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Linux a "temporary phenomenon"
scenic
writes "A Washington "Think Tank" has a
report
complaining about the new "Assessing Microsoft"
conference. In particular, they have an issue with the
OSS remedy that many, including Nader and Love, have
proposed (i.e. opening up the Windows source code).
There is quite a bit of stuff concerning Linux (about a
quarter of the long article) and why OSS and Linux are
temporary phenomenons created by "media interest in
identifying a viable competitor to Microsoft." "
Opening the source to winXX is not the answer to the micro$oft problem. A hefty fine and splitting them into separate OS and application companies is.
The author of this article misses two very important distinctions:
1. The difference between a server and a client desktop.
2. The difference between open APIs and closed (or secret) APIs, and the competitive implications for developers who do not have full access to an OS.
Bradley
Au contraire! When will the media stop bowing before the mighty Bill ?
I wonder if Microsoft doesn't subsidize them.
I know that Microsoft runs another cover group in Washington called the ITAA, the Information Technolygy Association of America the people who lead the lobbying to increase the number of foreign high-tech guest workers. The ITAA produced some pretty shoddy research so it's not surprising that that the wealthiest man in the world could buy someone else off in Washington to support their agenda.
Come on people... Look at this site and their earlier "publishings"... These people are nothing but conservative fanatics who have other agendas far from the world of computing. The only reason this article has been published is to get some notoriety and some extra press by playing a "Linux vs MS" (Like, there's even any competition between the two ;-) Best things to do is either ignore this article or crash these peoples server.
Mr. Republican: Teddy Roosevelt! Ironic isn't it?
Funny.. these guys _are_ totally wrong, that's obvious, but they're not FUD slingers. It's just that the people who put this "report" together can't conceptualize the forces in the computer world -- their brains revolve around politics, media, etc. So if they see something gain media notoriety, they must assume that media itself is the driving force behind it, in a reactionary way to some political/media event. Morons yes, but still kind of interesting.
Yes, this forum is so open that even misguided and hostile dolts like you are allowed have their say.
;)
Seriosuly, your comments about "the real world" are laughable, since open source software (sendmail, bind, tcp/ip) comprise the backbone of the internet, while, on the other hand, you hapless pee cee users are regularly rebooting and reinstalling, and struggling with viruses, disk fragmentation, dll conflicts and other assorted "blessings" of a certain proprietary pee cee OS vendor.
In your much ballyhooed "real world", open source has proven it's superiority.
I am not a Linux user, although I recognize it as a very stable and ammiable operating system. What every fails to see is that Linux has enjoyed it's popularity from the media only within the timespan of the Microsoft antitrust trials. Could this be coincidence? I knew Linux existed even before the media started latching onto it as a techno-savior buzzword (a la Al Gore), however the good majority of people around me didn't. Does this mean that once the media becomes sick of waiting for a user-friendly distribution of Linux, that the OS will die? Certainly not. Linux has enjoyed hacker-friendly status for the last 6 or so years among *NIX enthusiasts. I predict that if the media does lose their interest, Linux will revert from being the Jesus Christ of Operating Systems to it's previous status.
The whole article sounds extremely pro-business, pro-make-a-bunch-of-money. The interesting thing, though, is that they have their facts about the FSF / OSI basically correct. I just don't agree with the conclusions they draw.
All of this is academic, anyway. We'll see in 2-5 years how well free software can work. It's done quite well so far, thank you very much, and I have faith that it will continue to do so.
They are, however, very good at sounding like they know what they are talking about. And that's what makes the PHBs drool. I'm sure a lot of people will take this one seriously.
The classic pcc (portable c compiler) sources
were never open. You had to licence them
from AT&T.
GCC was the first open-source C compiler.
-- cary
quidquid. I have used Win3.1, for 2 years now at my job.
I have never reinstalled, had a DLL conflict, repartitioned,
reformatted, or defragged. You wanna talk FUD? Try listening to
the bunk put out by mac zealots: windows sucks, it crashes and is hard to use,
winZealots: macs suck - no buzzwords and no software, or
GNU zealots: everything else sucks and crashes and is just part of the evil capitalist patriarchy. what a joke.
just from skimming this article i kind of get a vauge idea that capitalresearch doesn't actually give a crap about linux, or free software, or anything. They just for some reason don't like ralph nader, and want to bring them down. If a bunch of random kernel hackers happen to get hit in the crossfire, well hell, they don't care.
/. and people with subscriptions to "the federalist".. don't worry about it.
/.'s moderation system, aren't they?
I get the feeling this is the kind of extreme-conservative website that isn't going to get read by anyone except people who got sent there by
Anonymous Cowards are ignored by
And your working windows-machine is a proof that Windows is good?
It's a pitty I forgot what Scott Adams calls this kind of logic -anyone?
My experience with Windows 3.x/9x/NT, thousends of users and a lot of developing tells me that Windows truly sucks. My experience is that most Microsoft products sucks.
-Me
Hey! Don't mess with Al Gore -He invented Linux just after he invented Internet.
-Me
Let them make money think tanking!
Something 'wicked' this way comes. (LINUX)
It's called Linux, GNOME, KDE, GAMES, APPS, OS that runs on anything!
WUAHAHAHAHA!
Have you ever read old science mags. Read the incredible bullshit they wrote at that time! You'd laugh!
Now, in ten years, we'd either laugh at this guy or no one will even remember him!
CIAO
Yeah, but that's not going to help break up their monopoly any. I'd love to see it, too. :)
-Chris
When the author says `OSS is based on a false theory of production' he fails to pay attention to the real world. The false theory of production he refers to has generated a useful operating system, for chrissake.
Apparently theories of production have little impact on what is produced. The writer is addled and should be flipping burgers.
I've used Win 3.1, Win 95 version 1, Win 95 OSR2, and Linux Mandrake.
I've had to constantly defrag under Windows - MS systems ARE inefficient in HD use ("clusters", anyone?), and you really should defrag that drive once in a while. DLL conflicts haven't happened - missing or old DLLs, however, are common. The "System File Error - SHELL.DLL" every other time I install a program is loads of fun. I've tried reinstalling a few times when a problem seemed unsolvable - in those cases, I had to screw around with the registry.
And JUST AS I WAS TYPING THIS, I had to run up three floors to fix a friend's computer running Win95 w/Active Craptop. It mysteriously began generating an Internal Stack Overflow for no obvious reason. I'm not sure how I fixed it, but I did. I really, really shouldn't have to deal with this kinda crap. This isn't FUD - this is real stuff. Several hundred million complaints after several hundred million crashes can't all be made up.
As a friend of mine once said after Win95 refused to detect his sound card for apparently no reason;
"thank you microsoft for this awesome piece of shit."
The primary problem with the report is that it doesn't undersatnd that the rules have changed!
The "free" in free software means "free speach", not "free beer". In the 80s, getting "free" software meant piracy. Now it means "freedom to edit the code". The rules have changed.
The report also stated that free software won't last in the long run beacuse, well, "how can you make money selling something for free?" But listen-- the rules have changed! Companies do not make money on their software, but on their software support.
Well, what about the claim that Linux depends on the fall of Microsoft to succede in the long term? Linux seems to be doing just fine right now as the underdog. Perhaps it's better to say that Microsoft depends on the fall of Linux to succede in the long term. Linux, Open Source, and Open Standards are changing the rules for Microsoft. Microsoft as a corporation is used to making the rules, not following another's rules.
The report made another claim, that open source development is inferior to current software development, because Open Source is too unstructured to address consumer needs. This is equivalent to saying Mercantilism better addresses the economic needs of an empire and its colonies than a free market system. The free market (and open source) naturally gravitates towards what the consumers want. The rules changed in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote "Wealth of Nations", but how long did it take the British to realise it? How long will it take corporate America to realize it? Hopefully not long.
What about the claim that Open Source development is less structured, because anyone can edit the code however they want? Won't that cause open source software to become chaotic? Nope! Remember, open source means "free speach", not "free beer". A third party has the right to reprogram the source code however they want-- free speach. The official development group has the right to accept or reject the third party source code-- also free speach. Once again, the rules have changed. Corporations not only listen to the _needs_ of consumers, but also to the _solutions_ of consumers.
-Ted
Lets just for a moment imagine two senarios, associated with any origanisation which has it's own support staff. (Most likely any medium or above organisation, almost certainly covering all the "enterprise class" which we hear so much about at the moment.)
In senario one people are spending ages on phones listening to on hold music and attempting to explain things to glorified secretaries.
In senario two people are fixing the problem.
Senario one is the situation we have with the current shrink wrapped software.
Senario two is what you can have with free/open source/peer reviewed (or whatever you want to call it) software.
They are just to the left of Jesse Helms and other facist types in our government. The only people who will pay attention to it are people like my mom. Now I'll get letters trying to "save" me from being a leftist. Ack.
Truly Misinformed indeed, my favourite quote:
"Besides Linux, the only other OSS developments that have found much success are the products of Microsoft's competitor Netscape"
Hmmm, Apache anyone? TCP/IP? Sendmail?
In fact I would go as far as to suggest that the only major OSS development not to have found much success is Netscape...no release as yet?
That they don't understand what Free Software is. It's not an attempt to work within a free market, or any market at all. It's just the free exchange of ideas between people who love ideas. *That's* why it doesn't fit their theories. They seem to think for some reason that Free Software is a commercial venture. It isn't. If it were, then it probably *would* fail. But we aren't motivated by desire to make profits. We're motivated by a desire to write software--good software.
Al Gore invented UNIX. And Windows. And computers.
:-P
More who do you sue FUD. No one warrants their software. Just TRY to sue a major software house for a flaw in their software. Ain't gonna happen. Too bad, I'd LOVE to sue Microsoft for all the time and stress their products have cost me. I don't run it myself but a lot of people ask me for help with their crashing Microsoft systems.
Sift through the FUD and you find a little of the stating of the obvious going on. Yes open standards are constantly threatened by proprietary non-standards. Linux and OS/2 had to adapt to Microsoft PAP based PPD servers. I've had friends who have had major problems getting POP clients working with Microsoft mail servers. The article seems to think this is a good thing. All hail to the proprietary standards.
Ironically in the same breath they worry that OSS will result in thousands of non-compatable and fragmented programs. Despite the fact that propreitary protocols do a hell of a lot of damage to network interoperability and integration, we're going to ignore that and say that OSS MIGHT lead to product fragmentation. Hello, is there any thinking going on in that think tank?
They also seem to be blythely ignoring history, which shows that the market prefers open standards to proprietary ones. History is littered with the carcasses of propretary products, now all dead (or in some cases undead.) Customers typically hate being locked into a single company for solutions. Do you think Microsoft WANTED to include POP support in office? You can bet they wouldn't have if Office could have survived in the marketplace without it. Big news, it can't. I guess you can ignore stuff like that when you're a Washington "Think Tank." My internet think tanks says that Microsoft has badly misplayed their hand and will not be around much longer. So there.
Take a look at the CRC links page. It is a collection of first and second tier conservative institutes.
The MS trial has the potential to: 1)radically alter the competitive landscape in a fast-growing segment of the American economy; and 2)clarify the relevance of anti-trust law to the high-tech industry. It shouldn't be a surprise that every kook with an agenda is mounting a cyberspace soapbox and harranguing anyone who cares to listen.
I started using linux close to 2 years ago. I saw it on the shelf at babbages. It was a redhat distro. I said, "Hey, that's like Unix. My stupid winblows using self should learn how to use that stuff" Anyway, about 6 months later our web server at work kept crashing about once a week. I talked the other tech into putting Linux on his home machine. A few weeks later he agreed that Linux would do a much better job as a webserver. Around a year later(now) all our servers are running linux. None of our servers EVER crash. We don't have to worry about software licenses anymore etc. etc...
Anyway, we use linux because it is a rock solid OS, and it blows NT away in performance, and we can run it on cheap hardware, and we have more control over the OS, we can upgrade for free, cgi scripts etc. run much more predictably than on NT (god, NT as a webserver was a nightmare)... I could just go on and on. Now that we've rid ourselves of windows, life is good...
>X can still be a major pain in the ass to setup
As can be the same part of Windows including
but not limited to the ease with which you
can overdrive a monitor.
>(no average joe is going to pour through the XF86Config file and tweak it manually or have
That there was ever any need for the average
non-obsessed-with-performance novice to do
so is a great lie & FUD. Either your card is
autodetected (RH) or in the list (Slack).
>much luck in finding the right server for his card).
Much like needing to find Windows drivers
or alternately Windows drivers that work.
>Getting email working can be trying, unless one
Email has always worked out of the box, period. More FUD. Getting apps to a newly installed box is always a problem.
>used Netscape's mail abilities. And there isn't too much idiot proofing in the OS as a whole, and
Sure there is. You just have to run in idiot mode which is something that consumer Windows lacks (a genuine idiot/user mode).
>we all know that with media hyping comes a whole
> bunch of people who don't think for themselves
> and aren't really all that interested in
> learning how to (both central requirements for
> a successful Linux installation, I'd say).
The same could be very much said of Windows. That aspect of Windows is why many of us who aren't in it for the hype run it to begin with. If Win9x wasn't subjecting us to MORE sysadmin work, many of us would have little motivation to switch.
This non-thinking crowd is the same lot that got burned (and will get burned in future) by gratuitous UI changes on the part of M$.
NO, this is just an organization with a particular axe to grind and they would like to make a mountain out of a molehill. From my reckoning Nader doesn't see really pro OSS as he is pro-alterantives or rather 'ABM'. This article seems more like a desperate attempt to discredit a potential paradigm shift that scares them witless through guilt by association.
The wallpaper (US currency) should give one a huge clue about these people.
Even GNU started before Windows did. So to state that it was meant to be a competitor to Windows is just ludicrous. The two didn't even really begin to operate on the same class of hardware until the 90's. Even then, Windows was still in a sad state. By the time Windows could run well on reasonably priced hardware (CHEAP ram required), SCO and Solaris and NeXTstep were already available for PC's, nevermind GNU/Linux/BSD.
They are the suit & tie 'lets bring back RobberBarons' equivalent of RMS on one of his bad days.
True, Unix was around before there was life on this planet. True, it is great for some, but only as of late have I heard swarms of people speaking niceties to linux and in the same breath cursing microsoft, leading me to believe this may be a phenomenon - 'people who like linux simply because it is not microsoft'. Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry at these people, quite the opposite, they give linux greater recognition and increased market-share, but they DO exist.
That certainly explains the existence of the like of Anderson consulting and the Oracle Metals contracts.
Beat yourself with your own cluebat.
...not anti-government, just anti-government-for-the-little-guy. This group represents that aspect of Libertarianism that is merely interested in getting government off of the backs of the 'priveledged' so that these would be Robber Barons are free to rape and pillage the lower classes for whatever economic gain they can extract.
I bet they're more than pro-government when it comes to protecting their own monetary interests. Note their support of M$ intellectual property. Such things can only really be protected by a suitably powerful state.
