more impressed when they stop trying to hide their interfaces.
As a developer and sysadmin and ex owner of two companies (one VAR and one unrelated to IT) with 15 years in the Unix world I say this.
Of course, you are welcome.
I would suggest a cautious approach to the GPL and wouldn't advise it at all if your software is for a niche market.
If your software could be mainstream, you could provide a free (as in beer) binary Linux version while keeping your MS revenue. If you can actually turn a profit on the manuals, service etc for Linux then release it under the GPL if not, you've lost little and you could perhaps charge for it as you do with Windows.
Linux is only another operating system platform for you to have fun in and despite the rantings, has mostly a humane community. If your company behaves like a normal person would, you'll find the GPL is a way to create great software and reputation and if you have the services in place, you'll make money - honest.
Regards
Mark
The kernel only needs open hardware and skilled hackers. Suits' approval might be convenient for some of us (certainly for me - my day job is developing for Notes), but it worked just as well before they'd heard of it.
The market has proven again and again how little it really cares about stability and efficiency. Why is "taking over the world" a goal? The world would never notice except to whine.
It can't, since the Linux kernel is GPL'ed. IBM, Red Hat, Michael Jordan, the Queen of England, you, or I can put out our own distributions if we want to, but we can't own it.
Neither can the suits, but we need them if Linux is to grow beyond a "cult" following. The suits can charge other suits big bucks for support, while we can charge (or not charge) for support for the average home user.
Hackers can write all the free software they want, while the suits are selling proprietary stuff to other suits.
My point is that all the suits in the world cannot make Linux not-free (as in speech), but we (or they) can make as much money off of it as we see fit. It's really a win-win situation.
Like the parasites they are. First the Net now Linux, the techies go out and create something original and ingenious, and then the suits come in to make a fast buck. The Linux model is that it is OK to make money with it, just don't be greedy and put the technical aspects, and/or OSS aspects first. The suits don't understand that. They will pollute the Linux world unless we're all very careful and self-disciplined enough to refuse their temptations.
Hell - I like manking money off the Penguin. If a few starve to death, there will be more to take their place.
:-D
I get the money, they do the work. Like I care if they starve?
Life is good
The new stuff should be off to the side and not intertwined around the old stuff. So that eventually the old stuff can be cut loose so it doesn't bloat the system.
Otherwise you get a ton of compatibility stuff twined around everything like in Windows and you can never get rid of that old stuff. Hence Linux becomes Windows.
Listen: We don't want another Windows. !!!!!
After a bit you get tired of their cold, blank stares.
:)
True. True. Your comments make sense. However, I do not post on Windows newsgroups because I have absolutely no desire to provide free technical support for the giant Redmond slug (not for lack of knowledge, I earn my living providing Windows support). I do help fellow Linux users quite often though. But if Linux was somehow identified with some huge corporate entity, I would then stop offering help for the above reason.
The list of OS's that died out were all proprietary. When the company that supports proprietary software goes out of business you can no longer have any access to that software.
Nearly everyone who is running Linux has a copy of the Linux source code and a complete development environment on their boxes. This is a guarantee that Linux will always be available. The Microsoft source code will remain a secret forever, but Linux will be in use a thousand years from now, the source code still free.
Microsloth is dead, long live Linux!
Why do you feel the need to rip people off by selling them upgrades every 6 months?
Why not release the source code and let the market decide what features it wants to have instead of a group of technically clueless suits in boring planning meetings?
The money is, has and always will be in the support of a product. Open source requires that organizations provide this support in a timely, professional manner. Or your customers will drop you like a hot potatoe and move onto the next support organization.
You don't beleive in free enterprise, you believe in dividing the pie up so that each of you can price gouge your customers!
Shame on you, and shame on customer who would allow a business to force them into a business deal like this.
Re: "There is no reason to GPL...except to be nice and contribute to the free software world."
That should be "...the GPL world", since your GPL'd contribution can be combined in most situations with the X11, BSD, or Public Domain software I write.
Oh so MS is doing to die out? I wonder why the stock market does not report that. And why MS top economists Formal US economist is not telling his company this and instad MS is deploying 100 satalites into space for a global network in space. If MS is fixing to die out they are sure wasting one hell of a lot of Bill's money. From a business mans point of view, if you can build a huge empoire like that then the chances of it failling is 0 to none. Mr. Ford ( you knwo Ford trucks and cars ) tought us that.
You're right: Linux itself does not need money to survive. It won't die completely, but it will shrink to a relatively few hackers like it was a few years ago. The bucks are required to bring it to the masses (mind-share) and the suits (market-share). There is plenty of room for both your beliefs and mine in the Linux world, unlike a certain crappy product from Redmond, WA.
You probably won't like this, but it is now time for Linux to grow out of its niche and join the masses. Why? For one, it works. Windows doesn't. Second, it is free. You and I can do with it whatever we want. And, yes, we should make the code available. So should IBM, etc.
Maybe you like to code for code's sake, but I am trying to earn a living at what I love to do. That means that I had to learn DOS and Wincrap, and now Linux. Maybe something better will come along in a few years. I'll learn that and make a living at it, too.
Here Here !!!
Sometimes I think this place is packed full of flaming liberals and students. It's not business that is trying to sell shody goods at a too high price
IT'S THE GOVERNMENT! ! ! ! !
And all other likewise monopolies.
You've got it all wrong baby. Switched round cross ways. Business only gives us what we want. Including the majority of us. And all the minorities too. If you find the majority of stuff to be schlock then you know just who your neighbors probably are. They are schlock.
And what about the falling prices of hardware and software? It is because it is unregulated and you have to take what you get and the buyer beware that that kind of thing is happening. If it was regulated and mandated by your happy happy joy joy Gov you seem to love so much. You would still be living in the USSR.
Get with it man. Liberalism and the pursuit of stupidity as a God given right and to promote docile dumb cows that the Gov beaurows can herd for their own Beaurowcratic sakes is crap. We need to get rid of the barriers, free up information so that people can truly choose intellegently let that be the level playing field and then the Government can go and get stuffed. They just want to protect their constituency and their pay checks by keeping people docile and dependent. Government money working so you don't have to. That's why they have been importing all these liberals. Because as some people actually benefit from the Government's efforts but mainly by their own, and get away from the Government, then they become Republicans and this causes the Gov to have to look outwards for more CUSTOMERS. And that is why they are importing more liberals ( and not Republicans ) into this country. And they seem to have reached a critical mass of imported liberals while we have slept so there is no stopping them now.
Shudder to think of the US becoming like Norway where the whole country is run by oil money and female public servants.
(an go ahead and flame on.)
>> A business requires a profit to stay alive.
That's just it. Linux does not need profit to stay alive. It needs care, love and attention. This is a model where money is not involved, and the average business person can't understand that the linux community only jokingly cares about userbase and "world domination."
Notice the "community" there. The linux community is a real community, or rather assembly of communities. Our relationships are based on liking each other and what we do. Business relationships are based on what can be traded without helping eachother out too much. This is probably the thing that separates us. Our model is better. Let's teach them!
Making your living doing something you love, namely hacking/develpoing for linux, is wonderful. Unfortunately, it may divide the community greatly.
I don't think we'll see Bill Gates out on a freeway overpass pushing a shopping cart filled with PC's and old copies of Win95 while carrying a sign that says "Will Quash Competition For Food" anytime soon.
By definition, half the people are below average intelligence. Language is a sign of humanity. Those who don't possess it are considered beasts. Mathematics is an extension of language. Programming languages allow you to perform formal proofs that are called programs. Thus those who are making the next evolutionary step into the higher languages are clearly the next humans.
People who can't read, write or perform even simple math are clearly subhuman. You use a synthesis of reading, writing and math to program a computer. Therefore people who can't program a computer clearly cannot read, write and calculate as well as a human being.
Hey, you asked for the reasoning.
Having a hacker god like Linus is great but how much does the movement depend on him.
We know who takes over the country if the Presidents plane goes down.
But what is something, god forbid, should happen to Linus. Do we have a clear line of succession? Or are a bunch of rat weasles going to fight over the Linux kernel until we do split up into seperate groups?
We see and understand your point. But as to the solution, if you want to use linux, it does take some extra work. You make the solutions YOURSELF. So if you want an easy, friendly disk management system, get coding! If make it free, then by the time you have enough of your first prototype to show someone, you will have others helping you.
Free software methods are both a social reform and a better development method. Really.
Why would they sell cut punch cards?
:)
Try paddling your own canute!
What about Halfacanute, Partacanute, Rathacanute, and Hardlicanute, his four sons?
So what you are saying is that I can distribute the software that my company has made and distribute it under a standard copyright etc. to Linux users and also withold the source code as the standard copyright etc. provides?
What about keeping some part of my company's software S proprietary and distributing another part P under GPL that could be of general use to the community but would not hazardously compete with S.?
Would this part P then be upgraded for free by other programmers and extended to P+ and could my company C then extend S to take advantage of the new extensions of the new P+?
As always P+ may help competitors to S which means we will have to compete with them. But perhaps it is no different from having M$ make P+ and have all of us scrambling to compete with each other if not to be king of the hill at least not to be killed off. Except that in this case we and not M$ get to decide what P will be.
check out http://www.linuxexpo.org . That's what he's talking about.
Canut? King Canut?!?
:)
Æh, Kong Knud?
Sadly, Idiots will never die out. An "Idiot" in hacker terms(hackers of any sort, not just computer hackers) is someone ignorant, who knows they are ignorant, and despite the ease by which they could educate themselves, doesn't.
This will not change, as it does take that small bit of effort to decide that instead of doing what you've always done, you must do something new. Especially in the modern world, where getting by without thinking hard is easy.
This is one of the reasons I love free software. It has always had the attitude that excellence requires effort, but that the effort needed can be acheived by anyone.
What does this have to do with suits? Suits are not idiots. They ARE capable of expending effort to learn, especially when it means money to support their business(which BTW is what puts bread on their tables at home, not just their dark evil holy grail!:) Which means we have an opportunity to teach REAL FREEDOM to those who have never really understood it.
All that "be gentle" femmy stuff got to you aye?
Yeah that stuff kind of goes down like warmed over cold comfort.
But the spirit is good.
It sometimes amazes me how certain threads get `lost' here on Slashdot. I'd post on Usenet, but for every non-spam post there are 5 spams to go along with it.
Suck.
Why are you guys always acting like Linux has continually let you down, and there is "Finally some sense on Slashdot". F*** all of you.
I really don't understand you morons, or why
Rob puts up with it...
Yes, some support needs to come from venders. For instance I want Linux 2.2+ to run stable on Sun Enterprise 4000+ computers, with support for Sun FDDI StorArrays, hotplug support, and an upper RAM limit of 20Gb+. Unfortunently I doubt Alan, or Linus or the other kernal deverlopers have this equipment, but that doesn't mean that SMI (that's Sun Micro Inc for you loosers out there) has the right to see the kernal modules to users who want the support, under the pretence "it's for business". It must ALL be free. Support and Hardware are the only exceptions....
Oh my god. COMMUNISM. And here I thought COMMUNISM died when the Soviet Union fell apart.
Well, since Mr McCarthy has just informed me that Linux is full of the evil of COMMUNISM I must immeadiately remove the linux software from all my computers. Here I was nearly brainwashed by COMMUNISM infesting all my computers.
Get real. COMMUNISM is fascism with everything owned by a group of corrupt old men at the very top of the command chain. They had people beaten to death at a single word from any one of them. Why are comparing COMMUNISM with Linux?
Linux is more like your public library than anything else. You know, that place where you can go to read those free books? The difference between GNU software and all the proprietary crap that came before is that anyone can go read through the Linux source cade and make improvements to suit themselves. The only restriction is that if you make improvements and want to sell these to other people, you then have to release the source code for your changes to everyone else.
Just like the Library, only you can append your own notes to the end of the book and the next person to check out the book gets a better book.
The proprietary method looks more like some old miserly hermit alone in a tower who sometimes lets people take a look, but only at steep price and with the promise that you won't tell anyone else what you saw. And you aren't allowed to change the book, only the ugly old hermit is allowed to change the book and he is only interested in writting more new chapters (features), not in fixing the spelling mistake on page three.
You are indeed a MicroSloth employee to spread Fear, Uncertanty and Doubt in such an incompetent way. Reminds me of the way you people program.
You are right that the government is responsible for many of the problems today. You neglect the fact that the government is, in large part, controlled by big business (and vice versa). Businesses, like people, use the government when it's in their best interest to do so, and they whine, like people, when it gets in the way. Of course, businesses have a much greater influence on the government than any one individual since they have more money. Exxon and Mobil are not your friends, and neither is Bill Clinton, but I can guarantee you that Bill Clinton (as well as Trent Lott) gets along really well with the lobbyists from Exxon and Mobil.
Did Dan Quayle post this? Is a faget some kind of howmowsixool? What are deverlopers? venders? Unfortunently?
Gee, I'm glad Hookt On Fonnics werkt for you.
Oy Govna
toodle pips
I like blinkered. That's great.
To hell with STD's
No, I think that he has a valid point.
Too rapid development is hard on people trying to actually use the computer to perform work.
Maybe the application developers and library devopers could go the the same sort of odd number is development and even is stable that the Linux Kernel team gives us.
Some people are still running Linux 1.13 because it is stable and does everything that they need it to do.
He who judges will be judged.
He who has mercy will have mercy visited apon him.
You make an extremely interesting point about freedom.
:0
I am still learning about freedom
It has been said that teaching a subject is the best way to learn that subject. Maybe it is more accurate to say that by preparing to teach a subject well, one can best learn it.
In the begining most software was free. But there were few people to share it with. Commercial entities have succeeded in marketing computers to the masses. This sets the stage for the distribution of freed software the masses. By spreading to the masses, freed software will become even better as more people will contribute to the cause.
