Slashdot Mirror
Suck on Linux Evolution
Jonny Royale writes "Today's Suck has an interesting perspective on the Red Hat IPO, and the future of Linux in general. Warning in advance: It's not pretty. " Ouch-I think there's a lot of honesty in this article, particularly the attention to human nature. What do you folks think?
"You're obviously not a coder and haven't followed linux much if you think that the community hasn't been filled with "serious competition" since its conception. The "serious competition" is one of the things that draws a lot of us to it. It's made a huge difference too, Linux is far better because of competition."
/. have a KDE-positive counterpart posted immediately thereafter? (or vice versa)
Really? If you consider HURD vs. Linux, or WM vs. Afterstep or TWIN vs. WINE competition, then perhaps there has always been serious competition in the Linux domain. But I am a coder, and I have followed Linux software development for a long time. What I saw in those projects was peaceful coexistence and even cooperation between differing products. Sure WM is a lot like AfterStep, but then again, it is a lot unlike AfterStep as well. One doesn't exist just to outdo the other. WINE and TWIN? Same thing. In fact, there has been a lot of cross-communication between those projects recently.
Contrast this to the GNOME/KDE wars. Do these developers communicate with each other as effectively? Why are there two disparate object models being developed? Why is there very little cooperation on the CORBA front? Why must every GNOME-positive article on
How about the drafting of the GNOME WM compliance specification? As I recall there was/is a lot of dissention regarding how closely the spec was tied to E. Several WM authors decided not even to implement the spec because of this. Is this cooperation?
Perhaps we should create a distinction: community competition vs. corporate competition. Community competition leads to better products and common ideals. Corporate competition leads to lawsuits and fragmentation. And the Linux community seems to be moving from the former to the latter, IMO.
If you need one more piece of anecdotal evidence, reconsider for a moment the scuffle between LinuxCare and RedHat over a certain advertisement. This type of thing can't help but spill over into the code at some point.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
The biggest difference is that Chess Records never gave away their stuff for free on the Internet.
This whole lame article conveniently ignores all those years of development, the thousands of developers hours dedicated to the cause of making great software for humanity. Pathetic.
The Suck article should be required reading for Linux zealots. Not because it is completely right, correct, and reflects the absolute truth, but because it is focused, edgy, nasty, and says the dirty words without flinching. The guys at Suck have a point and they make it very well indeed. You may disagree with the article or parts of it (at least I do), but the issue is not going to go away. That's the same issue that has been repeatedly surfacing at Slashdot and subject of much discussion by a lot of very smart people -- Linux and the big bad commercial world out there.
I'm not going to try to recap these discussions, but I think it's worth pointing out some quite trivial facts:
RHAT is a public corporation. Its management has legal duty to maximize shareholder value by whatever legal means necessary. Historically, courts have given a lot of leeway to company management in deciding how to go about it, but on the other hand, management has been sued, sometimes successfully, for doing (or not doing) something useful for shareholders. Think about it: if they believe, e.g. that writing and selling proprietary extensions to Linux, will make the company more profitable, then the RedHat management has a duty to do this. I really would not be surprised to see an effective fork of Linux (on the same kernel base) into a "corporate" Linux, sold, say, by RedHat and Corel, and a "pure" Linux, distributed by e.g. Debian. It's not a good thing to happen, but welcome to the real world.
So, yes, the transition from the academic/hobbyist/sysadmin world into the rat-eats-dog-eats-rat corporate world is dangerous and will probably affect Linux in some way and the Suck article pointed it out with a very-well-sharpened finger.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Hmm, I programmed my stuff for me. If somebody can make money from it more power to them, but I've been in this industry for fifteen years and have a nice paying job of my own, thank you very much. Why should I care if somebody else finds my random hacks to be of use?
Where can I buy it with my filthy lucre ...
Sheesh, and Wired is just so much better than us at avoiding profit.
Will in Seattle
That's an ignorant comment. Anyone who believes whole-heartedly in what is put before him blatently proves his own ignorance. Linux is not the only NON-MS Operating System. Implying that the author must have been paid off by Billy Boy himself is ludicrous. FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, and many other operating systems all have a very avid following. (None of which have a slashdot counterpart, unfortunately.)
The author is pointing out the fact that the Linux community has grown to such a size that it now has the potential for profit-making and probably a large majority of the projects will be aimed at selling the product and making money rather than entertainment and learning.
Linux has lost touch with its roots and all associated are too blinded by lime-light to see it. I'm thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing. Unfortunately not a single person will ever view this because Slashdot will censor me for saying "FreeBSD".
C. Baron --
IT Management
dude-
back away from the 3rd person references to yourself...
who are you? Dennis Rodman? Mike Tyson?
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
First of all the issue with servers has already been pointed out. Linux will continue to grow there, and a GUI is irrelevent for servers.
Second, the KDE is in many ways a easier to use interface than Windows. The use of single click as a default (and currently only option, though KDE 2.0 will support double clicking as well) is one of the reasons. People who have been using Windows and MacOS for years hate it. Those of us, like myself, who think of mouse clicks logically in terms of speed and having enough states like it. New users will love it. I've watched quite a number of new users, primarily older people who never used a computer before, click on an icon and get very frustrated when nothing happens, so they click it over and over again until five copies of the app start up, which also frustrated them. Back when I was younger this led me to unconsciously tripple click, which made my friends laugh at me.
None the less, Linux with KDE is a viable alternative to Windows for the avarage joe on the desktop.
Nitpicking their layout isn't really a convincing argument as to what, if anything, was wrong with the article.
Linux may not be the desktop choice of the future, and if it is, it'll be different from the Linux server of the future. There are other choices for a desktop system that are (or will be) better than Microsoft (BeOS). And either way, competition is good, maybe it'll force MS to make a better OS (about the same time penguins are ice skating in Hell).
It's the 21st Century Do you know what your government is doing
Man, oh man. This article highlights something which I've always disliked about the GNU/Stallman way of thinking. It seems to claim that greed is a bad thing and a negative thing. That anywhere money goes, evil must follow. I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment of the situation. Greed means competition, and competition means advancement. One of the major things that will a selling point to a lot of people here at slashdot and you crazy GNU communists will be whether or not a particular distrobution is 100% open source. As a result, the 'greedy' competitors in the linux market will be sure to release their changes as open source... Sacrificing their hard fought code to the community so the community will buy their product. Believe it or not, market forces are a Good Thing. Greed is a good thing. Communism is a Bad Thing.
By this, I don't mean you shouldn't assist the community, I mean people should stop whining and moaning whenever someone does something *other* than that. Caldera wants to release a closed-source GUI install doowhang? Fine, sounds like a good idea to me. I won't complain. But, all Red Hat or SuSE would need to do to beat them would be to release the same utility as an Open Source doowhang. And this applies to everything. Their greed will force them to do what we, the consumers, want.
Bah. Linux isn't gonna blow up or be 'pushed to ship' until Linus or Alan decide that they want to be owned by one of the major competitors. Lets not forget that Linux develops at the speed and in the direction that the community wishes it to, not the major companies. The best they can hope for is to contribute code and thus become liked by the core developers.
--Me
OK, well this is a situation that happens with all organizations. Nothing can break up a group like success. The smallest, most insignificant organizations will have vicious politics when they have to start deciding what to do with some money.
But, Linux is still free. It has been built on good foundations, and programmers at companies are being paid money to work on it. So maybe Linux will become more of a consortium of corporations and a few stellar individuals. At the very least it raises the standards of what an operating system can be. So what if it is Adaptec that starts writing device drivers instead of Pete in Vancouver? The point is that the good stuff gets absorbed and the bad stuff gets criticized and improved on. It's the product that is important, not the motivations.
What was it that T.E. Laurence said in "Laurence of Arabia"? 'Nothing is written'. Suck on Suck. Nothing is written. 'sept code.
The office I work in has only one Paperclip-enhanced copy of MS Office (it's 2000 and I had to re-FDISK the Harddrive after it's first "install") and the Top Dog of this company just LOVES the paperclip. Especially since it is "all nifty and 3d-like". Oh jeeze.
Michael "Aliaser" Henninger
No matter how great you feel in your jihad of choice, you have now to face the fact that the plunders are being divided, your work is being taged with a cash $ sticker and your bible of turth is now for sale on a shelf along side the DemonWin and others.
I noticed this transition over a year or two back when folks seemed to be driftin from teh fun of playing with the system of Linudx and began the push towards making it User Freindly. Not that user freindly is a bad idea, but Linux is, at its best, a fast driving hard truning race track to test the skills and hone the ability of it users.
When they started putting padding on the curves, all that changed.
One can say Linux lost its virgin zeal the minute it stepped away from the practicalites of CLIdom and workability and spent large chunks of its time arguing over how an Icon should look on a screen.
"how does it feel to be a rolling stone no direction ~"
So now Linux is a Money Making venture with large chunks of cash at stake. You think the realses of tomorrow wont be thiniking about the demands of the Buying Public versus the Bleeding Edge Techers. Who do you think BUYS a linux install anyway, some one who knows how to do a net install over thier dsl??? Nope, its the same folks who BUY software and expect it to work out of the box( yes it has a box) with MINIMAL hassle. The words Kernerl and Complie are going to fade from the fore to be replaced by, CUSTOMER and Support. Chaching. Next customer please.
Linux is about the
To every cloud there is a silver linning, in this one the silver is redemable for houses, cars, food, and new hi fi systems to listen to your MMW bootlegs.
Dont deny the dark side..........Your soaking in it
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
I won't agree that an operating system sucks simply because it's corporate. An operating sucks if it makes accomplishing a task more tedious than it would be in another operating system.
I think M$ makes a great OS for gaming, with all that DirectX stuff...
I think Linux is a great OS for development (in all areas) and networking
I think the Mac is a great OS for making graphics, laying out pages, and providing a simplified work environment.
Pick your tools according to how well they accomplish the job, not for any other reason (hatred of a company, etc...)
Since when is commercialization a problem? Lots of Linux coders take money for their work. The issue isn't whether we sell our code or labor, the issue is whether we use a free license. Any commercial entity that tries to drop the free license is asking for trouble, they will see their market evaporate almost overnight since they now push a proprietary Unix instead of something open and therefore standard. They also risk being sued back to the stone age.
The one thing about the GPL that even non-opensource-zealots really appreciate is that it it holds the vendors feet to the fire with respect to keeping Unix open and standard. As long as its open and standard the customers will line up for miles. All of the long run incentive pushes the commercial vendors this way. Those that don't have this perspective will be trod under the feet of vendors that "get it".
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
Okay I know this may sting a bit. But, alot of what is said in that article is also true. I still don't think that hundreds or even tens of people have changed their motives for developing for Linux just because of an IPO.
The author seems to think that this is corrupting when it was meant to be supporting and a sign of goodfaith.
After all RedHat does 100% own it's very existence to the OSS community. And RedHat knows it, so they did the right thing. Even if it wasn't the original motive for the programming and RedHat wasn't under official obilgation to do so.
So will Linux be market/money driven? Well, no I don't think so... Look at the big players that are involved in Linux up to their neck like IBM. Who would have thunk it 2 years ago. Everyday, I see on LinuxToday 4 or 5 companies pledging support for Linux. And Linux in my opinion hasn't lost it's soul.
If anything it is changing the way others think about software. Not the other way around. Did you ever think that all the many hardware vendors today would even ever think about open sourcing their drivers?
Linux has been the underdog all along. And once again I think that people are under estimating it. Linux will survive commercializm. And come out stronger because of it. The Linux community will see to that by their every choice of what software they run.
Just my 2 cents.
I really like that last line. When people read negative words like in Suck's article, they get the idea, "well what's the use?" and they give up. We need more people that /do/ have faith in their fellow man.
I agree with your point, but if you think people don't have to learn Windows, you're sorely mistaken. While it seems ridiculously simple to the Linux ubergeeks (myself included), to people who've never used a computer before, Windows is daunting. ("I have to click Start to finish?" etc.)
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
A lot of slashdotters bitch and moan about unions, but all a union is is the people that do the work joining together in their common interest (corrupt, anti-democratic 'unions' are something else entirely). And hopefully at least in this instance, everyone can see that the coders should call the shots. (though I suppose there'll be a bunch of replies that if you don't like coding for RedHat for free, you have no justification to demand control over your work, and instead, you should quit and find some other OS)
Not really related to your comment, but I'm just thinking. Microsoft is in a forced position here. It can't really keep releasing new upgrades every... year or so or people will get extremely fed up and give it up all together. So, they can either make the space between releases longer, or make releases that are cheap/free. Given Win98 SE, it doesn't seem like they're going in the cheap/free direction. So while MS may take a big step forward with W2k, they kind of stay at that stage until their next release (at least from end-user's pov). I'm guessing after most companies make the jump to W2k, they won't even bother looking at W2002. So I'm guessing the next release will be 2005. 5 years of Linux development while W2k is stuck in the same place. That's where Linux is going to get ahead. Unless, of course, MS realises this and starts releasing cheap/free major updates(ie W95>w98). Hmm.. but another thing is that while MS had it lucky with Win95, where most of the hardware manufacturer's were just coming out with new peripherals and they wrote drivers for Windows 95, many of them have gone bankrupt? or sold off their divisions. So W2k, if it has a different driver format than W95, which it probably does, will have to rely on its own programmers to write drivers for hardware they probably don't even have, or can't buy new. Plus, the fact is, Windows isn't easy to modify, even for Microsoft. So when some new technology or feature is needed in Windows, they will probably have to overhaul Windows to accomodate it, or release some quick-fix that kind of latches on to the system but doesn't really integrate.