I would argue that the source to Windows simply CAN'T be cleaned up. I would argue that you can clean up a dirty implementation of a reasonably clean API. But if the API is too dirty, then it's just plain impossible to clean, no matter how clean or dirty the implementation.
Microsoft APIs are dictated by marketing, not software design. They are a morass designed to "encourage" use of even more Microsoft APIs, tools, etc.
The morass doesn't have adequate separation of function to be cleaned up. It's probably
too huge to EVER be debugged by human beings.
Any questions?
Linux is thirty years old? Geez, Linus must be much older than he looks.
And for pre-dating commercial software, what kind of software do you think ran on all those IBM, et. al. computers in the 50 and 60s? It sure as hell wasn't free.
Just to add my own 2-bits worth ... when I read in the article that UNIX was designed as a competitor to windows, and that HP, Sun, IBM, etc. split off into proprietary versions after OSS, my impression is simple:
... users of MS believe in and generate their own FUD ... its a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The author was so unknowledgable that I can't place any credibility in any of his statements. Perhaps if he had read the "Jargon" book he would've had more ability to support his thesis. Twaddle like this are simply the logical extension to MS FUD
If you want to discuss this with me offline, contact me at bbeaton@hotmail.com
To me, as a (fiscally conservative) European, these kind of people sound really scary. The whole subtext to their argument is that nonprofit==amoral.
Everybody seems to understand the detail in their arguments quite well, but the vary presence of this kind of philosophy in society (even yours) never fails to frighten me.
I'm sure these guys would like to round us all up and chain us to a computer to software engineer for them.
Check out the button on their webpage if you don't see my point!
aren't who this is for. If someone doesn't think they can trust it (which is a baseless fear) then they shouldn't use it! I use it because it performs better and is more stable than Windows. I *need* raw power. I also need a system that *I* am in control of. It is impossible to actually be in control of Windows--it tries to do everything for you. So: free software works for me, and I'm not shoving it down anyone's throat.
Bravo to that. IP is dead, it just hasn't been noticed by most people...
-- Luke Francl, another Free Software Anarchist
Linux is thirty years old? Geez, Linus must be much older than he looks.
And for pre-dating commercial software, what kind of software do you think ran on all those IBM, et. al. computers in the 50 and 60s? It sure as hell wasn't free.
no, dumb ass, UNIX is 30 years old... and YES, when computers were NEW operating systems weren't sold... they were written FOR the software...
I admit it's hard to write pro-linux without basing it on the reason people use linux (well my reason anyways) but why trash either side? It's understandable when there are flame wars between people in private communication, but the viscious flaming that happens these days (and these are always posted on
These are Government funded researches, and they are being turned into good old classic fud. That entire article was one huge flame at linux and open source. (This is your tax dollars in action people)
This kind of deconstructive critisism is just the type of blind prejudice that society has (as of late) been trying to get rid of. This person saw an idea that was foriegn to him and shot it to peices. This type of flame should be reserved for private (non-government funded) rants on a little web page off in the corner of nowhere.
Why can't people just leave these things they don't understand alone (or actually do some research into real life, ditch the standard "this will never work because we do things different" attitude and evolve.
I think you're just stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut, stuck in a rut
Anyways, the main premise is, if linux sucks, it will die. It doesn't care about the latest marketing scheme or merger or mircosoft trial. OSS is bigger than that. People who use it don't all of the sudden switch back to bluescreen of death98.
Something doesn't have to be good, to be popular.
Something doesn't have to be popular to be good.
OSS is outside of the lines. The only way to get those people back on the mikrosoft boat is to actually come out with a better product (no, sorry, micru-hype doesn't cut it it actually has to be better). I think that it's not technically possible for the limited resources of a multi billion dollar software giant.
MaxXx OverDrive
maxxx_od@home.com
*Real* libertarians, anarchocapitalists and individualists know to choose the best product, regardless of who makes it.
That's true if and only if they have the necessary expertise and experience, and that they are never emotional, misinformed, or in a hurry. Considering the complexity of human life, you're selling fairy tales. The same goes for the rest of your post.
Much like you, I can design an engine that's perfectly efficient -- if I get to assume that friction doesn't exist. Unlike you, I am too honest to try to sell such an engine.
I have no more interest in sacrificing my life on the alter of your wide-eyed theories than on the alter of socialism or anything else.
... Red Hat and Caldera offer 24-hour Linux support. Also see LinuxCare, VA Research, and Penguin Computing.
You say those companies aren't REAL WORLD enough for you? Try this one:
IBM Gets Behind Linux
Worldwide 24-hour telephone support from IBM. That's about as REAL WORLD as it gets.
Let's see... The other posts about this are from 9:22 AM to 9:39 AM, while your post is from 5:23 PM. Now, it's possible that Slashdot has the time of your post wrong, but it seems to me that it's much more likely that you posted eight hours after the other posts. This suggests to me that you checked out the link eight hours later instead, which would probably be well past the peak of the Slashdot Effect.
Although not in defense of Microsoft... First of all, the "unable/unwilling to adapt to changing conditions" thing is a crock. For one thing, we certainly can't mock the amount of time dinosaurs thrived for until we've at least begun to approach that amount of time ourselves. Also, major cataclysms are hardly simple "changing conditions". Let's not get overly enthusiastic about our own survival abilities. For the most part, when the glaciers start to slide down, human beings survive by moving to somewhere without glaciers. What do we do when the whole planet is affected? In any case, you can't say that dinosaurs didn't adapt by evolution, because some of them did, which is where we get birds, as you point out.
The bit about dinosaurs being cold-blooded is debated these days. The bit about not being able to get out of the water for fear of being crushed under its own weight has been totally discounted. Such ideas were based on really, really simplistic mathematical models of how much weight an animal can take. As for small brains, some dinosaurs, usually herbivores, had very small brains, but some, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, had brains that probably weighed as much as some people. Of course, brain size by no means absolutely determines intelligence.
A-hem, anyway, sorry to get carried away. Maybe I care about dinosaur defamation too much, huh? It was probably seeing them compared to Microsoft that set me off.
It's not ironic. There's no contradiction between being "right-wing" (which seems to be used as a term of abuse here) or conservative, and being against monopolies and trusts. Personally, I can't think of anything more anti-conservative than unregulated and lawless "capitalism". Hell, these bastards would never have become billionaires without the legal protection and infrastructure that we provide them via the State and its Laws. It is only fair that they abide by these, instead of trying to privatize their benefits whilst socializing their costs. But then, many of you geeks don't know much about history or politics, sadly, judging from comments here.
The CRC also object to the persistance of pure philanthropic giving, rather than giving in such a way that it serves the companies goals and increases its profits:
Anyhow, the part I found interesting was in the section of the article that gave philanthropic profiles of a number of companies. In the discussion about Microsoft, the CRC voiced its dismay that some recipients of MS money are, from the point of view of the CRC, of no real value to society:
This is interesting to me because it mentions that the CRC recieves Microsoft funding. This fact is omitted from the other article even though it would seem relevant in determining the objectivity of the Capital Research Center on the subject of Microsoft.
From CRC's mission:
"Former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis more than 60 years ago said that sunshine--the glare of public scrutiny--is "the best of disinfectants."
This reads like an endorsement of open source to me. What better way to 'disinfect' software bugs? They'd rather you beg MS or other corporation (large or small)--and I've done this often over many, many years too often to no good result--in hopes it will be fixed and if such a fix comes it may cost you as a so-called upgrade riddled with data incompatibilities, bloat, speed hits, new twisted labrynthian UI, etc.
The illogic and ignorance present in their article should be offensive to any thinking individual right *or* left.
I stopped reading after 6 or 7 paragraphs as it became obvious that the author(s) were trapped in the Microsoft world of "you have to use (Word|Excel|Access) because it's the standard and we'll make sure that you can't read its files in any other application".
Many many references to people needing to buy standardized programs to "be able to share information" bear this out.
Pity they didn't do any research.
Peter
I have to disagree. Iam am IT professional and all the people i know running linux are absoloute geeks who would start crying if talked to by a girl. They will not be running anything in the future
Witness the ``many different
versions'' of PC's/graphic cards/mouses/keyboards/... the PC community has come up with. This is confusing for end-users, and for
developers alike.
Sorry, but I think everyone agree that it is better for you to choose your hardware and I think that it is better that you could choose distro as long as Linux flavors remains mostly compatible between themselves. This is just a matter of being used to do this, once you've compatibility between the distros you can choose the flavor you like (vanilla, chocolate, caramel,...)
Yes, the notion that that novice user will have to tweak /etc/X11/XF86Config is indeed FUD. It's a misrepresentation of a situation which has been distinct from the Fear (of editing config files) you are spreading for whatever reason.
It simply aint so.
Either your hardware is supporter or not.
If it is supported, you use a Win 3.1 style configuratore or a Win9x style configurator and then are done with it.
Applying the odd geek who might be trying to use some hardware that Windows won't even acknowledge to the norm is indeed objectionable FUD.
It's FUD that might keep those that otherwise might have their X installation (and other device detections) completely automated from trying Linux.
The issue is not whether or not newbies will be subjected to some arcane, even to some of us that have used Linux for 4 years or more, process but rather or not the lack of 'supported by default' status will interfere with someone's hardware being supported.
The effect is the same either way.
The two were originally built for radically different types of computing problems running on different classes of hardware with Unix or GNU predating any viable version of Windows by some years.
They only compete head to head now because of Moore's Law. Although Windows(NT) is intended to compete with Unix, rather than the other way around. The difference in implication is subtle but relevant.
Every comment the same. Same shite, different poster. Gotta love the "open" community here.
Talk about "it's different so I'm scared of it."
Now listen up, cause the same arguments play here as everywhere else. We're not talking about some idealistic hacker fantasy. This is the REAL WORLD. In the REAL WORLD people don't want to use a piece of software hacked together on the Internet. They *want* to know who they can call if something breaks. They don't care that Microsoft has been sued for flaws in their programs, because at least in their eyes, Microsoft always fixes them.
-r-
About 1/3rd of the way down, the author lists one of the major benefits of a non-OSS market as, "In a free market, identifiable manufacturers own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws.".
This is one of the major basis of his arguments. Unfortunately, he doesn't understand that this statement is completely untrue in today's "free market". Just about every software license out there currently absolves the manufacturer of all responsibility for the use of the product, and in fact, any problems with the product itself. Basically, the author is trying to make an argument for accountability, and stating that the manufacturers of software are accountable, and that the OSS software authors are not.
Pull out this crutch holding up his arguments, and what does he have left? Nothing.
Ignoring the various factual errors in the article, the general thesis that much (not all) of the hype around Linux started as a way of providing pseudo-objectivity in news reports is valid.
But the story of the "pity date" which lead to true love is a cliche because it really occurs. And Linux, which first got coverage because of Microsoft's desparate attempts to prove it has competition (Apple doesn't count since MS invested $100 million).
Look at the facts. Linux started out as being reported as a competitor with no applications.
Then, finally, the media started picking up on Apache. Suddenly Linux might be a viable competitor, although a one-trick pony. (Read: still a sideshow of no weight.)
Now Samba is getting the same rave reviews. It's still not enough to kill MS in the server market, but it's suddenly no longer a foregone conclusion.
If history is any guide, by fall we should see a third application where OSS applications beat the tar out of the MS Windows equivalent. Once is a fluke, twice is a trend (which can easily reverse), but three times is inevitable. Expect to see incredible pressure from MS to upgrade to W2K (even though it doesn't come out until mere months before Y2K and any CIO who allows upgrades should be shot, not fired, at dawn) just so the media doesn't cover the next major application.
Anyone who is interested in free software should
read this article closely. This article provides
one of the best insights into suitthink that
I have ever come across.
The following are the points that struck me.
1) These guys don't WANT the internet to be
based on open protocols (can't make money on
a commodity).
2) Assorted governments around the world, various
research organizations and thousands
of individuals have spent billions of dollars
building up this entity called the world wide
web. This `think tank' has no problem with
a corporation assuming control of all the entry/exit points and reaping the rewards... as long as they can make some money.
My favorite quote from the article:
How could anyone but a radical anarchist support a concept like "free software"? It may seem like a boon for consumers. But they should realize that a market totally free of prices is not likely to produce quality merchandise and will quickly collapse.
Guess its time to call the nice folks at Linux central at let them know that they don't have any software to sell.
Seriously, the author doesn't have enough of a grasp of the appeal of Linux (more than just techies) or the economics of commodity software (see Red Hat's presentation on the likening of packaged Linux to bottled water). I don't mind articles like this, since I think it'll only slow down the acceptance of Linux a bit and perhaps drive us to create more user friendly features to broaden the appeal.
I think my work place will finally start selling the Linux port of our software (done without permission of course), now if only they'd let me open the source code I could cut down on the support issues.
This is my latest theory about free software.
Free software represents the transition in the software industry from a product based industry to a service based industry. As you all know much of the industrialized world is in this transition as a whole, moving product based economies down to less developed nations. Software is also in this same transition.
Most software companies already realize that the most money is going to be made in support. In fact, whenever I complain to a jounalist about unfair or incorrect coverage, I usually receive a response along the lines of "You don't understand the real world. In the real world, support costs are higher than the software itself, so free software doesn't make a difference."
If this is true, then it would make sense that competition will flourish among companies providing support to free software, simply because more companies can acquire the intimate knowledge required to provide quality support. No longer will you have to go to the "vendor", who has a monopoly on support, but your choice among several. More companies means more competition which will mean higher quality and lower prices.
There is definitely going to be huge resistance to this change. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have so much invested in their proprietary architecture that unless they make major changes they risked being pushed to the wayside. However, given the size of their resource base, this is obviously going to take a long time. This is just the same as the transition of the economy as a whole.
I would imagine that this process could take upwards of 30 years or so. Obviously 30 years is a long time in the world of computers and the internet, so who knows what can happen in the mean time. However to call the free software a "temporary phenomenon" is just completely ridiculous. If anything proprietary software is the temporary phenomenon which took hold due to a certain confluence of factors. The transition to a service based industry is anything but temporary, nay, it is inevitble.
Mr. Reilly forgot to incude his bio and email address with his article, so I'm posting them for your convenience:
Patrick Reilly, Research Associate and Editor, Foundation Watch, Organization Trends
PReilly@capitalresearch.org
Before joining CRC in 1997, Reilly was the executive director of Citizens for Educational Freedom, a national school choice advocacy group. He has bachelor's degrees in print journalism and political science from Fordham University and a master's in public administration from American University.
slashdot broke my sig
BSD license is *very* old.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Linux is obviously a LEFT WING PLOT so those ANARCHIST RADICALS can overthrow the AMERICAN WAY! Those PINKO Finns are trying to bring down true AMERICAN companies like Microsoft, who use the capitalist FREE MARKET to produce the best, most reliable software! You can tell they're COMMIES, because Ralph Nader likes them! And everyone knows he's a LIBERAL! If they have their way, there'll be open standards and software everywhere, and then who knows what'll happen to good, solid AMERICANS like Bill Gates, who stand behind every byte of code their companies produce!?