Let freedom reign!
I really admire a man who can insult more than ten groups of people in a single posting.
You are my Hero!
NOT!
Didn't Ford make the Pinto, that great classic of short term thinking? They designed a car and added the cost of the law suits because of a bad design and decided that the cost/profit ratio was good enough to make the vehical. They didn't even give a fuck that they would kill serveral thousand extra people because of that bad design.
And I beleive that GE has had similar suits with flaming toasters and the like.
Linux people don't mind paying for software if its good and there is not a free alternitave. That said, you will have a hard time selling a web server to the Linux crowd. As of right now there is a large vacuum of apps for Linux and the first company to fill it will make a lot of money.
Right now it is very hard to find good 3D modelers and video editors. I would nut if Avid, Lightwave or Maya were to be ported to Linux as there is *NO* alternitve right now. There are several other nitch markets waiting to be filled for Linux, you only need to look. These are the ones I know of as these are my interests.
Free software is written by geeks. Geeks write applications that they want. Geeks have a narrow range of apps they want. Fill the void, make some cash.
Cough... hardly. I have worked in an ISP, and now I'm an ISP, and I've done so for the past four years. I dislike User Friendly intensely, and not because "I lack a frame of reference" but because the jokes are childish and unamusing. They are so intensely aimed at self-congratulating geeks, with horribly inept humor (like Zis Iz A Geeky Akczent) and try-hard geek jokes (WhizBanger Router 4001).
But I'm not telling anyone who does like User Friendly to stop enjoying the cartoon. I happen to like Dilbert, which I know a lot of people don't like. However I'm above the level of arrogance to claim that "those people that don't like Dilbert merely lack the frame of reference of having worn a suit and had a real job". Don't insult the people who don't like User Friendly with a patronising comment like that.
And I agree that
But there is, thinking in terms of return for work, a seriously diminishing return. For example, TeX is a great acheivement, KLyX is a step backward-- it's a concession to attract new users. Sure, maybe someone likes lyx, but I think almost all of us in the old school would benefit from time spent in other directions. (this is not meant to be an slam to lyx users/developers, it probably started as and may still be an interesting exercise).This is just my opinion-- people should work on whatever they like. There's not enough time to work on things one doesn't enjoy-- but I think it now happens with increasing percentage that people work on projects that are designed for the purpose of making Linux more popular, rather than better.
The main point of the article was "be nice to suits." The second point was that money influences kernel development and in an increasingly prominent way.
Look, Alan mentioned it. He gets money for working on the kernel. Just the fact that he mentions it suggests he's concerned. It sounded like a veiled confession to me. So, I wonder what the concern is. I added the phrase "slippery slope" but I was trying summarize my impression of the article.
The internet (originally ARPAnet) was created by the United States Department of Defense via the Advanced Research Projects Agency. That's AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS to you. They got out of the internet biz around 1990 but had gradually been turning it over to the civilians for years. The "suits" discovered it around 1994 a few years after the web was invented.
BTW, how do you earn your living? Working for suits, consultant to suits, or foraging for nuts and berries? I suspect one of the first two, assume you actually work and are not a professional student or are in academia (aka "institutional welfare."
I see people at work all the time who are
just *barely* getting by with the point and
drool interface of NT. Nobody there even
knows how to do anything in DOS even. Gawd..
Management likes NT because it allows them to
hire id10t's on the cheap. Linux comes rolling
around, all those retarded people are going to
be broken, aka human-BSOD. It will be nice to
see all those arrogant NT tEcH's pretending
to be experts at something whose expertise
cannot be faked(These are the guys who try to dress like the ads in wIrEd)..Majority of computer users in the workplace are dumber than a beowolf cluster of dogturds.
Pity the poor helpdesk people..As we persue our daily battle against pessimissm as wave after wave of *MORONS* call in who know *nothing*. Here's a true story:
helpdesk:"What OS are you using?"
moron:"Trinitron"
helpdesk: "Doh!!"
Nyaaa...Nyaaaa! -Nelson
Er, like the British empire?
Yeah!
Also the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, if I remember right.
So you're smart enough to identify a supposed troll but stupid enough to reply even though that's all trolls want.
I'm sure troll-boy is laughing.
You are correct. GPL is not really about communism. Communism made sure that you got paid. Poorly, but at least you got something. RMS would put every programmer in the world out of a job. We should all be flipping burgers and coding in our free time. He really has no respect for the value of information. According to his way of thinking, everything that I write, I should give away. And sometimes that is OK. Sometimes it is not. Yeah, I know that Linus is getting paid right now. And so are the folks at Red Hat and Cygnus and so on. But most of the Linux community is not. And honestly, the pot isn't (and never will be) big enough to pay everyone. Because human nature is such that people will take for free what they can because they can. I bought Red Hat, yes. Because it added value (CD vs hours of download).
Linux itself can't stand as a commercial product. If programmers had to be paid for their work, the ftp sites had to be paid for, etc, it wouldn't exist. Every MIT student has subsidized Linux. Every UCB student has subsidized the distributions stored on UCB servers. Linux is far from free software. It is just paid for (indirectly) by people who aren't you and me. Maybe it is more like communism than we thought...
NT
I personally can't stand the unwavering obnoxious intrusiveness of capitalist culture. It's in-your-face the whole time, all day long - buy this, order that, it'll make you sexier, happier etc etc. Like the salesman who doesn't seem to understand what the word "no" means.
I used to be able to say I love computers. In the "old days" though the industry was very different - the whole culture was around engineering, hacking, building your own computer, hobbyist etc. Now it's hit the mass market, and it's become all about moron-users, flashy graphics, funky advertising etc that just won't leave me alone. "Who cares about the technical details of my new PC, just as long as the advert with the flashy graphics and the hype made me feel good" ("while sucking my wallet dry")
Nowadays I have a "love/hate" feeling about computers. Linux was kind of like a refuge for me, where I could just go and use computers with a hobbyist attitude; just sit and code and build something, without people pushing flashy graphics and ads at me the whole time. Software "wizards" that are oh-so-smarter than me, wanting to hold my hand while we do difficult things like "install a program". My desktop becoming a corporate billboard, with "push channels" and corporate icons and sign-me-ups. Spam email. I just feel like "get the hell off my computer, I don't want to buy any of your sh-t!"
With the sudden corporate swing toward linux that is beginning to take place, a lot of people are smelling money, truckloads of it, and that is their only interest in it --- to bring to Linux all the funky feel-good advertising and drivel and to dumb it down. Invading my last refuge, so to speak.
Personally I would love to see Linux succeed. But if corporations just want to hijack our "nerd-bandwagon" and twist it into something they can use just to make money - something akin to Windows - then I won't want it anymore. Then I reckon I'll move to Hurd. Linux is a hobby for me, and I love that about it. If it "goes mainstream" it'll lose what's so loveable about it.
- David Joffe (djoffe@geocities.com)
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2018/
Hehe .. OK .. you've made your point.
... capitalism just "sucks less".
I don't *like* capitalism. But I do acknowledge that it is by far the best system (in terms of quality of life for the people, maintaining liberty etc) that humans have running at the moment.
To put it another way, my feeling on this is that all the political models (communism, socialism, capitalism etc) suck
It still doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be annoyed by intrusive salespeople who assume I'm thick.
- David
I think Richard Stallman is a communist and a dicksucker. Dont't you think so.
After all, you can't mention commerce to Richard Stallman without him pointing you at one of the FSF position papers that says the very behaviour you're complaining about is absolutely okay-fine.
Linux Is For Everyone
Yeah. I beat ya to it by an inch! One more inch of inspiration and ya woulda found this acronym.
The LIFE Manifesto:
WHEREAS, Linux's design model represents a truly modular approach to operating system design, allowing for the seamless (without rebooting) addition and removal of ALL libraries and ALL drivers in the system (in RAM or on the hard drive), as well as their dependent software; meaning that you can turn a gaming machine into a music jukebox into a secretary-friendly wordpro machine into a CAD workstation into a high powered internet server - with but a simple few scripted commands - without ever rebooting;
WHEREAS, all things placed on a Linux core / "distribution" CD must be distributed under the GPL, which means the source code for all software contained things therein must be available on the CD or on the Net for free, for unrestricted use, modification, and redistribution; and all non-GPL'd software must be distributed on separate "enhancement" CD's, thereby preventing the proprietary, non-GPL'd enhancements from being put into a core Linux distribution;
WHEREAS, this does address the preservation of the open nature of linux, but does not address the need for user friendly additions to the Linux OS, leaving the future of Linux's expanded functionality (as opposed to its core) up for grabs by GPL and non-GPL mindsets alike;
WHEREAS, the danger of this lies in the form of many proprietary hardware driver and various library addons not distributed under the GPL, but then required by necessity for future Linux expansion projects; for example, all future games might come to need proprietary, closed-source drivers for Creative Labs/3dfx hardware, or require some closed source QT-like widget sets - because these drivers/widgets have become extremely popular because of their ease of installation;
BE IT SO RESOLVED that the Linux Is For Everyone initiative has been started, and that its focus is to:
Concentrate on the aggressive demand that all drivers, libraries, and basic internet and system services (FTP servers, X windows/window managers, etc., but not word processors or games) be developed under the GPL, for continued distribution as core features;
Educate the hardware industry that profits are made on hardware sales, and not by closed source drivers; so as to encourage them to release their hardware specs, and/or develop open source drivers;
Establish and keep current a database of hardware vendors with open source driver sets for Linux - otherwise broadly labeled, "Linux Friendly"; and to distribute this database in web and/or PDF format for easy access, so all Linux users who so desire, may know exactly who to buy from;
Provide a single (moderated) sounding board for common Linux users to express their desires as far as future Linux functionality is concerned; if such functionality exists, L.I.F.E. will point them to the relevant resource; if not, developers who (randomly and anonymously, as nobody needs to register) read the message board can choose (with zero obligation) what they want to take on;
Maintain a comprehensive list of points of user friendly functionality which has been covered under the GPL;
Organize the buying dollar of the Linux user community to boycott non-Linux friendly software companies and hardware vendors wherever practical, and to fiercely bolster the sales of Linux friendly entities so as to strongly encourage a Linux Friendly initiative in the corporate workplace;
Because in the very end, L.I.F.E's intent is to preserve the power of Linux to provide, in a flash, either an end user-friendly workstation or a high powered server - or both. Without ever leaving behind the lean, mean chassis that the old school hackers are used to. Linux can do it all.
Does anyone want to go in on this with me? Drop me a line at paladin@best.com! We *WILL* take the server market from MicroSoft and we *WILL* take the desktop, too! Think not? Then let's get L.I.F.E. off the ground and help make it happen!
Some people make excuses for not acting; others make excuses for acting. Ciao.
(Steve) (paladin@best.com)
If we were going to commit our body to "suits" who might do good or harm to it,
shouldn't we carefully consider and ask the opinions of our friends and kindred
who have dealt with them in the past, and deliberate very long before we give them the care of our body?
But in matters about the very soul of the Linux community, which we hold to be of far more valuable than of our body, good or evil will affect the well-being of each and everyone of us; why then, in times when we are perfectly enjoying our
present way-or-life should we risk all for the sake of popularity?
But no sooner than these suits appear, we instantly place our soul under their protection. In the evening, we hear of them, and in the morning we make friends with them, never taking the opinion of persons who in the past were destroyed by
them. We have quite made our mind that we will at all hazards allow the suits to join us and extend our property to them -- manifestly ignorant of what cooperations desire from us we march and commit Linux under dealers who trade wholesale and retail. Indiscriminately, we praise them, without regard whether the new way or life bring is is beneficial or hurtful.
Okay, I hear a lot of linux folks talking about "world domination". And then I hear people getting happy about the fact that people are pouring money into Linux.
But you don't want Suits. Suits will make Linux into the M$ of the future. Suits are idiots. Suits don't know computers. Suits aren't programmers.
Well, I'm sticking with Linux, suits and all. If it loses its advantages (small, stable, Open Source, easy to fix bugs, free kernel, easy upgrading), then that would be sad. But that's the breaks. If we continue it this way, linux is never going to go beyond geeks.
And here's the thing: Linux started out with one man writing an operating system. If Linux gets bloated, then do as Linus did. Write another OS. If it's good, people will come to it. If it works, people will use it. If it's better, it will be adopted by the people it was intended for.
So give linux a chance with the suits. We can either go forward or stagnate. I say we take the risk and move ahead. If it bombs, we can do it over and learn from our mistakes.
See ya.
linux users double every year!!!!
1 * 2 = 2
2 * 2 = 4
wow, thats astounding
too bad that curve necessarily flattens at some point - somewhere math would limit at 6 billion, but commone sense and some market research would place much lower.
Hmm, The Linux model is capitalism at its best. All of that patent crap and proprietary copyprotection is about as un-capitalist as you can get.
Yes thats right I am saying that Micrommunist is the one that acts the communist line. Communism can not exist in a free market capitalist system. Go read an economics book and learn something.
Well Mr. pointyhair,
You omitted my section about the Trinitron OS(TM)
I wasn't exaggerating in my post....
And if you knew half as much as you suggest, you'd know how a seasoned tech support person feels about the "customers" and wouldn't be hiring
anybody. That's reality. Something pointy-hairs
like yourself seem to avoid at all costs.
Maybe that's why you have such a hard time
communicating with your support staff....
Linux is a slowly emerging beast of an OS. It's long-term development cycle is very long indeed when compared to the commercial projects on the Windows platform, but this is applauded as this slow turn-around is, under the microscope, merely testing code down at bare-bones level and getting it right.
