IEEE Spectrum Open Source issue

David McWha writes "The cover story of the May issue of IEEE Spectrum is on open source systems, and gives a good balanced view of the competition between Windows NT and various Unices (including Linux). There is a nice unbiased review of the pros and cons of each. The whole story from the history through to the commercial model of open source is there. The article is available online, but you have to be an IEEE member to get in, so join! "

Comments

Re:"Protected" Content and Pirating

[Rene S. Hollan]

I disagree.

It should be up to /.ers to decide what's "exceptional". Do we really want /. to filter the news to us like the major media players do?

Perhaps some sort of per-article tag, relating to kind of content, restrictions, etc. could be used so that indivudual /.ers could select appropriate filters for themselves.

As for copyright violation, I don't see that as Rob's problem.

Sheesh, haven't you people ever heard of a library

[xyzzy]

Or a (well stocked) news stand? Or maybe a friend who is a member?

IEEE is a non-profit professional organization. The costs they charge just cover the services they give.

Slashdot doesn't have "members"

[Stephen Williams]

Why should the Slashdot team do any "actual work" to "provide...members a real service"? Slashdot doesn't have members. No-one pays to use Rob's cool site. Rob and the team don't owe us anything.

I for one am delighted that the Slashdot team provide the service that they do at no charge to the users. Keep up the sterling work, people :-)

Ironic (and moronic also)

[RangerElf]

An article about Open Source software and the article itself isn't viewable except by members.

I was once a member of IEEE, the organization itself sucks like hell, at least here in Mexico. I really regretted shelling out the money to subscribe, specially being a hungry student at the time (and their "computer" mag was always late on everything, playing catch-up to byte, etc).

I coincide, /. shouldn't display pay-subscription-site news. Like the guy said, 99.9999% of us won't subscribe just to read the thing.

-elf

"Protected" Content and Pirating

[L1zard_K1n6]

It would probably behoove /. to not make links to "member-only" articles unless they are extremely exceptional. Not only is it a pain in the rump for the 99.99999% of us who are not, nor will ever be, IEEE members, but it encourages some here to "pirate" the article and paste it in here, which I would assume runs counter to the intention of having it on a members-only site to begin with.

"Protected" Content and Pirating

[Weezul]

Perhaps we should have a policy of making ``more desciptive posts'' when we make links to member only sites, i.e. ask for a summery with any link to a members only site. This seems like a good policy since it allows potentially valuble content to be posted and those of us who don't want to join can still get the message.

In this case it would have been worth providing a basic list of what they liked and didn't like about the various OSes. This could probable have been done in one paragraph without even a hint of copyright enfriengment.