Man, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry reading that article...
John Campbell, at Radical Anarchist Headquarters, signing off...
"I'm a rich white guy. My father is a rich white guy, and his father was a rich white guy. Back in the day, life was good. We told people what they needed, why they needed it, and where to get it, and nobody argued. We kept as many people as possible under our thumbs, 'cause it kept them from getting uppity and upsetting our power base.
Now, you have people speaking up and making their own decisions and all kind of foolishness going on. Some have even gone so far as to think that they can become rich white guys. Is that what this country is founded on? Don't answer that. If you think too hard you might hurt yourself. Just listen to ol' Uncle Moneybags, and everything will be okay.
Tell you what. Make me a hundred shoes a day, and not only will I pay you enough to buy a pair someday, but when you do and then can't afford to eat I'll have some of my friends drop by with some food on holidays. Won't that be nice? Just listen to Uncle M and it'll all be okay. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."
Posted by Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters:
I must admit I skimmed over the ranting in the article... not even really getting to the Linux sections in great detail. It is familiar stuff, as joss points our (warmed over Heritage Foundation stuff).
The article really was hilarious though. They really did not want even their daftest readers (out of a daft bunch) to miss their ideological slant. The discussion of Nader, in particular, read like:
"The far leftist Ralph Nader advances leftist positions... oh, btw, did we mention that this is left-wing... and you DO understand that you are supposed to think left=bad, right?"
Yours, Lulu...
Posted by Reitzel:
Good grief. *Nix has beed pronounced dead even
more often than OS2.
Maybe somebody needs to sharpen a stake...
I find it really interesting the way that these people speak out of both corners of their mouths. First they talk about why the Open Source model is inherently flawed, then they cite Linux as a serious competitor to Microsoft. They need to develop some kind of consistency. Either the Open Source model is truly inherently flawed, in which case Linux is as much a fad as the hula-hoop, or else it isn't, in which case Linux has the potential to maim Microsoft. It can't be both.
Most of us reject the idea that the Open Source model is a fad. As someone commented earlier, this "fad" has been going on for something close to thirty years. While it may not be a strict economic model (from their point of view), that doesn't mean that it can't survive in a market economy. A good example of this is Red Hat, who have found a way to sell Linux solutions to Linux newbies and business people.
To say that Linux can't survive in the market, and then to say that it is a viable competitor to Microsoft is contradictory. This article is not credible, simply because it has no consistency. Of course, it would help if the people who wrote the article had some understanding of the basic grammatical structure of English (did they never learn about apostrophes?), but that's a side issue.
I personally believe that Open Source is a viable model, but someone who wants to convince me otherwise should take the time to ensure that their arguements aren't mutually exclusive.
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Anyway it seem as the conclusion is that the Free/Open Source Software community is nothing but a lefty/socialist/commie/anarchist conspiracy against Microsoft/capitalism/big corporations.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Yes, very amusing/frightening. These people seem to believe that the non-profit organisations will destroy the families and turn the US into a (OH NO!!) welfare state. Also, don't miss the one-year-old article about "Computer Philantropy", listing how much money the good hearted computer companies have donated to charity.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
This article is Looneytunearian drivel about "free" markets. Well, from my perspective, the commercial software market is anything but free. I don't see how the writer arrives at the conclusion that Microsoft's business practices constitute free market capitalism; they are based on fraud and deceit. I bet some Microsoft stooge wrote this crap.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
These people are not free market economists; they have a very basic misunderstanding of the concept of value. Value is not measured strictly in dollars; it can take many forms. As ESR has discussed in the past, there are several non-monetary currencies in the Free Software marketplace.
Exactly; in the early 1970s, when word got out and people started getting interested in Unix, AT&T couldn't actually sell it to them, because of consent decrees handed down years earlier that said "you can't get into the computer business". So they distributed it for the cost of the media and with no warranty. This environment spawned, among other things, the BSD project at Berkeley, which started in 1977 and produced its last release (4.4BSD Lite 2) in 1995. Later, AT&T started tightening up on the licensing (around the time of V7), and after the breakup of the Bell System, they were able to start charging.
Take a look at the home page for these folks, and read portions of the article. This isn't an attack on open source for it's own reason, but because Nader supports it. That's enough to convince them that it's bad.
(Now, I'll admit to a high correllation, but almost nothing is 1.0)
Nah, these guys make Reagan, Reagan's speeches, and even his administration look like leftists.
Reagan antitrust enforcement was heavily of the "if it benefits the consumer, it's not anti-competitive." But this line of anti-trust reasoning does not jibe with the arguments in the article.
These guys *defend* practices of exclusionary license, and keeping API information information secret as both legal and good.
The Reagan crowd sees cut-throat competion as good, and believe its benefits outweigh its consequences. You can debate whether they're right or not, but that's where they came from.
These guys explicitly support barriers that are repugnant to that view. You can debate whether microsoft engaged in these practices, or whether they *should* be legal, but current law says 'No', and and the economic analysis behind the Reagan policies screams, 'NO!!!'
hawk, esq., antitrust lawyer & economist
CRC is one of those Reagan think tanks founded to safeguard the interests of minorities (such as wealthy individuals or corporations - the poor wee things) against powerful pressure groups such as unwed mothers or disabled people.
Theie assertions are provided without any arguments based upon logic or facts. Example:
'How could anyone but a radical anarchist support a concept like "free software"? It may seem like a boon for consumers. But they should realize that a market totally free of prices is not likely to produce quality merchandise and will quickly collapse.'
Except the quality merchandise already exists and shows no signs of collapsing. So, what is the assertion based upon ? They seem to be saying
"The existence of free quality software is inconsistent with our theories --- therefore the world is obviously going to change so that the facts will become consistent with our beliefs"
A more rational group might reason as follows:
"The facts are inconsistent with our theories --- therefore there might be something wrong with our theories".
These people are TRUE BELIEVERS though, so they make assertions and back them with their beliefs
'But OSS has a fatal flaw: it is based on a false theory of production.'
What does this mean ? OSS will not work, and here's why - it won't work because it is based on a "false theory", and how do we know this theory is false - easy, it's different to our theories so it must be false.
These guy's should have worked for the Spanish inquisition. They've got the techniques down pat.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The way I see it there are a lot of people pushing Linux for a Lot of different reasons,
Linus wants to play with code.
RMS et al. want software to be free.
ESR et al. want better software.
Ralph Nader wants to get rid of the MS hedgemony.
Tim O'Reilly wants to sell books.
Red Hat et al want to sell support and services.
etc.
I think Linux is big enough to hold all of us. And I think we all can agree that making Linux better will help all of us.
If someone out there has an axe to grind with Nader hey, its a free country. But I wish they would at least read CatB or something first.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Ahh, but there is more to a complete linux system than the kernel alone. The kernel itself is absolutely useless without other supporting programs like a shell at the very least. Witness the ``many different versions'' of distributions the linux community has come up with. This is confusing for end-users, and for developers alike.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
Ok so I suppose all the Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Gimp, etc etc.. users must not be either
A: people
or
B: living in the real world
If no one wan't to use software created on the internet why do more then 50% of webservers run Apache?
Why are there so many Windows shareware/freeware applications?
Ex-Nt-User
I think all this "mis-information" and "illogical" conclusions about the death of OSS stems from deep paranoia.
Let's look at the arguments against OSS:
1: Law suits..
Q:Who do you sue if something breaks?
A: How many times has MS been sued for a "flaw" in their software?
2. If Proprietary software disapears people will stop inovatingm including the OSS hackers.
A: Why would hackers Stop hacking? the reason OSS exists isn't because proprietary software exists.. but because "hackers" exist. (And every day there is more of us)
3. With proprietary software gone all those coders will be out of jobs.
A: There is always a need for customization withing companies. Good programmers will NEVER be out of a job. (Unless someone can come up with an AI that can spit out code)
That's just a few arguments that are commonly used as scare tacticks. And they are all based on the "I'm scared of it so it can't be good" logic.
Ex-Nt-User
Sendmail, bind, and the BSD networking code have been around for a *very* long time, and there have been no "incompatible" splintering. I think this shoots a hole in one of the major tenets of this article-- that free software is doomed to many splintered, incompatible versions of each package.
This whole article was a crock, anyway; it assumes MS is good for consumers ("They chose MS-Windows," instead of, "They don't even know they have a choice,") and that free software is trying to destroy the software industry.
The rest of their web-site is just as clueless; they advocate a return to "classical education," which is impossible. They suggest that anyone who quibbles with Unions are leftest commie pinko bolsheviks. They claim in one article that "consumer advocates" like Ralph Nader are owned by certain companies, and then admit (in this article) that they have no allegience to any company (with the implication that this is a Bad Thing).
Their thinking is constrained by pre-conception. They can get the facts right, but the interpretation of the facts are distorted through a warped fresnel lens of bias.
- Tony
----
My favorite parts:
"Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows"
I thought that originally Unix was distributed for free (source and all, with no support) because AT&T was prohibited from entering the OS market. Unfortunately for the folks at Capital Research, Unix had to wait several years before it could begin competing with Windows, because Windows didn't exist yet.
-----
If you go back and look at the article they are referring to GNU's Unix... Which I suspect they are referring to HURD.
As I recall the full sentence is more like...
"GNU's Unix which was developed to compete with Windows, proprietary Unices from Sun, HP, IBM and others..."
I'm curious how you expect to comment on something you haven't read properly?
----
Most software companies already realize that the most money is going to be made in support. In fact, whenever I complain to a jounalist about unfair or incorrect coverage, I usually receive a response along the lines of "You don't understand the real world. In the real world, support costs are higher than the software itself, so free software doesn't make a difference."
----
They're not talking about paid support for software, they're talking about all the support costs consumed by the business.
i.e. learning the app, installing the app on 2,000 desktops, answering questions from endusers, figuring out why it just broke, etc.
These aren't support costs which can be farmed out. Well they are in that consultants might fill those positions, but that consultant type is a generic desktop or server admin, not a product specialist.
Product specialists may be brought in for a week or two initially to help identify the best way to install and deploy an application, but that's about it.
There are other recurring costs going down the road... training, and data conversion if you have to switch products, or upgrade products.
That's a simplistic definition, but I hope you get the point. Maybe when you get to the Real World you'll have a better understanding.
1) We'd all be using X all the time because it's kind of hard to show a parade of advertising pics at the bottom of the console.
2) Instead of a penguin, we'd have that dog from the Taco Bell commercials for a mascot
3) Tonight on Springer: vi/Emacs mixed marriages; can they survive? And a special segment: how to pronounce "Linux."
4) "We're sorry, this program is blacked out in your area" suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.
5) Al Gore would try to take credit over the Net for creating the media.
...anyone got any others? This one just begs for jokes to be made. Honestly, how clueless can this writer be?
How could anyone but a radical anarchist support a concept like "free legal arguments"? It may seem like a boon for consumers. But they should realize that a market totally free of prices is not likely to produce quality legal arguments and will quickly collapse.
Actually, the "free legal arguments" movement is not opposed in theory to sale of legal services.... The word "free" refers not to price, but to the removal of restrictions on repeating, delivering, improving, and redelivering legal arguments once they are presented in court or otherwise obtained.
But OLA (Open Legal Arguments) has a fatal flaw: it is based on a false theory of production. For the sake of an imagined voluntary cooperative, OLA rejects free market competition and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality legal arguments and targeted marketing. By contrast, in a free market, identifiable lawyers own the arguments. They are responsible for their performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws.
OLA shows that Nader and his allies' "self-proclaimed consumer advocates" do not have in mind the best interests of consumers. His support for legal anarchism would deprive lawyers of their property rights and deprive consumers of standard, quality legal representation.
> How do consumers identify the products they
> need when software is constantly evolving and
> there are no standard products that enable
> users to share compatible information?
Who else thought they were talking about Microsoft products (Office 95/97/2000/etc.) here?
Regards, Ralph.
On the whole, this article had some great FUD. I'd give a three bull rating on a scale of zero to five bulls.
If Microsoft survives its antitrust case with the ability to continue to market its Windows operating system intact while holding on to the Windows source code, even Linux supporters acknowledge they cannot compete with Windows.
FUD. Linux was not developed to kill windows. Yet, it will. Side-effects are great sometimes.
I'm very weary of right wing conservitive marketing gurus whose mantra is "economic incentive drives software quality". This article is a reiteration of this demonstrably untrue assertion. IBM? Microsoft? Apple? Have these wealthy companies produced superior quality software(at least, consistently)? Do the customers benefit from having someone to direct their complaints to? I think not. If you have been on tech support calls with commercial vendors, I think you'll agree that a single entity responsible for bug fixes doesn't get problems solved.
Another assertion this article makes is that OSS companies will become victims of pirating(please explain how you steal free software). RedHat doesn't seem to be too concerned about Cheapbytes and frankly they shouldn't be.
His support for cyber-anarchism would deprive companies of their property rights and deprive consumers of standard, quality software.
Software is not a commodity. Let's all say it together.
Software is not a commodity.
There. I feel better, don't you?
Service and the ability to adapt and extend software *is* a commodity. Pay for that. The day large vendors fully appreciate this will be the day they devote more time to software stability rather then finding new ways to bag pirates.
Sell the eggs. Let the goose go.
I am deeply disturbed by this product of a "think tank". To me, it only
;)
;)
reenforces what I have experienced in my own life, of late, the isolation of
the ivory tower. The authors in this essay base their opinions on the fate of
the OSS movement on equaly idealistic principles that are no more realistic
than the "ideals" they claim are the OSS's Achiles heel. For example:
But OSS has a fatal flaw: it is based on a false theory of production. For the
sake of an imagined voluntary cooperative, OSS rejects free market competition
and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality
products and targeted marketing. In a free market, identifiable manufacturers
own the product. They are responsible for product performance, and they can be
held liable for inexcusable flaws.
Since when has Microsoft ever been held responsible for thier product flaws?
What about Mellisa, for example? What about the Blue Screen of Death?
How can they get away with charging $89 for their bug fix to Win98 (aka
Windows 98 Service Release 2)? There has been no sense of responsibility shown
by proprietary software manufacturers, nor has any such responsibility been
forced on them.
OSS advocates also claim software distributors can make money by distributing
software free of charge, while providing support services and instructional
materials for a fee. This half-hearted accommodation of private ownership
suffers the same flaws. It assumes that companies can survive by offering
support for nonstandard software that is found in many forms.
Hardly a valid asssumption. Ever look at the prices companies charge for
tech support? If your out of warranty/grace period, don't count on spending
anything less than $25 for any question you might have. I imagine the
coorporate accounts are even juicier.
Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against
Microsoft Windows; originally OSS, later versions of Unix were made proprietary
by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
It would be nice if these people at least got their facts straight. UNIX is
originally an OS developed by Bell Labs, unless I'm mistaken, over thrity years
ago. That predates the very inception of Mircosoft. Perhaps we have, of late,
been talking of UNIX unseating the Windows monopoly, but that's only using the
tools that existed before the prophanity known as DOS was even written.