The Suits are coming. No doubt about that. With them comes development money to pay for hardware support. Big names are seeing that corporate clients are asking about Linux and this is drawing more and more server software and hardware to the Linux community. Should we be worried about this? I see no reason yet. The Suites know, or will do shortly, that proprietary software will be met by angry mobs in the community, and that will have all but the hardcore running away into hiding until they GPL their work.
Linux is a tough industry to be in. Paradoxically, it's proprietary, and the suits are going to have to change their business models for this industry, but they can do it.
Right now we can see that Linux exists only in server form for the commericially-interested. Proven by Red Hat's investments and big-league products. As the likes of KDE and GNOME develop and mature we will see more Linux Desktops in our homes and places of work, but not yet. Wait until you see the posters in the shop windows advertising Red Hat 7.x and Linux competing evenly on the shelves of your local bookshop; wait until Linux is behind the '/' after Windows 2000 in the ad listings for PCs.
We're getting there
James Green
From one of the 'Suits' you so disparage, I want to tell you how absolutely powerless management feels at this point. NT 4.0 was forced on every self-respecting CIO and even CEO over the last 2 years, despite long and loud complaints about reliability, functionality, etc. vs. unix. Now we find out the NT 5.0 is not only at least a year away, but isn't even compatible with the NT 4.0 crap we have running now. This is a major opportunity for a Linux market entry. But one thing really puts the suits off, and that's the open hostility from the tech crowd regarding business issues. You don't like money issues? YOU try meeting a payroll. You don't want to hear about taxes? The IRS will shut you down and collapse you as a business if you don't sustain a profit. Free software? Great. I'm all for it - just don't give me the political speech every time we try to use something else. Companies have always supported the well-made case for why a solution is good for business. Business will not accept a solution simply because you say so, and it makes matters worse when the tech gurus ridicule business leaders for their lack of arcane (in their view) digital savvy. (If positions were reversed, executives would have discussion groups making fun of the fact that the average sysadmin doesn't know squat about merger due diligence or IPO's). Alan Cox is spot on in his plea for meeting the suits halfway. Maybe we can get someone from the 'suit' side to write a companion article that speaks to that audience making the case for you tech guys who are so pivotal in the survival of businesses worldwide, yet are so underappreciated.
As the link you provided points out, ITS pretty much was written in assembly. Assembly for a kind of machine that very few people have anymore. That makes it fairly non-portable. Not exactly ideal as a candidate for the kind of wide spread use Linux has achieved. Anyway, all of the features of ITS, and then some, can be found in any Unix varient. In other words, that was a really, really bad example.
If your philosophy is to be believed then, even if Linux "succeeds" (it already has for me), the other free operating systems, such as the various BSD projects, will die out. That would be just as bad as Linux dying. Fortunately, your philosophy isn't very believable. You seem to be looking at the flow of green and black bits of paper that is the lifeblood of commerce in this country and buying into the myth that it's the lifeblood of everything. Sorry, but I, for one, don't buy it.
ITS was completely HARDWARE DEPENDANT. Which part of this do you not understand? Also, the ideas in ITS were incorporated into other operating systems. It didn't die, it just metamorphosed. Perhaps the actual code didn't pass along, but the soul of it did. In the same manner, Minix is not really dead (aside from the fact that there are a few people out there still using it) because it lives on as part of Linux. Sure, there's no Minix source code left in Linux, but that's not what's important. If you claimed otherwise, you might as well claim that everyone is dead, after all, the material that makes up our cells is constantly being replaced. Are we dead when none of the soft tissue (some stuff doesn't get replaced, but it's all stuff that's still around long after you're dead anyway, i.e. bones) we started with at birth is left?
It's tied to MS through Bill Gates, who is a major investor, of course, but is otherwise not MS-controlled. The stock market does not report this because the stock market is not intelligent, it is reactionary. The stock market is essentially gambling, and it is important to note that, while MS does make unreasonably huge profits, its stock is overvalued. It will eventually come down, and it will probably do it very, very fast. When it does, a lot of economists will be interviewed, and they will talk about how they were warning people all along. As for MS, they will probably survive, since they have significant cash reserves, but confidence will be badly shaken and they will probably never achieve such prominence again. As for empires never falling, tell that to the Roman empire. In fact, tell that to any empire you can find in existance today. As for Ford... Once upon a time, "car" (well, "automobile") meant "Ford". These days, Ford is just one of many auto makers.
"Either the same thing is said, and nothing is
said, or something is said, but it is something
else."
-- B. Latour
Amen!!
I was just thinking the other day, that
poor RMS is going to have some serious
challenges facing him when the corporations
start breaking the GPL.
Scared you, didn't I?
Now can we get rid of the AC's?
You do realize, don't you, that when people say, "I used to like them until they got popular", it usually means "I used to like them before the record company started telling them what to sing". That's exactly what people have against the suits, they come along, find somthing wonderful, milk it, warp it in their image, then throw it away because they can't understand why it's not wonderful anymore.
The suits usually do not understand free software. They sometimes think they get it, act like they get it, and then they do something that shows that they don't. The trouble is, they look at "open source" and read the descriptions (usually they read second hand accounts either from reporters or lesser suits who also don't get it) and they think that it means that people want to work for them for free. In the suit philosophy, we are all crazy or stupid. In the suit philosophy, all the talented people who actually do the work that they profit from are stupid. If they weren't stupid, they would be suits instead.
The above is massively generalized and probably represents my fears and paranoias much better than it does reality, but there's at least some truth to it.
Whaa? Let's be sure we're comparing apples and apples here. If we're talking about the kernel, then it's only fair to compare that to the development cycle of Windows itself. Lessee...how many years now for NT5/W2K? Um, over two. Pushing on towards three.
How many years between Win95 and Win98 (hint: the names :-)? How many years between Win3.x and Win95? Two or three?
How many between 2.0 and 2.2? I guess it was about 2 and a half. In other words: just about the same length of time as for an M$ OS, for a kernel that leaves anything M$ ever did in the dust.
Now, on the other hand, if you're talking about applications -- well, I think that free software competes fairly well there, too -- though comparisons are more difficult since Win-ware tends toward feature-bloat ("Acme Do-It-All does everything FOR you!").
I know that the long time between kernels is a good thing, but let's not pretend that Win-users get releases in a shorter time frame. They don't.
Techno-geeks generally do not run successful companies. Even The Evil Mr. Gates had help from financial-types. Engineers know about as much about marketing as actors know about politics (with a very few exceptions in both cases, of course). Programmers are even worse than hardware engineers since they generally have even less access to "suits."
Suits care about one thing: making a profit for the company's shareholders. If open-source is cost-effective, then Linux will win out. Some suits will never be won over since some of them believe that corporate problems need corporate solutions. In the '80s that was believed to be IBM. In the '90s, Microslop. The IBM'ers were found to be in error and the Microsofties will be found the same.
I just wouldn't be ragging on the corporate types that are trying to bring Linux into the mainstream. Directly or indirectly, they provide your job!
I am not in management or sales, BTW, but after almost 25 years of dealing with them, I have learned how to deal with them. Being a nerdy a$$hole doesn't work, unless you like unemployment.
So that's why Iridium is going over like a lead baloon. $2000 phones, $2-$7 per minute phone calls. Bill Gates must have set the prices. The satellites probably are running NT, too. Expect them to fall out of the sky any day now.
And I thought that it was only Motorola's corporate ego responsible for this waste of RF spectrum. It's Uncle Bill's ego, too.
Are you a Linux user For LIFE?
No more "...because I hate Microsoft!". We've outgrown that. No more "...but Linux can't do that." That's the strategy of the weak and fearful. No more excuses except for how Linux can triumph under the GPL! No questions except "How are we gonna get it done".
Linux Is For Everyone - on our terms!
Linux claims to be different than those "suits" - but is it?
The "suits" are charging money for their software
while Linux charges the equivalent in kind, eg.
source-code.
Now there is nothing immoral about it, it is simply a sophisticated barter business, trading code for code, while highly relying on free promotional gifts.
But it IS immoral to mislead and claim it to be "Free", while it is not.
If you really mean it that you want a brave new world - use a truly free license, such as LGPL.
It wasn't you that I was replying to. It was that poor, misinformed nimrod that started this thread. I also apologize if you thought that it was you that I was jumping all over.
You said something better than I did - your comment about the people who feel the need for 'corporate solutions.' M$ has ready-made brochures for these people, btw, and with equivalent no Linux brochure handy it's a tough fight. IBM coming out for Apache and Linux helps some, though.
Yes, the suits don't generally know that there are techs trying to bridge the gap. And I have heard from various managers who expressed the view that getting rid of the unix gurus would improve computing services - only to be proved horribly wrong when the NT Administrators showed up with their newly-minted MCSE's. (Exchange was but one pitiful example of just how inadequate NT was compared to the working, always-up e-mail system it replaced). The suits know they were wrong, but they don't want to go back to the days of the inaccessible, wait-til-the-guru-comes-back-from-boardsailing-to- bring-the-servers-back-up computer priesthood that they think is part of the unix mytique. Education and advocacy are key.
Right, how can Linux be free:
I wanted to give my friend a small present:
a version of the "who" program that makes practical jokes about some people in her department where I also used to work before.
Now I know that in this case there are many other ways to do it, but only after modifying the "who"
sources, I found that the GPL requires that I be willing to send the modified source-code to all the world, INCLUDING just those that would be offended. Is this called *free*?
Just passing on to the masses doesn't mean a thing. My say is, if it gets just passed on to the masses it is potentially dead. It'll remain alive as long as there are people who really understand it ( the simplicity and coherence, as ritchie puts it.). And for that you don't need to put up a advertising banner. It will still have its visibility amongs't the actual programmers, and keep solving the purpose.
and when was it around -when people had those machines, but still a bad example. The truth is this: if "suites" begin to commercialize it, they may corupt it, and if they don't it will die (it will, or at least slowly suffer for a while). And so the solution is this: create a new type of suite for linux -a mad hatter if you will. In other words, don't try to sell and support linux, but advertise it and show people where to get it and help. Does anyone make any money off of this -probably not, but that is the point of linux (it is free and desireable). Now then, I have been up for two days so I must go.
include "sleep.h"
You're going to be heavily outnumbered on this, and I have to question why you dislike it "intensely" as you put it. I don't much like Dilbert's humor or Seinfeld's, but the feeling is one of overwhelming ambivalence, not the intense hatred you seem to bear. I wonder if there isn't some kind of envy involved here. It would certainly explain a great deal.
is your little utility going to dig iron ore out of the ground? refine it &c &c and make it into a car?
you deserve *nothing* that you haven't traded equivalent value for.
"Panhandling"
"most lucrative"
Where's this stuff coming from? You value your salary too much, friend.
Life is not just a capitalist ordeal. People living in developed countries working in technology generally have enough whatever they are doing. The extra zeroes in the bank don't add up to much, - maybe more exotic holidays versus less time off.
Don't confuse idealism with laziness. Working the same boring job year after year shows a very lazy attitude.
Think about fulfilment first. Stallman might be strange but he is driven, and you don't get like that by performing uninteresting stuff for bean counters.
two ways to get around it:
(1) treat the jokes as "configuration parameters" (see above post)
(2) write a Perl script that processes the output of the standard who command. then you don't have to give away any source code.
That's what KDE/GNOME are for. The "retards", as you put it.
speaking of gtk, man what a load of crappy docs it has, totaly shit!!! common get of yee asses
And the api, jeez only a bit better than motif but still a pain!
I found porting a mac app to win32 10x easier on day1, then porting a win32 app to gtk... why? coz win32 is easy to code for (non mfc, direct calls)
Face it, win32 api is easy and has nice support functions, gtk altho powerfull is too imature and needs more help / tools/ ide etc...
and GOOD DOCS like msdn.microsoft.com/
I will use gtk and put up with it, but really its not WOW technology, its a disapointment and the only thing to use....
GOd forbid when Windows programmers look it, they will go into comas trying to comprehend it.
ANd to any lamer that says, "Hey read the includes on how to code it..." thats a pathetic idea... grow up. THe includes tell u fuk all too.
reading testgtk.c helps somewhat but that still doesnt show u anything... reading the source to gtk helps a littlemore... but not much, just shows you how many functions are missing that could have been done ot make it easier.
gtk wont be mature till 2000 Q2 or so. Ver 2.2 probly.
until then, ill put up with it, but i wont have to like it , at the moment ill say "errrrk..." just like 1991's MacOS api, but at least they had decent docs.
ADios
That what i hate with gtk, all those crap calls.
gtk_set_label_text()? what bozo thinks of that , at least MS has one call, with args, SendMessage( button, SET_TEXT, "THIS FUCKED TEXT" );
it works for ALL CONTROLS, not just damn labels
and gtk cant even WRAPP long labels, what idiot made that, farrrrrrrrrk, even MS can wrap labels.
Ill still putup with that crap coz i know its very early, hell the macos api in 1988 wasnt that advanced...
I wish gtk had better api calls, "SetWidgetText()" which could set the txt to labels, buttons what ever...
not gtk_open_this_damn_window_really_fast()
who thought of that calling convention... err puke
You certainly are a suit. Talking about what YOU want and what YOU are going to do whether we like it or not.
BTW- I'm 47.
Just ignore the GPL and release the source as you like... what are they gona do ? Sue you????
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
My point stands. the TECHIEs created it, regardless of the funding. I've been involved in 2 internet startups that have been ruined by the suits doing their 80's buy/sell BS. They come in with loads of VC buy things up and the people who haved worked so hard to make things happen get left out in the cold. It will happen again with Linux. Not that I'm giving up on Linux yet.
A company called I think WinMain or MainWin has already done that, for windows.
I've seen their product and it's quite impressive, it let's you talk straight to the hardware and generates the appropriate code for you. So it obviously can be done. Only question, who's gonna do it?