The HURD was in development before linux. The HURD never went anywhere. The HURD is a remnant from the days in the early part of this decade when the prevailing view was you couldn't do anything useful without using a microkernel design, it was the holy grail. Many OSes (the HURD, NeXTstep, NT, BeOS) came from this era. Linux disproved this general theory by creating a stable, fast, portable OS with a monolithic kernel. The HURD is and probably always will be the OS that wasn't. It still hasn't met the goals set for it in the early part of this decade, let alone implementing modern features linux is coming to terms with today (SMP, Journaling file systems, ect.). The HURD may be the politically correct OS in your mind, but it is rather uninteresting when compared to linux, BeOS, QNX, ect. and is nowhere near the level of development that linux and the BSDs are at. I'd be suprised if it reaches the level linux is at today in the next 5-10 years.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I used to read Suck, but forgot about them for some reason. For that reason I'm glad they got some "air" time on Slashdot, now I have them bookmarked again (I'm sure I could remember the URL, but I might forget their existence otherwise.)
I don't think they quite understand where Linux is coming from though (or maybe they just left it out for the sake of humor.) I've watched the development of Linux for ~6 years now and one thing that stands out about it (and other similar open source projects) is that it's growth is organic. It's development has about as much to do with money as a tree's.
Redhat may come and go. Maybe Debian will fall too. Who knows? The development of Linux will continue despite what happens to the people and organizations involved now. Maybe it will evolve into something else if necessary.
It's more about mother nature than human nature, and you can't stop mother nature that easily.
numb
That is the one thing that I don't understand. I get the newest version of Red Hat everytime there is a new distribution. But I've always paid about $7.00 ($2.95+S&H) from Linux Central. True not everyone knows about Linux Central and the Installation book is a little more (yeah like I ever bought that). And there is no 30-day support with the GPL'd version of RH6 - gee maybe that is why they sell it for $70 bucks. If anything this IPO helps Red Hat continue to add more support to their distribution by allowing them to expand they can add more people for support. And spend more on R&D on their distribution (which there is source for). This isn't going to stop the community spirit unless the community decides that people making money for selling support is bad. Which I don't understand - first the community wants Big Business to start looking at OSS, which BB doesn't want to do because there is no support, now companies start offering support through an OSS distribution, then BB started taking Linux seriously. So now these distribution companies need to expand their support models to handle BB so they go public and everyone in the community is screaming foul! They going to steal Linux! Why didn't the community express this when IBM started offering Linux support - their a for profit public company and they are (in the way of support and they are bigger to handle BB support) competitors to RH. People thought they were going to hijack Apache and not give to the community but they didn't and they have helped to give back to the community. Let's open up are minds a bit and remember that every distributor has given back to the community and helped keep Linux GPL'd and open sourced. This is their payback to become a public company like IBM and still help the community. It's in their best interests to do so. And the more companies go Public the stronger the community becomes and these companies become to take M$ down. Don't freak out. Be a community and support all these companies going public.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
Whatever planet you're from, that's gotta hurt!
Looks not so great, but we know how the media isn't always the most correct group, eh?
Dan
You can't buy free.
Good point. Let's take the idea further... can we GAIN from this exposure to Coporate culture?
Is it possible that Joe Corporate Coder, firmly entreched in the Evils of Money, can be converted? Perhapse their company wants them to take a look at Linux. Perhapse they look at it themselves to see what the fuss is. What they find is an environment enamoured with tinkering. It reminds them of the fun they had when they first started coding... why they made it a profession. They begin to tinker and hack... not because of some marketing drive but because they once again can enjoy coding. They're converted. And Open Source is richer for their contributions.
I'm not saying that the corporate culture is in danger of falling completely for the promise of Open Source (yes, obviously many will not)... but as long as the code remains open, some of those coders will want to tinker. Linux will continue to evolve.
They usually know what they're talking about.
I'm optimistic that Open Source and the GPL will hold out against the worst aspects of greed, though.
SECOND?
George
Does it look like the author has been reading every link /. publishes and bookmarking it in case it makes a good story?
The problem I've seen with the "Linux is dead movement" is that they seem to forget that sure the stockholders want something, some return, some new thing, but that's Red Hat's problem, not the Community's problem.
Now, I'm not suggesting fragmentation. I'm suggesting what simply seems to be how it's always worked pre- and post-RHAT era. When the Linux users need something, they post to the cola, wait for a response, get none, and do it themselves. None of this stockholder BS. It's how the projects get started.
What I'm really trying to point out is that as some of you are now shareholders, your work helps you earn money (that's what the Letter was about, not selling your soul), for those shareholders who aren't coders, users or even "geeks" if Red Hat doesn't perform, well tough! We do it our way. There is no board of directors, no COO, no managers to look over our shoulders and provide projects. There is only a lack of a service we want that provides us with the latest project.
To the investors that aren't Community, you should have read the fine print of the deal. To the investors in the Community, you earn when you produce. To the rest of the Community, it's still about love of Linux.
The naysayers predict doom and gloom, but we know we're different. A person doesn't win a race by watching who's nipping at his heels. Likewise, world domination won't happen if we let ourselves be overcome with FUD from the money men.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
I use Linux/Windows regularly, but if you were to ask me if Linux or Windows is easier to install (from scratch -- I've done them both many, many, many, times), I'd probably have to say Windows. I can't say I'm in love with X windows, so if I'm in Linux I'm usually in console. I boot into Windows to read Slashdot (it's horrible browsing Slashdot via lynx) and do some web browsing. With all this flamethrowing going on with X, I can't really say whether or not a replacement is what we need... But, I do have to say I _HATE_ the extra virtual terminal that X uses and doesn't close when you exit. Anyone know how to fix that or get rid of it?
272 0 . Huh?
In a way, the Linux/GNU community is one of the only Communisms to ever exist.
Unlike the "communist" governments in recent history (and the present) Linux has no priveladged party. True you could consider the big Linux kernel hackers (Linus, Alan, etc.) to be a priveladged group, but the means of communication to them is in no way limited. Just join the kernel mailing list and contribute.
There is no need for anything outside of the community. Many communist governments failed, in part, due to the innability to rely on the community alone for success. Whether it was military ties, food, oil, communist nations still needed to rely on the outside world for parts. The Linux community, on the other hand, has always been able to provide for itself anything it desired. If a piece of hardware was need, or simply wanted, someone wrote a driver. There was no need to rely outside the community. There may be instances where outside source was used, but that was most likely out of convenience then necessity.
The major thing that seperates the Linux/GNU community as a true example for communism is that citizenship is voluntary. Sure people can emigrate the community and develop commercial applications, but that in no way means that the community is tied down to only that application. They can always develop from within the community. And true, you may be short one hacker but others will join.
--- Linux... a college project gone horribly right
A very easy to use interface will allow very stupid people (VSP) to use it. If VSP can't use it, then they won't.
If VSP use the interface, then the average level of intelligence of the end-users decreases. This is part of the reason that VSP don't use Linux today: it doesn't have a very easy to use interface.
---
END OF LINE
first post?
So what you're saying is that Linux systems are advancing and improving at a very fast pace, but still manage to maintain backwards compatability (due to the fact you can have multiple versions of things like libc on a system).
Oh no, anything but that!
This is quite true. I have been using Win2K for a while now at work, and it has never crashed. No tonce in the entire month I've been using it for. That's not to say that it doesn't have some problems, but they are not stability problems.
I'm not doing anything high-powered though, and I don't know how much went into setting up this box (I was given it when I began as an intern here).
---
END OF LINE
After about the 1000th consecutive article in which they complain, bitch, or deride something, I just had to hang it up.
It went from funny to annoying very quickly.
...but you're still wrong.
You're wrong because you equate the expectation that a company will deliver on a promise with a sense of entitlement. The developers who recieved the letter didn't demand a piece of the action, but RedHat offered it anyway. That was a nice gesture, and it increases my respect for that company, but once they made the promise those developers were right to expect RedHat to deliver. I get the impression that after all was said and done RedHat did deliver, but that is another story.
You're wrong because you believe, as the author of the article does, that businesses have the power to control the development of free software. Companies and IPO's have existed before software did. They didn't control free software decades ago and they don't control it today. Some of them contribute to it, but that doesn't stop anyone from developing or using any free software in any way.
You're wrong becuase you assume that money and free software cannot coexist. There is nothing wrong with programmers being payed for their work. There is something wrong with reducing the utility of that work in order to pay them. Free software is not about giving software away, although there is nothing wrong with that either. Free software is about giving people the power to software in the way that works best for them, rather than accepting the canned decisions of some corporation.
Ok, bad example. Once ANOTHER Linux power/distro has an IPO and there are multiple groups of shareholders going after the same customer base...
Suck's presentation blows. They need to fix it. Who the hell do they think they are, Wired?
He didn't specifically mean the 'paper-clip', nobody likes the paper clip.
He meant that StarOffice doesn't have all the useless features, bells, and whistles that Jim down in Accounting likes in an office package.
I wouldn't call this the 'fatal flaw' by any stretch.
Red Hat, or any other publicly owned business (or those aspiring for an IPO), doesn't give a rats ass about what "free agent" developers do, don't do or think. They may give that impression today, since they're counting on you to help build the market. But, you are not the market they are after. They want to capture a share of the enterprise, and those people who know nothing about Linux and it's community.
Slashdotters are fond of saying but RedHat != Linux, which is true enough for everyone here, but to Joe Public and the PHB's RedHat == "Linux" is most assuredly true. Caldera want's Caldera == "Linux", and so on.
Red Hat's number one obligation (by law) is to their shareholders, and to maximize the return on investment in either the long or short term. If they don't, they'll face a big fat class action lawsuit.
The only power you hold has no value to them. They will always be able to find someone to do what they need done.
Well, I haven't read it yet, but if it says something bad about Linux, it must be bad, right?
:)
The only way that Linux is going to gain marketshare and respectability is if there's only good news put forth about it. Whomever published the article therefore must not like Linux and hence is on the Microsoft payroll in some way shape or form.
What we need these days is more objective news covering the linux phenomenon. If it degrades linux, obviously they don't see the full picture, and therefore is not objective and they're being paid-off by Bill Gates.
This is slashdot.
Now I'm gonna go read it!
Before you go around throwing out statements like that. I'd like to know of an actual real-world stituation that happened like this? If so then, it's the clients fault for not knowing how to work their computer. And if they need help they should purchase a support contract.
If the commercial app is broken than that is again the fault of the client to choose to go with a closed source app.
And since when did Linux give a crap about a commercial product enough to not allow progess with libraries or anything?
BTW: 3rd
like most suck essays they state a ridiculous premise (linux has fallen into the hands of corporate evil) and then spend the next 500 words enjoying their own wordplay without ever saying anything to back up the initial claim unless restating it in increasingly witty permutations counts as proof.
I gotta agree with you, AS LONG AS the GPL stands up....we shall soon see some challenges that should determine the long term course of OSS and GPL. I have my fingers crossed and my HOPE HIGH.... Here's to an asylum run by the inmates :)
Here's yet another silly article written by someone who doesn't understand that Linux isn't windows. It's not a monolithic closed software "solution" with its contents predetermined and spoon fed. Linux is a flexible open system. Linux developers work because they want software that doesn't suck. Companies want to make money selling to the mainstream will hire programmers to do the boring work of dummification layers. The beauty of Linux is that those who don't need the dummified "features" don't have to use them. Those who do need them can get them from Red Hat. Everybody's happy. Those of you who are whining about people making money or Linux, shut up and go use *BSD. The rest of us will continue to use Linux how and where we want.
I think that Capitalism is the best form of governmet that we have to offer yet. (Compare it to Socialism and Communism) But money runs Capitalism. If people can see the beyond money and into what money brings. As in 1984 "Not money, power, raw unadultered power". If we can get past Capitalism and into more of a Libertarian form of government money would not be a problem. There would be equal freedom for everyone, freedom for all! This is NOT Communism!!! With the leftist form of government power is given unto a few who rule with absolute power over the many. Let Freedom Ring!
"People standing in the middle of the road look like road kill to me." - Linus Torvalds, On Bill Gates
First: I contributed (and continue to contribute) to open source projects not out of altruism, but because it's fun. If I can make some money from it, so much the better. Second: I complain about the IPO fiasco not because I feel it is a god-given right to receive shares. I complain because I feel E*Trade is deliberately avoiding giving shares to the people who were assigned shares. This is not allowed, under NASD regulation.