Linux is a good example of how Microsoft's competitors have attempted to
exploit the open source concept. It was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a
student at the University of Helsinki, who wanted to improve upon Unix and
distribute an OSS operating system free of charge.
Hmm...from what I knew of the matter, Linus wrote it to have his *own*
UNIX. Good god, the idea of one person thinking they could improve upon UNIX
from scratch is ludicruous. Besides, how does one "improve" upon something so
complex and diverse? UNIX is so vast and nebulous in its nature. Is it the
kernel, the tools, the filesystem, the drivers, or the paradigm? (This was a
rhetorical question, not a real one
Linux is building a following among computer users who have sufficient
technical knowledge to take advantage of the source code. That, of course, is an
important limitation of OSS: it appeals primarily to those who have an interest
in tinkering with programs.
Microsoft must love it when non-affiliates engage in their Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt tactics. Anyone ever heard of Redhat? Or maybe about
upcoming distributions such as the Corel one which is targeted at ease of use?
(No distribution wars, please
Windows operating system intact while holding on to the Windows source
code, even Linux supporters acknowledge they cannot compete with Windows.
I have yet to meet or speak online to a Linux/*BSD user who truly feels that
way about the matter. I'm sure there are those out there who feel this way,
but I don't care for the authors' painting this as a community-wide opinion.
Besides Linux, the only other OSS developments that have found much
success are the products of Microsoft's competitor Netscape.
What? Pardon me, I guess the *BSD's, StarOffice, KDE, and Gnome products
are no good and never used. It's bad enough when academics use assumptions,
but they could at least do the research right.
In the end, the facts and assumptions of this essay are unfounded, erroneous,
or just plain wrong. I'm a great fan of captialism, it goes hand-in-hand with
democracy. Yet I believe it was Winston Churchil who said, "Democracy is a
terrible form of government...but it is better than all the rest."
Likewise, Capitalism is a terrible form for an economy...but it is better than
all the rest.
The assumption that free-markets will always provide the best product is
easily disproven in cases not involving software. Take Beta vs. VHS. Though
this may be arguable, from what I understand, Beta was better technology, hence
better for the consumer, yet VHS won the war. How about Mac vs. IBM? I'm no
Mac fan, I hate Apple's proprietary nature, but consider that the GUI, which is
usefull to non-techies, was in a product on sale for six years before an
IBM-compatible machine equilvalent (ie, Windows) was developed. Granted,
Windows is a nasty OS, but it is the fact that IBM maintained dominant market
share for six years, becoming the standard for hardware to the present day,
while a better way for the every-day user to operate his or her machine existed.
I don't worry much about this article, though. It's nothing more than the
unfounded drivel of academics who live their lives in a vacuum. They may have
their theories, which have some foundation, but in the end, the proof is in the
pudding. As companies learn of the stability of Linux and the BSD's when they
migrate servers from NT and Gnome and KDE make the desktop a more realistic possibility
for them, then Windows will start to lose corporate marketshare to the *NIX's.
When Joe User's company switches over, he'll have no choice but to get the
same for home, thus nibbling away at the Windows home user market. Game
manufacturers will see the marketshare start to shift, and code for Linux.
Within five years, we may live in a completely different landscape than we do
now, and the DOJ trial will seem humorous and irrelavent.
> It can't be both.
Sure it can. Just look at Windows. :-)
They just keep missing the point.
Free Software is NOT about "Ralph Nader's Agenda" (whatever that may be.) Nor is it about "Competing with Microsoft."
Free Software is about software - and in a broader sense technology - returning back to the public grounds. Technology should not remain locked up in the safehouses of the few who have (money- or knowledgewise), but instead should flourish in the common culture.
Openness of the Stuff that programs (or technology in general) are made of is a prerequisite and the best guarantee for a continued interaction between development and use of programs (technology) in our human culture.
Locking up knowledge is a dead end for humanity.
The Gartners, Brownses and the rest of the FUD slinging professional truth-mongers just don't see this. Maybe they don't like to, clinging as they do to their business of selling you the truth, in a handsome report.
But lets focus on the contents of this "Trend Analysis"
Once again, a "report" appears to be humming the well-known FUD theme "who are you going to sue?"
I'd like to see these "consultants" for once to come up with some detailed cases of customers sueing software vendors for buggy software. In any case, I've never heard of any substantial case.
For example, did anyone ever successfully sue Microsoft for the bugs in their software?
These incredible dimwitted reports are really starting to annoy me, because they are so flagrantly untrue and disrespective of the plain facts of reality.
With Free Software, the question is not "who are you going to call if things break", the question is "who are you NOT going to call if things break."
With Free Software, you can call virtually any skilled software engineer to fix your programs, because the code is available.
This might even be far cheaper than stumbling in the dark to pinpoint the cause of problems, losing time and money on the phone with your vendor's (clueless) "tech"-support drones, losing even more time argueing with the vendor about who's to blame and finally paying premium for a "custom" solution from your vendor, costing a multiple of the original (buggy) software.
information is free.
the only question is:
Scott Draves
Could all the media focus on Linux is just a cleaver ploy to undermine the justice departments case that Windows has a monopoly on the OS market? Also that, once the case has been finished, all this attention will dissappear?
;)
You be the judge...
It seems to me that these guys never heard of them. They talk about how OSS isn't really consumer driven, but totally miss the idea that just because you don't pay to purchase something that doesn't mean you can't pay to get it improved. Companies like Cygnus get paid to make improvements to Opensource software.
Here's a quote:
"Unfortunately, while Microsoft's donations of technology are favorable to the industry, many of the nonprofits that receive Microsoft grants are liberal advocacy groups that are bad for business. These include the ACLU, Humane Society, League of Women Voters, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National PTA and Planned Parenthood. The Capital Research Center is the only known conservative organization receiving support at this time, although Microsoft has indicated interest in broadening its support for free-market advocates."
So it appears that MS is supporting a group that opposes women, the environment, minorities, and helpless puppies ;-).
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I agree even though it really sucks. But I think that there is even more suckiness: My company has "standardized" on Lotus Notes and it is the worst piece of software I've ever used -- literally. When we had a "town hall" meeting with our CIO he even agreed that it totally sucks and has given our company nothing but problems. We won't change though (though we're thinking about it -- please God) because of the cost in doing so. For me, personally, switching is a non-issue. For a company that has to think about training it's a different story that I'm not quite savvy enough to grasp yet.
I disagree. I think Microsoft would absolutely love to destroy all traces of sendmail and replace it with some software that they own running some protocol that they own. And in the long run, when you can tax every packet that moves on your proprietary internet, that is extremely cost effective. I think that the real reason that Microsoft dropped the ball on the Internet is because they were compeletely focused on making MSN the next big thing. MSN ran on software that they owned. The reason why the license for NT Workstation is so restrictive compared to NT Server is because Microsoft wants to force you to buy IIS (IIS, like Internet Explorer, is NOT free). That's one more web server that Microsoft owns every time a person "upgrades" to NT Server.
How do you know? You give no support to this statement despite the evidence that OSS / free software continues to grow in popularity. Personally I believe that free software will continue to grow in popularity as more and more people become educated in using and programming computers. And I think that will happen primarily because of the popularity of the Internet. Why should I be compelled to buy someone's software when there is a greater and greater chance as time goes on that someone has written an equally good product and is giving it away?
How do you define an "Actual User"? I think there are many reasons why someone chooses software. I think most people use Microsoft out of ignorance, because of the lack of applications on other operating systems, out of force (try and buy a laptop without a Microsoft OS preinstalled on it that you are forced to pay for), or becuase their company makes them do it. I fall in to the last category as my work forces me to use Win95 even though I do most of my work in xterms running from HP-(S)UX boxes running on (expensive) Exceed. At home I have 3 Linux boxes and one BeOS box. Interesting that the BeOS cost me $70 while the Linux installations for the other three computers cost me $2 (CheapBytes). Right now I have found much more support for the Linux OS than for BeOS.
And what is your definition of "support"? In business-like discussions I often hear people say that they wouldn't want a business to use any free OS because they want to have the comfort of knowing they can "sue" the software manufacturer if it breaks. When was the last time a company ever sued Microsoft because their software was buggy? I remember Bill Gates stating "There are no bugs in our software." He, personally, has one hundred billion dollars to back that statement up in court.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
> What every fails to see is that Linux has enjoyed it's popularity from the media only within the timespan of the Microsoft antitrust trials. Could this be coincidence?
Actually, I think it is. About 18 months ago, I was at a party with a bunch of my tech-type friends, telling them that Linux was gaining the critical mass needed to really compete on the OS arena. In that time span, features have been added, and packages have matured that have given Linux capabilities it didn't have before. Those capabilities make it much more usable as both a network server and a user desktop. What is even better is that the more usable Linux is, the more people want to use it, and mor importantly the more people contribute system stuff or applications. The train goes down the track that much faster. Hype does not create applications, but enough applications DO create hype.
Eric Geyer
Linux maybe a temporary phenomenon that is getting a lot of press because it is a real competitor to Microsoft. But I doubt the whole concept of OSS is temporary. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and applications like Apache prove that OSS success is not hardly limited to Linux. I hope we can educate writers in the future to distinguish between OSS and Linux.
-Weld
The article didn't talk about incompatible splintering but simply forking. BSD has forked many times, and the BSD networking code even more. The BSD license sort of encourages this by allowing the creation of proprietary versions whose source cannot be folded back into a mainstream version.
for a company supporting charity and philanthropy your attack on
OSS was absolutely revolting. OSS is responsible for the internet -
from tcp/ip implementations to the software that makes www.microsoft.com
resolve to the software that makes http://www.microsoft.com display
on your screen. over twenty years people invested their time,
their creativity, and sometimes their money into creating the net.
now companies like microsoft are deliberately making their software
incompatable with everyone elses in order to get more market share;
locking people and companies out; and slowing overall creativity
and innovation around the world.
and you support that?
if you're a friend of charities and a supporter of altruism i'm
honestly frightened to know what the enemies of them are like.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Ok very good writeup. But let's talk about democracy and capitalisim for a moment. First off they are not the same thing as you do point out but most people seem to acuate one with the other. The comment that they go hand and hand is not correct. One is a system of government and the other is an economic system. Now to truly get into this I need to start to say that elite power around the world has done a good job at spreadding economic FUD (this IS what it is) about ANY other system of econimic diversity. If I even speak socailisim I'll get my head cut off by a bunch of people who don't know the technical definitions of the words and attack at an idea they have about capatilisim somehow meaning democracy. This notion people attack on is plain wrong. We have people who buy cars every other week who live in multi-million dollar houses simply because great-great grandad steve was in the right place in the right time. while people starve and live on the streets a few miles away. We have great ogopolies and monopolies running the world. States compeating with each other for a companies buisness they sell out their people. We are destroying our environment simply because it cost to much not to. our world is OBSESSED with money and this in turn will destroy us. This is the root of the problem from wich most problems stem. The rich keep getting richer as the middle class keeps shrinking. When we destroy our world over green peices of paper is when we will look very foolish I would think.
Sorry about that I had to get that out. It's a point not often made and you know us philosophers we have to throw a few wrenches into the works and hopefully get people thinking before it's to late in the visions of tomarrow we see.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
sorry about it not flowing when I go into rant mode sometimes my spelling and grammer get neglected.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
We'll see.
Every day
In every way
I'm getting better and better.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Seems to me this was written by
A) Lawyer.
b) A person that does not understand software development.
c) Believes that the main reason that Open Software exists is; as ONLY a response MS.
d) has a political aggenda not related to software in general.
e) Not comprehending that, Linux is a cultural statment, not a political one first.
That said; Now on to my political statements.
I wonder what f**** rock they crawled out of, and they should go back re-read there own Conservative pseudo-intellectual manafesto's, EG Ann Rand's Fountain head.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
OK. I hate to admit it, but I used to support M$ Access for the evil empire itself. I can tell you that we DID give custom fixes for people's problems, although sometimes it had to be done without the management's knowledge or consent. (Not all of the time, though...) And I also know for a fact that the SQL guys often did custom fixes, sometimes going to the customer site. This was three years ago, though...
oh come on. puh lease don't compare charity to the poor and the sick to a bunch of ego-driven hackers who want to reinvent the wheel just so that they don't have to pay for Photoshop or whatever. You also can't deny the fact that even Mr. Evil Bill Gates himself gives more money to real charities than all of the FSF members combined. Technology is something else-I think MS is stifling it. But they are helping people who are worse off than you and me. People who are too sick to get out of bed-let alone use the internet
---
That portion you're referring to does give this impression, but it appears bad editting or poor historical knowledge is more likely to blame.
The author mentions that Unix was once open, but then proprietary versions were made by Sun and HP. It doesn't say that this was at any particlar time though so there could be some confusion.
--- http://foo.ca
You forgot:
6) Every useless consumer product in the world would have xlock 'plugins' instead of Windows screensavers
7) Perl Quick reference cards on cereal boxes
8) Cartoon series about a group of animals thatsolve crimes and share the source
9) No one make, let alone attend movies like Hackers except perhaps as an openning feature to The Rocky Horror Picture show.
10) WebTV? What's that?
11) MSN would refer only to 'Minnesota Sports Network'
12) Ralph Nader would be testing cars, etc
13) Future Shop / CompUSA / Radio Shack / etc. employees would have to officially not know linux in addition to officially not knowing Windows.
14) And if Linux were created by the media, it'd likely suck.
--- http://foo.ca
All this analysis is not worthless. The key reason is because the market can be easily manipulated. The major manipulation tool is media, which is exactly what I'm betting this article goes into (if I could read it, I wouldn't have to bet).
The media has created a major buzz about this OS and the "Open Source Movement". As a result the market is giving Linux and OSS a much harder look than it probbaly would have at this time. The last phrase is the most important: at this time. Sure, Linux might have caught on a few years down the road without the push the media has given it lately, but at least then it would have been ready.
All this media attention is forcing things. In short, Linux is not ready for the mainstream commercial world. It'll continue to be used on some web servers and inter-company file servers and whatnot, but it is not ready to make the populace at large happy. While basic installation is getting easy (as long as you have all supported hardware), that is about where the ride will end for the large majority of people trying this out. X can still be a major pain in the ass to setup (no average joe is going to pour through the XF86Config file and tweak it manually or have much luck in finding the right server for his card). Getting email working can be trying, unless one used Netscape's mail abilities. And there isn't too much idiot proofing in the OS as a whole, and we all know that with media hyping comes a whole bunch of people who don't think for themselves and aren't really all that interested in learning how to (both central requirements for a successful Linux installation, I'd say).
The market isn't ready yet. More specifically, Linux isn't ready to go to market (we have to cater to them, they aren't going to be forgiving of us).