Well, that may be true for *small* companies, but it most definitely doesn't apply to big companies and multinationals. Ever tried complaining to a large company about their service? Do they ever give a toss? Nope.
It's true that they believe that's what they're there for. It doesn't mean they actually do it (often because their companies don't let them).
Give up on the psycho-analysis, Freud. The anger was against Alan's arrogance. You're propogating the same arrogance now. "If you don't like it, you must just be jealous, or not understand it". No, perhaps it just sucks worse than Peanuts, and that's a lofty target for any cartoon to achieve.
Guys, I'm no programmmer, just a concerned user with a strong feeling for Linux an all free software. As a scientist myself, I can relate to the feeling behind open source and free software--I have CHOSEN (gladly :) to work for peanuts and give away everything I make. I *might* be taken for a "geek"--but NEVER for a suit. I'm no computer guru, but I *do* know suits: * **
* ** ;).
***********************************************
DOWN THE EXECUTIVE LADDER OF EVOLUTION
Fire in the hall!
The world is burning.
Run run run!
The world is turning.
The Night of Ages has fallen,
Fallen upon us. The fire burns but sheds no light.
We are out in the open.
We are out in the dark.
The Gates of Evil are open.
The sound of howling fills the night.
We are in danger. We are the prey.
The Dogs From Hell are loose tonight.
Nowhere left to hide. They are approaching
From behind [how else].
They have sharp teeth and an insatiable appetite
For souls. Not mine! Not mine!
Their teeth are sharp and shine
Piercing through the dark.
Here they come, their eyes gleaming
With lust for everything we have.
They have sensitive senses.
They smell your fear. They can see you in the dark.
They crawl upon you from behind.
They feel the air.
They feel the ground.
They see you. They smell you.
They stalk you. They charge and cry:
Buy! Sell! Lie! Kill!
They got you. No escape this time.
The kill isn't silent.
But then, nobody minds.
Another successful deal.
Another masterfully performed lie.
They got you. No one cares.
You die.
They raise their heads,
Sniffing the night.
They have an insatiable appetite.
They close their suitcases
And straighten up their ties.
They have a keen sense for business.
And they stalk you from behind!
***********************************************
Meet suits at the midground (yes, set an ambush at the border) and touch their hearts (with 7.62*35 mm rounds
Suits simply *spoil* everything the can reach--the can't help it, it's in their nature. They can do nothing better than harm--otherwise, they wouldn't be suits! (would you become one?--aghh!). Please, dont let then spoil Linux!!!!!!!!!!
We're supposed to take the predictions of a Visual Basic `programmer' seriously?
I agree with your points, but I think you underestimate the issue . Suits only care about *money*-suit can only *understand* money. Nothing else. Money is just a degraded, crude redescription of the complex reality of human ecology. Do you think the could *ever* understand this? To become a suit, you need to have your community sense surgicaly removed--and then get a major lobotomy. Free software improves humankind chances for survival (they are slim enough :( ).
Suits will never get this. They can not even act out of self interest--too dumm for that.
You obviously don't read very well. The original poster said, and I quote, "I dislike User Friendly intensely..." I don't see any mention of anger against UF, just an intense dislike. And the replying poster wasn't being arrogant, just pointing out that people with an "intense dislike" of something probably indicates something a little deeper and less honest than just not liking it.
lord that was a terrible sentence. Well, I understood it while I was typing it.
All that it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
;)
Responsibility shared is responsibility avoided.
"They" are the suits of course, the ones that smile to your face and shake your hands and then move the entire facility to some third world country so that they can pay Jose $10 a week to do your job. You are paying attention to the thread, aren't you?
The engineers that designed the Pinto made a mistake and, too late, passed the buck to their supervisors. These supervisors went to the suits and the suits looked at how to maximize profit, in order to perform a duty to their shareholders.
The Judge awarded a record settlement at the time because he said that he didn't what any company to write off the lives of human beings in a simple cost/benefit analysis.
And yes, I think that if they had not gotten caught that they would have been doing the same thing to this very day.
You are the one that held these companies up as the shining light of goodness in the world. I never said that anyone is evil. Each of us has to make that judgement for ourselves. But it is interesting that you bring this subject up. It has been said that evil flees where no man pursues. Do you have a guilty conscious?
The corporate culture is based on the feudal system. This model is based on a liege lord, the CEO of the board with his knights, "suits" and his serfs, the other 99% of the population. It is interesting to note that microsoft employees are referred to as microserfs. What the CEO says, goes, or you go. Shut up and put up.
There is only one measure of success in business and that is maximizing profits. If you are not the best at what you do then your stock plummets in value. Then someone else buys you out and replaces the management team with someone who will dimantle the company and sell the peices.
As an employee, if you do not do what you are told then you are shown the door by security. Their is no chit chat with the CEO by the janitor staff. Social class and rank are as important to a corporation as they are to a military unit.
There are other models that are just as good as total facism. The open source model is based on democracy. It gives that power to the people and the people have turned out to be every much as effective as a multi billion dollar "empire". Wow, look at how the english language itself is supporting my argument! This mentallity goes so deep that it is ingrained into our speech.
Anyone at all is free to study and contribute to Linux. I hear all you people whining that there isn't any software to do what I want. Stop whining and form a group to write the software that you want. No business is required to interven in this process and if you can't program then contribute by giving money to the effort, or write some documentation. Some effort and some time is all that you need to develop your own applications.
It is interesting to note that the people want stability over features. This has really slowed down Linux development with cumbersome round after round of testing and performance enhancments.
The "suits" generally want "razzle, dazzle" and "sizzle" because they are so smart that they have reallized that if they sell crap software with a lot of features that people tend to also pay for upgrades. I wouldn't call this evil. I would call this "maximizing profits."
Users are actually trained to expect this and will look forward to shelling out a hundred dollars every year for the next "upgrade". They want to buy the next incremental upgrade.
The open source model forces every one to compete on a level playing field. No secret agreements, no hidden code, no intellectual property. Only support and your customers. If you cannot provide good support to your customers then they will fire you and get someone else to support them.
Can you imagine the screams that would resound if some car company tried to forbid anyone one but them from providing parts and service to a car that you had bought from them. Can you imagine how expensive everything would be?
Software is a lot like a car but the production costs are trivial. All the costs are developmental and are comparable to designing a car. You buy your program and go home and you are using it and have a problem and are told by support that the problem that you are talking about is going to be fixed in the next release that is coming out in six months. This is equivilant to being told that the windsheild washers on your brand new car are supposed to fall off, but in the spring we are releasing a new car that you can buy that fixes that problem. With open source you can tell your support company, "You are fired" and go find someone else to hire to fix the problem or failing that even (god forbid) fix the problem yourself.
But there is no profit in giving away your source code that you worked so hard on. I hear this argument all the time. How do I get paid by giving away code that I wrote myself. The answer is that I get paid by using all the other open source software that others have released. I get paid by raising my reputation among my peers. I gain the experience of a complete software development and can note the fact that I have developed widely adopted software on my resume.
I myself get paid by working for a hospital where my job is to help sick people get well by supporting the computer systems at the enterprise level. On my own time I program and write aritcles to try and teach people how to program and give these articles away for free.
Maybe someday I will collect my writings, if there are enough and publish a book. We will see.
By the way, these are not my writings, these are my rantings, if you have read this far thru this thicket of confusion, I commend you.
That will work-around the problem for our particular little Sardine, but it still presents a more principle problem: the GPL was designed to fend against sharks in suits, not poor sardines like this guy. Look at any other OS that comes with sources: BSDx, Unix-5.2 (pre-SCO):
If 2 or more people payed for their systems, there is nothing preventing them from exhanging modified software privately among them: Not in Linux.
It would make Linux much more free if the GPL could distinguish between commercial sharks in suits and private sardines in pajamas.
>> Making your living doing something you love,
>> namely hacking/develpoing for linux, is
>> wonderful.
But that's just what puzzles me. If developing software is something you love, how DO you make a living doing it the Free Software way?
Suppose I'm not interested in working for other people and being beholden to their agenda. Suppose I'd rather be doing my own thing. And suppose that my skill is programming, and I've got a great idea for a new program. Suppose I'm also a young man in his 20's who'd like to build a future for himself, support a family, buy a house, and so on.
Given the above, my best bet would be to start my own business and sell my product, right? But if I do things the GNU way, then I CAN'T sell the product. Instead, I have a selection of useless alternatives. Sell distribution media? The Internet is rapidly making distribution media irrelevant. Sell support contracts? No, my software should be good enough to not require frequent support, and when it does, then support should be an automatic priveledge that you get when you buy my product in the first place. I want my users to feel secure that they will get help when they need it, and will not have to pay a premium for it. Have companies hire me to add specific new features? Again, that would make me beholden to someone else's agenda and timetable, and besides, there's no guarrantee there'd be enough such offers to keep me in business. Make money selling T-shirts and coffee mugs? I'd be better off working at Burget King.
So the question remains: How do I make a living if I am giving away the very thing all my energy is invested in?
If I am missing something here, would someone PLEASE point it out to me.
Do not let merchants in the
temple. For of them comes the
worship of Mammon and other
unclean things.
-- Anonymous Bosch
I have no desire to comment on the content of the above article, which I find highly dubious. However, I should like to voice my concerns about a respectable site posting articles in such deplorable English. Should you really be offering a forum to every uneducated halfwit who feels he has something worthwhile to say?
You need to wipe the sarcasm off your chin. If, by suits, you mean paid professionals, then yes, all points hold. However, most people use the term to mean beaurocratic Peter-Principled middle managers who don't have a full grasp of the technology their departments are working with. By this definition, every one of those products was developed by hackers/grokkers, NOT suits. Somehow I doubt Kernighan, Ritchie, et al., were worried about their clothes when they were up at 2:00 a.m. trying to figure out why the OS was going into an infinite loop when a program called the allocate_page kernel function. If developers (hardware and software) are going to have great demands placed on them, then other demands will be relaxed; they don't have time to worry about how they look.
As far as point number 3, the suits who make those endowments and grants may APPRECIATE what they support, but they don't usually CREATE what they appreciate. Any rich Joe can endow a Marc Chagall exhibit, but that doesn't mean he can create a Marc Chagall painting.
And point number 4 betrays your disdain for the people who DO put food on your table. Growing up, and now living in, farm country gives a person real respect for manual labor of any sort. Before you go saying "is that where you'd prefer to be?", you might want to consider how much more important they are than you. At least the farmer takes off his manure-laden boots when he comes into the house.
You just have to explain to them why Linux and Free Software in general make sense. And then maybe they'll understand that it's in their best interests to let the software remain Free.
Dont imagine for one second that IBM or any of the others give a rats ass about Linux. They are only here to make money. M O N E Y.
Actual possibility to make "MONEY" often doesn't matter much compared to politics. Making money is always a possibility, and a strategy that always maximizes a profit in the short term at the current moment is always suicidal, so companies want to have strategy that provides them stability and protection from various possible, or imaginable dangers. One such strategy is lock-in of customers, bullying competitors, building a monopoly. Another is co-operation with things that are stable by their nature.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes, there are shady people out there in corporate America but they are the exception rather than the rule. Big business does not generally tolerate them (too much risk, for one thing). Furthermore, I still don't understand why some of the people who post here hear the word "business" and automatically think "Microsoft." That is a rather simplistic view of the world, n'est ce pas?
Because in software business "shady people" from Microsoft, and ones of their type, have taken the control of almost everything. One either works at the company that dictates things, or for company that complies, and quality is of no importance compared to marketing, so they will do more for 1x2 inches place for a company logo on full-page Microsoft ad in a magazine than for any improvement to the product's quality.
This can be changed, and in some areas it's not so, but in general "software business strategy" *does* mean "being an obedient servant to Microsoft".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
"Card carrying C++ programmers"? definitely not. Alan is a C programmer first and foremost. The majority of Free Software programmers are C programmers. (And perl. And python. And and and. Just not C++.)
Posted by Digital Daemon:
I couldn't agree more.
Posted by That one guy...:
Well I appreciate what the "suits" can do. You cant have world domination by isolating and shoo'ing the business world. (There are a lot more machines in business than in schools).
How about a new term....
Geeksuit to describe the "professional" geek
Posted by OGL:
Can we finally ban the AC's now Rob?
-W.W.
MS won't die, but they'll be cut down to size, both by the DOJ and by the next recession (...see the air escape the gaping hole in the balloon...).
Ford's doing great, but it's not as big'n'bad as it once was; where once they hired thugs to beat up on unionizers, they now depend more and more on cheap labor (and, of course, techie smarts) - but when technology improvements and bad labor practices no longer produce sufficient gains, then what?
What about Rockefeller's monopoly? How are your oil stocks doing, now that that market has crashed yet again?
MS is not forever. It will be a victory merely if the computer-industry playing field becomes sane; I don't care if MS dies or not. A lot of nice folks are there in Redmond, believe it or not; I'd like them to keep working there - but for a Good Corporate Citizen rather than for an 800-pound octopus.
--
--
=8^
I have to agree - sure, Linux is stable. I'm a recent convert, and I'm impressed what one installation of S.u.S.E. 5.3 could teach me. But I don't think Linux is EASIER yet than Windows 95/98. However, I expect that the attention of "The Suits" is only going to stimulate the development of more usability.
:)
"Easier" is a very relative term. After all, do you mean "easy to use", or "easy to manage", "easy to install", etc... There are multiple facets of "easy".
Easy to use, Linux already has that if the machine is already setup. My mother could use WindowMaker and the GIMP just fine, but I'm not about to expect her to compile either of them, or even use a packing format with binaries.