Alright, I read it, and yes it was a bit painful. However I am not easily disillusioned. I was always told that writing is infinately more interesting when it contains quotations, which seems contradictory to me because in most cases the quotes that reach my ear merely have a ring, and not a meaning. But to break my own rule, and quote Michael Douglas as the infamous Mr Gecko in 'Wallstreet': "Greed is good." But more seriously, the injection of money is fine. I am a firm believer that the truest path towards any goal lies in maintaining a sense of moderation in all things involved. Noble causes are fine, and self indulging egocentristic greed is fine as well, when taken in proper balance. The Open Source community did not get caught with its pants down, and the innoncence and purity of the movement was not lost in one fleeting moment. What must be remembered is that we now find ourselves poised on a slippery slope, and maintaining this precarious equilibrium is an absolute must. We find ourselves suddenly in the adolescence of Open Source at large, there is money to be made and that is great, its the surest sign that we have beaten the odds as a community. That's the key here: Community. Red Hat succeeded because many, many hobbyist and student programmers, as well as seasoned 'hardcore' developers slaved away for a very long time, and now there are benifits to be had. Money is not suddenly the chief concern of the Linux developers, and there is no sudden rush to push product out the door. The license under which all the code currently exists did not vanish, and the spirit of altruism still remains. Still free to download, modify, and hack; but if your good enough at it, you may get a bit of livelihood as a bonus.
Blake
dude. The original poster of this thread was obviously joking. It was funny. Put down the caffeine pills.
Nuff said. The argument doesn't hold.
:)
There is nothing to see here. Everyone move along.
This sig is false.
Really. I was kind of shocked to see it there - all us techies killed it, but it was happily sitting on her desktop.
Oh well.
Will in Seattle
RedHat isn't worth so much because of
their operating system. Everyone can
distribute Linux.
RedHat opened a large market for Linux.
They made it popular.
And making things popular is what is
worth money-- not writing good software.
It was there most subsantive point. How the money will actually keep the uber-geek programmers that have worked off of the feeling of satisfaction and publicized prowess from continuing there work.
^ ~
But then, haven't we always been pushing for the day when companies would write there own drivers? Look at what is going on in the graphics card market. All rushing to show that not only are they fastest on Linux, but that they are open source friendly (of which Matrox seems to be winning.)
It is going from sexy to where it should be and always really was. The nerd who just wants to use a particular piece of hardware on his system, and the proud hardware developers that want to see it run well. Maybe even the college kid who wants real world programming experience on what he is learning.
Money is doing exactly what I hoped it would. Adding to the development effort, giving more reasons for more people to contribute. Nothing has happened to scar anyone off, except maybe the level of entry as the kernel and software in general becomes more complex. And that is a good thing.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~
Comics and Cartoons are as valid a communications medium as any other. Anyone dismissing them strictly as kids media is culturally illiterate as far as I'm concerned. The fact that the vast majority of comics suck is merely Sturgeons Law (90% of everything is crap) in action. For every Citizen Kane, there are 100 Runaway Brides. Are we to conclude that Film is a lousy medium because of this? Of course not. Go read Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, it will lead you into a larger world.
As for Suck... User Frindly is so painfully weak it's embarassing. After Y2K has funny stories, but the art quality is pretty lackluster. Suck, on the other hand has Terry Colon, the finest cartoonist on the web today, bar none! There have been many attemps to meld the sequential art traditions of the printed comics with a computer based delivery, and Suck has taken a damn good crack at it, so give them their due. The writers, while relentlessly snide, are overall a pretty bright group, even if they do run into the occasional blind alley.
My $.02
The music is not in the piano -Clement Mok
"Fixing an obscure bug in the driver code for a network card may be useful, but it's not sexy, and it's certainly not going to get the author noticed the next time someone's handing out prepublic stock."
People don't fix obscure bugs in network drivers for those reasons. They fix them because they want their network driver to work.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Maybe opensource companies can put some money towards a open source hardware project. I am sure that VA Linux (or Systems or whatever their offical name is) would love to have some new powerful hardware. Hardware has basically stood still since the XT. Sure we have fast and faster graphics, better sound, bigger harddrives, but the backbone is the same as every except for faster. Maybe an open source hardware project could do for that field what it has done for software. the x86 architecture is dated, we need to update it.
It's my understanding that NT can't boot from a floppy, period. Which, I suppose, takes the hassle out of making a boot disk
Totally off-topic, of course, but yes, NT can boot from a boot disk. It does so when you install, and you'd have to boot from a disk to rescue it from a failed mirrored boot drive.
Of course, you'd have to boot from a boot disk to recover from a failed non-mirrored boot drive, but that'd be to reinstall... [snicker]
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Could someone please tell me by e-mail or replys to my post who exactly this group represents? This is probably from the same people who composed "Satan Trek" (tm) that appeared on slashdot in the past. I would refute the statements of the authors for their lack of general all around knowledge about linux. As people have pointed out in the past linux != Red Hat in any form.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
I personally think the only way for RHAT to survive now that its taken a financial stance on linux rather then a open stance on it is to merge. So buy up be, and get real multimedia support in linux and have a journaling filesystem
most of all, return some of that money back to the public.. the amount of shares kept internal for something like this is outrageous.. give some back.
A job is something you do, but do not really care about and get paid for it
A career is something you do and you really are interested in it and you get paid for it.
A hobby is something you do and are really interested in it, but don't get paid for it.
...could go on...but I think the point is clear....use the proper word. Just because you capitalize a J in job does not make it any more important.
This article highlights something which I've always disliked about the GNU/Stallman way of thinking. It seems to claim that greed is a bad thing and a negative thing. That anywhere money goes, evil must follow.
You misunderstand. RMS does *not* claim money is evil, or bad. He claims that hoarding is evil and bad-- especially hoarding something that is, in essence, knowledge.
This is a common misconception, made worse by the ignorant press and neo-McCarthyists who mistake his ideas for Communism and are frightened by that. The GPL grants the specific right to make money off any software under the GPL, without any kind of compensation to the actual author. The only requirement is this: access to the source code must be guaranteed, and the person recieving the software also recieves the exact same rights-- including the right to redistribute the software.
This ensures that the code will always be "free." Why is this important? Not to keep people from making money, but to ensure that the code survives; and so other people can learn, and fix, and enhance.
Also, true communism is neither bad, nor good. It's an ideal, and quite impossible, just as a Free Market is an ideal, and quite impossible. Communism in Russia turned into Socialism, and Free Market in the US turned into Wall Street. Same difference.
Other than that, I agree with you 100%.
Give Suck some credit. Just like that band you knew from your neighbourhood ignored you when they landed the million dollar record deal, Linux is also succeptable to the taste of green, despite what anyone says. As a community, we must do our best in keeping our heads out of the clouds ("oh, they finally love that OS I've loved for so long .. how dreamy is this?") and make sure we don't lose the handle on this thing. As a Linux user, INFORM your friends and neighbours! Tell them why Linux is such a great OS .. not just because it works, but because it's the communities! Tell them to support the grass-roots Linux community, not just the companies who shrink-wrap it.
But yes, lets not be idealistic. Linux may end up being the Windows of the 00's. Who knows. Anyone who discounts any possibility admits being ill prepared for every possibility.
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is my first exposure to this site. The format is very annoying. I've never read a piece more dripping with sarcasm or more inaccurate. Is this journalism for the skateboard crowd?
As those inside know, it's not about money. It's about respect.
I read your first Salon piece, and frankly I don't buy this at all. You got the letter, so you must have contributed something valuable to Linux. In this gift society, didn't your gift already earn you respect?
Why in the world would an open-source developer need the respect of E*TRADE? Online brokerages and the stock market are not about respect, quality or any other admirable goal. They're about money -- a completely amoral barometer of right and wrong.
Your efforts to equate respect with money help to prove the point of Suck's commentary.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Any online rag that isists on putting an average of four words on every line should be promptly ignored.... ...and I'm off to find some aspirin for my headache.
Actually, I can think of two:
Phil Kerns (PKZip)
John McAfee (Viruscan)
--
Howard Roark, Architect
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
The biggest concern is not just money, but in general that the motivating
factors like money or fame tend to sway development in a particular
direction. Why is USB still not standard in Linux, why is scanner support
virtually non-existant, why is sound support highly limited? All because
those are the fundamentals that don't bring fame or fortune. It's the dirty work
everyone hates. Let me also mention winmodems which are still not supported
even though many models have been around for months if not years.
Mozilla development is lagging behind because it was not sexy enough to attract
a significant number of outside developers. I mean I just keep coming up with
more examples of what current OSS or FS developers are "not motivated" to code.
Suck stumbled upon a real problem even though it has little to do with Redhat IPO.
I did indeed think about your statements (well honestly as much as any person can think for 2+ hours about 300+ comments about a controversial subject. What is the most glaring problem with most of these theories is that if this even happens people will just use a version of linux that does not have all the little "improvements" that the "board of directors" wants in it. Since linux is not managed into one major company Linux Software Inc. things will eventually work out for the best in the end. The later commentary about the inefficency of corporate world with most things. Since I have not really been exposed to many of the upper level jobs where I would get to interface with the big boys is it really this bad? If this were the case why dosn't someone usurp their power.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Please re-read the GPL license, it requires any derived work of GPL source to be freely available, and not to just paying customers. this is why there has been the debate over Qt (their license makes the source freely available, but states you have to pay royalties if you want to sell a product based on their stuff). BTW: what linux distributions are not freely available?
With a CD Recorder a Gimp CDLabeling utility and a weekend each one of us could make enough from Linux CD's to buy out Microsoft. Get real OSS Free Software rules!
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Jeez, if we wanted to make money writing software we wouldn't have written Linux in the first place. If people get rich off it, good for them, I never intended to make anything, so why should that change anything for me? Stuart
Actually, I have a minor correction...
the MacOS allows for the use of single clicks. Just change it so everything is displayed as a button rather than icons. This is true for every version after 8.0(maybe earlier, but I couldn't say for sure). Granted, it's not the default that is set, but it can me made so that it is system wide and very quickly.
okay...back to what we were talking about....
Seems to me that unless someone writes at least a couple dozen apps that are better than what is out there currently there is little chance of this at all. Nothing could stop say someone like me from taking all of the GPLed code and composing a new distribution and making improvements and getting some people to work on it. Suddently those in this world known rather affectionally as "the suits" will have less of a monopoly and no way to stop it.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
First, I'm curious why you care about the extra VrT being opened -- do you have very limited system resources (e.g. 386 < 16M Ram)? If so, you can reduce the total number of vt's init opens (most distro's default to six and X opens #7; so if you reduce what init opens to, say, 3, then you'll end up with a total of 4.)
There may be something else you can do, but I'm not aware of it -- maybe the kernel includes a system call to close a VrT (I've not done much system specific programming so I wouldn't know). If so, you could write a short little C program to close the VrT, then call that program from the end of startx?
Question about lynx: does anyone know if lynx is still being developed to the point where they plan on trying to implement some of the newer stuff? I'm in the middle of developing a web-site (I'll be the first to admit I'm new at web development) and I'd rather not create two versions of the site -- one for lynx, one for everyone with a graphical browser. I've developed my site so that hopefully it will be readable from lynx, and understandable, but it sure don't look pretty! ;-) Is there anything I can do about this?
What exactly makes Suse better in the long haul? I mean it must be good for those of the world with whom German is second nature but I would still prefer something with English (my only strong language) was the primadry target.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Are programmers really writing Linux and other open source software without gaining anything? As Eric S. Raymond said, (i think he said this anyway) most programs are written because of the programmers personal 'itch'. I know that whenever i code, I have a use for it, be at work, home, or whatever. I don't wake up in the morning and say "Gee golly, I think I want to write a 10,000 line program just so that a rich, fat CEO can make millions off of it while I sit at home and read /."
I think that in the future, the majority of Linux developers will have jobs in the industry as a consultant, sysadmin, etc and write programs to work more effieciently. Or perhaps some of them will be high school/college students writing programs as projects or whatever. I dunno.
Of course, then again, it's late and I'm tired.
yawn
Everyone I respect, it seems, loathes the paperclip.
Everyone I think is a moron, it seems, loves it.
There are lots of morons.
Seriously... Suck was being sarcastic to prove a point. That's because they know how to write. Apparently, good writing goes over the heads of geeks here.
I have tried for over a year not to rant on /., but the discussion under this topic has finally sent me beyond the precipice. This is WAY OFF TOPIC (or is it?)
/. moderation. Moderation doesn't censor anything. Just set your threshold to -1 folks and you can read every post. Slashdot is a group and as the cliche goes the IQ of a group is equal to the loswest IQ in the group divided by the number of people in the group. Moderators are slashdot readers. Try to get over the pain of being moderated down and try making your point again, but this time use careful language that doesn't fall to personal abuse. You'd be surprised how suggesting someone has a Philistine attitude gets moderated up while calling someone a shithead gets moderated down. Just try to write like you would actually speak to someone in person and maybe you'll be happier with the moderating (but maybe not).