I'm not sure why you basically called my entire post FUD. I'm not a newbie. I'm not a windows advocate. I love Linux, as well as OS/2 and can't wait to give BeOS a try. I wasn't posting FUD. I was posting fact. For instance, on the XF86Config tweaking which you declare as being FUD. I just recently installed RH 5.2 on my system (first time for RH, I ran slackware several times over the last three years or so) and my card was not autodected or on the list of cards under the xf86config script. I had to go out and find a server not included in the distro (slightly daunting and an annoyance), put it in the right directory (granted not a hard thing to do in and of itself, but to the novice who doesn't know where everything goes I think this would be more difficult), and manually alter the XF86Config file to get it to work correctly with the card and monitor combo I have. None of this is performance tweaking, mind you, this was just to get X up and running with better than 256 colors and 640x480 resolution.
All the other point I made were similar in that they were problems encountered in the recent install I did. Again, I'm not a newbie, I've been installing Linux for better than 4 years now and have been into computers for more than 14 now.
My simple point is this. Linux is at least an annoyance to setup right now (based on my experience with Slackware and RH, I'm guessing the other distro's are also). At most it is daunting and very difficult to setup. Things are getting better, and they will continue to. But it seems clear to me that if people are going to have to put up with installing an OS in the first place, they are going to pick something that has current wide range support and is the least likely to piss them off (Windows installation is generally quite easy, done in 30 minutes as compared to an hour or more for a linux installation).
Just because my statements presented here are somewhat "anti-linux" doesn't mean I'm some Windows drone or that they are FUD statements.
BTW, I ended my message with the following inscription:
--A proud member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
That oughta confuse 'em a little bit! ;-)
But anyway, I have to disagree that their facts are basically right. Free Software *won't* remove stuff from the shelves. Free Software has *nothing* to do with Ralph Nader. Programmers who are interested in Free Software aren't driven by desire to make profit. *That* is why they come to incorrect conclusions. I don't care if MS or anyone else makes buggy proprietary software. I don't care if MS or any other corporation makes a lot of money. That's fine with me. However, I'll be using Linux. ;-)
That's great! I'll have to add it to my list of quotations!
BTW, you're right about Free Software being a good example of free market competition. I mean, when a *community* can produce a product to compete against corporations, something has to be right.
This "research" is below most 'GEEKS' inteligents. They have done NO study, but state numbers like they have been done by research. A large number of their facts are blantanly wrong. I believe the only reason they are discussing 'open source' is the same reasons Gore2000 (use to be: AlGore2000, whats up with that?) is using it, its a hot topic and they want to create exposure to themselves by somhow associating with it.
IMO, the whole site should have been ignored!!!
I have to take issue with the "temporary phenomenon" quip. It seems to me that Linux has been around 6 years, UNIX has been around for decades, and Kernigan (inventor of C) released an entire language under "open source". Open source supports much of the vast infrastructure of the internet - sendmail & apache, bind, for example.
To say that it is only temporary is to show a complete disregard for the history of the internet, nay, computers at large.
--
http://www.netcraft.com/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?host= www.capitalresearch.org www.capitalresearch.org is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98 they sure are. no kidding
http://www.netcraft.com/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?host= www.capitalresearch.org www.capitalresearch.org is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98 they sure are. no kidding there. that looks better. hopefully.
>What is most frightening is that people will >believe this junk.
Frightening how? Frightening to whom? Afraid
of what?
That all this FUD will keep something like Linux
or GCC from gaining widespread acceptance? That
millions of people will not adopt public software
out of fear, or willingness to be controlled?
It isn't news. We already won. The revolution
these pundits are hoping to forestall, already
happened a few years ago. Unless somebody
develops a time machine (one that goes *backwards*)
there isn't much to worry about.
The free software is out there. Whether the
mainstream commercial world can deal with it is
irrelevant. Whether linux kills microsoft is
totally irrelevant.
They did not stop the public software from being
released, and whether or not we use it, and whether or not
industry X adopts it, and whether or not there is widespread
acceptance of it...
Was irrelevant... But guess what?
It already HAPPENED.
So what exactly is the "F" in "FUD?"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Phoole childe. *Real* libertarians, anarchocapitalists and individualists know to choose the best product, regardless of who makes it. *Real* lovers of freedom would not have written such an idiotic mercantilist, protectionist rant that puts _Das Kapital_ to shame. *Real* lovers of freedom always insist on getting the best product at the best price. *Real* lovers of freedom know the difference between voluntary and involuntary... but hey, these guys already proved their cluelessness many times over.
Fuck Slashdot
Exactly.
Microsoft has never faced anything like the Linux (and the entire FSF/OSS) movement before.
Excellent software that gives people creative freedom. More and more new developers are going to learn Linux because it's a hell of a lot more fun than Windows and Visual Basic.
--- Film at Eleven.
"media interest in identifying a viable competitor to Microsoft." ?!
When will these people see that Microsoft is NOT the centre of the universe?
On the other hand it took a long time for them to understand the world wasn't flat.
I think that the answer to this question determines (somewhat) the credibility of the often-made claim that "open/free software has been running the Net for decades."
All of this pseudo-analysis is worthless. The market will sort out the validity of open-source. This of course, will take time.
One distinction that should be made I think is that demand for linux is not fueled by its open-source nature. Demand is fueled by the fact that it is a very inexpensive way to get a solid unix-like OS on to commodity hardware. Most users couldn't even tell you what path the source code is in.
I don't think they were referring to free software as temporary, just the intense media attention it is getting lately.
There will always be free software. People will produce it because of varying reasons, philosophical beliefs, just for fun, they wrote it but don't want to support it, etc, but there may not always be the "buzz" associated with it that there is now.
Umm... that looks like it belongs on a list next to military inteligence and microsoft works....
It just occurred to me (or re-occurred to me--as reading my own source code (and clever comments therein) reveals, there's no telling what great ideas I might have had in the past but forgotten) how right this is, and how we know it's right--we have the current bizarrely pro-Microsoft IT departments of today as proof-of-concept. As has been pointed out on many occasion, the people in those positions are probably almost all former dosophiles, and therefore have a biological need to validate all that "expertise" they developed by forcing their platform onto everyone in their company.
When the current crop gets out there, they'll probably have the same attitude about Linux, forcing it onto the next generation of the technologically underclued and/or politically underpowered. I guess if I'm going to be beaten with a stick, that's a much better stick to be beaten with.
And hey maybe the open culture will make their dictatorships benevolent. Maybe they won't just replace:
"we don't support Macs. We've standardized on Microsoft."
with
"we don't support Macs. We only allow open source solutions."
Hell, I can dream.
I know, I'm late in having this epiphany, but you know how it is--you have an idea you think is cool, you have to share it with millions of people that are already tired of it.
Liberty uber alles.
This article makes some really good arguments that, at face value, seem valid, but really dont lead anywhere.
Essentially, the article tries to psychoanalyze Nader's reasons for going after Microsoft. Here, they identify "open source", and "free software" as the ideological stance that Nader is purusing, and then go on to try to discredit "open source" and "free software" concepts. At the end of their article, they state, very curtly and without any previous justificiation of their statements, that Microsoft is right and Nader is wrong. In short, their argument has nothing to do with their conclusion.
The point here isn't wether or not the OSS concept is bad or good, but wether Microsoft has been a fair competitor in the "market". The article never mentions technical superiority, but bases it's arguments on the assumption that most people prefer Microsoft software over OSS, and declares that as a failing of the OSS paradigm. In making these arguments, it ignores a key point:
The OSS community does not spend millions in advertising their products, while Microsoft is shameless in it's plight to assure customers that they are actually getting something of value forthe $97 they pay for the latest upgrade of their software.
Consumers do not make choices in a vacuum, but in an environment pervased with advertisement and promotion.
Furthermore, they do not even try to refute Nader's accusations of predatory licence practices, and simply make a reference to "property rights", and expect their argument to be fulfilled. Microsoft's licencing practices have created an environment where the average person cannot easily come in contact with alternative products. How can a person decide if he or she wants to use Linux or BeOS or BSD if he/she does not even know it exists?
This article is essentially a bypass of the real issues put forth by Nader and the DOJ. They make an unsuccessful feint of the arguments made against Microsoft.
-Laxative
Sheer, sick curiousity. I want to see exactly what makes that nightmare tick. Nothing professional, just that disgusting impulse to stare at wreckage on the side of the road.
The OSS movement isn't competetive, according to this article, making it seriously flawed and likely to collapse from rarification. These individuals haven't stopped by to see the holy wars on Slashdot, or the bitter interfactional fighting that goes on when a project forks. I think 'survival-of-the-fittest' is alive and well in the OSS community. As for it being a passing meme, it's a valid point, if you ignore the fact of how long it's been in the media background. Emacs, anyone? The BSD 4.4 Controversy? These things happened well before the Microsoft Hearings.
Perhaps these thinktanks should do research outside what they read on USA Today, and take a look at the community which they are trying to assess, instead of accepting third-hand accounts.
OSS rejects free market competition.
What free market is Patrick talking about? Isn't free choice a "free market". Where in OSS does it force users to use particular software? IMHO, free market means free choice. Therefore, I can use any OSS software I feel is necessary and apply it to my needs. For proprietary software, is there a "free market"? I say yes; I can coose any software that comes closest to my budget and needs. However, I would not be free to have any software to my specifics needs. Therefore, I don't understand Patrick's conclusion that "...OSS rejects free market competition and loses the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with quality products and targeted marketing". There is no "distinct advantage" any where in proprietary software in meeting consumer needs.
[Manufacturers] are responsible for product performance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws.
I have not seen any examples of this. Who has ever sued Microsoft over "inexcusable flaws"? I don't see this argument as being a fatal flaw either. How can a company like Microsoft ever meet consumer needs with such a diverse group? OSS seams to fit that better, in that anyone can modify the source to fit the real needs of a consumer. So not everyone is a "hacker". Support can fit this role very nicely. If I don't want an in-house software group, I can hire a support company. They can modify the source as they see fit. If I dislike their service, I can go to another support provider and keep the software (and the ex-support company can too for that matter) and not loose in a long adjustment period. To me, this is flexibility which is not a fatal flaw rather the Golden Egg.
I only read half the article and got bored with it. If I contradict the author in my context, please post them!
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
And how many companies are willing to even spend the money to take a vendor to court? Damned few as far as I can tell. I've never seen one case get any significant exposure in the press that dealt with software of the type that we'd buy at the local computer store. In fact, the only case that I recall concerned Arthur Andersen who was being sued by a fairly good sized firm over a custom software implementation (and the only reason, I suspect, that I saw that in the news was that it was a local, i.e. Chicago-based, company).
Q: Why did the software industry recently spend so much time and effort lobbying Congress to remove the few teeth that shrinkwrapped licenses had if they weren't going to stand up in court?
A: Um... They didn't want us to have any teeth?
Really great if you happen to be one of their larger clients. I have worked for companies large and small and don't have memories of a vendor that really cared if they lost our business or not. Just how big to you have to be in order for a company the size of Microsoft to care about losing your business?
BTW, I am currently working for a large, industry-leading, multinational, multi-$G healthcare company that cannot get any cooperation from one of the leading database vendors. What actions do I see from them or some company like MS that would make me believe that they really gave a whit about us as customer? Would I expect MS to bend over backwards if we decided to abandon MS Office? Perhaps, but the cynic in me thinks that'd happen only after word of it got into the trade press. And then, it wouldn't be because they were worried that we through the SW was buggy; it'd be because some regional manager was worried he'd be out the door if he lost the customer (more likely the customer's $$$).
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for making money. I expect I'll be getting that business started on the side in the next year and I won't be doing it to lose money. My feeling is: If a large company can't get satisfaction when dealing with software vendors, what makes you think that mine or the other hundreds of thousands of small businesses are going to get anywhere?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Maybe it's just me (having spent some years working for a University) but:
and
seemed inappropriate comments in relation to the Capital Research article. I've always liked to think that the ``ivory tower'' was where the real ``academics'' (i.e., University professors and other real researchers) worked. Not where independently funded political hacks spouted whatever their funders wanted said. I doubt that a lot of ``research'' went into the anti-OSS diatribe in the article.
The Capital Research author lost me when he had to use ``left'' or ``leftist'' and ``nonprofit'' three, four, or five times in the article. Was this guy paranoid or something? Reminds me of the old film clips of the McCarthy hearings. (``Oh! Look at this guys! This Linus Torvalds fellow is from Finland and that's right next door to them God-less communists! This Linux stuff must be some sort of pinko plot to destroy our economy!'')
And I knew that there wasn't going to be much of substance in the remainder of the article when he attempted to trash John Barlow because he once wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead. (``These Linux anarchists are all hippies! John Barlow opposes our beloved Internet decency regulations! Lock up your daughters!'')
I'm guessing that the funding for this group comes from the same software vendors that lobbied against stronger consumer protection in software products.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Unix is a propriatary OS made to compete with Windows? Wasn't Unix around before Gates? Debian doesn't "sell" it's distribution. You pay for shipping and the cost of the cd. You can donate, but you don't have to (can't image why you wouldn't). Open source isn't a radical idea. Isn't that how it was before Billy started whinning about it? Grab your bats, we're agoin bashin.
2) Instead of a penguin, we'd have that dog from the Taco Bell commercials for a mascot.
:)
Hey! Don't mess with that Taco Bell dog. He might look wimpy, but he'll kick your ass!
Viva Gorditas!
Later,
Blake.
--
I speak for PCDocs
The nice thing is that we can just ignore them. If OSS were a profit-driven company, then this sort of FUD would be damaging, and could lead to the destruction of the company. Since OSS is driven by volunteer work, and since there is no "company" to take it off the market, we can simply ignore those who are afraid of open source, and continue doing whatever we want.
Just imagine what the state of open source software will be in 10 years. Projects such as Gnome and KDE will be either extremely mature, or superceeded by better technology.
Articles like this can be safely ignored.
Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows; originally OSS, later versions of Unix were made proprietary by Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that Windose has been around for over 30 years. I stopped reading at this point, as the author(s) lost all credibilty.
For the past 30 years, linux has been relegated to a "non-consumer" status. In other words, it may have been used widely, but only within certain types of environments. Most of them were probably technical or academic in nature.
Today we're talking about the entire software user base, which is a completely different animal, and comes with a completely different set of needs and expectations. The article does a very good job addressing the issues related to free software in the consumer arena, and the logic used to support the notion of a "temporary phenomenon" seems quite plausible.
Linux itself, as well as some of the currently well-known applications (the gimp, for example), probably won't fade from existence any time soon. Free software is fine - so long as the means to support it exist. Right now, this isn't a problem. But if you take the whole of the commercial software industry and try to convert it to the "free software" paradigm, I think we're going to have one HUGE, unworkable mess on our hands.
You mean like a temporary phenomenon that has existed for 30 years and PRE-DATED commercial software ?
Sheesh! Hit these guys with a clue stick...
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
I dislike the writers unqualified assumption that OSS will inevitably result in 'many different versions' of a product. As far as I can see, there is only one mainstream 'thread' of the linux sources; most people modifying OSS actually WANT to submit there changes back to the original author/project manager so that their fixes become part of the main version and they can continue to use the main version in future and not have to re-implement their changes every time a new version comes out.