What we need are easier methods of maintainment - the equivalent of an "installshield" or "active setup" in the winblows world. Packaging methods don't solve this problem, hell, in a lot of ways they're just a glorified ZIP file, which, hell, my mother can't even figure those out.
Definately something to think about.
-Erik-
>Their concern is, will we get beat out the door
because of the free software concept of the community?
Do you mean, will you not be able to sell a proprietary thing because the Linux community is so adamantly pro-free software? The answer is no. Applixware hasn't been burned to the ground, Opera's plan to port to Linux received positive feedback, etc. The Linux community is not monolithic; while there's a strong desire that the OS be free and open, many of us are willing to pay for useful closed-source applications.
If you're worried that open sourcers will just duplicate your idea, the answer is they will, and so will other closed-sourcers. The only way to survive selling proprietary software is to keep improving it, whether you're on Linux or not.
>How do you people who code for free survive?
Some are students, some work for companies like Netscape and Red Hat, some do open source stuff in their free time, and some help the open source effort by improving tools they need for their jobs (like Corel helping out with Wine.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Everyone is ignorant about something, but it's usually the people who are ignorant about nearly everything that do most of the flaming.
TedC
I basically agree with you, except that there is a non-business-related reason to spread free software beyond the hacker realm and into the real world: to afford our fellow citizens freedom, real freedom for its very own sake.
Information is power. If information and the tools to process it are equally accessible to all (effectively, free), well -- that could shake things up.
In addition to the suits invading our world, we are invading theirs. Or what do you think "Linux in the enterprise" means? The culture clash works both ways, and it's debatable who is invading whom. Even Linus Torvalds needs to work a 9-5 job for a suit to put food on the table- is it that the suits are adopting Linux, or is it that the hackers are bringing Linux with them to their day jobs?
Of course, that doesn't help the problem of the "suits" who don't know there's even a cadre of "techs" out there trying to do this.
Some suits sure do think about $$. Most however, don't place it as the *only* important thing.
A business requires a profit to stay alive. This is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2. This need is unfortunately often clouded by the greed of the few - not the many.
And even more unfortunately, those who don't understand simple economics think that profits == greed, when this isn't often the case at all (though it very well COULD be).
-Stu
It's only natural for one to want their favorite product to become more widely used, however people often lose sight of the actual effects of long term use...i.e. if they want to encourage at, they're going to have think like a "businessman".
There's nothing wrong with being a "suit", if you can keep perspective on the details while you "keep your eye on the prize" - what do you want? And do you know what the consequences of getting it are?
-Stu
No they don't. Hackers rule. And hackers created Junkbuster which lets you filter out the mind pollution created by the suits. It's a beautiful tool and hits the suits where it hurts.
--
Like the guy above says, there are plenty of auto-mount things out there. Anyway, if they were using, say, KDE then it's mounted when they double click on the 'Floppy disk' icon. Having to unmount before removing the disk is a Good Thing. The amount of times I've seen people taking the disk out while they still had the file open in Word, and then wondering why their files get screwed up....if they had clear directions on "Always unmount before removing the disk" it would make them be a bit more careful, I think...
IMHO, of course.
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Methinks your problem is not the library..it's RPM...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
So it's bad if someone takes money to do someone else's work? It's a "slippery slope" if Joe Hacker takes $10,000 to write a device driver for Linux? Why? What if Joe Hacker uses that $10,000 to live for a few months while he adds some super-neat feature he always wanted to implement?
hehehehehehehe. could not, well, I am lying: I could have said it better, but am feeling too lazy to try, long week at work, working for suits and feeling the burn of such.
The best thing about LyX (and KLyX) is that when you use the various buttons and things to insert an object, it will show in the status bar how this could have been done with the keyboard. After using it for a few hours and taking note of the status bar you can do most things without touching the mouse. This slowly teaches you proper TeX without having to go through huge manuals first.
I would rather keep my mind on the proof Im trying to communicate than the program I am using to do it.
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
Make the source independent on the jokes and
put the jokes into a seperate configuration file.
Then distribute the source with a non-offending
sample configuration.
IMHO, making offending jokes about former
co-workers isn't exaclty what i call good style,
anyways...
-- Jochen
Having experienced the September that Never Ended, and the AOL deluge, I don't have a lot of confidence.
:-)
I guess guys like me feel the need to always be on the edge. Linux just moved one more step away from the edge.
Linux is dead! Long like Linux!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I wish I lived in your world. Everyone around here is interested in one of three things:
1. Money
2. Avoiding work
3. Getting into each others' pants.
What Color is your Parachute is a very common book to see on people's desk where I work.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Linux would be dead if it weren't for the brilliance of the GPL.
Minix isn't exactly sweeping the nation.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
why hasn't gnu died yet then? gnu is pretty much universal and it survived without going corporate.
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
What a conscending article. But hey, if you are one of the great hackers in the world I guess you are allowed to be. Viva la kernel!
Thank you for re-iterating what I've been saying all along- both to the hackers (me and my peers' crowd) and the suits (my boss' crowd).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Alan won't agree with us 'cos he's a Brit and over here in the USA we're all cowboy-radicals as far as he's concerned, but the GNU movement is very heavily Libertarian.
:) software -- as Linux and *BSD show, it's better. Period. And that's market forces at work. If IBM, Compaq, et al. feel they can make money off this, fine. As Alan says, any "freedom deducted" product they sell can be redone Free.
ESR describes himself as a "gonzo libertarian." What does this mean? That the FSF group as a whole thinks that leaving software in the hands of big, proprietary business is as bad as leaving it in the hands of goverment. It's pretty clear MS has enough power to screw over anyone who uses or resells their software.
Being a Libertarian does _not_ mean being against capitalism. Libertarians are usually the most free-market minded people around. Not that commercial software should be illegal -- rather that you are sacraficing your freedom when you put the control of your computers into the hands of someone else, be it a corporation or the government. It's in your own interest to use Free (freedom, not beer
You're right tho. It's software, not religion. It means _nothing_ if we spend our time having religious flamewars and never _write_ the free software. RMS will use free software on the principle, but businesses who rely on their software won't use the Free stuff till its better -- capitalism again.
Oh, and once a business is comitted to Free software (which it can never make unFree if it's GPL) that business has a simple vested interest in improving the software -- it's good for the bottom line to employ people like Don Becker, Alan and Linus.
I don't see at all how it's controlled by those "making money from it". Anyone who wants can modify the Linux kernel or GNU OS. Even if you don't get your changes accepted by Linus, you're welcome to them as long as you abide by GPL. If a company needs functionality, it can add it, but control remains Free. No one can screw the user over. And that's the point.
Free software is a long-term investment. Writing your code and setting it free means that some other programmer out there is going to be able to learn from it, and in turn release what he learned 'into the wild' to seed other learning and development.
Free software makes software *better*. Better software makes better businesses. Better businesses make more money. But this is long-term thinking, and usually suits are worried about beating the Street this quarter, not a bunch of nebulous, can't-prove-it, head-in-the-clouds bullshit.
It is that kind of short-term thinking that will hurt Linux and free software the most. Free software is about ten or twenty years from now, not next quarter.
Teaching next-quarter guys to think in terms that long will be very difficult -- and in many cases, impossible.
Firstly, I've just found 20 pence in my washing machine. Such ecstacy! 25% of fizzy water in my local pub!
Secondly, call me a mad hippy, but this free software meets the suits phenomenon could have wider, positive social implications, rather than negative ones on Linux etc.
Just think of the possibilities as the blinkered, prejudiced igroant masses that make up capitalist society have their eyes opened!
There will be a positive step-change in the state of western society, a dramatic advance over night.
Well, that's what the Great Unwashed will experience.
Our economies will mushroom, productivity will boom, technology will leap forward.
We'll all be richer in many ways.
Time for my pills.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Cor blimey!
Stike a light!
Knees up muvver brown. knees up muvver brown...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
did your system happen to work before the new lib came out? well if it did, then why are you upgrading? If you don't developers who are working for free to improve the software that you use, then stop using the software, and go use something else that only get upgraded once a year, and that you have to live with all the bugs and lack of features till the next release that you have to pay through your nose to afford.
so, take a hint. no one is forcing you to use better software.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Ey yie yie, where to begin.
Like a great number of extremely clueful right-wing North Americans, you have identified the twin sources of all that is evil. These are of course, Liberals and The Government.
I'm not going to try to argue with you; you've displayed all the acumen of a 14-year old Rush Limbaugh fan. I will point out that, last time I checked, Republicans seemed to like the government just fine. As long as it was handing out tax breaks and public land to wealthy corporations, instead of money to individuals in need, of course.
I won't debate the merits of social programs. But your virtuous Republicans are as much in favour of them as is Barney Frank. The only disagreement is who should get the money.
Oh, and there's an alternative to governments. We can go there any time we want to. Check out Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, first -- you may miss government when it's gone.
I would put my secretary on linux... with WordPerfect and a postscript printer... why not? It won't crash like Windows 95... I'd just set it up for him/her once and never give him/her root access to screw up the machine with. Perfect!
Think free speech not free beer!
Examine the GPL... there is nothing that says you can't charge for your software... just that you must make the source available to people who have the binaries.
There is no reason to GPL if you're not using anyone else's GPL'ed code, except to be nice and contribute to the free software world.
If you think your code will be ripped off and resold because it's something that the average Joe Blow would want, then don't GPL... But if it's, for example, software for blind real estate agents... who cares if you have to give them source if they ask? They most likely won't ask or even care.
Remember, you CAN charge as much as you can get away with, and you don't have to give your source code to anyone who doesn't cough up the dough for the binaries.
Best of luck!
.
Man... there's all kinds of auto mounting techniques.
And telneting into your Mom's computer is generally easier than trying to explain things over the phone.
.
And this is just RedHat being nice... technically, they don't HAVE to let anyone download the distro for free. They DO have to let anyone who bought the distro download the source code to any GPL'ed RPMs though... or include it or send it to them if they have no net connection. (What fun UNIX would be without a net connection, I don't know ;)
.
Cox's writing was painful to read. Stick with code, my friend; your writing style is quite poor. Good point, though. I, too, find myself trying to explain the merits of open source to the corporate "suits." It must be done gently, and with GREAT care. If open source software falls short of the suits' expectations, it will be more difficult to convince those in power to adopt it again.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
In suit-world, the term "Business model" scares the heeby-jeebies out of me. Especially since the PC "business model" is "trending" toward the cell-phone "business model."
[enough with the quotes already]
Why should you care? Money and information.
Cell phone users have money, and they regularly give it away to pay off their outrageous cell phone bills. Computer users have money, and they usually pay the outrageous MS tax.
What suits want in addition to your money is your information. They'll offer you free email service so that they can have your information; hell, they'll sell you a computer if they can have your information and shove their information down your throat.
We MUST make certain Linux stays free, and is a success. This might show the suits that the industry is not trending toward the cell phone model. We must show that that we will pay for the tangible hardware, but we'll make our own software and share it. And you can have my information when you pry it from my cold, dead, encrypted filesystem.
We need to marry the suits and hackers to make the world a better place. Hackers are great at making software but are poor at hardware and enlightening the rest of the world.
Suits can HELP.
They can pay us to write "FREE" code.
They can give us access to fun hardware.
They can provide the SERVICES that the rest of the world needs.
Many business don't need great software they need great services, implimentation plans, defaults, promisses of emotional security and support.
Hackers do a horrible job of providing this.
Let the suits provide services for hackers software, let them add back to the community. But let them come to the hacker community on our terms. Educate and assimilate. There is nothing wrong with them trying to make some money as long as they do it appropriatly. Sometimes you have the money and not the skill, hire someone with the skill, lots of software is service, and if people want to pay to have other people configure their systems, tell them how to do it, or just talk on the phone GREAT!
Suits will bring propriatary software. Just don't let them do anything core to the Network or System. Propriatary applications are fine, they can be excellent inspiration for another "FREE" project.
The world moves because we will it. Keep hacking, keep having fun and the world will be a better place. We like to get money for toys, housing, and food (except RMS who seems to consider poverty saintly). Those people who want our skills should pay, and in our free time we can hack. Just make sure that you get the FREE time!
"His[Mankind's] heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque." -Satan "Letters From Earth" Mar
So the Great Glorious Republicans will save us all then, right? Yawn. I almost took you seriously. But then again, you're nothing but an AC. I have no problem looking down on you for that only.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
This is beginning to degrade into ridiculous paranoia.
Its an operating system dammit. If you can't handle users who actually work for a living, go use OpenBSD.
First off, some of us Brits are libertarians too. Some even have big Ls. And there's quite a healthy anarchist contingent over here, too. I think socialism is dead, but principally because nobody believes any more in the concept of a large benificent authority figure. (The final death of feudalism perhaps? ;> )
;> Give me a hearing, though. Yes, I know that capitalism is built upon the concept of a free market - but over time, capital tends to centralise, and the larger a company becomes, the easier it is for that company to extinguish all competition. This pattern is ancient. And a lack of competition is the antithesis of a free market; it could be said that the whole purpose of capitalism is to destroy the very mechanism which made it possible. (Worse still is the old boys' club that can be found in any board of directors anywhere in the world; there's no meritocracy at the top - too many people would be out on their ears if there were. But that's just a moan.)
:> The big capital investment in software is writing the stuff initially. M$ write "sardine software". [1] But free software is generally written to address a need, not to generate sales, and it's not normally written on a commercial basis. And even if it is, it no longer represents capital assets in quite the way M$ source does. Which means that nobody can possibly dominate any part of the supply chain, but especially that nobody can dominate the crucial one - supply of raw materials. In essence, in software we can have a free market without capitalistic structures evolving - because there's no longer any need for them.
;>
Secondly, I would tend to draw a distinction between the free market and capitalism. That probably sounds strange, and will get people wondering loudly in public if I have a clue.