Rant 1: Re: People who complain about
Rant 2: People who flame anything anti-Linux. I use Linux. I use Windows (although I do not want to). I use other Unices. I like Linux. I want Linux to win. I want people to like Linux just like I want people to like the TV shows I like and worship the God I worship. And that's what we need to beware of. I am often reminded of that scene from Life of Brian where the "Vow of Silence" man attacks Brian and the reaction of the crowd, esp. Cleese shouting, "Heretic! Unbeliever! Persecute! Kill!" For goodness sake, it's a computer program!
Rant 3: People who talk about Slashdot readers and posters as if they were all of like mind. There is astounding diversity of opinion on Slashdot. Read the thread a couple of days ago on the Kansas/Evolution thing. Now there happen to be certain overlapping domains (like Linux-love) in the nerd/geek community, but there is some part of each of us unique and outside all the overlaps. That's what brings me back again and again. I can get perpetual self-congratulation by watching any E! program.
Rant 4: People who think anything Microsoft does matters in the slightest. Linux is not and cannot be destroyed. It is not in even the slightest way threatened by anything Microsoft does. Linux businesses may be, but the network is here. The code is here. It cannot be taken away or destroyed. If every Linux business were forced to fold tomorrow the whole thing would just keep right on going. I do not care what Microsoft does.
Rant 5: People who just don't get it. It seems to be an American disease, but it is spreading everywhere. The only thing that matters is money. People talk about the quality of movies on the basis of how much was spent to make them, or how much they are making. An amazing number of people think I am "exploited" because I have given away code I have written. They do not understand that I wrote that code for my personal needs or pleasure. These same people think that I am not exploited when I code things I don't want to code for other people to make them richer forty hours a week, 52-weeks a year (that's ~87 days a year folks, for 45 years that's 3,900 days, or about 10 years 6 months of my life), for which I get paid just enough to keep me in debt for most of that time, after which I become a liability to the healthcare system until I die. Exploitation comes in many forms. Writing source code and giving it away is not one of those forms as far as I am concerned. (BTW, consider that between work, school, and sleep you use about 16 of every 24 hours of your life for 60 years not doing what you want. That's 40 years of your life spent not doing what you want. Let's assume you live to 75 years and that you sleep 8 hours a day for those years you are not working or going to school. That's another 5 years of sleep. So, out of 75 years of living, you get to do what you want to for yourself for 30 years out of 75. Now talk to me about exploitation.)
Rant 6: People who sneer at anything. Given the numbers above, why do so many of us feel that there is time to sneer at anything? Maybe we should try to form some genuine, sincere, honest, trusting, real relationships between actual caring living people in the time we have left?
Boy, I feel a lot better having gotten that off my chest.
Linux is not even near being ready for mass market consumption. A lot of /. seem to think, o, Linux isn't that hard, or it's just as hard as Windows. Sure, installing was pretty easy, getting used to the different way file systems are named (C becomes /dev/hda1) might throw some people off, but it wasn't bad at all to install. But actually using it? No, Windows is much much easier. It's totally GUI, so they don't even have to type at a console, ever. One of my first daunting tasks was making a boot disk. Due to the way I installed it, I have to boot from a disk. In Windows it's easy, just search the help file for "boot disk" and boom, it gives you a link and instructions. So, I go to the KDE help, type in boot disk, and it gives me about 13 different pages, none of which seemed to be what I wanted. So I go into #linuxhelp, and someone says tyep mkbootdisk. So I figure out how to get to the console, and type it in. Then it asks for otehr stuff, like the device, and the folder. More hassle. And configuring stuff, like the mouse or resolution, much more of a hassle in Linux. The fact you have to log in and remember a password is going to confuse the dickens out of some people. Permissions are still giving me hell, half the stuff I can't do because I have to be logged in as superuser. Linux is not a desktop OS, I don't use it as a server, so I guess that's it's a great server, but as a replacement for Windows 98 or 2000? Ha, that won't happen. Maybe Windows 200x, but not in the near future. Windows is MUCH easier to use for the average computer user.
So what will replace linux? As I see it linux has been the only noticeable blip in the Open Source arena in the past 15+ years. Winblows has been quite anti-learning when it comes to people becoming endeared to it. Other versions of unix lack many applications and such that give people a warm cosy feeling. In actuality as has been pointed out in the past is that what really matters is applications and not the OS. If linux is gone the field will be pretty bleak indeed for open source in any form. My experience is that non-linux opensource isd difficult to use/configure/compile/run without the additions that varions dos ported versions of linux held utilities by the GNU project. What this could do is just raise the bar with how people learn about things. Basically it may mean that every 1-2 years programmers will have to retrain and relearn all the new features of the api that is in the new os. That will just suck and raise the level of startup costs of getting n IT related education.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
It's interesting to so much recent activity synthesized in this not-particularly-enlightening way.
So, if I get tired of Linux and download Debian GNU/Hurd instead, why would that be so very different? Ok, if Linux gets buggy from releasedate pressure and such maybe. Or are you talking about using something entirely non-commercial like Debian or GNU?
Not to be too picky you can pick the thing up for about $59.95 on most sites that sell linux cd-roms. Also Comp USA sells what appears to be Red Hat for about the same price also. Just shop around a little more.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Exactly... this comunity loves to tinker. If not, then Mindscape(?) for Legos would not have been so popular. People did not crack the code in the hopes of getting paid by Lego, they did so to in order to be creative, and perhaps, to make a useful tool that was above and beyond the scope of what already existed.
I do not feel the open source community is in danger of falling completely to the evils of money (yes, obviously some will)... but as long as the code remains open, hackers are going to continue to tinker. Linux will continue to evolve.
Anyone who's ever had to install Windows will tell you that the Linux install process is generally easier.
I beg to differ. I installed Windows for the first time without a hitch. It auto-detected my non-IDE CD-ROM (and installed drivers), set up my video card, set up my monitor, set up my network card and basically did everything else.
Then I installed Linux for the first time. I had to make a special boot disk (sbpcd.i) to enable me to use my non-IDE CD-ROM, manually configure the ethernet card, and mess around in XF86Setup for about 45 minutes (plus two reboots) before getting my video card and monitor set up.
Compared to win95/8, that just plain sucks.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Another couple problems was that most people will not pay for something that costs 5,000-10,000 $s and can only run on equally expensive hardware. That I think is the barrier for even the gifted.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Adolescent scatology...what can one say about such a negative piece?
Buzz Lightyear
This may be the most clueless comment I've seen in a long, long time. Go back to www.gnu.org, and this time, actually read it!
Hint: You're confused about what the word "Free" in FSF stands for. Your comments are about money. Nothing on the GNU.org website talks about software that doesn't cost money (except where they clarify that's not what they're talking about).
To ask a counterquestion to your last question: what's not free about that? (Remember, you answer should make no reference to money -- checking www.gnu.org if you're confused about what the word "free" means in this context.)
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
this article was right on... I think people are gonna move on and find something else to hack on. the glory days are over fellas, it's gonna get nasty from here on out. how many of you are going to stick around when ms decides to support linux?
I think a point is missing here. We're are coding and someone is earnig a lot of money? So what? Sometimes I code for fun, sometimes for money. I JUST DON'T CARE! Let they make money I live for love and happiness, I have my wife, daughter and 2 dogs. God, love, fun, friends and food. All that matters.
Money is good but isn't everything...
Think about it.
Dude, didn't you see the KDE pre2.0 screenshots yesterday? :) That looks pretty damned new-user oriented. The days of fvwm being the coolest X interface are gone.
... I think Alan Cox is a pretty good example here. :)
I think the article was perhaps purposely foolish, anyway. Anyone who can code has always had liberal opportunities for "selling out" if that's what they're after.
Also, even though Red Hat isn't my distro of choice, I think it's apparent that they *do* pay people for coding without "selling out"
Hey, if Linux stays free and of good quality, I don't care *WHO* makes it rich.
... could fail and I could care less as long as I get my Linux!
I just want a quality OS/Kernel that I don't have to shell out my life savings to buy. Office apps are nice too, but I can do without.
If shareholders complain because Red Hat doesn't turn a profit, it won't affect me a bit. In fact, Red Hat, VA Research,
- Steve
--
Steven Webb
System Administrator II - Juneau and TECOM projects
NCAR - Research Applications Program
>Do you think you will remain "not in it for the
:) but even if it is the primary motivation for some (even most), so long as there are some for whom it is not, the community will survive.
>money" when there starts to be serious money
>thrown towards linux?
Perhaps not, I'd like to think so, but like I said, only time can tell for sure.
>If various Linux distrubutions start weeding out
>the less-used, less-funded ones they become just
>like Micro$haft we've all grown to hate
Perhaps the other commerical ones, but I don't see how for instance Red Hat could ever "weed out" someone like Debian. What can Red Hat do to make Debian go away?
>Let's not forget FoxPro 2.0 which was well
>destroyed by the awful product Access.
Again, this is assuming two commerical products which need money to survive. Even if the only people using Debian are the people who build it, if they want to keep building it they can. There is no budget or sales to worry about.
I believe what scares MS the most about Linux is they don't know how to attack it. A lot of people like developing it, like using it. Even if it has very little market share, even if it has lots of bugs, etc. All of these things were true in the past, and people still continued to use it.
They can't make their product cheap or free in order to put the other product out of business (a favorite strategy) because the other product _does not depend on money to be developed_. Sure lots of people are being paid now to do Linux development, and I think that is great, but I bet many of these people would continue to do so even if they had to go back to other jobs.
Thanks to the various FS/OSS licenses you can't buy it out, sure you can buy off the primary developers and the latest code, but people can always just go right on developing for the last public branch.
This, I think, is the real power and threat of Linux. Sure you can scare most of the world away with FUD, but those who know better are just going to keep at it, and it will eventually poke its head back up again. Short of wiping out every Linux developer and eraseing every trace of its existance, I don't see how they can ever make it totally go away, nor do I see how any commericalization of it can ever truely destroy the community. Damage it sure, shrink it definetly, but make it go away, I doubt it. And so long as that community exists I'll be happy.
>You may not want to be a millionare, but
>understand some developers would like to be one
well actually I do, thats just not my primary motivation.
Wow that was a lot longer and rambling than I intended.
anyways,
-chris (gandalf@darkcorner.net)
How much should Torvalds pay for a share or two of Redhat? Huh? $14/share.
Torvalds, Stallman et al created the wealth, Redhat capitalized on it, and Bob Young got greedy. If he had any decency, he would form a "compensation committee" or somesuch thing and pay the coders whose code he capitalized by -- giving -- them a proportionate share, just the way they gave him a share of the code.
Bog Young, like Gates is a pure wall street type, and yes he should get his cut, no doubt, for opening the wall street floodgates etc., but ... the idea of Young making Torvalds pay, or any other coder, pay $14 for a piece of paper, printed by Young, for which Young paid maybe $0.01 including fees and commissions, turns my stomach. It was Torvalds code, plus others, which Young capitalized into his personal wealth.
He should have a better concept of sharing.
The question still remains, How much should Bob Young charge Torvalds or Stallman for a share of RH?
Rape usually happens in the real world because a sexually desperate illadjusted person cannot get what he/she wants and decides to take it does this imply that you/anyone else perhaps envys the success of linux?
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
That CEO most likely started out as a little nothing too probably 20-45 years ago somewhere and had to learn the ropes and get things done with an equally "clueless" person at the top. It's just different areas of expertise. Einstein knew how the universe worked but more than likely couldn't fix his own car.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Re Rant 1: Right on. Moderation is a way to single out good comments for commendation and conversely, to single out bad comments for reprimand. It isn't censorship.
/. readers are linux users (I have two friends who read solely for the mac/beos news).
Re Rant 2: Right on. I use windows, linux, and even mac and while I like linux best, each has its own strong point. Windows is (right now) the best 3d gaming platform and Netscape's more stable on MS, linux is the most stable (of the three at lest; I've no experience with any *BSD) server platform and mac (I just bought my first mac, a classic II for $25) has shufflepuck cafe and the best version of tetris I've played.
Re Rant 3: Right on. While many geeks/nerds/academia/whatever may be quite left-wing, agnostic/aethist, white males (don't flame me for saying it, and yes, I am) there are far to many who aren't to make that assumption. You can't even assume that
Re Rant 4: On, but not Right On. Microsoft doesn't matter to the future of linux but it does matter to the future of America and the rest of the world. They are getting powerful enough to influence foreign policy which is literally a life and death area.
Re Rant 5: On, but not Right On. I enjoy my job, I enjoy sleep (I'm a cross-country runner: try taking a nap after a 12 mile run through the mountains; it's damn fun) and I enjoy school (I'm a college freshman). I feel sorry for those people who don't like what they do, but I feel that I'm doing what I want to be doing for more hours a day than not.