The authors of this document have clearly not studied HOW OSS actually works in real life, they have just listened to a few people to learn the jargon and made up their own story based on their own (wrong) assumptions. Whoever paid them for this report should ask for their money back.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
Brave words from an AC.
Pop Quiz: Name 3 users who have had a non-trivial problem with any Microsoft product and have received useful help from Microsoft.
I worked for Ford of Europe as a desktop support specialist and we never received any meaningful help from Microsoft - Their helpline hardly ever answered and when it did you got through to someone who only knew how to log your problem or advise you to re-install the OS. We eventually gave up completely and used to post queries on Compuserve- we never got a 'fix' from Microsoft. I don't beleive ANYONE has ever got a custom fix from Microsoft.
In the real world people would rather have software that works. Of course people "*want* to know who they can call if something breaks" but few commercial organisations can offer this because they only have 1 or 2 people that know about the technicalities of any specific area.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
they should realize that a market totally free of prices is not likely to produce quality merchandise and will quickly collapse.
Right-wing thinking at its finest: Vague, logically incoherent and factually unsupported generalizations, "proving" that consistently obvserved phenomena do not exist. What that statement really means is, "The people who fund us are making a lot of money by selling inferior products for high prices. Please keep buying those products. If you just keep paying more and more money, the Market Fairy will make the bugs go away. Thank you."
. . . the market's distinct advantages to meet consumer needs with . . . targeted marketing.
Just like the man said: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Lemme tellya, targeted marketing sure meets my needs!
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
the ruling techno-elite of the future, I mean the people who will head up IT departments and be making all of the real decisions,
Will they be making decisions about anything other than IT? If not, they're not "ruling" very much. Yes, all the corner-office spuds will have computers on their desks; and, yes, they will need IT to make those computers do anything useful. In that sense they'll be (are now, in fact) dependent on IT people -- just like they're dependent on farmers and HVAC repairmen, neither of whom constitude a "ruling techno-elite".
There is life outside the server room. Quite a lot of it, in fact. The world is run by suits. It's a galling and depressing fact, but I doubt that it will change any time soon. The problem is that the qualities necessary to gain, keep, and wield power are fundamentally suitish qualities. If they weren't suits, they wouldn't be in the corner office. They wouldn't know how to get there, and they wouldn't want to be there badly enough to go through the hassles anyway. Okay, Julius Caesar wasn't a suit -- but how long did he last? After the dust settled, Augustus was in charge, and he stayed in power for decades. Augustus, not by chance, was a suit.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
How do consumers identify the products they need when software is constantly evolving and there are no standard products that enable users to share compatible information?
When you really look at it carefully, the "constantly evolving" situation he's so afraid of is a competitive free market. He's claiming that choices are bad for consumers -- because if they have choices, then they will have to choose.
There's also a bizarre, unstated, and unquestioned assumption underlying much of the essay: That products from different different developers must necessarily be incompatible with each other. It's on that assumption that the above statement rests. He thinks -- or is at least being paid to claim -- that if there are multiple word processors available, then nobody will be able to share files.
Another level down, the underlying assumptions are underlain (?!
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Please. Folks like this are apoloitical - they'll call themselves liberals when they need to, conservatives when they have to, whatever they need to maintain their position and power base.
Democrats and republicans have about as much in common with that particular type of gutter slime as most developers have in common with marketing.
-Samrobb
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Quite entertaining... especially the part that read something like "Companies like RedHat, Caldera, and Debian sell ....". Too bad debian doesn't sell anything. I'm really curious how they came up with that one...
It should be noted that OSS is not likely to ever die. It may go "under cover" again, but it will not die. There are always people that will be using and developing OSS (or similar). Look at *BSD. They don't get any notice, yet it is still being developed and used. I hope that *BSD doesn't get much press, just like I hope debian doesn't get much press. The less "newbie" notice, the more focused development can stay.
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- Only the desire to maximize profits drives people; since Linux doesn't make any profits, it must be shoddy.
- Windows is popular and exists in a free market, therefore it must represent consumer preferences accurately.
- The value of a product is measured by how much people are paying for it; because Linux is free, it doesn't have any economic value.
- Any information, creative or incidental, automatically represents a property right, so requiring companies to disclose their APIs amounts to "deprivation of property rights".
There is more, but that let that suffice. (I'm reminded of Dilbert's comment that he likes circular reasoning because it leaves no loose ends.)A careful economic analysis of these issues needs to take into account, among many others, notions of public goods, cooperation, non-monetary economic goods, opportunity costs, and multi-attribute utility.
One of the most blatant problems with Reilly's ideas (and it is representative of a particular political agenda, not sound economics) is that it incorrectly describes human behavior in a quite fundamental way. It should be obvious to most people who have spent any amount of time at top research and development labs that it isn't profit that drives top quality researchers and developers (but, I suppose given that Reilly works at a conservative Washington think tank, that lack of experience is understandable).
In fact, one of the reasons for the low quality of Microsoft products is that their development seems primarily driven by short term profit considerations rather than an interest in quality. This actually seems quite reminiscent of the US auto industry, which produced large, inefficient cars and ran into serious problems when nimble, small, cheap Japanese and European cars became available. The analogy to Microsoft and OSS should be fairly obvious.
Reilly's piece is full of misrepresentations and factual mistakes. It's not worth expending time on analyzing them all, becaue the most fundamental blunder he makes is that he thinks that OSS is an alternative to the free market.
Far from it: OSS succeeds because of the free market. That has nothing to do with a short-term desire of harming Microsoft (a kind of "software dumping"?), but because it makes long term sense for individuals and companies to cooperate on operating system development. It's free market economics at its best.
People like Reilly like to assume the mantle of "free market economics" and "conservatism", but they really just represent economic interests that want to avoid free market competition as much as possible. Ensuring a functioning free market requires that the market is governed by orderly rules and regulations; otherwise, we would have social Darwinism and anarchy. Given the economics of software development, I'm sure an orderly free market is all OSS requires for its long-term success; at least OSS is up for the challenge.
And for consumers who actually like Microsoft software, I don't think he has to be concerned: OSS and Microsoft will live side-by-side, hopefully with dozens of other choices, as is proper and desirable in a free market.
were the dominant life form. We all know that.
We also know that, cataclysm or natural selection, they are no longer here because they were unable/unwilling to adapt to changing conditions.
So it seems will it be with M$ (or at least their OS) Design by committee and focus group of bored housewives does not a lasting OS make. Feature glut creeps in and pretty soon you have a cold-blooded saurian that can't get out of the water for fear of being crushed under it's own weight. It can't comprehend, in it's little brain, that those small critters it tries so hard to stomp, will be eating it a few years later.
Did ya ever consider that maybe dinosaurs were pecked to death by penguins? I goes well with evolutionary theory, that dinosaurs should be replaced by birds.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I got the impression from reading the histories of UNIX that AT&T, at least at first, was fairly good natured about licensing it's UNIX & C code to whoever wanted it. I got the impression that the licenses weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either, and AT&T wasn't very discriminatory about who they licensed the code to. So they weren't open, but they were at least fairly good natured about this. Is that true or just a mis-impression?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
I think we can all agree that this essay is a load of crap...but I think that we need to be carefull of having a knee-jerk response when stuff like this comes out. Whenever something criticising linux/*bsd FSF or whatever comes out, people jump all over it. As a community, it would be better to sit back, analyze what other have to say, and attempt to address potential weeknesses. Even essays such as this can have one or two things worthy of consideration, if only to determine what type of logic underlies the criticism. I thought that these people brough up two points vaguely worth of consideration.
A. Long term viability. Lets face it, the current boom is a fad masking over a long-lasting tradition. But this fad is bringing in valuable support. In the public eye, Linux will fail if it falls back to being a geek toy, sure, it can continue on indefinetly in that manner, but the public doesn't care about that. They only care if it affects them. Maintaining a broader user base, and Linux is heading for now, is important for Linux to become something other than a server OS (I think the classic FSF model works fine for server), but the variety of software needed for desktop software by nature demands wider support, and this support comes from users. Assuming one wants Linux to become a desktop platform in addition to a server platform, maintanence of this broaduer user and vendor base is necessary,and at this point, as this support depends largely on hype, a long-term solution is needed. (note: contrary to many, hype isn't all bad, I think it helps reach a large amount of geek-inclined, tinkers or idealists who other wise would never of heard of this. Their not the tradational linux users, but hey, the more the merrier.
B. There is a slight contridiction in stateing that software should be free, than stating that it is ok to make money through support, education and the like. When one thinks about this, it means that software is only free to those who don't need support, IE geeks (most of the time). There is a dicotomy that needs to be resolved between "free" code and the ability to make money...the current model just doesn't hack it, the free except for other things...either its free or it isn't. I personally would like to see a case where all vital tools are available oss, ie, OS, server tools, office suite, web browser, and the like, whereas more eclectic things may remain proprietory, such as games, weird niche apps, whatever. Propriatory software does have a place, we just need to remove the issue of its closedness from being a barrier to new entries who may not be able to afford the cost of propriatory software, such as kids, new companies and organizations, people in underdeveloped areas and the like. This would level the playing field, but still allow for commercial activity.
On a completely random note, I think that contrary to these people, OSS is a perfect example of a free market. The notion of a free market implies that there are many providers and customers are free to give their support (i.e. usually money) to the one that they feel is best. Theoretically, this leads to the best product winning, which we all know is not true. We do not and have not for some time lived in a free market economy, we live in a oligopoly, where a few large providers are able to control the market. This is not free market, the average consumer is not forced to decide between competing products, and the best product does not always, or even ever, win. OSS brings this back, replacing the resource exchange of money with the exhance of ideas, support and the like. Yeah, its messy, thats the way the free market was intended to be. Current defenders of the free-market are defending something that, on a large scale, died long ago and are acting as intellectual pimps for companies.
whew.....getting off of soapbox now.
Brian
BTW: I know of analytical firms/thinktanks that take oss very seriously, its just the better ones don't make alot of hype or follow hype. Their view of OSS's future seems to be positive, though not leading to world domination.
From their web page (emphasis added):
They seem to be focused on protecting business from the effects of government charities. Apparently they heard about the Microsoft trial and free software, put the two together and decided that the government was out to destroy businesses who make money off of software. Last time I checked, that wasn't the situation at all, but if you read their article with that perspective in mind, it does seem a little less circular and convoluted.
When you think about it, it's strange that they came down on the FSF in the article, because the FSF is an example of exactly what they are trying to encourage: a private group of individuals volunteering for the public good. No government involvement there, which seems to be Capital Research's main concern.
My favorite parts:
I thought that originally Unix was distributed for free (source and all, with no support) because AT&T was prohibited from entering the OS market. Unfortunately for the folks at Capital Research, Unix had to wait several years before it could begin competing with Windows, because Windows didn't exist yet.
I, for one, would love to dampen that creativity, and skip a little progress as far as incompatible, obscure file formats.
I think one of these will end up as a sig quote.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm afraid you are mistaken. The entire paragraph, found at http://www.capitalresearch.org/ trends/ot-0499a.html, is as follows:
So first off, I'm afraid I did not misquote the article. I'm curious how you expect to comment on something you haven't read properly :p
Second, if Sun, HP, and other companies have made the GNU HURD or the GNU utilities proprietary, then someone should pass this info on to the FSF folks, because that would be a serious violation of the licensing terms of GNU software. This is not the case, of course.
Sorry, but the authors of this article are attempting to refer to the original Unix, which originated at AT&T. The reference to Unix in the middle of a paragraph about GNU is confusing, but then the rest of the article isn't particularly accurate either, it it?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm not sure why a couple of people are pointing out things that hint at the bias of Capitol Research. It's written all over their faces: there's no such thing as an unfunded think tank.
What's interesting about this one is that they manage to *completely* confuse open-source/proprietary software with open/proprietary *standards*. I think this is just hilarious. And to boot, they threw in the thing about OSS advocates writing to the UN about netscape possibly being an "illegal device" under new copyright treaty, which is beyong being merely a different issue.
*BWAHAHAHAHA*
At least, it would be funny if the "bad guys" didn't have such a large presence in Washington. We've got plenty of people who can write pulchritudinous platitudes for dayz about the wonders of open source software, but if you don't have anyone in Washington to make sure it gets read, well, you're f*^O^*d.
Don't get me wrong: we've got Ralph Nader (for the moment, until our little gadfly is distracted by a shiny object), and we've got James Love. We've got the EFF, the CPD, the VTW, and some other TLAs on the same or somewhat different fronts down in DCTown. However, good as these guys may be, they're a relatively small presence.
I don't mind being run down for my own faults (and Linux has plenty), but it's just insulting when the people trying to take you down don't even know why *they're* doing it. That's the problem with this paper. It misses what little meat is on the bone of this issue, and pulls shit out of its ass to compensate.
-k. ^-^ ^D
Belief in the The Free Market is the modern secular equivalent of belief in The True Cross, or of the Marxist's belief in Working Class Consciousness. This article is just another sermon.
I think could take these econopuritans with more equanimity if they had better hymns.
IMHO the point of this artical was that OSS interfers with the functioning of the market which strikes at the core of belifes of any economist (such as my girlfriend).
/. (a thread on gift cultures vs markets I think). Basically the culture in place needs to allocate resources in an efficient manner in order to resolve the problems which are being faced - in a market economy that allocation is driven by demand. In a gift culture that allocation is via a totally different mechanism.
Its an interesting point and has been discussed before on
I think therefore that it is probably safe to say that OSS solves fewer consumer problems than commercial software.
But conversely OSS probably address more technical issues (although perhaps not as rigorously) than commercial software... this is entirely because the development is driven by the desire of 'geeks' (I hate that phrase) to be involved in new technologies.
Essentially if all software becomes open source then all software is valueless, thus removing _commercial_ incentives to produce new/better things.
I would disagree with the articals assertion that OSS leads to fragmented versions and incompatabilities between software - in the commercial world there is a commercial advantage in being compatible with the market leader... there is not nesciarily an advantage in being compatible with the _best_ standard.
I belive that OSS is much more of an academic enviroment where sharing information creates robust solutions. But much like an academic enviroment once the fundementals of a problem have been solved many people loose interest, not all people but many.
The main thrust of the artical was therefore an assesment of the _long term_ impact of OSS on the consumer. They may have talked in terms of revenue and companies but for any market economy that boils down to consumer desires.
And I think they have a point - it would change the nature of the industry forever. IT would cease to be an industry centered around artifacts and would become an entirely service based industry (sysadmins and and technical consultants).
Compulsary OSS would severly curtail the desire of any company to build new software. If all your revinue come from support and anyone can support your software then you do not have a stable buisness. This is not something which makes people with a buisness training happy.
The other issue that the artical failed to address was that the DoJ trial is about the operation of the free market. One of the witnesses (I forget who) testified that MS had a monopoly because they where able to price software differently for different suppliers - this was economic evidance that the free market was not working.