How does this relate to 'free software'? Well, it's a demonstration of how the tendency for capital to centralise can have the rug pulled from under it completely.
Now we just have to figure out how to do the same with bread, and we'll all be happy.
--
A warehousing corporation got hold of some sardines for 2p/kg. He sold them to a holding company for 3p/kg, which then sold the sardines on to a large food distribution agency for 5p/kg. This food agency approached a supermarket asking for 8p/kg. The supermarket buyer took a tin home and sampled them, but that night was taken violently ill with ptomaine poisoning. So, when he got back to work, he traced the sardines back to the warehousing corporation, and rang the MD up to complain.
;> )
"Those fish are bad! People can't possibly eat them," he said.
"What do you mean, eat them?" replied the MD. "Those fish weren't for eating. They were for selling."
Hence "sardine software".
(And this, children, is why it's important to proofread your posts.
--
linuxexpo.com != Linux Expo?
What's he talking about?
Many of the same things I have been stating here over the past several months. Perhaps some of it will sink in since it comes from someone with a bit more popularity/recognition than I obviously have.
Being a suit is not a capital offence. Being an idiot though is...
Alan is right, idiots shall die out sooner or later. The problem is how long it will take and will *BSD and Linux survive over this... We have an example of an idiotic (suit) system being a market leader so this is indeed a reasonable suspicion...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Can you read man?
;-)
Read it again. Alan is not talking about money payed for doing kernel. He is talking about people with money who wish to run Linux and have been able to afford the iron which is worth a lot of money.
In other words get yourself an Origin if you can (I can't
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Congratulations from a man that wears a suit at work (sometimes).
;-)
This is worth to be posted on segfault
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Dear dumb troll,
You got it wrong. OSS is not software, it is a point of view on the world. It is something the humanity has known since Platon and Aristhotel. It is:
IDEAS DO NOT GROW IN CAGES
And the fact that software is what gives it wings is just late 20th sentury specifics. In ancient greece it was philosophy...
So, dear dumb idiotic troll I would really recommend you to go back into high school and learn a little bit more about how civilizations are developed.
Best regards,
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
1. Most of the Linux community is paid or will be paid. The mere difference is that they are being paid or shall be paid not for what they write, but for what they do with the stuff they write.
2. Every UCB student, MIT student, etc has to learn how to do stuff. Go and learn kernel programming with M$ if you can... Or design a market analysis system using MSWord+Excel
Also the price per student capita using free and "free" systems is much lower so it is simple economical/educational common sense.
3. You are correct that Linux/*BSD and friends are payed indirectly. You are wrong about the rest - they give a reasonable economical leverage in all small or very large environments. And this is common sense (or money if you prefer to call it this way).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Yo! Yet another grave case of dragging communism etc... where it doesn't belong.
Reminds me of Communist newspapers. Anything they don't like, they tie it to capitalist oppression.
Not bad work for an epsilon, eh? But that really should have been Aldous Huxley, right? And if you ever look carefully at their writings, you will find that RMS, Linus, ESR manage to write compelling, well written prose to convey their philosophy, unlike the traditional stereotype of geeks/hackers/whatever. Now as to Gates having any programming skills...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I think you are completely correct. Having moved from a support role to a more "suit" role, I think that the best thing "suits" can provide to linux groups are toys and a good work enviroment. Linux people love toys and it is the job of the suits to give them these. A good, fun work enviroment, lots of room to let employees work whenever they want to from 9am-5pm or 6pm-2am, as long as they get their job done. Give them boxes on the net to host their own sites and have people with shell accounts. The people who should be treated the best are the engineers and developers, without them the sales guys have nothing to sell, or something that isn't good. So what if the sales guys make more money, sometimes, than the engineers. The engineers are getting payed pretty well also, and they dont have to directly deal with customers and kiss ass so much. I have become friends with many linux type people, yes the suit world also refers to linux people the same way linux people refer to suits. Some of these guys have turned into really good friends and really great when I have a question. Both worlds can co-exist and both worlds can profit from it.
I just wish my company had COMPLETE linux support. Well its something to push for.
Current whois record for linuxexpo.com: Registrant: IDG World Expo (LINUXEXPO2-DOM) 3 Speen St. Suite 302 Framingham, MA 01701 US Domain Name: LINUXEXPO.COM Administrative Contact: Strader, Charles (CS1290) cstrader@ONECHOICE.COM (617)437-7668 (FAX) (617)437-7697 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Hostmaster Role Account (DS15-ORG) dns@DIGEX.NET 301.847.5000 Fax- 301.847.5215 Billing Contact: Benson, Juliana (JB21096) juliana_benson@IDG.COM 508-424-4832 Record last updated on 30-Sep-98. Database last updated on 3-Mar-99 13:47:37 EST. Domain servers in listed order: NS.DIGEX.NET 164.109.1.3 NS2.DIGEX.NET 164.109.10.23 ***** End of paste *** However, diffrent people own linuxexpo.net. IDG are poseing as linux people. Just another in the series of stealing-your-domain people. I'm sick of hearing about name thievs. ( I'm not at all complaining about the linux.com domain, I think that was handled very well! )
Some of us are old enough to remember when Unix ...
(remember Unix?) V7 was an academic plaything
and then the first commercial license was
negotiated. And then the first commercial product
came out.
And then Uniforum, a trade show/trade organization
for suits was born, and tried to steal the stage
from Usenix, the (traditional) user's group.
A lot of lessons were learned in that era; perhaps
we can avoid learning them again, the hard way.
First of all, I didn't see that what he wrote constituted an attack on Alan. He merely acknowledged that Alan, as a major kernel developer, would know what he was talking about when he says that money is influencing kernel development more and more.
Second, what do you mean, What did you do for Linux today? I'm sorry, but not everyone in the Linux community is a programmer. Obviously they're not capable of helping the community in the way that you require. Is it not good enough for these people to help spread awareness and use of the operating system? I have several images at the bottom of my webpage [www.adirondack-park.net] that tell visitors that my site is running Linux and Apache. Who knows, maybe a few people have clicked the links and have themselves gone on to install Linux. Everyone on my floor at college knows about the "guy down the hall with the 100-day uptime." And a lot of people, after rebooting their Windows 9x machines several times a day, install Linux just for the stability. Does this count to you as helping the community? I hope so. So before you go flaming somebody just because they're not a programmer, remember, everyone has their role.
---
Greg Smith
ipfwadm@adirondack-park.net
http://www.adirondack-park.net/
From what I have seen, Alan would be the successor to Linus. This was bounced around linux-kernel around November, and there wasn't any opposition to Alan taking over.
--
Free software methods are both a social reform and a better development method. Really.
For some people, it may be both. But, there are loads of people who want the better development without the ideology of the likes of RMS.
One doesn't have to believe that "Information wants to be free" to use, develop, or sell free software.
I think his point was that by abandoning something when it becomes popular you are just as much on the bandwagon as those who only start paying attention when something becomes popular. This attitude is very often found in music, "I used to like them until they got popular." Listen to "Know it all" by Lagwagon if you really want to understand my point.
-matt
If you haven't noticed, we all live in the same world. If everyone else uses Win*, then unless you live in a bubble, you're going to have to deal with it. I've had to deal with it more than I want to (i.e. at all) because it's so common. I've had problems interoperating in real-life environments because of all the proprietary software. I hate it. Maybe you can live in a crystal bubble. I want open source support for the latest hardware. That's not going to happen in a binary-only paradigm. I want lots of open source software, that's not going to happen with only 5 people working on it. I want to contribute open source software (I've done a bit of that already) and get a dozen people contributing stuff that I wouldn't have thought of or couldn't have done. that's not going to happen with 3 people using their open source OS and everyone else on binary.
If you say screw them, you might as well say screw yourself. The free software boat has to be major and world recognized, or it's always going to be small and contracted. That is sort of self-evident. How do you think that it's going to be big if almost noone uses it?
Also, why are the non-techs sub-human? I bet that you don't know the intricate workings of mechanics and what's the best type of car to get from a technical point of view. So you live your life and make the best decisions that you can within what information that you have. Would you rather that mechanics said "Screw you." because you aren't a mechanic, or helped you by educating you?
Remember, we all live on the same world. If we let it go to hell, we're going to have to live in that hell. What are you going to do if the next CPU is proprietary and gcc doesn't support it? What are you going to do when your CPU dies (and it probably will), or your motherboard dies, or what have you? Are you going to go to antique shops to get replacements?
The world doesn't stay the same if you leave it alone. Most of the time it gets worse. If you want things to get better, you have to keep working at them. To keep something the same, you have to continually improve it. Stagnation is death. Do you really want Linux and BSD and hurd to stagnate to death?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
It's quite simple: so that Ma Bill and Apple don't control anything anymore. I don't want to live in a world dominated by Bill Gatus of Borg. If Linux et al. remain niches for the rest of eternity, there's a good chance that that is what we'll face. As I put it to a friend of mine: would you rather help your parents fix their win95 computer, or keep their Linux computer working?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Actually, there is a hacker culture, though it is loose. Remember hacker != linux. Linux was at least partially made by hackers. It doesn't necessarily make hackers.
And the distinction between suits and hackers is quite real. Try going to a head of administration and explaining the technical intricacies of a particular program. If he's good he'll want a working understanding of it, and he may even be interested. But he's not going to be fascinated by it, and he's not going to want to work on it. (with, of course, exceptions, as there are to every rule.)
That's good. Different people for different jobs. Each to his own, etc. But people are different. And there are groups of different people who are similar. Hackers are one of them. Read Eric S. Raymond's howto on being a hacker (I don't have the URL handy). That's a specific group that does, in fact, exist, though loosely.
So do PHBs. So do "suits". As Alan said, being a "suit" isn't a degrading term, it's a descriptive one. It's good that "suits" exist. Many of them are good people, and they contribute a lot to the world. Some of them, just like some of every group aren't, and they have a net detrimental effect on the world. This is just life.
It doesn't do anyone any good to pretend that everyone's the same, or that noone has anything in common. There are plenty of people who have hacking in common. And there are plenty of people involved in business who aren't hackers. Those are, generally speaking, the "suits". Are you going to deny that these groups exist?
Are you going to deny that the members of each group will tend to know more about the main focuses of their lives, which tend to be different?
I do object, as I think that you do, to the term "suit" as a degrading term. My father is a "suit" (though he isn't a manager), and he's a good man. However, there is a difference between him and me, and you can't get rid of that fact. Knowing our differences and embracing each other in light of those differences is what makes the world a better place.
If we don't understand and accept each other's differences, you just get prejudice against groups. If you don't understand why most people aren't going to be that technically oriented and that you should help them, you'll just end up thinking that they're stupid and possibly sub-human.
As long as you use stereotypes as a guide to what you shouldn't expect, i.e. if someone isn't a mechanic, you shouldn't expect them to know the fundamentals of mechanics. So don't get angry at them for not knowing what they have no reason to know. That's the useful side of prejudice, coming at something with toleration to begin with.
Of course, learn the truth and specifics of whatever situation you are in as quickly as possible. Doing without expectations is impractical, so it's best to have the most appropriate expectations that you can. This way we all get along the best.
Of course, never use a stereotype as a limitation. A stereotype should be used to not get annoyed with someone for spouting nonsense when they have no reason to know the truth. It should never be used to deny someone something, e.g. "you wouldn't understand that, you're just a kid."
Learn about each other. Come to know what to expect from each other so that we can get along best. Then learn specifically about each other when we get the chance.
If you get it wrong and a manager is a hacker too, then you've just lost some time being more patient with someone than you had to be. It's always better to make sure that someone understands the definitions of the words that you use and find out that they already knew (or knew better than you did), then to just blow right by them and have communicated nothing useful.
It's all about how to get along better. that's the spirit that I saw in Alan's post. How to get along better and more pleasantly.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
n'est-ce pas
Sorry to be a stickler, but if I'm not allowed to call people on things like "it's" and "they're" (and, it seems, almost anything with an apostrophe), then I can at least claim that this is a valid point.
First I am not talking about stability in the sense that Linux isn't stable, I am talking stability as in to the libraries.
I currently own a libc system, and now, almost a year later most newer software will not compile on it so it kind of bums me out adn yes I need to upgrade. But then gtk 1.2 comes out and it is not totaly compatable with 1.0, so now I have to have 1.0 and 1.2 till all the programs I have compile with 1.2. This is the instability that I am talking about. Maybe all these 'suits' will bring a sort of necessary 'uniformity' to Linux, wher eit will not matter what distro I have I'll be able to install an rpm from RH on SUSE or anywhere (currently that is not completely possible as there are often dep problems) or Caldera.
united against M$ we stand divided we will fall.
These suits will bring new hardware, and who knows maysome day I'll be able to buy ANY video card or sound card or computer card and have Linux drivers included with it in both source and binary form.
I think that all this development is great under linux, but I wish that I woudl not have to upgrade my system every 3 months it seems to run a new program.
These suits are going to want a stable lib to build on weather they develop there own or use an existing one..and end users will want one too....
Only 'flamers' flame!
New features are great yes, but backward compatability is also very important.
You want more companies to develop for Liniux right? You want any video/computer card to work on Linux right?
Well I am a developer and if I develop something on gtk 1.0 it should still compile with 1.2 Gtk 1.2 should be an extension of 1.0 not a differnt library. Go read the change log form 1.0 to 1.2 they deleted and rename functions. The same with glibc2.
Now my 1.0 program will not work with 1.2 cause I use "gtk_label_set" and it has changed to "gtk_label_set_text"
where is the improvement there? they have made the name longer? what is the logic there?
If this keeps up Linux WILL be dumped by the suits.
There also was no documentation on the best way to upgrade from 1.0 to 1.2.