Re Rant 6: Right on. I couldn't add to the eloquence of Rant 6.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
This reminds me of a supreme court case decision (can't exactly remember which but dealing with the 1st ammendment) which states that we should tolerate free speech for all even the speech we hate. More than likely no one will ever topple the empires of microsoft or other companies and completely discredit linux and OSS. What could happen to hurt it a little is something like this--- Bill Gates or some powerful person hires a group of terrorists from a country with an unstable government and radical ideology and instructs them on comming to a major event like Linux World or something where 90% of the developers are located. Using Anthrax or some other method or biological or chemical warfare they assasinate (in a devious manner) most of the participants. The resulting people who are left after this will either be forced into hiding or have lesser skill and will not be able to produce code as well as the core group and hence will make linux fail due to a lack of technical superority. A couple of months/half a year later M$ releases some major revision to their OS and offers a bunch of technically inclined add ons for free or nearly so. Now this is not to say in the slightest that this has even a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000 chance of happening but according to quantum physics it can.
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
Right on target. RedHat != Linux.
RedHat is a Linux distributor. Linux is likened to water. There are many distributors that will sell you water. Some have better quality, sell it in different bottles, add a little extra and spend more on advertising. All water does not taste the same, but close enough for some people not to notice. There are many people who will only drink bottled watter, there are some who drink anything, and some who prefer it straight from the tap - or lake.
They can always kill the bottled water manufacturer - they can't stop the water.
nice sig but i thouight the quote was "64K ought to be enough for anybody" not 16...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Some corrections,
1. The GNU OS is a high quality operating system created by a group of talented people. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete.
2. Linux is a high quality kernel created by a group of talented people, thus completing the GNU OS.
3. Both the GNU OS and the Linux kernel are available for free.
4. Because of 1-3, most people consider GNU/Linux systems a Good Thing.
5. Red Hat sells a "value-added" product that includes the GNU/Linux OS.
6. Red Hat is successful.
7. Red Hat issues an IPO, offering shares to some of the people involved in 2 (above). Some of those people accept the offer. (Did they offer any to those involved in 1 (above)?)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
From the FAQ:
--
Repton.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
The logic of the article seem to something like "it is no reason for a coder to do linux/OSS because the chances that he will be one of the few that makes big money on it is very slim".
;) proprietary sw on a proprietary operating system (say Winblows). Then the coder future is all golden right? Lets just take some examples.
Hmm.....
Let turn our attention to an other alternative. The coder do some really great/cool/inovative
What about Netscape? some years ago they make this (for the time) incredible product, and what happens? some control freak at M$ goes scared and M$ release a free product to cut Netscape's "air supply". Result Netscape bearly survive with the help of AOL.
Hmm.....
Okay, Okay an other example: Citrix and their MetaFrame, a great idea or what (*nix has had better for years but anyway)! M$ take a look at the Citrix SW and announce that they are already working on, and are going to release a similar product. What happens is that the Citrix stock plunge and lo and behold M$ buy Citrix! And guess what! now they really do have the product. (Maybe the Citrix coders made some money on this anyway? a little.....)
Hmm.....
So I guess the choice is really up to you, take your chances were you know you will get screwed or where you at least have a chance not to. (As the OS is not controlled by a control-freak, or anyone else for that matter).
Take a bit of Generation-X negative mindset, sprinkle it with a bit of FUD and journalist ignorance and what do you have? A crapy www.suck.com linux article.
Linux, coming to a desktop near you!
I have no problem with people informally calling their operating system "Linux." I certainly don't expect people to say "GNU/Linux" each time. However, I do object to blatantly wrong statements such as "I run the Linux Operating System." There is no such thing. Saying "I run Linux," would, however, be correct.
In addition, implying that the Linux kernel is the entire OS, and that those who created the kernel created the OS, is disrespectful to the many people who spent the previous 10+ years writing the operating system that the Linux kernel plugged into.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
But seriously, if such a thing appeared, it would simply get reverse engineered...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Do you think the suits realize that they're just feeding off others? Some of them maybe, but I bet a lot of them are clueless and think they're actually doing something. They probably believe it's their great entrepreneurial skills that are responsible for the success they are enjoying, rather than the prowess of the engineers working for them. Just look at how confident and arrogant suits tend to act in general. I can't imagine anyone being able to act that way unless they really believed they were that great. No one is that good an actor.
Let's not be too eager to embrace this article in the interest of appearing self-depricating, open to constructive criticism, and so forth. I see no reason for Linux to depricate itself in any way, and I saw little in the article's criticism that was constructive, or even accurate as it applies to Linux or the Free Software movement in general.
A few short years ago the notion of free software was decried as an absurd fad at most, because "human nature" would always mean greed would win out and therefor no one would code free software in the long run.
They were wrong then, as Linux, FreeBSD, GNU, and countless other freeware projects have demonstrated, and they are wrong now.
"Clueless users will never be willing to switch to Linux until they have xxx", where xxx is some absurd feature (e.g. the paperclip). Wrong. I have a number of "clueless" friends who know next to nothing about computers and have embraced Linux when I've offered it to them, even though it has meant giving up some applications which simply haven't been ported (Quicken for example), and learning how to do other things differently. Without exception they are all so delighted at having a system that lets them work and accomplish things without constant problems and unexpected crashes to contend with, that they have become even more zealous advocates of Linux than I or any of my "geek" friends have ever been. Are there more apps and capabilities I'd like on the desktop? You bet! Is their lack proving to be a major obstacle for technically challenged users to adopt Linux. Not at all in my experience.
Finally, the argument that money will force the splintering of Linux has already been refuted time and time again, both here and elsewhere. Splintering Linux wouldn't make Red Hat, Caldera, Suse, or anyone else more profitable, it would simply shrink the entire Linux pie in favor of Windows, making everyone poorer. Red Hat et. al. know this -- they've seen the long, splintered history of UNIX and they understand the Open Source paradigm far better than the folks who wrote this article appear to. In addition, they appear to ignore the built in safeguards inherent in the GPL which help to prevent just this sort of thing.
Oh, by the way, has anyone actually ever seen a coherent definition of "human nature" that wasn't a tautology? Just curious.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Still...give people a break. A lot of people have no desire to spend time learning to use a computer. A ton of people want to be able to turn on their computer, see a GUI, play solitaire, get on AOL or something else. They aren't morons becuase they wanna use something simple. The computer may be a small part of their life, and they don't really care about flexibility.
Just an idea...
It seems the people at Sucks have figured out that they could get noticed if they used the word Linux. It's a damn shame they don't know what they are talking about. It would appear that they have forgoten that the guy who fixes the network driver is the one who made Linux what it is today. Without him Linux just wouldn't be what it is. All those companies that are trying to make money are going about it the wrong way. They are only trying to cut corners(though they are cutting the right one) and save a buck. Those companies don't control Linux and are only affected by what the programmers(that's us) do. Eventually I think we will see that because of the GNU License on Linux that it will prevail in a huge magnitude and be recognized around the world as a superior operating system. Linux is fairly new and relies on word of mouth to gain popularity. Microsoft has spent millions each year to advertise and garuntee that things like Windows get recognized. Let's face it they are organized. Linux on the other hand is decentralized and things like bug fixes and new programs are not publicized. I say, press on yea fellow hackers and cease not until the day the devil hath been slain, for if yea cease your actions are in vain. Another Namless Face In The Crowd
Moderate this post down...
Why is it that the surest way to get moderated up is to complain about being moderated down?
But...when users stop choosing distros because the suits have infiltrated, the "new" distros will become more and more popular. It will only be a matter of time before they try to capitalize on the popularity too.
Its only a matter of time before linux too is absorbed (atleast any of the distros that are worth anything) in to the corporate market place.
I like the idea of linux, not the biggest fan of it currently, but something good seldom goes unpurchased.
Will definatly be interesting in the next few years though.
Thanks for the clarification. I think there will be some marked changes in the way things are done. As it stands now (pls correct me if I'm wrong) very few (5?) people make final decisions on what is added and when. Now these decision affect billion dollar companies and I seriously doubt that the "benevolent dictator" model we have now will continue to suffice. I think its up to the community to try and guide the process of deciding how things work. Of course, the "community" now includes those companies, which will gum up the whole works. I guess all I can do is voice my opinion and hope Linus doesn't go for the Canyonero (cryptic Simpsons reference)
+&x
And of course there would be no penguins in Hell, because Hell runs Windows.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
The hippies failed to change the ideals of the majority. (Did they really? Or should I rather say they failed to change them as much as they wanted.) It remains to be seen whether OSS will change everything as far as they want to or not. I think it's already true that it has changed things,
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
All the cash in the world doesn't (by itself) undo what has already been done. That would take a techonological breakthrough that leaves Linux and GNU in the dust, but is also closed source. I don't see it. Do you?
:-) And wouldn't you like to know.
Yes, yes I do.
laughing all the way to the bank:
Dan
that's just the warning that is played over and over in my head every time I watch Linux take another step into the comercial world. Even when talking about these sites being funded by companies now.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
I think there is still value to be had in both working on OSS software for free, and doing it for money.
In the paid case the value is obvious.
In the free case, you still have the advantage of lack of deadlines and a much more relaxed working environment, plus more control over features. Basically, its still fun. I don't see how deadlines or PHB-management techniques can be enforced without compensation.
One question is whether the corporate Linux entities will continue to mainline programs from free contributors in their distributions, since it won't be as possible to use them in marketing or control their nature. If they don't, it seems to me Debian can only get more popular by doing so.
Another is whether commercialization will affect the way kernel development occurs. There is a danger of buggy releases from trying to meet shipment schedules for commercial entities. With Linus not working for a commercial Linux entity (by his choice) I'm fairly confident that his style will continue to drive development style. We may see some rushed releases initially, but I can't see Linus not putting his foot down on commercially driven schedules if it becomes a problem.
At my current job one of the things that I used to do and still do on occasion is bug fixing. With RH making more money they should be able to pay more to do bug fixes. So fixing a bug is not glamourous. At least you have the source to do it, unlike Microsoft. I recently fixed a bug in the kernel. It was a silly little annoying message that I just changed. I didnot get paid, no thanks, nothing. I still did it cause I could. I saw what the problem was so I fixed it. I am sure others still will. It is not the money that is Microsofts problem, it is that they are not open source or freeer with there licensing. If I find a bug in Microsoft, it may never get fixed. Or they send out a service pack, which is not installed just right can cause the blue screen of death (been there done that reinstalled true story). I just wish I had the money when I recieved the letter that is all.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Sadly, the HURD is dead.
I try to be fu
This article kicked ass, even if it was like reading from Mother Goose.
:)
We all basically like Redhat right? We want them to do good because we think that will give Linux the respect it deserves and grab that all-important marketshare. What happens when Redhat's stockholders start pulling the strings because their dividends aren't growing by X%. They'll start to throw their weight around and make a few "suggestions". The majority of the stockholders are capitalist businesspeople. They don't generally have as many morals as your typical factory worker. Let alone as many as your typical known-to-be saintly Linux developer. A majority of stockholders can have a CEO removed or can threaten to dump their stocks if the company doesn't do what they want. Eventually they will gain control of Redhat because it's what will make sense tp them and it's how they will reach their goals. Why did Redhat have to go public anyway? What do they need all those millions for? Weren't they chugging along just fine before?
What happens if Redhat replaces Microsoft as the monopolistic, shove their buggy OS down your throat company? Or Microsft buys Redhat? Are all you Linux coders going to continue to give their work to these people? I think not. When that happens there will be a revolution just like the one we're having now.
I have never quite understood why the Linux community wants to dominate the market. I'd prefer Linux was a secret society with cool secret handshakes and stuff. Why do you care if I like WindowsX? Doesn't it make more sense to just snicker and tell me I'm stupid rather than try to convert me? I admin 2 Linux (SuSE) servers, 1 Solaris server and an NT Intranet server. I have found Linux to be easier to work with than Solaris and just as stable (Except for CDE its rock solid on the Sparc). I've also found Linux to be easier to config than NT and far more stable. If my competition down the street wants to run NT I'm sure as hell not going to try to convert them. I digress...
Redhat going public was a bad thing, unless you do the math on the stock I bought
Format floppy under NT command line.
Copy following files to floppy from C:\
(These files are probably hidden, so turn on "Show All Files").
NTLDR
BOOT.INI
NTDETECT.COM
NTBOOTDD.SYS
BOOTSECT.DOS
The last 2 files may or may not be present.
You will still need the C:\WINNT or whatever directory on the hard drive.
Useful for rescuing data or if BIOS, Hard Drive, and NT do not get along with each other.
Can you perhaps qualify this somehow?
What's up with their format? It seems like I'm reading mother goose over there!
But not the developer. Bob Young; worth $650M as a result of YOU coding. Bob wouldnt recognize a line of code if it hit him in the head. This is BANG ON and the moderators will mark this down as anti-Linux. Long Live The Linux Thought Police. OSS just got raped. Deal with it.
Microsoft would rather go bankrupt than put out a good product.
i have no problem with lairy & bob being billionaires, they work hard.
.coms/orgs up to let the WORLD know what the penguin can do for business, with free? ads from at least 10,000 of y'all.
.coms/orgs intended (from the start) for use by the o-s/linux community (no bosses) to spread the message, and draw in the functional PC starved public.