Perhaps what we should be looking at is how to force the free market to behave correctly within IT with OSS existing only as a component of that movement. Perhaps what is needed is a generic industry oversight body which can force all companies to produce software with a defined interface - by the arguments within the artical we should be fostering competion.
I'm sure that we can all agree that the most important thing is to produce tools that people want at a reasonable cost. That is the base premise of a free market - and so perhaps we ought to support the real message of the artical which was that to much OSS could genuinly damage the software industry in 10 years.
I'm gonna get flamed for this - but feel free
Tom
you really should defrag that drive once in a while.
:)
AMEN! I have a friend who ran win3.1 for two years without defragging, then one day his computer told him he didn't have enough hard drive space to save a one page wordperfect document even though there was over 40 megs left... I defragged it for him (took a couple hours) and he was quite amazed that it now not only allowed him to save, but also seemed to be faster. There's a reason they put defrag there.
I'm not sure how I fixed it, but I did
Aren't these the worst... When you fix a problem you should at least be able to figure out what you did to fix it... in case it happens again... and again... and again
There is no doubt that OSS can be applied to a limited number of software products for a limited period of time. But what happens when the OSS method of production is applied to thousands of software applications with millions of users requiring product support and attention to their particular needs? How do consumers identify the products they need when software is constantly evolving and there are no standard products that enable users to share compatible information? The "free" nature of OSS quickly collapses into chaos.
They're equating applications with data. One of the nice things about OSS is that information is compatible between different applications (in standard file formats or markup languages), instead of proprietary, closed file formats.
And the lawsuit idea is a straw man, as most software licenses exclude liability as a term of use. So not only has MS not been sued, the license (provided it sticks) effectively protects them from litigation. In order to win a lawsuit, not only would somebody have to prove damages, they'd have to get the court to strike the ULA, something the courts have been unwilling to do.
- e
It should be obvious that Linux will not die when its hype does, but I do think Linux's hype will be short-lived -- and that there's no way it will ever "replace" Windows. There will always be a market for a weak, friendly-to-the-point-of-patronizing-the-user OS, and that's a market Linux will never -- and should never -- fill.
Windows should exist!!! There are people out there who need an OS that's a no-brainer to install, use, etc. WinX has its place in the market, as does Linux, as does Unix, as does MacOS, as does __insert_personal_fanatacism_here__. There is no one solution -- contrary to Bill Gates' belief. There are appropriate tools for every job, but Gates would have us use a screwdriver not only for screws, but for pounding in nails, opening car doors and serving salad. That's just not the way it works.
(my $.02)
It was what, a few years ago, that the media had its interest in Java, but Java wasn't ready. It was slow, the implementations of the virtual machines were bad, and it didn't really take off. Then media interest waned. They stopped paying attention to Java (the then-Microsoft-"competitor"), but did Java stop? No. Just because the media gets to something too early doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. If they hadn't paid all that attention to Java in the first place, a lot of tech-savy people wouldn't have started paying attention to it and supporting it, so that it's now in its second wind. Same with Linux. The media attention benefits the movement by getting tech-savy people to actually help (much moreso than in Java's case) the movement; as a side benefit, a few years down the road, when we are rapidly becoming the actual king of the hill, the non-tech people of the world can at least say, "Linux? Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that on CNN one time." Just because the media is early doesn't mean they can't be on time too.
When I started reading their "non-analysis", I thought of writing a reply. But this article has so much nonsense and factual errors, that it would be nauseating just to list them.
I liked the term "Baby Bills" though...
Exactly. It was because thousands of people worked on Linux and the OSS and not-so-OSS apps that are used in it that OSS became a buzzword. Those people aren't going to simply stop because it IS a buzzword. In the software-corp world, OSS may be hype, but to many companies where software is a cost, not a benefit, OSS has been and will stay very important.
Why is it terrific when Gates spends a small percentage of his fortune on helping others, but horrific when others spend portions of their lives writing code to help others? Talk about hypocrisy.
Actually, you can't. MS EULA warranty section:
LIMITED WARRANTY
LIMITED WARRANTY. Microsoft warrants that (a) the SOFTWARE PRODUCT will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying written materials for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of receipt, and (b) any Support Services provided by Microsoft shall be substantially as described in applicable written materials provided to you by Microsoft, and Microsoft support engineers will make commercially reasonable efforts to solve any problem. To the extent allowed by applicable law, implied warranties on the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, if any, are limited to ninety (90) days. Some states/jurisdictions do not allow limitations on duration of an implied warranty, so the above limitation may not apply to you.
CUSTOMER REMEDIES. Microsoft's and its suppliers' entire liability and your exclusive remedy shall be, at Microsoft's option, either (a) return of the price paid, if any, or (b) repair or replacement of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT that does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty and that is returned to Microsoft with a copy of your receipt. This Limited Warranty is void if failure of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT has resulted from accident, abuse, or misapplication. Any replacement SOFTWARE PRODUCT will be warranted for the remainder of the original warranty period or thirty (30) days, whichever is longer. Outside the United States, neither these remedies nor any product support services offered by Microsoft are available without proof of purchase from an authorized international source.
NO OTHER WARRANTIES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND THE PROVISION OF OR FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES. THIS LIMITED WARRANTY GIVES YOU SPECIFIC LEGAL RIGHTS. YOU MAY HAVE OTHERS, WHICH VARY FROM STATE/JURISDICTION TO STATE/JURISDICTION.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR THE FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES, EVEN IF MICROSOFT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY CASE, MICROSOFT'S ENTIRE LIABILITY UNDER ANY PROVISION OF THIS EULA SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU FOR THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR U.S.$5.00; PROVIDED, HOWEVER, IF YOU HAVE ENTERED INTO A MICROSOFT SUPPORT SERVICES AGREEMENT, MICROSOFT'S ENTIRE LIABILITY REGARDING SUPPORT SERVICES SHALL BE GOVERNED BY THE TERMS OF THAT AGREEMENT. BECAUSE SOME STATES/JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY, THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
To summarize, you can return it or have it replaced for 90 days. After that, you're on your own. Of course, MS is the sole deciding factor on which it will be, and they also decide whether or not it is actually defective. I'm sure that if more people read this instead of just clicking on past it, the backlash against MS would be far more severe than it is.
That article is so slanted. The authors must have to turn left to see Pat Buchanan. In fact, almost the entire article is more applicable to MS and other proprietary shops.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Not to start a political flame war, and it has been pointed out before, but check out the board of directors. They come from some of the leading conservative think tanks and organizations...The Leadership Institute, The Heritage Foundation, etc... Seems that they have a huge interest in seeing OSS fail. After all, if software is freely distributable, the source code is available, etc... then how can you make money off of it? Sure, there are other business models, but these are the same types of people who want MP3 to be illegal, public libraries to be censored, etc... Information is something to be concealed, restricted, kept out of the hands of the masses. Is this too ideological? Perhaps. But it seems to me that there are two kinds of people...ones who want information to be free, and ones who want information to be restricted so money can be made for their own personal gain. I feel that the Capital Research Center is in the latter.
On a side note, can anyone really take seriously an organization who believes that food banks encourage people to remain poor and malnourished? (See the As CRC Sees It link)
Heaven forbid that MS has competition and consumers have to choose which products they buy...
.PDF format, from Dumbentia.
That would be just TOO scary, wouldn't it? Here is a humorous summation of that thought, in
I dream of the day when consumers get to choose which products they buy in the computer world. Tied into that dream, of course, is Microsoft having to update Office to conform to open standards, lest it be left behind.
Well, I said it was a dream, didn't I?
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Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
In support of your view, here's a more plausible theory based on real-world experience.
I am a software developer who also has to maintain some lab computers and help a number of non-tech users. Where I work there is an excessive amount of support for Mac, Windows, and Unix environments.
We often have to transfer files between environments. Those of you who may have tried to allow their users to transfer files between these different environments know how incompatible they are. When we learned that a Linux box could be set up as a router supporting the native network protocols for each environment, we got excited. Windows NT, Mac servers, and even our Solaris boxes did not provide this kind of capability.
Along the way I discovered a bug in Samba, found the problem in the source, fixed it, and sent a patch back to samba.org.
Now, my point is this: the people who provide support for users often have the skill to make corrections in the operating system. Not only does that make those people more valuable, thus paying them indirectly through salary increases, but it makes the software more valuable. The "no cost" feature is irrelevant in this context.
Their are many other arguments similar to this one that support OSS.
This has got to be the most boneheaded report on free software I have ever seen. This goes way beyond FUD.
Last I heard, Mr. Nader was not a leader in the free software or OSS movement. He isn't pro-OSS, he's anti-MS. Big difference. The premise of this article is that if Nader approves it, it must be wrong. Gee! If Nader approves of drinking orange juice for breakfast, would he write a report on how the citrus industry is socialist?
Free software is the PROOF of free market economics. OSS isn't the equivalent of a bunch of hippies living in a collective commune. It's making software economics behave like every other product economics.
From the surface, this site looks like a pro-business conservative think tank, but I think it's really a shill for the neo-fascists and populists.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
After reading the article, all I could wonder is if these guys actually studied the situation before putting their spin on it. OSS and FSF is not some Naderian conspiracy, which seems to be what they think.
My take on this is that OSS and FSF and their like threaten their idea of how things work. Apparently having open exchange of ideas is somehow the antitheses of capitalism (funny, I thought open markets were capitalistic). If they want serious competeition, let's see companies compete to release the best products instead of relying on closed source and copyright law to protect them. Let's see REAL competition.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
It's a shame that so many people use it only because it's free as in "free beer." That has a serious impact on its validity in the workplace. In my mind, the open-sourceness is the most important factor because it allows ANYONE to fix it.
:)
The Microsoft Junkies in our department argue that Linux is an amateur operating system simply because it's free. They claim that is the reason we have been using it. Then, when they demand a side-by-side evaluation against NT for security, performance, and scalability, they get slammed.
I know what path the source is in. But I couldn't tell you what any of it does.
-Chris
I fail to see the advantage of opening the Windows source code base. It seems to me this is just more evidence as to the ignorance of the DoJ and the media.
It would still take enormous amounts of time for real-world programmers to figure out most of the code and begin making improvements. In fact, I imagine that most Microsoft programmers would have trouble understanding most of the code. I doubt that a single Microsoft developer sits in front of a screen looking at lines of code all day; they probably use some form of internal development tools where they can drag and drop, then set the properties on code "chunks" that make programming more like building with Legos.
Even if the main Windows codebase was OSS, the rest of the add-ons, upgrades, and APIs rely on the bugs that have been in the system for years, so they would all get broken. And that would just increase the instability once people started poking around with the code.
OSS isn't the answer. Nor is breaking up the company. Try again, DOJ.
-Chris
I feel a little squeamish about Ralph Nader jumping on the Open Source bandwagon. I'm not wild about such a highly controversal figure starting to loudly declare his support for Linux and Open Source. (This is probably the first time I've been in agreement with ANYTHING Nader has said.)
I live in Louisiana, home of David Duke. Anytime David Duke announces support of some political candidate, the candidate will immeidately issue a statement that he DOESN'T WANT David Duke's support! "Go away David Duke! Go endorse my opponent!" is the typical reaction. I sort of feel the same way about Nader's support of Linux.
If Open Source is a "temporary phenomenon", then so is the internet.
For a far more eloquent rebuttal to exactly this kind of thinking, click here.
On their "mission statement" page, the first sentence is:
"Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism."
They then go on to bash one of the biggest volunteer efforts in history (OSS) as being anti-free market and bad for consumers.
This is just an anti-government group in disguise.
They may be right that for OSS to succeed on a large scale, it will eventually have to depend on more than altruistic programmers coding for free in their spare time. This is especially true for an open source project where the final product will be sold instead of given away. Ultimately, a OSS system where a for-profit company can make use of the vast network of independent software developers but pay them for their work may be necessary. This way, a company can sell a "standardized version" and still benefit from the OSS model, while the programmers can earn money for their work.
What is most frightening is that people will believe this junk.
kmj
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Actually, this is how I imagine MS code is written: some randomly-collected blob of sleepless overworked programmers are handed a set of vague guidelines, a list of features, and a picture of the finished product as design specs.
The half-dead coders just pick some details and toss the revised spec into a source-generator that makes the pretty pictures appear to work. After the alpha demo, they add spaghetti to make the features do something almost useful.
After the beta is released and they've had a few hours' sleep and some coffee, the original programming team picks a new team to do the post-sales commercial version, which fixes the most blatant bugs now that some cash is coming in from the product.
But maybe that's not how it's done (yeah, right, tell that to the people who don't know what division they're in anymore).
They describe the problem with Free software being when thousands of products are built under it and they are all evolving then the market will be chaotic for the consumer and then colapse. The market already functions in those conditions and consumers do fine, it sounds like they are supporting the idea of a big monopoly and one company with control of each particular industry. Heaven forbid that MS has competition and consumers have to choose which products they buy... I wonder how all those car buyers work it out, I mean, there must be 150 different makes and models to choose from but they all some how end up owning a car.
I'd also like to know who their sources are that said Linux can't compete with MS if they win the anti-trust case. All of the big free software king-pins don't seem to even care what happens with MS. It seems really trivial to me, we have more workers, more tallent and motivation. We can out code MS any day of the week. That leaves the market with a situation where all we need to do is provide what MS provides to have every economic edge because our product is free. If that was our goal, we would be there in no time. Instead we've raised the benchmark so we are providing more than MS (stability, choice, better looking, more function, easier to use (it's comming along...)) How can we not compete with MS? They can out market us and they've got a lot of pull with important people and companies but if CRC believes in Adam Smith as much as they act like they do then it's a NOP, GNU/Linux and Free Software will win as long as there are people willing to write it. For a company, excuse me, a foundation, that is supposed to study philanthropy and non-profit organaizations they seem to discount it an awful lot, especially considering the people who are doing it aren't just doing it for the cause but because they love to do it.
That might be the only fad, the number of people willing to write it, but I've seen too much to believe that.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Working in a corporate environment I have to disagree with you. While a lot of manufacturers state in their licenses and other paperwork that they cannot be held accountable for all kinds of nasty things, the reality is different.
First of all a lot of the legal mumbo jumbo in licenses and agreements simply doesn't hold up in court.
Second, and more important, manufacturers simply are afraid to lose their larger clients and will go to great lenghts to keep their customers happy.
So I know that in the corporate world accountability IS important enough to be a deciding factor in choosing OS's or any kind of product for that matter.
Fortunately, larger IT companies are beginning to see this and have started implementing linux solutions for their clients. This also means that they can be held accountable for the quality of the OS Software, and that's what they earn their money with. This is the only way that corporate clients will ever use OS Software.
Just a "suit's" perspective on things
beauty is only a light switch away
So much for that article.
Maybe they are running IIS?
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
I can only reiterate the most reasonable suggestion I've heard regarding Microsoft and that is that Microsoft should be forced to document _all_ Windows and NT APIs. ALL of them. In perpetuity. No more secret or backdoor APIs.