It is more than an inconvience when a user has to blow away his system or spend all night on something to get his system back in running shape.
If I wanted to do that everytime I installed a program I'd still be using windows....
Do you think that 'suits' will put up with that for to long? Do you think hardware venders will either. Or users?
Only 'flamers' flame!
GNU, BSD its not about handouts.
Why do you supose so many people spend there time writing Linux/applications for Linux? They aint all Richard Stallman. Infact if Linux was just about Linuxs and Richard then we would be nowhere.
Stallman has an ideal, and hes willing to sacrifce a cosy life for it, i wish more of us were like that.
Linux/*BSD are more of a community than anything else. It works, infact even relies on the good nature of the community members. I`m not totally against the suits, they have some good (somewhere) but they need to realises that it is them that have to addapt to the situation. They are trying to rewrite the community, its not going to happen, the sooner they realise this the better.
True we all need to eat, its a shame the world is built upon greed that makes money esentuial. But Linux isnt built on that. And if the day ever comes that greed runs Linux the way it runs the "Windows world" and the real world itself is the day the community will go elsewhere.
Sure some people use these operating systems for price and techincal merits, but let us not forget the underlying principles that brings these about.
Linux is Freedom, the suits cant take that.
Scott Aaron Bamford (vpp) "We`re giving you the chance to skrew it up in a whole new and exciting way" sab@clara.net
I'm afraid to say it, but I don't think we've seen anything yet. This is just the beginning of a deluge.
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
How can you taste freedom and not want others to be free? Maybe if enough people become comfortable with free software, we will finally see a viable alternative to capitalism start to develop.
I have read the above article and the first comment.
I have been using Linux for a year, NOT at work, but at home. And Hey, I am not a computer hacker, nor will I be any time soon. AM I A HOME USER, a REAL ONE? Yep, and also a student who uses Mathematica and Numerical Recipes in C.
Ok, let's get back to the suit thing.
Did you know some people actually sell FTP software for 90US$?
Did you know Office costs around 400$ Canadian!
Or did you know Windows98 costs 150$CAN for an upgrade!
This is the land from where these people come!
There are actually people who buy screensavers!
Ok AfterDrak is cool but does it deserve 30-40$CAN!, when RH Linux cost me 50$? NO!
I have been using Linux and Windows for a year now. I had used Win3.1 before, and dos! And believe me, THERE are strange things out there!
So what is the problem? People don't know, and we are expecting them to believe that for 100$ they can get an OS, an Office suite, ftp, telnet, ftp server, web server, netscape, C/C++, Fortran compilers, and text editors, plus LOADS of SCREENSAVERS!
Add to that GIMP, xv, XPAINT, etc... and all you need is a X fax and telephony software (The software exist but no nice X or gnome or Kde interface I know of) to be more than loaded as a starter!
It's hard to believe that you have been screwed for a long time! That people robbed you for all that time!
The natural reaction is to say. IMPOSSIBLE! This Linux thing must be total crap to sell at 1/100 price, in its most expensive form, of what I had to pay.
It's like when I bought My P166MMX for 2000$ and six month later I saw it was sold at 1100$.
The only solution is to ask them gently if they would like to see it work! Show them, and offer them your shoulder so they could weep to their heart content before filing a class suit against Microsoft et al.
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
In my opinion, there is nothing to worry about. There is enough code out there that is already under the GPL or other such license to guarantee that it remains free. There will always be people out there who will start new projects and base them on similar licenses.
I promote Linux to as many people as possible. In a number of cases I have found it hard to convince the 'corporate' types. I am typing this on a Windows NT computer at work because I am forced to use it.
As the 'suits' become more familiar with Linux, then I'll have a better chance at getting permission to run it at work. This can only be a good thing. I for one can't wait for corporate acceptance of Linux.
Sure, I'll probably be forced to run some proprietary apps, but I can also run my GPLed apps along side them. This will at least put me in a better position to be able to find GPL replacements for the proprietary software and promote them around the office (and perhaps with more success since GPLed apps won't be frowned upon as much now that they are accepted).
I can't see Linux falling because of corporate acceptance, there is too much heart and soul behind it.
But what if Linux does end up being misguided in the future? Well we'd still have a better OS than what MS has provided us with, and most importantly, there will always be alternatives. GNU Hurd and FreeBSD for example.
Free software will live forever!
I will take it to heart.
But someone misspelled "A Brave GNU World" in the title.
Yo...you have a point. Most businesses *do not* want profit. Profit is taxable, thus bad. However, they usually want enough to reinvest into their business and to get the most out of what they invest in.
But it's a bit of the greed of the few who muck things up. They want personal gain that comes from the net profits, but most businesses do not operate that way. They'd lose a lot to taxes in the long run.
Um, try to explain mounting a CD-ROM or floppy for access. Until that one little simple function is taken care of, too many people are not going to be productive on Linux. Most of us, we're spoiled because we're geeks.
At one point, a few months ago, I was going to put RH5.2 on my mother machine to get rid of her Windoze problems...but I stopped and thought, "She already bugs me enough with Windows, but at least she can surf, listen to her CD's and handles most installations herself." Now, I would still be stuck at my parents place if I had done that. True, her machine would run a *lot* better and stable, but my sanity would not....
Yes, but remember that linux has a user base that has doubled every year, and this is without any sort of mass marketing and publicity (until now). "Suits" are there to sell an inferior product at a high price to an uneducated buyer. Linux is a product that sells itself.
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
remember this: you can make money from FREE software! You can download redhat free over the net, but they still sell many many copies of the software in that little red white and blue box. Also, the entire idea behind free software is to give the software away, then charge for the hundreds of other things that go along with it (tech support, books, seminars, etc). Of course, this only works with software designed for the public, while it could be adapted for designed for a specific customer or business.
Just becuase a business supports free software doesn't mean that they have to live in poverty. It can make money.
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Don't worry about writing software for free because we're all working for almost free anyways. Programmers make about 0.1 % to 25 % of what the boss makes today, we pay more taxes on that and we don't get to keep what we wrote. If you want cash, here's how I retired:o rmation.html
http://members.xoom.com/mistwalker/FinancialInf
In the meantime, free software is doing more to destroy the suits than anything else in the world today, what other force could make M$' share price go down? I haven't payed for software in a year, am never going to and am going to buy a cheap computer without the M$ tax in about a month. So long suits.
Vive le Linux libre!
Minix also isn't exactly as technically worthy as Linux.
But I agree that a large component of Linux's success is due to the GPL.
On the other hand, don't make the mistake of assuming that just because the GPL got it this far, it will carry it forever. It may prolong Linux's life, but if Linux does not get any mainstream, commercial, "suit" support, it will die.
As surely as all the "alternative" OS's that came before it have.
Linux has only been around for 8 years. In a real sense (outside of Linus' bedroom), less even than that. It is still very young.
The source code to ITS was available, yet the system itself is long gone (realistically).
I repeat: Open Source will not carry Linux forever.
Sooner or later, we need the support from the suits. Not a fun prospect, but one that must be faced.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
ITS was open source. It is now dead.
Linux has not died because it hasn't had the chance to; it's only been around a couple of years.
When it gets obsolete, as it will, all the free code in the world will not save it.
A few generations, a few upgrades, perhaps.
But sooner or later, it will surely die.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/h acker-howto.html
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Whoa, whoa, cool it, dude!
I think he was responding to the first AC, not you.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
What good is free software if it can't be exploited? Are we supposed to display the code in a museum and admire it? Like it or not, the primary purpose of most software is to help people get work done.
Also, what do you mean by "My Free Software"? From what I've seen, the people who actually do most of the development on open source projects aren't complaining about the increasing corporate interest in Linux. Especially when those corporations are willing to donate code (like IBM with the Apache project).
Suits and hackers don't have to be enemies. If they make money off of your code but the code remains open, why do you care? Besides, they're probably making money by selling support, which is a lot more expensive to provide than the original code is. And if they have a decent relationship with you, you can probably score a piece of the profit. Meanwhile, free software flourishes and all the children join hands in peace and love.
The suits do not mix in, it is obvious how they stand out. When they realize that the profit margins will not support their new BMW monthly payment requirement, many will back out, kiss MS's mighty butt and drive away, soulless, shallow, but happy.
An acquantence of mine told me that, in business, boil things down to money to make a point.
Linux does make good financial sense on many (but not all) levels. Would I reccomend placing a secretary on Linux? No. But if my company is going to set up a web server, I can grab a copy of Linux and an old unused system and have it up cheap. Are we going to need something highly customized - Open Source makes it easier ahd cheaper.
The secret of Linux some of the Suits haven't gotten is this - in the right situation it saves time and money and gives more back than many other products.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I have to agree - sure, Linux is stable. I'm a recent convert, and I'm impressed what one installation of S.u.S.E. 5.3 could teach me. But I don't think Linux is EASIER yet than Windows 95/98. However, I expect that the attention of "The Suits" is only going to stimulate the development of more usability.
It's open source - it can evolve quickly. my bet is that the attention of the Suits is going to mean some massive and fast leaps in usability and idiot-proofing very quickly. That, for Linux, I feel is very good.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Richard Stallman might be a hippie but he is not a panhandler. Since their earliest days the FSF have sold media distributions of their software and printed documentation for those who wanted it.
You should visit their web site and read the _facts_.
Stallman's outspoken opinions make some people uncomfortable but he is mroe of a pragmatist than the press give him credit for. Don't fall for the FUD.
Hey wasn't Unix invented at AT&T, arguably the biggest bunch of monopolistic "suits" ever (or are you too young to remember what the phone company was like before 1980)? They were even worse than MS today!! ). If you want to keep it hard so no one else can use it, your no better than Uncle Bill keeping it secret so no one can fix/replace it...you're afraid to lose the POWER this "secret" Linux/Unix knowledge gives you over the regular folks out there. Don't they deserve to be freed from the MS yolk? Don't they deserve the benefits of OSS, like you? Apparently your self-imposed "alternative hacker" "cool" lifestyle is more important than REAL FREEDOM for everybody.
The beauty about Linux and Open Source in general is that it can be taken over by anyone - "suits" OR techno-snobs ("I'm-better-than-you-cuz-I-use-the-command-line"
Man I've read a lot of posting from "Amish of the Internet" with the "anything but a GUI/Windows" attitude on this site. If the Linux community is like you geeks (and I know it isn't!) it deserves to die out. I want Linux to be a REAL alternative to MS Windows, to get some REAL competition back into the market, to get some REAL quality stuff made out there. And there are some of us here who are going to do it, with a nice GUI interface, that's easy to install and administer and has lots of FREE (or very affordable) OSS software that runs on it. Yeah, lets make it so everyone can be productive and USE software on Linux(not just "hack" it). A bunch of us here are going to do it and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it (after all it is Open source GNU/GPL!)
We're just inviting you along for the ride....
if you had your way, we'd all still be building computers in our garages instead of buying great hardware at pretty cheap prices (I'm sure your too young to remember the '70's - thanks IBM!!!!(they are the suits that looked into a hobby community and created and industry)).
Grow up. Some of us wear suits cuz we HAVE to, not cuz we WANT to...And I still listen to music cuz I like it, not cuz its "alternative" or "cool" or popular.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
As I am NOT an American (and actually quite proud of that fact) I look at tripe like this and just shake my head. Its people with your attitude that keep intelligent people out of the US (if anyone was truly a "liberal" or as we like to say in the Great White (because of the snow and nothing else pin head) North, "left-wing", the LAST place they would go to is America). It's the governemt...Linux is a Communist conspiracy!...
.....
buddy wake up! People like you voted for the NAZI's because they had "good ideas" (they blamed their problems ond sombody else, too).
This discussion is about "hackers" and "suits" (whatever those terms really mean) and how we can all get along and promote Linux/Open Source Software as an alternative kind of market/economy (unrestrained capitalism is just as bad as totalitarian communism), one that's fair to everyone who works in it and make quality products for people to consume (as opposed to MS...). One that's free, but not so "free" that people are exploited or left out(since that's not really freedom, now is it? Wait a minute, where have I heard this idea before? oh yeah! John Locke! Wasn't he a commie?). Welcome the "suits" and business in - but not the same old business with the same old practices - be brave and invent something new.
I'd rather live in country run by "female public servants", pay high taxes but have good roads, free healthcare and safe streets than in ANY country where you could be taken even remotely seriously. (Hey, I already do!)
By the way, I hope you don't have access to diesel fuel, fertilizer and a Ryder truck
Love, a Schlocky Nieghbour to the North
(like you could find it on a map anyway)
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Well aren't YOU cool. Wasn't open source created so that things couldn't be kept proprietory and secret? Sound like you'd be quite happy to keep Linux out of the hands of anyone who isn't an engineer or geek. Try reading the GPL again.
I suppose anyone who can't speak English is also a -excuse me- "Retard"? (after all they must be damn near neanderthal if they can't under stand a "simple" OS like UNIX or Linux!).
Guess what? A lot more people than geeks like you use computers and alot of them like to "point and drool" as you so elegantly put it. Isn't OSS about having a CHOICE? Don't you rant on here so we (that is all humans, not just the ones with pocket protectors) can have a CHOICE other than MS? If you keep Linux as your little secret, hard to understand and install system that only you know how to use, isn't that just going to keep MS on top of the heap? If you want to beat MS, then Linux must be for everyone, including kids, clerks, offices workers, parapaligics, blacks, hispanics, women and,yes, even people who are mentally challenged (like Downs Syndrome, Autism etc)? Don't they deserve tho have a CHOICE in the type of OS and software they use, aquire or (gulp) buy? Or is that privelige reserved for Techno-Snobs like you?