.com is already paid for, it can be used for any good idea, if it isn't paid for yet, cough up a few bucks and become a co-conspirator. i say, flood the net with honest to business penguin/o-s power. we've had the opportunity to sell some to megasloths, but have been able to avoid having to do so. we registered them with the intention of preventing megsloth greedmongers (you know who they are) from getting them. and maybe for collecting some advertising income. many of them are not paid for yet, but we are working to pay for all. if we weren't shoestringing, they'd be free4all forever. save the penguin from being cornered, and get work for yourself. i'm sure y'all have some great ideas, i know i do. can't do it without you.
problem is, what about the several million folks who are responsible for the vehicle they used to be vaulted to their high station?
me, i'm just a fool, whose tired as hell of seeing a handful of megasloths, or any minority, profiting excessively from the efforts of the majority.
i'm also tired of beggin y'all to look past the BS, and get with the program.
by now, there SHOULD be 100's of linux/opensource
instead, there's 5-10, that are news, and 5-20 that offer pretty much proprietary products for sale.
we (that's me) STILL have around 100 o-s/linux related
there are some really cool commercial names in the lot, and some were gotten solely with the intent of promoting community. anyway, they are pretty much unused, other than a penguin picture, and/or ads for stuff we do that doesn't need to be there.
i was led to think that some of y'all's "leaders" were going to help me with disposition. butt it looks like their agendas DO NOT include empowering majorities.
my motives are about seeing that there's more than a few powers near the top. should be more like 1000's. perhaps arranged geographically. some of us have already lived through 1 dictatorship, NEVER again.
if you wait for commerce to trickle down to y'all from bob & lairy, your potential for world domination (in the most generous sense) will evaporate. don't you think pudbillygates is also going to cash in on/co-opt the penguin? gawd, geezeus, y'all seem so anti-inertial.
if you have interest, please contact us, harryjo@imcnet.net. as i've said before, and probably will keep trying to say, we want to help, we need YOUR help.
sorry for any excessive emotional attachment. i'm sick & tired of seeing joe public, or joe penguin, or any joe, getting the sh*t end of the stick.
if the
go ahead, just shoot me. i'm definitely inferno bait.
harryjo@imcnet.net
A GPL'd OS isn't going to be very helpful if you've got, let's say, a proprietary GUI running on top of it.
While I don't doubt that things will change, the article does seem to downplay the fact that linux!=redhat (although they are clearly aware of it). But they ignore the existence of such projects as Debian entirely, which is odd for an apparently well-informed article.
in my experience, Suck exists to shit on everything (have you ever seen a positive piece by them? I haven't); they like to play up the negatives to fire up the readership. Take away the apocalyptic tone, and what they say is probably correct; but the rest seems to be a variant on the "linux is fragmenting" theme.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
The point isn't that Bob Y. or Red Hat is making money off the Linux contibutor, it's that they now answer to share holders.
Share holders don't give a crap about how much you love coding under Linux, or how great OSS is, or how much Windows suck. They only care about making money. And to do that, Red Hat is going to have to grow, because if they don't, share prices won't go up, and share holders don't get richer and sell.
Red Hat now has to deal with yearly growth, quartely earnings, earning to stock ratios, etc, etc, and that, unfortunately, is something that's out of Joe Hacker's hands.
It sucks, but that's the way it is.
BH
All those trendy magazines and news channels that keep saying linux is the next big thing, they're wrong. They're not thinking in terms of geeks and end-users. All the geeks that want linux already have it, it's very popular among the hackers, wannabee hackers, nerds, and techies. But that is the farthest its goin to go without a 1BRI (1 Brain Cell Required Interface).
Its near its peek since all us geeks already have linux and all the companies that want to switch are about to do it. But thats it. Linux is not an end user product. Like it or not, MS is easy to use, and the users don't really mind rebooting every five minutes. They want to be able to turn on their computer, fire up MS Office, type up some fancy documents and reboot a couple of times. No more, no less. And thats what theyre getting, so they're happy. They don't want linux or the flexibility and stability it has to offer. And damn it, that's how its gonna stay wether we like it or not.
---------------------------
---------------------------
Fixing a buggy network driver might not be sexy and profitable, but that kind of attitude doesn't get the one network card at your disposal working, does it? Suck seems to assume that everyone is going to start writing software that's going to please Joe Shmo Investor instead of providing software purely out of generosity. Well-meaning contributions are not the only driving force behind Open source, however; its making software that the person who writes it actually wants (or needs) to use, and then sharing it so more people will use it and improve on the part's they couldn't finish themselves. "What, you don't like [crappy software]? Think you can do better?" Open source developers believe they can. The thing that sets open source software apart from commercial software is that there is a much shorter route for feedback between the user and the developer; more often than not the user /is/ the developer, and has more of an interest in getting it to work right than actually getting paid for it. Of course, having the luxury to write better software without having to worry about stuff like a job and affording food and 'net access doesn't hurt.
We might start to see some developers start to creep in who expect to cash in because of all this new money, but if their work isn't up to what the open source community expects, it will either be ignored or improved upon 'til it does work well, whether contributors are being paid or not.
Long story short: open source is about making software that *works*. Whether someone gets paid for it or gets credit for it doesn't matter, but those of course nice extras.
Suck's whole shtick is cheap cynicism. This article is not a surprise. Nor is it very interesting.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that this is all you have to say on the subject. I hope you're planning a new essay about what happens to a gift culture once Christmas is over, Bob Young got 400 million presents, and hundreds of others didn't even take home a coal-filled stocking.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
I like to follow a few Free Software projects, and I don't think that someday the people contributing to them will start writing code for image or money. Maybe people who work for RedHat will, but I'm sure they already do. It's their job. I don't think Suck is taking in concideration anything outside of the LinuxConglomoCorps that are in the spotlight these days.
I don't know exactly what this RedHat IPO is, and I don't really care. So maybe I'm wrong about everything here.
Let me try again.
This wasn't a respect issue until E-Trade forced it to be. Red Hat said "the little guys are important, we'd like to reward them." E-Trade disagreed. Holy war ensued to ensure that Red Hat was able to do what they wanted to do in the first place.
Everyone sees this as a "we want money" thing. What we want is the opportunity to act according to our value system in the "real world". Although companies *may* give up the community as soon as they enter Wall Street, when a company (such as Red Hat) attempts to maintain its community orientation it is our responsibility as community members to support them -- or to call them on hypocrisy, if necessary. I have no problem with Corel (for example) keeping their money to themselves. But when an effort to benefit the community goes awry, we have a responsibility to make the faults known, so that future gift-givers don't make the same mistakes.
If you had a generous relative who'd been sending all your Christmas gifts to your next door neighbors by mistake, wouldn't you point out the error? Doesn't mean I'll complain if they don't give me a present next year. It's a *gift*.
[
[RANT ON]
I'm gonna throttle the next person that gives me the "Money's gonna corrupt you" speech! I think that these people really just want to see Linux fail, that way they can be comfortable and secure with their own bitter ideals of how the business world is really supposed to work! What a bunch of crap! Do be sure to excuse the rest of us that ENJOY programming and working with computers, after all no one in their right mind would actually do that just for the FUN of it!
The RH IPO didn't affect me, hasn't affect my willingness to program or help others figure out problems related to Linux, hasn't made me feel left out because I didn't get "The Letter", hasn't made me jelous of Mr. Young's success, and it certainly hasn't sapped me of my desire to use Linux. So, I have to ask myself: Is anyone else really going to be affected by this either? I doubt it. In fact, I would say that the increased publicity of Linux is a good thing, and that's all the IPO really was: A publicity stunt.
So what happens when all those greedy, money-grubbing investors start putting presure on Red Hat to make money? Who knows, and who cares. That's Red Hat's problem, not the Linux community's! And should Red Hat regress to closed development methods I can just about guarentee that it will be their downfall. People can't seem to understand that Linux doesn't belong to Red Hat, it belongs to the community, and without the community it's dead in the water. End of story. [RANT OFF]
Yeah... I was amazed that SUck is still around... I bet that the /. effect has caused more hits on their server in the past year. Speaking of time... must be a couple of years since I've seen Suck. Suck just smacks way too much of "1995 Gen-X Alternative Internet thingie" Don't get me wrong.. I liked that whole scene.. but only in 95-96... Got old really fast. Suck is still trying to be cool like Fray.org... trying to push simple HTML into doing things that no one thought was poss.
Lately it seems to me that people are forgetting the nature of our community. Yes, Red Hat is having its IPO. Get over it! The source is still there, it won't go away. If a few developers "sell out", if Red Hat trys to take linux the way of Winblows, someone else will come along and pick up where they left off. Also the development effort behind linux is probably the largest single development effort ever. Not everyone developing for linux is going to sell out at the first oppertunity like several people think. Yes, linux will change. It will still be free, it will still be developed openly, that can't be stopped, even if the GPL turns out to be worthless. The commercial influence will be one of many things that effects linux development. However, a few American companies aren't going to stop an international development effort. How are a few IPOs different than companies like IBM throwing their support behind linux anyway? Red Hat will be just another company making a buck off of someone else's free code. Maybe they will continue to support linux and GNOME, maybe they won't. Linux was here before Red Hat, and it will be here after Red Hat is gone. Companies will come and companies will go, the source is forever! Suck missed the mark with this one. It is all about evolution, not about the almighty buck.
-LordNite
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
Linux disproved this general theory by creating a stable, fast, portable OS with a monolithic kernel. ... The HURD may be the politically correct OS in your mind, but it is rather uninteresting when compared to linux, BeOS, QNX, ect
Interestingly you mention QNX since QNX is a microkernel based OS that does damn well as a realtime OS. I believe AmigaOS was another microkernel OS that was really fast. Microkernels are more elegant from a technical standpoint and seem to be able to offer some advantages that monolithic kernels don't but the downside is that it seems like microkernels take significantly more effort to implement well.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Someone just had the guts to say how it is. They will get flamed, this post will be moderated down, but the reality is that people like Bob Young, Larry Augustin and Co. will make HUGE amounts of *PERSONAL* money from yelling "Linux is for Everyone" and letting you fools code for FREE. OSS == Freedom == MONEY FOR THEM AND NOT YOU. Open your eyes and see the brave new world YOU created. The vast majority of OSS developers will NEVER make anything like the money that will be made by a very small number of people. Its about the OS, stupid! No, Its about the Applications, stupid! No, ITS ABOUT THE MONEY. And we are all stupid to get caught like this. But then waddya expect from highschool kids and students?
WIRED etc., Suck's pappy, already tried to IPO a bunch of times and failed. Sour grapes? Well, not really in this case, but Suck has always been known for their really good sour-grapes rants...
I particularly like the concept of losing desire to put hard work into (unsexy) code when suddenly someone else is making money off of it. At least in pre_RHAT, that wasn't the case.
Funny reading these posts and seeing the direct correlation between Linux and Suck.
/.ers will continue to argue until the cows come home.
ie - Suck/Linux *used* to be good. Now that it's owned by (insert big, ugly, money-hungry corp. here) it's going downhill.
Read the suck article - loved it. The fellow expressed his opinion in true Suck fashion. It was entertaining, and perhaps, informative.
I will continue to use Linux at home, and if possible, at work. I will continue to read Suck if I'm feeling the need for cynicism. The sun will continue to rise in the east, and
Cheers
I wish I could share you optimism, but it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch. One coder is going to start thinking "Well, damn, I might as well make some money off of this" and he'll go do it. Then all his coder buddies see it and follow suit. Soon, the people who try to "hold out" against the commercialization of the whole deal are a minority.
It's called selling out, and with the money at stake ranking in the billions, I doubt that anyone would, when it comes down to it, say they'd rather do what they do for the love of it, if they can also make enough money to put little Suzy through college.
This is merely history repeating itself. Don't worry, the happy little unknown will come back some day. (Just look at music... first albums rock, the second always sucks) Look on the bright side, at least it wasn't a one-hit wonder.
Michael "Aliaser" Henninger
Heh. Anyone who writes lame things like this is lame. Lame I tell ya.
Linux is here. It is superior. Get used to it.
Money, no money, or on Wednesday. EVERYONE ELSE in the world could burn their linux and install VMS or whatever, but I'll stay here thank you.
1. GNU/Linux people are excessively anal.
2. No one cares about this debate anyway.
3. Because of 1-2, most people consider couldn't care less about what you think.
4. Precision is for mathematics, not language. "Linux" is easier to say than "GNU/Linux".
5. Because of 1-4, I am going to be flamed and/or moderated down.
"Suck? That must be one of them thar porno sites!"
Forbidden by rating check
You are not permitted to access the URL http://www.suck.com/ due to the policy of your organization.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
This is going to start out off-topic, but if you bear with me, I think it will come back on.
I was of an age to catch the last whispers of the real hippy movement in 1971-4 (or maybe just miss it, take your pick).
At the time I wondered why all these nice people (they were on average at least okay, some were great, one or two were not so great) were failing the hippy ideal.
It took me a couple of years of heavy thinking to get to the point of realising that as I had been told earlier by a wise man, "the majority are never wrong".
I don't actually hold that that's always true, but in this case, it had been the claim that the ideals were such that most people could live by them, and in the vast majority, those that tried found that they couldn't.