I believe _complete_ documentation of the Windows API would be _much_ more useful in the long run than 60 million lines of bloated source code would be.
As far as Nader is concern, I suspect he's more interested in using the DOJ lawsuit as a stick to beat Microsoft with than he is in free or open source software. I consider his participation as a minus, not a plus.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Unless someone can come up with an AI that can spit out code
That's an excellent metephor for products that generate code for you - they literally "spit out" code. Just as you'd rather not step on a floor someone has just spit on, you'd rather not program using "code spittle" as a base.
Sorry it's off topic, it just struck me as funny!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wants to say "far from likely" but decides the more honest "far from certain" will probably align the same way in the readers mind.
The key is "premature" no? since when was planning ahead of time for a possible contingency considered the "encouragement of premature discussion"?
Really, now. Are we to believe that a "market totally free...will quickly collapse" is some kind of economic axiom?
We couldn't get anyone on record to say outright "I am opposed to software sales under all circumstances," so we'll just say that "in theory" this isn't what these loonies believe, it's precisely what they believe "in practice." Throw in the word "idealist" for extra fright.
Right. We made it up and I'm presently doing some "imagined" stuff with "imagined" software that happens to include some fantasy items like Perl, and Apache and GNU tools, and (why should I even go on?)
When's the last time this guy read a MS EUL agreement?
The real clincher. You will have to constantly attend to upgrades, possibly become dependent on something that becomes outdated and in all circumstances, your collegues will not be able to read your documents because the information will not be compatible. Yes, this is a problem when you use, for example, microsoft Word to write your documents.
Sorry, but I just can't bear to continue.
Peace.
No...according to them Unix was created to compete with Windows, so it can't be anymore than 15years old or so.
Where's the clue fairy when you need her?
Well, we've done the second...
I'm all ready to do the first
In the long term, Linux is destined to rule all operating systems. Why? Because the ruling techno-elite of the future, I mean the people who will head up IT departments and be making all of the real decisions, are all Linux enthusiasts today. The Comp. Sci. majors running Linux and *BSD boxen in their dorm rooms today will be dominating the industry tomorrow.
So, Linux is not a short term phenomina. In the very least, it is the future of a long and glorious UNIX tradition; at most, it is the future of the Opreating System.
No sig.
The Capital Research Center is a right-wing think tank whose main activity has been to produce yearly "report cards" on charities and to "alert" corporate executives that their corporate giving programs give money to charitable groups with anti-capitalist agendas. Most corporate giving officers report that even the executives who supervise them treat the CRC as a joke. The CRC slams even the most white-bread charities as being anti-capitalist for doing things like lobbying for government funding for social programs or for laws that would restrict the rights of landowners. They have become a joke even in the far-from-left-wing halls of corporate charity, and we should treat them as no less than a joke on Slashdot. Give this article the monty-python foot icon it deserves!
The source of the above info is
"Looking Good and Doing Good : Corporate Philanthropy and Corporate Power" by Jerome L. Himmelstein. Since I'm repeating this from memory, any inaccuracies are my own doing.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
"Conservative groups [according to the CRC] tend to be those groups with a direct commitment to a conservative agenda. Liberal groups tend to be all those that seek to use government in any way to pursue a goal or group interest. Thus, the CRC includes among liberals all major environmental groups (including the Nature Conservancy), all major representatives of minority groups (not only African American and Hispanic, but Jewish and Asian American), the League of Women Voters, and, most intrestingly, several business groups as well (Council on Foreign Relations, Committee on Economic Development, the Foreign Policy Association, Trilateral Commission, National Alliance of Business). p111
"To put it bluntly, I believe they decide what their answer is and then try to torque their responses to meet their very extreme bias. I mean, they take, in our particular situation, somewhere between 1.5 and 2 percent of our total dollar grants annually and then on that basis proceed to determine by their litmus test and their measurement tool whether you're right, moderate, left of center, etc. It's some of the lousiest junk I've seen anyone put out" (corporate giving officer on the CRC) p. 118
The CRC takes a manichean view... American politics [to them] is a battle between pro-business and anti-business forces... there is little middle ground"
p 121
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
It's about love, man.
+&x
..over for the mighty Bill (Gates and green)
+&x
I absolutely agree; proprietary shops will bend over backwards to solve a big customer's problem. I think that OSS supporters will bend even further.
First, get one thing clear. If you're a small outfit, or a home user, you can get your support from USENET and similar sources. If you're doing serious work with OSS and can't afford to have it down for a long time, you must have support. You either have a support department in-house that understands the software, or you have a support contract with an outside entity. If you fail to do this, you deserve to lose. Linux General's Warning: This Is Not Free Beer. If you buy Linux so that you can pay nothing, you will fail.
That being said, and assuming that you actually buy a support contract, an OSS support organization will bend over backwards to solve the big customer's problems just like a proprietary vendor would. The OSS support team will bend over further because you can hire another organization, or do it yourself. The proprietary house has some control because it has the source code; if you want to change support organizations, you have to purchase and deploy new software. If your OSS support team fails you, you can use the same software and a get a new team; your users may never know.
--The basis of all love is respect
> There will always be free software. People
:-)
> will produce it because of varying reasons,
> philosophical beliefs, just for fun, they wrote
> it but don't want to support it, etc, but there
> may not always be the "buzz" associated with it
> that there is now.
Yes, the buzz will die down, not because OSS
will die out, but because it will be accepted as
just the normal way that things are done. Sort
of like they way the Internet is becoming
commonplace in the minds of most people... when
it used to be *this amazing new thing* that the
media had discovered. Is that a Paradigm I hear
shifting?
The Bolachek Journals
This article and alot of the comments assume that software is a finite thing. I beleive its more like Science. The more that you write/know, the more that remains to be written/learned.
If you accept this, you discover that the idea of a proprietary operating system puts a limit on software. After all, if your OS is worth $100, you have to expect to pay even more for a full suite of application software.
In the eighties, SCO used to charge $500 for Xenix, and $500 for the compiler. Microsoft has reduced that cost somewhat. But if the cost of the OS, development and basic productivity tools were $25, money would be freed up to buy more software. Hopefully, the free software movement will keep raising the bar.
Changes aren't permanent, but change is.
Well, as far as being a conspiracy, it's a pretty benevolent one for the big corporations. Well, except Microsoft. But most big corporations are not in the software monopoly buisness, and they stand to gain a lot through lower licensing costs and higher reliability.
The writers -- or their employers -- are probably MS stockholders. Why else would they try so hard to ingnore the realities of the situation? They are losing control and they are scared. Enough said.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
A significant part of their argument rests on the fact that the market likes Windoze...they seem to think that empirical market share directly translates into consumer preference in a situation of competition. It doesnt take an economics degree to tell you that this is not necessarily true.
They also have problems with support for open-source software...they dont seem to realize that the same people who are writing the softwares and a significant portion of their users are proficient in HTML...and are capable of documenting the common errors, pitfalls, etc. If they'd done their homework, they'd see quite a bit of documentation online. Dont get me wrong, I know there's much room for improvement in terms of information flow re: OSS support, but they seem to think that it does not exist... I guess they dont know about usenet or mailing lists and #linux.
They are also neglecting side-effects and side-payments, if you will, that companies and users receive as a natural result of OSS...eg., establishment of protocols, standards, etc in a purely efficient manner. You dont need a degree in economics to know that the best decisions for consumers are not always realized by a profit-maximizing firm (think about sports...why are there so many crappy teams? excessive competitiveness simply isnt profitable). While there is a significant fracturing in the systems and software standards available as a result of OSS, their differences do not hide general trends of convergence (eg. mp3, and dont pretend that unrestricted mp3 is gonna disappear cuz of some pay-for-play standard). MP3, I think it is safe to say, would not have come from the profit maximizing behavior of record companies, yet it seems to be pretty good at satisfying a consumer demand.
They also state that even linux advocates dont think Linux can survive in the face of an unrestricted Microsl0th...where on earth did they dig this BS up...
In short, I could have come up with a more compelling argument as to why Quake will never replace ATARI 2600.
$0.02
Dig in!
In other words, they like to portray Linux users as black sheep; rebellious teenagers with nose rings and leather jackets, thumbing their collective noses at Bill Gates, taunting "Neener, neener! We're not using Windows!" And while it is true that there are people who use Linux for exactly this reason, from my experience this is not what drives the average Linux user.
People like Linux because of what it gives them, not because of what it takes them away from. The Redmond-centrists who believe that the industry revolves around Microsoft will probably never be convinced of this, but on the other hand, who cares? Microsoft is a lot less relevant to the growth and success of Linux than a lot of Slashdotters seem to think.
He also writes:
What this individual doesn't get (and, indeed, what just about every opponent of OSS doesn't get) is that the fact that a piece of software is free is not enough to guarantee it widespread acceptance and success. Sure, it doesn't hurt, but anybody who attributes the success of Linux solely to the fact that it's free is woefully incorrect. It almost seems as if they are completely unwilling to accept that a piece of free software can be fundamentally better than a piece of commercial software. "Don't listen to people who tell you about its supposed quality!" shouts the OSS detractor. "They're just using it because it's free!"
Complete nonsense, of course.
In fact, Linux is succeeding in many places in spite of the fact that it's free! Case in point: I work for a large corporation where we are currently in the process of migrating a series of NT workstations to Linux. The process that we had to go through to get this done was long and arduous, and most of the opposition was due to the fact that the management types simply didn't trust a "free" operating system. For us, the fact that Linux is free really doesn't matter; in any medium- to large-sized shop, the amount of money spent on desktop operating systems is miniscule compared to the buckets spent on server iron and large-scale software. We had to fight to convince them that the "free" Linux would be a better choice than the commercial Solaris x86. In the end, I'm happy to report that we won.
The bottom line is that a piece of software, be it a rinky-dink application or an operating system, will only succeed and be accepted on a large scale if it is fundamentally better than its competition, and unless the numbers are particularly extravagant, price isn't a very big consideration (in corporate markets, anyway.) If somebody comes up with a better solution, people will use it
Sorry about the length.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
That entire article was clearly written with a goal in mind. Logic is just used as a tool. As a result, it reads a lot like Moonie or Commie promotional material.
:-)
I particularly like the lengths they went through to associate OSS with Ralph Nader. And just in case your parents were too young or moderate to have taught you to spit whenever that name is mentioned, they made sure to slap the label "leftist" wherever they could.
Take a look at some of the other articles on their home page. I particularly like the one complaining FDR's New Deal destroyed private charity.
Also take a look at their board. The only name I recognized was Ed Meese. That explains a lot. Anyone remember the Meese commision? As I remember it, all the scientists on it resgined in protest. Does anyone know who the any of the rest of those yahoos are?
He must have been a buisness major. The whole article reaks of "Software is a product used to make money" Anyone who codes knows "Software is used to do stuff" If you take his premis to be true then the article makes sense. Why would these people develop software and then give it away.
He just cannot Grasp the concept that someone might code the software that they need for themselves, the releaseit to the rest of us.
This is a very easy article to attack, but it does make some good points. I think it is worth asking "What if they're right?" There are two specific points that I think we need to consider: the scalability of OSI and the real motivations of corportate sponsors.
... There are a
First, the success of Linux does not automatically guarantee the success of the entire Open Source movement. Imagine all software distributed under
GPL (it isn't hard to do). I doubt that the same people who devote so much time to Linux would be willing to spend as much time improving Word Perfect and Excel and Quicken and
very limitted number of people who are both willing and capable to make meaningful contributions these huge programs. The more programs that are released as open source, the more diluted the pool of able programmers will become. What works for a few programs may not work for the entire software industry.
Also, consider the large number of programs that are currently open source. How many of the programs actually benefit from the contributions of other people? How many programs are maintained solely by the original authors?
The other interesting question that this article raises is the motivation of the companies that have recently jumped on the the Linux banswagon. Are these companies really dedicated to the idea
of open source software, or are they simply seizing an opportunity to attack Microsoft. What will happen to all this support after the antitrust lawsuits are concluded?
OK, now I'm not an AC any more, so you'll have to find another ad hominem attack. :)
My point wasn't that people can actually *get* support in any meaningful sense. Although in most cases they can usually get it. Perhaps not from MS but from other software vendors.
My point was that people want to *think* that they can, or at very best have someone to blame if they can't. Not to throw around cliches, but let's call it "mindshare..." People need to *think* that they're getting something supportable by someone other than a 15 year-old hacker in mom's basement on a cable modem.
I know I do.
To respond to other comments, I don't think that the widespread use of DNS/bind, sendmail, etc is any "proof" of the superiority of open source, in the PUBLIC EYE. People don't choose to use the free source sendmail protocol. They choose to use Microsoft Outlook Express. They implicitly use sendmail because it's there, and because no one has found a compelling reason to replace it. It is free, and if it breaks, it will get fixed for free. Why should Microsoft or anyone else try to change this? It wouldn't be cost effective. At the same time, that doesn't mean that people looked at all the alternatives and chose the higher quality free source implementation. Nine out of ten internet users these days likely don't even know what sendmail is.
If we're talking about OSS as the "future of modern software", that's probably a lost cause. Yes, there are examples of successful open source items. Apache is used by many. How much of that is just because it was here first, the world may never know. But when it comes to Actual Users, in my "much bally-hooed real world," they choose things that they can trust, and that they can feel they get support on.
Those were my points? Any clearer? Do my words now have more meaning and value because I attached a name, email address and web URL to them? Or are you just angry because I disparagingly used the term "hacker"?
Sheesh.
ryan
Isn't it feasible that some site might be having a slow day? I never have any trouble accessing sites that are so-called "Slashdotted"... maybe your ISP is just really pathetic.
The thought that Slashdot is some unstoppable force that brings down websites is humorous.
ryan
I'd agree with that. But I think that many others wouldn't. The sentiment is that Linux (and by extension all free software) is "the next big thing" - anyone that doesn't think so, or anyone that uses "proprietary mindraping garbage" is just a tool of the establishment.
ryan
"Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows;originally OSS, later versions of Unix were
made proprietary by Sun Microsystems,
Hewlett-Packard and other companies."
I'd say this pretty clearly indicates that they don't have a clue.
BTW, did Al Gore invent Bill Gates, or vice versa?
"In a free market, identifiable manufacturers own the product. They are responsible for product perfomance, and they can be held liable for inexcusable flaws."
Flaws such as the one thats lets macros viruses easily trash computers and shut down email systems?
Ideology is for ideots.
Cripes, they're a load of rabid right-wingers, who probably think OSS is another variety of Communism. And they have it in for environmental groups too...
Conservative Thinktank
Sure Linux is temporary. So's winblows. Every few years, the next big thing comes along. Some are fads, others are less transient, but nothing lasts forever. So in the big scheme of things they're right.
But they're dead wrong if they think Linux is a passing fad.
Yours in ephemeral passing,
Bubba
-----------
One viagra in the morning before work; I just know I'm gonna be screwed