Maybe if you made a system that had BOTH a GUI and command line interface so you could CHOOSE which one you wanted to use, and it was stable (as we know Linux is) and easy to use, you might not get those "Morons" calling you at the help desk...no one would have to call you!
But I guess then you would have no one to belittle in order to make you feel big and important and powerful. You were picked on quite a bit in high school, weren't you?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
47 years?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
47 years?
...
PS Pretty gutsy talk for someone who won't sign
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
"Suits do not generally think long term..."- I've added this quote to a notebook I keep next to my PC. The notebook has a label on the cover that says "Inane Stereotypes I Have Read on Slashdot." I'm running out of paper, by the way...
I would counter your statement and point out that some of the most successful and admired companies in the western world have been in existence for very long periods of time. Think of Ford, Procter and Gamble, General Electric, and Wells Fargo. All four have operated in their respective industries for close to or above 100 years and continue to offer products in the same categories on which they were founded. The first three companies I listed are the #1 most respected businesses in their industries (according to Fortune magazine's "Most Admired Companies") while the last is in the top ten. To summarize, business people seem to respect those companies that exemplify long term thinking over those that don't.
If you have a problem with "short term thinking," it should probably be directed toward the technology/Internet industry and the million "dot com" businesses it has spawned. The hordes of techies running around the bay area with half-baked business plans in their back pockets and visions of IPOs dancing through their heads are as guilty as anyone for the condition you describe. Your problem is NOT, I should think, with the business world and "suits" in general.
That's a really interesting point of view but unfortunately its wrong. Yes, it's true American businesses are motivated in part by the need to build the greatest wealth for their shareholders. At the same time, though, the professional business class knows that the sale of bad products at unfair prices does not make for sustainable profits or wealth. This means that if they are to succeed as businesses, they should offer what the market (ie: you) wants at a price it is willing to pay.
Businesses that "don't care what the customer needs" are businesses that file for bankruptcy before the end of their first year of operations. They just don't survive (it's almost like evolution). If you ask any brand manager at a major company what their job really is, they will tell you something similar to the following: "my job is to deliver to the customer the best possible product at a fair price." If you hook them up to a lie detector, you will see that they are really telling you what they believe. Why do you think that many millions are spent on market research each year?
Yes, there are shady people out there in corporate America but they are the exception rather than the rule. Big business does not generally tolerate them (too much risk, for one thing). Furthermore, I still don't understand why some of the people who post here hear the word "business" and automatically think "Microsoft." That is a rather simplistic view of the world, n'est ce pas?
Au contraire, my friend. The user base has, in fact, grown because of *lots and lots* of marketing and publicity. The only difference is that to date, all the marketing and publicizing has been conducted and paid for directly by users and developers. We've held expos, advertised our user groups in newspapers and on the radio, and spread the word amongst our friends, family, and coworkers. Personally, I've probably been able to bring at least 100 people to "the community" through events I helped organize (not a big number, but I'm proud to have helped anyway).
This has been marketing and publicity of the best kind (grass roots all the way, baby!). This does not have to change now that Linux has been "acknowledged." Now we'll just have a lot more money for our efforts!
Isn't this what everyone has wanted for the past four years anyway? Can we ever truly be happy?
That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Once upon a time, I worked as a information systems project manager in a Fortune 100 corporation. I was, in your words, "the boss." All of the people I supervised were consultants and made at least 25% more than I did. They also made more than MY boss did.
The funniest thing, though, is that on more than one occasion I had to "help" these highly qualified, highly paid programmers with their coding.
Why don't we just ammend the GPL with the following:
"Only card carrying C++ programmers who have known about Linux for at least three years and have contributed to the kernel may use this software. Also, users must have a job in software development or as unemployed students (high school or college only) to use, distribute, or interact in any way with this software."
Would this make all the paranoids happy? Imagine what it would do for Linux's popularity! Oh, Yeah! While we're at it, why don't we go to all the "suit" newspapers, television stations, and magazines and demand that they retract every positive story they have ever run about Linux or OSS? This is all great stuff that I'm sure will help us in the long run...
You have a good point about why some Slashdot people may have had their perceptions about business tainted (Microsoft has been shady to me, Microsoft is a business, therefore Business=Shady). Others, though, hold the view out of pure ignorance.
The good thing is, I think we can make things right in the software industry. Pretty soon that full page ad that you mentioned may have a "Cool! It works with Linux" logo on it instead of Microsoft's logo. We will just have to join together, give what we can back to the effort, and proceed ethically into broader markets.
As Bill Clinton would say: "We've been practicing the politics of personal destruction too long!"
Yes, making and selling toothepaste is, in fact, one contribution of business. So is making and selling computers, electricity, food, houses, and cars.
Unless you're living in the woods and using a computer you built yourself, you're the fool!
And they're "suits" too (green camouflage suits, anyway)...
Actually, the guy never said he was a Republican... (Neither am I, by the way- Libertarianism is the one true way!)
Ok... We'll exclude the C++ programmers too, then! Will Perl hackers be allowed in? What about PHP3 people?
Pardon me, but to me and most other people in the US, the Military and the Department of Defense are essentially the same entity (and I'm a former military officer). You don't say that GE Capital and General Electric, Inc. are two different organizations, do you?
Regarding your second comment, as I've already stated I'm working in the field of marketing now- and I'm quite happy about it! You do have me on three other counts, though, as I have worked for different businesses as a consultant (networking, disaster recovery, and other technology specialties) and as a project manager in systems development. I have also spent time in academe getting my degrees. I don't see why you think any of the above experiences are necessarily bad things, though. Although I don't mind talking about my career, I really don't see how it's relevant to this discussion (are you going to offer me a job, perhaps?)
An Anonymous Coward said:
> Majority of computer users in the
> workplace are dumber than a beowolf
> cluster of dogturds.
> Pity the poor helpdesk people.
So just because someone doesn't know much about computing and operating systems, they're a moron? Why don't you step in and try to do each one of their jobs a day? Let me know when you've figured out how to balance the general ledger, prepare the capital budget, set up financing for that new plant, and develop a launch plan for that new product R&D just finished working on. Oh, and when you're done with that, put on your human resources hat and develop an executive compensation plan for the division (remember to keep incentives in mind!)
I've interviewed people who were looking for tech support jobs and consulting before. I would never hire anybody who viewed their customers (that's right, the people you support are your customers) the way you do regardless of how skilled the candidate was.
Maybe that's why you've had such a hard time finding work...
Ok... So you found some good exceptions. Do you honestly feel, though, that the cases you mentioned are the rule? Do you feel that most people working in those companies today would like to have the same things happen again? Is there no one in big business who does their job because they like the company, the product, and the customers?
If not, please tell me what you think it is about the world of the gainfully employed that turns otherwise normal people into sadistic evil-doers. Is radiation from the Xerox machines, perhaps? And who are "they?"
At least you won't be bothered by flashy advertising any more. I hear the cigars are pretty good too...
Let me know how you like it when you like it after you've been there for about a year.
I think a lot of the suits have gotten the point that Linux is good in the right situation. They would probably disagree with you, though, on which situations were "right."
I've met some Linux advocates in the workplace who would sooner spend six months and several tens of thousand of $s to build a system on a Linux platform when a decent commercial alternative exists for $1,200. That is just bad decision making and almost cult-like behavior.
I'm all for Linux in the corporation but EVERYTHING should fall within the constraints of cost/benefit.
Amen, Brother! Let's aim this rocket for the stars and see where we end up... All aboard!
If you read my post you'll see that I never suggested that I knew how to do all the tasks that I asked you to try (although I am familiar with quite a few of them). I did suggest that the users who you are so quick to berate do know how to do them and probably quite well.
The bad attitude you exhibit about your job would be a strike against you in any field, not just technology. Somehow, though, some technologists think they can get away with attitudes since (for the moment) their skills are in short demand. I know, I've been there. Part of this attitude also comes from the fact that for many years, MIS and IT departments were able to operate in "silos" (organizational isolation from the rest of the business functions). This is not the case any more. The silos, and in many cases the MIS/IT departments themselves, are going away. In some cases, the CIO is the only member of the department and his job is to hire consultants. "Outsourcing" is one of those "suit" buzzwords you might have to become familiar with in the near future.
You might find yourself moving up in the world more quickly if you drop the ridiculous self-aggrandizing attitude you're displaying. By definition, unless you are working in a line position, you are just part of the staff. Nothing you do *directly* affects the success or failure of the company's mission. This means that your job is to support the "real decision makers" until you decide to get another job or to start your own company. Do you think that your users don't detect the attitude you're carrying around? Fat chance! Do you know that after you've "helped" these people, they talk about how good or bad your service was? Maybe even to your boss or your department head?
This reply is not a knock on you or on the tech support community- you DO provide a vital service. You just have to have a little bit of perspective about the role you have in the organization you choose to serve. Just take a look around you sometime.
You're right. I apologize, Mr. AC (if you're listening...)
C'mon my man... You're going to ding me on a measly dash?
Thanks... Got to stop reading Slashdot in "flat" mode.
Adolf Huxley was right after all. But the critea should be based on programming skill, wow
:)
So linus,stallman(and even gates) are obvious much more evolved than sub humans like jame joyce,camus,flaubert,satre,asmiov,sterling,et al
Obviously
Surely this this one of the exact reasons why linux will have a hard time going big time and keep M$ in business.
Every country at the moment is screamming about shortage of IT staff, so as a logical consequence more and more below par people are being hired to look after systems thus the suits want systems that the id10ts have a chance of being able to look after
A common linux cry is want a bit of functionality -> write it yourself but imagine if every windoze box in the world was replaced with linux tommorrow. Do you think there is enough cluey people in the world to look after/customise all those boxes???
Human development has and allways be a stumbling,drunken meander not the confident march that the idealists which for.
Alan Cox outlined some tremendous points in his
essay. There is definatly a level of balance that must be retained in order to keep linux the lean
piece of code that it is, and not bloated. It is extremely important to remember linux's roots
of being a hacker-based operating system- its only worth what you put into it. It's very easy for someone to say that "oh, Linux is going corperate, its over influenced by money, and is no longer worth it," etc. instead of writing the that new device driver module or putting out an application for the masses to use. I'll be the first to admit that I had no clue what I was doing when I picked
up a copy of slackware 3.0 and threw it on to my old 386.. Now I'm programming, and I'm striving to get to the point where I can give a little back to Linux. Shouldn't we all try and do the same? I'm not saying that every linux user should be the next Alan Cox, but there's no reason why even the average user can't find a way to help out the cause. Money does talk, but can never go as far as someone who believes in what they do. Have a little faith in the concept behind linux, Do what you can, and linux will be fine.
..and yes, I am still a proud user of the Slackware distrobution
And I feel really dumb, just as I should, like many of you say. I have a few ignorant questions. Perhaps those of you who are wiser will enlighten me:
1. Wasn't the cpu (386) that Mr. Torvalds originally wrote Linux on developed by 'suits'? And wasn't it running in a machine developed by 'suits'? I suppose Mssrs. Grove and Akers qualify as 'suits'.
2. Wasn't UNIX originally developed in a lab (at AT&T?) that was dreamt up, created by and funded by 'suits'?
3. Aren't places such as MIT and Berkeley (among many others) supported in large part by endowments that were paid for by rich 'suits'? I.e.: don't all the CS labs (and the students in them, many of whom post here) benefit from the efforts of 'suits', perhaps w/o realising it?
4. Would we all have the leisure to argue about such things, and call each other stupid names, if it weren't for capitalist-pigs-wearing-suits who created the wealth that allows many of us reprieve from getting our food and shelter directly? Wouldn't we all be subsistence farmers (with no computers to play with) without them?
Please forgive my ignorance. It must be the necktie I'm wearing right now.
regards,
Bradley
But as long as money (the sacred word) is kept out of the Linux-sphere there'll be problems to adjust Linux to the rest of the world.. or is it the world that has to adjust to Linux? But if money came into the Linux sphere, what would happen? Would you dare to risk what you have?
Iustum enim est bellum nihil magis alienum rebus vestris est!
If OpenBSD solves business problems as well as Linux, then the suits will come, and you will be unable to stop them.
People in the Open Source community are victims of their own success. Life's a bitch.
I hate to break it to you guys, but 99% of all software written is to help run a business. Most hacker sorts don't seem to realize this because just about every business has their own code for this purpose, so the community at large doesn't see it. But it's there, and it will have its impact whether you care or not.
The suits got ahold of Linux because it's starting to be better at doing suit-stuff than Windows is. If that ever happens to OpenBSD, or any *BSD, the same thing will happen.
Not all of us can be Richard Stallman and make money off of preaching to the choir and begging for donations from other hippies.
If we don't work for the suits, where do we get the money to buy our toys? Panhandling like Stallman? There's only so much of that to go around.
No, sorry, we gotta make a living. The most lucrative way to do that is to work for the suits. The more power we have, the more dependent they are on us, and the more they have to listen to us. Also, Open Source stuff makes that whole ordeal a lot less unpleasant than having to swim in Microsoft's shit.
This is why your attitude is naive. I'd rather have a little cultural pollution from the suits if that means I'm allowed to use Linux to solve problems.
Or you can be a BSD and hardcore GNU hippie and beg for handouts. It's your choice.
Yeah, very smart. Lets stop developing all libraries. That will give us a great 'stability'.
New versions of libraries don't appear because their author wants to make a lot of trouble for everyone, they appear because the libraries get better. And because application writers wants to make better application they generally use newer libraries in newer versions of their programs.
Take gtk+ for example. If i want to make a gtk+ program that can drag and drop from netscape i *need* to use Gtk+ 1.2. Otherwise such a program wouldn't be possible to write (if you don't want to reimplement Gtk+ 1.2 in every application!).
Thus, with you 'stability' comes the problem that we can't make programs as good as we want, and that *sucks*.