The ideals failed, not the people, except in believing that the ideals were valid.
I don't say OSS will fail, I hope it won't, but really, really, don't dis-respect people who find the ideals difficult, the problem is more likely to be the ideals than the people.
rcsteppat
Suck, like /., is a site I check every day. I need that daily dose of sarcasm, cynicism, satire, silliness, and/or intelligent criticism. If this article is the first Suck you've ever read, browse around a little in their archives ... they don't always hit the mark, but sometimes Suck will make you blow your coffee out your nose. Not mention that Terry Colon is a god of cartooning.
I was entertained by their take on the Red Hat IPO. Yes, evil $$$ has arrived in the paradise of open source, and it's true that things are going to change as a result. You don't have to agree with Suck's pessismism to appreciate the timeliness of this warning.
No, the reason why Netscape/Mozilla is having such a hard time is because the source code is an impenetrable jungle, and its far from obvious how to make constructive contributions to it.
I downloaded the code and got as far as adding an "about:cananian" redirector, then drowned.
The core source code was never meant for community development, and the code was released to the community before it was usable.
[
this fact being that free software authors have always had the opportunity to make money, namely by writing proprietary software and getting paid for it.
...) rather than the little contributors. nonetheless, most free software authors have refrained from starting 'big' projects and most of the 'big' projects started lately have failed, because of lack of competence (jos, berlin, freedows, ...). if money makes competent programmers start big projects, i don't see why this is a bad thing. if it makes incompetent programmers start big projects, i fail to see the loss, too.
the main reasons why they wrote free software nonetheless being because (a) they needed a certain piece of software (scratching their itch), because (b) it is fun and because of (c) peer recognition.
let's look at each of these in turn, taking into account the fact that now money is in the game:
(a) money doesn't change anything here. if i need something, i'll write it. writing something else for money doesn't make my need go away.
(c) peer recognition was always in favor of the leaders of big projects (rms for gcc, emacs, linus for linux, miguel for gnome,
(b) how can money be a substitute for fun???
based on these observations, i predict that pretty much nothing will change.
bye
schani
That bears repeating: We. Still. Have. The. Source.
You can do anything with Linux today, that you could do with it before the RedHat IPO. You can fix it, you can extend it, you can port it, you can write a windoze emulator for it, or you can port Squeak to it, or even re-implement NeXTStep, and so can Redhat!
WHY does anyone care what RedHat or Caldera do with it? If you like their packaging, then buy it. If you don't like it, then don't.
Now, you can bitch all you want about who should or shouldn't have been in on somebody's IPO, bt the fact of the matter is, Linux is a better and more useful system today because of the commercial vendors.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They do fail to realize the point, the linux and linux company's are centered around linux. Because if they make something crappy, in the OSS model, its either fixed, copied, or replaced. And its done very quickly. suck.com is useally into inciteing people, a little anti-trend is taken best with a grain of salt. And for that I am glad I read it.
Allegedly started by a bunch of disenfranchised louts employed by Wired, then conveniently their side project gets bought by Hotwired so they can get paid for their awful defeatist babble.
/. has survived so many of these round-and-round debates about GNU/Linux, KDE vs. GNOME, Bob Young as the Bill Gates of Linux, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad astra, forever, that I doubt anyone who reads this site regularly hasn't considered every one of these half-thought harbingers of doom.
Is there anything here that hasn't been thought of before?
Does anyone really think that Red Hat is all good and benevolent? I sure hope not. Comments from people like Raster and conventional wisdom about corporate America should act as a check against that attitude. We surely don't need Suck to tell us that.
But my opinion, like Suck's, is like an asshole. Everybody's got one.
J.
damned vulpine http://sb.drtwister.com/
Linux is not money. Linux is not not-Microsoft. Linux is not a political crusade. Linux is not a wet geek dream. Linux works. Linux is stable. Linux is full featured. Linux comes with source. That's the point.
There wasn't a whole lot in that article except for really trite metaphors.
Does linux have to be the perpetual virgin at the prom every year? I mean this whole virginal innocence of not being beholden to professional interests is foolish. Linux is still GPL. Don't like the license or the software, don't use it. I excercise the same choice every day when I boot into linux instead of windows. Sure windows can do some cool stuff, but it just isn't the same.
I think this article is nothing more than holding linux to a higher standard than any other technical project. Not a whole lot to get worked up about.
Everyone wants to have a roll eventually... Think of the GPL as a condom, or dental dam, or well you get the picture.
\\
Blah
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
Even if Linux cost twice as much as Windows
and if Linus and Bob Young had more money than
Bill Gates, Linux is *still* better than Windows.
It's not about money. It's about quality. If
quality starts suffering, Linux will fork or
something better will replace it.
Criminalize spam and telemarketing!
The fat guy down in MIS may love remote administration, but he'll end up suffering with Windows 2000 until StarOffice has that talking paper clip his users like so much.
Uh huh. Does anyone else hear the giant sucking sound of credibility going down the crapper?
Very nice piece. Finally a Suck article I didn't need a dictionary for. :-D
:)
I think this article's main point, that market forces will chance Linux is
quite true. The GPL license will allow crusaders to continue, like Debian. Red Hat and Caldera will certainly become more micro-soft, but that probably won't affect the hard core community that much.
Of course the click and drool crowd will be pandered to. Corel's
upcoming Linux distro is trying to be an NT workstation killer.
Hell, even the login screen has a place for an NT domain.
Linux is surging forward and has yet to encounter a real setback,
benchmarks not withstanding. When that fatal flaw is found it could tax and fracture the community.
I'm somewhat skeptical that even a Redmond-like behemoth Red Hat could cause
quite the same damage the Bill's company has in these past ten years. I suppose we'll have to wait a bit.
For the record, competition is good. KDE/Gnome fed off each other. Linux/NT do the same. For all those that think that competing OSS projects are
a waste of programmers' time, remember that the ones that didn't come down from the trees no longer have descendents to mourn them.
I think Suck is wrong on this one, for the most part. Most of the people who work on Linux will not be negatively affected by a little money. In fact it will allow many of them to contribute more time and effort.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
This is a two way flow. We (the community) do get cash back - but we do get a bunch of stuff we would not have otherwise. With out the RedHat's we would such a high profile. We wouldn't have hardware vendors coming on board. We wouldn't be able to get our 'toy OS' through the door at work.
Have a commercial presence really helps us out alot. More importantly - we're the senior partner in this sybiosis. They can't kill us, we don't -need- them, but with out us they've got nadda. OSS walks quietly but carries a big stick - the GPL means this stuff is ours and will stay ours regardless of who's putting their logo on the shrink wrapped boxes.
... with eskimo chains i tatto my brain all the way...
Your absolutely right, but that's not the point I was trying to make. I agree that Linux will survive even if the distribution companies don't.
I should of made it more clear that I was refering to the fact that for Linux to topple Micro$oft (or more specifically, NT), it's going to have to succeed in the corporate world.
Linux has just entered that arena via Red Hat, and only Time will tell what's going to happen.
BH
In most music circles, except for those such as the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, and all that other corporate, booker-produced dreck, selling out is the worst thing that a band can do. Look at Sugar Ray. They're complete sell outs. They're also very popular. But, they also suck very much bad.
However, we're not talking about music here. We're talking software. You can still release quality software that meets the demands of the consumers after starting to sell IPOs. It is possible and there are companies who have done it. But those companies are few and far between.
So I suppose the turning point for RedHat, et al is going to be when they stop caring about the GNU public license and the Open Source movement and start caring about giving large returns to the stockholders, most of whom (and you can quote me) probably are going to use M$ until dealing with it gives them an aneurysm and they die. Based on other companies (erhm...M$...diebill), the shift from caring about the end user to caring about the stockholder won't take too long.
I think that I'm going to install S.u.S.E. or Debian...something that hasn't sold out. Because being around bands as much as I am, selling out sucks...sooner or later, it just plain sucks.
=====================
Homer not function beer well without!
Screw 'em...who cares what anyone thinks.
It's my understanding that NT can't boot from a floppy, period. Which, I suppose, takes the hassle out of making a boot disk.
Sad but true, Suck does have a point. Business are basicly raping Open Source. It's what I have been saying: "Computing is wonderful and exciting world... Until businesses get involved."
However, I think that Suck is blowing it a bit out of proportion... Which they always do. Also whatever happened to Suck being funny? When did they get so political? Oh Well... Guess they too are jumping on the Linux bandwagon.
-Luke... I am your father.
We are blind to the Worlds within us
waiting to be born...
Do you believe that cooperation or competition produces a better quality product?
I believe the latter and history proves me out.
Don't program for the Man for free.
The reality of the situation is that Linux is now no less free than it has ever been in the past. This freedom is protected by the very nature of the OSS process.
The commercial aspect of Linux is a SIDE EFFECT of its popularity, and in no way reflects its usefulness to me. So long as Linux is OSS, that's the way it will stay.
In short, people bottle tap water and sell it for $1 a pop every day... those of us who are smart enough to know it is "free" from those little knobs in the kitchen aren't affected if Evian and Perrier go out of buisness.
Not even close.
So far, that hasn't happened. Caldera used to come with a proprietary GUI, and there used to be (maybe still is) a proprietary GUI for sale that used Motif and was a file manager bolted on top of an Xterm. Currently KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, and Enlightenment are the only desktop environments/window managers that have any real mindshare, and they're all free. CDE and Motif for Linux haven't done terribly well; considering they're the desktop environment and the toolkit being used by most proprietary Unices, one would think that if any proprietary GUI was going to succeed on Linux, that would be it. It's not so much whether the file manager, Start Menu/Apple Menu analogue, window manager are proprietary; it's whether the toolkit and APIs are proprietary. If the toolkit and APIs are open source, then you just use something else for your file manager. If the toolkit and APIs are proprietary, then you end up with lots of software being based on something completely out of your control. Like, oh .. Qt 1.0 or Motif.
The article style was far different than anything I'd ever read on /. before. I've never read Suck before but it sounds like these guys are there to piss others off.
I really don't care if others make profit at my expense. The coders don't seem to care either. They're not in it for the cash. They are in it because they love doing what they're doing and want to share the wealth of information. Those who make money off Linux without supporting the effort are the same people who will be paying $80/hr to get their stuff fixed. Or $120/hr to develop new stuff.
Think about it. Those who know, do. Those who don't try to make money off those who do. In the end who's happier? The guy who's feeding off those who know how to do things, or those who are doing what they love and getting paid for support?
That damn talking paperclip is the most anoying thing I've ever seen in any piece of software ever.
-- My neighbors dog has a four inch clit.
As a FreeBSD abd BEOS user, I have been waiting for someone to yell that the penguin has no clothes. Linux was a beautiful thing in 93 when I first installed it, maybe some bits were missing, but it was powerful, free, and easy to get support for. I remember when usenet was chock full of Linux users trying to help other Linux users add features and support. Now the picture has turned, what was an effort backed by people who cared about Linux, is now a movement by people to use Linux till they have squeezed every last drop of profitability out of it. What happened to community? Free source? For god's sake, am I the only person on the damn planet that can see the scam people like RedHat are pulling. Making money off the backs of dedicated users of an OS, and then reaping the rewards, I wish I could pull that off, kudos to RH. I would love to see just how many people contributed to Linux and it's sucess. Then again I would also love to see how many of those people got any recognition at all from RH. I'm not even talking money, just a kind word, some recognition for the real reason Linux is even still around.
There are multitudes of people that have worked without compensation because they believed in Linux, they loved it and what it could be. For them it wasn't about money, it was about an ideal.
What is someone's ideals worth?
If you happen to have RH stock: about 68 dollars
otoPICO
This is exactly what happened at MIT while RMS was still there. All the programmers started getting jobs to produce non-free software and he was the only one to refuse to act that way. This was why he created the FSF.
Looks like the same thing will happen. Some programmers will start going to the non-free world, but some will stay.
how can you ever get sick of Filler? Polly Esther rocks! She's the only one of them that is consistently funny!
What did you expect? You saw quite a bit of hunger for the almighty $ here on /. Who got the "letter", who got through to e-trade, who was judged "competent" to invest, who felt screwed by not being able to renew their "indication of interest" even after the price was changed. (Raises own hand here.)
-- Improve Windows - Buy a Mac!
HAR!
I'm beginning to think the best way to get a post moderated up is to suggest in the message body that it will be moderated down, unless it's to have been moderated down and then post a reply under another name that it has been moderated down unfairly (it's controversial, it must be good).
I wonder whether every moderator just thinks the rest are real bastards or if they think they have to defend the moderation system.
...
Oh yeah, almost forgot...
This post is sure to be moderated down! The evil moderators are out to get me!
^_^
As Linux moves more mainstream and its
development direction becomes directed by
those who will most profit by it (even prob.
Linus, Alan Cox, etc. - I'm sure they'll be
in on all the IPOs), I will move more towards
the Hurd. This redirection of Linux is
inevitable in a capitalism-oriented world.
Software that develops without people trying to
get rich will remain superior since the ideals
of technological advancement will remain on
top. The Hurd, despite its low state of development, is such an OS that in the future
will be a very interesting system to use.
Let me bring you all a new perspective on this whole story, and why I really hope that this article is at least somewhat wrong. I am a blind computer user. I use a speech synthesizer to translate the text on screen into speech. The programs that allow me to do this are made by mostly no-name companies who don't have billions of dollars or tons of lawyers. Perhaps ironicly, however, half of how good the access product is has nothing to do with the quality of these companies, but how well Microsoft wants to cooperate with them and give them the information they need. Sorry to say, that despite what MS says on TV and the like about how they are trying to help the disabled, in reality it really doesn't show itself all that well. As an example, in the coming months MS is releasing a new dictionary product. However, this product will not have the APIs' that MS themselves designed to allow it to communicate with access products. Some commitment. I spent over a month last year trying to find a C++ compiler that I could use, and finally had to settle on an eight year old version of Borland C++ for dos. Around mid last year, I got introduced to Linux. I'd heard about it before, but never really gave all that much thought to it. Then I heard about the whole open source idea. It was almost too good to be true! Here was a model that allowed for the fact that not all products worked properly under all situations, and gave people the right to go out and change it and make it work better for their own individual needs. It was almost an admition by programmers that no they can't address everyone's needs, so we're giving our work to people that can. A few weeks ago I installed Redhat 6.0 on my computer. Sense then I have been able to use the latest C++ compilers, and can do stuff I'd only dreamed of doing in the past. I use a program called Emacspeak, which allows me to access anything that Emacs can do and I am quite frankly amazed. I don't think anyone could have pulled this off using Microsoft products and been able to spend the rest of their life out of jail. Linux is perfect for addressing the specific needs of people who otherwise would have been left out. I really hope that what is talked about in that article above doesn't happen to Linux, because then it'd be Windows all over again. Sorry for the length of this, but it is something that needed to be said. Thanks for reading this rant.
...because I'm going to defy the great penguin.
/. has witnessed more posts from people who believe that it is their Deity-given right to be financially compensated for writing free software--something that these same developers were patting themselves on the back for doing without compensation just a month before. I didn't think it would happen, but the aura surrounding Linux has notably shifted from one of community to one of serious competition, and while not all of this is due to $$ (witness the KDE/GNOME wars), it certainly hasn't helped. The RedHat IPO, as far as I can tell, has made the situation worse. Perhaps it won't affect the quality and reputation of the kernel, but the kind of corporate squabbling coming down the pipe can't help Linux's overall public image.
That article was not only honest, but it was accurate, given the amount of complaints that the RH IPO fiasco generated from the *altruistic* linux developers on this site.
In the last month
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Ever missing the point, as most writers with no real originality (or reason for writing, for that matter) typically do, those at Suck and Salon have become political BECAUSE they've suffered exactly the demise they claim to have observed regarding Linux: succumbing to the economics of appealing to the "real world". Like Dan Blather and Pete Lemmings, they appeal to (and often create?) controversy to grab readers' attention without ever really offering anything of substance. They have become critics of success, harbingers of doom and stand lumped with the rest of the out-of-touch cretins who call crackers 'hackers'.
Fortunately for the rest (most?) of us, Suck's "real world" is neither real, nor inevitable.
'jcr' put it best: We.Still.Have.The.Source. This point is the cornerstone of open source and will always be so -- even as commercial enterprises begin to leverage that source for commercial gain.
Let's get with the program folks -- open source is pointless unless it empowers EVERYONE, including Red Hat, et al. The notion that Linux, or the development methodology it represents, is any 'less' as a result of a less-than-smooth IPO is laughable. The fact that E*Trade rejected some online credit/investment applications says volumes about Red Hat's available choices (for distribution of stock) but less than nothing about the quality and viability of open source products -- and even less about the nature of those involved in the real process. I suggest that we all begin emailing Suck ideas for future pieces, as they certainly have lost the ability to come up with relevant topics on their own.
And I admit - I missed it. The point of that 'thirty pieces of silver' analogy was...?? Exactly who plays 'Jesus' in that analogy? Oh... Uhmm... I see. You mean it didn't really MEAN anything? It was just there to provide clever hyperbole?
. . . I suspected as much.
this'll probably be moderated down for flamebait. I'm not trying to anger anyone, its my honest opinion. The GPL is similar to communism. Sure it sounds great, but it won't work long in practice. The BSD-style license is much better. How free is code that you are FORCED to release your changes for? and lets not play what-if games, the freebsd people have yet to be outdone. There will always be people who release their changes. But if for a company its ability to not release source or bust, i'd much rather see them modify freebsd code then use MS.
-bugg
He repeats: "...nobody owns the software...". Repeat it often enought and they'll believe it? Well if nobody owns the software, hows come it all has copyright statements in it and I have to agree to these long license statements that say, in effect, I can't use it unless I give up my rights in my own work. The truth only hurts if you understand the concept.
After all, nothing sucks harder than Linux.
I guess I'd have to disagree with your analysis of the Suck article. Once you stop looking at the pictures and read the article, you'll notice that the article never says economic success is evil or wrong, just that it will change the future of the OS.
As I understand it, or as the legend goes, the development of Linux was/is done primarily on a want-this-feature basis. A programmer wants his or her box to do this or that, so the programmer makes it happen, one way or another, and then shares the code. In the past, all that would matter was the code, because that's all there was. From the code, one derived an ego boost at solving a problem and passing on the solution, experience from doing whatever was done, and a reputation for being a horrorshow hacker, or whatever.
Now, with the economic success of Red Hat and friends, you can get paid for it. This translates into something more direct than a warm and squishy feeling, something more immediately gratifying. Since money is more gratifying than feelsgood acts, money will be the driving force behind Linux development. Joe Programmer won't be writing a kernel module for device X because he feels like it anymore, he'll do it because his boss told him to.
And that is what will change the OS. But remember, it isn't Suck that said it was a bad thing.
You know, thats what the (Microsoft loving) guy in the cubicle next to me always says: "Once one of them smells the money, it's all downhill from there". And you know what? Even though I'd like to think it won't happen, I can't help but fear it will. I guess only time will tell...
-- My neighbors dog has a four inch clit.
Let's see:
1. Linux is a high quality operating system created by a group of talented people.
2. Linux is available for free.
3. Because of 1 and 2, most people consider Linux a Good Thing.
4. Red Hat sells a "value-added" product that includes Linux.
5. Red Hat is successful.
6. Red Hat issues an IPO, offering shares to some of the people involved in 1 (above). Some of those people accept the offer.
7. The aptly-named suck.com considers this a Bad Thing.
From this I deduce that you can only remain Good so long as you are NOT an economic success.
Let's all work hard to ensure that suck.com remains a Good site. I'd hate for them to suffer the ignominious fate of Linux.
Who, exactly, are you trying to impress?
"All operating systems suck"? Why? Are you trying to say that the concept of an operating system in any form is a bad one, or just that no one is skillful enough to actually impliment a good one? Well, sir, not everyone can be the OS-guru that you obviously are.
Suckiness for "being corporate"? You're not going to judge RedHat for the quality of their software or for whether or not they support free software...just on whether they are "corporate." What does that achieve? How does that closed-minded attitude improve anyone's life. RedHat's development has improved my life. Your ass-backwards comments sure haven't.
Oh, BTW, the "clever" thing about "M$" is that the "$" looks like an S. 'Cause you see, there's an "S" in "MS." There's no "S" in...oh...never mind. It seems to be over your head.
Programmers have been hacking it out for years without the credit of glory or dollars while others have been profiting off of their work (i.e. red hat, suse, etc.). Why should it matter now that these companies are making even more money? As for software being driven by the bottom line, well there's always been a need to do this or that to linux to make it more appealing to a wider audience. Gnome and KDE are examples of that. This need is driven by the community, not some suit waiting for his company to go IPO.
I think there are a couple of missed ideas in this otherwise interesting sucklook.
Perhaps trying to define the market success of an OSS related stock in traditional economic terms is inadequate. Why does this success have to mean that Linux is now a slave to the same forces that shape traditional proprietary, privately owned and developed software?
A developer who owns stock in a company that markets and supports free/open code he contributes to is literally banking on the success of his OSS project. If the company and its stock do well, then the developer will benefit. The developer may also do contract work or be employed as a coder or consultant specialising in his OSS project's software. This is also an economic benefit to the developer partially based on the market success of his OSS profect.
The economics of OSS are still developing. The possibilities remind me of Alvin Toffler's "Prosumer" economics idea sketched out in "The Third Wave." We may be seeing some of the new societal developments of the Information Age taking shape.
Suck had an interesting perspective to give voice to. But it's also possible that the success this OSS IPO may just be a portent of the new producxer-to-market relationships that are possible with OSS. In this light, "idealists selling out" is an outmoded viewpoint.
-M
Once apon a time, someone described Richard Stallman as a communist. "so what?" a few europeans might say, but for the american, the word translates to "satanist". It's a contradiction of the 5 commandments that have allowed america to be that country that every resident believes is the "greatest country in the world" in their vision.
Suddenly we're faced with this new concept : "generocity" as supposed to capitalism. Why make money from your work, when you can gain fame, and that wonderful feeling of GIVING? Rather than look out of your window seeing every soul as a potential profit, you look out of your window and see problems that can be solved with software. All we need now is government backing to ensure that opensource remains a balance for the impoverished and we needn't worry about those wars and stuff in the future.
Alternately we could buy the software of companies who stand in the way of worldwide development by restricting protocols and APIs
With that little Devil icon, it shows you that BSD was made by the devil himself. Since they want religion in the schools, they consider this a good thing, believe it or not. Of course, nobody can BUY this tool of satan, but they can mention it in schools.
rooooar
Nebulous, intrusive document? You mean like... oh, say... a EULA?? Those have been upheld. I don't see why the GPL wouldn't be.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I may not be motivated by money, but if I can get paid for doing the same thing (and paid very well), and others are being paid for it, shouldn't I make sure that I also get paid? And if I'm not... would I not resent those who do get paid for doing the same thing? Maybe not, I have a measure of respect for the hot coders that can get paid to develop Linux. What about the marketroids and pointy-hairs that get wealthy from selling that which I give away? (i.e., parasitizing my work.) Would I not resent them? Does that not then disincentivize me?
The point is that, as long as nobody was getting rich on free software, everyone had equal motivation and equal opportunity. Once profit intrudes, and people observe a huge disparity between those that contribute and those that only reap the rewards, they will start to question their motives. Not every developer will stop working for free software, but each and every one will run through the value equation--and you cannot deny that the equation has changed.
--
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
This has got to be the funniest suck piece I've read in the last year!
"The fat guy down in MIS may love remote administration, but he'll end up suffering with Windows 2000 until StarOffice has that talking paper clip his users like so much."
It oversimplifies a lot of the issues (like, a lot of talented programmers getting hired by linux companies for a good wage) that people are whining about, and ignores the fact that a lot of us got the job because we got really good at linux.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
Screw 'em! They're the furthest thing from what they were when Suck was started. Wired's changed it to it's own personal Masturbation Pit.
The cartoony pictures have always been drawn the same, except back in the beginning, they were more inspired. Now they're lame & flat.
Kagenin's Bottom Line is that Suck can't be taken seriously anymore. Not that they could ever be taken seriously.
Kagenin (who wonders where the Barrel, Fish, and Smoking Gun went to...)
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
RedHat Linux is free. You can download it. You can copy it from a friend. You can sell it. RedHat sells the package: support service, book, cd. If you envy RedHat's success. Do something similar or better.
the reality is that microsoft's products aren't great, but no one had a choice not to use them. actually there was no alternative, until linux came along. free, stable, and had a good story behind it. these companies can only make linux better. linux has such a community behind it that it will survive and improve.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
BSD rocks.
If someone can create BETTER versions, and that requires money, then let them go forth and obtain the money.
If the GNU/Linux 'people' (whomever they are) are SO damned worried, perhaps they should stop working on GNU/Linux and find something else to do. Something that worries them less.
Personally, I'm going to stick to my own knitting, scratch my own itches, and if others benifit from my BSD licenced code, great. I do it for *MYSELF* and not for the stroking of others.
Was I the only one who Scrolled through the whole thing to look at the cute little penguins? Awwwww... Soooo Cute!
I think the author's point about the tide of cash that is washing over the Linux community altering the community's dynamics is valid. I don't necessarily agree that it spells doom.
The big corporations may be paying us some lip service with all their Open Source posturing and grand philanthropic contributions to the under-dog movement, but I still don't think it spells doom.
All these changes will cause (Actually, ALREADY have caused) some changes. Like what? Well, the obvious one is a change in our userbase. We are used to dealing with newbies. We are not used to dealing with non-technical newbies. That's going to have to change.
But the idea that money will kill Linux, although plausible, is far from a certainty. The author implies that money kills quality and committment to creating the best product. That's hogwash. It may be true in the supermegahuge multinational corporation area of things, but there are many sucessful companies in the business of offering quality products.
Perhaps the Microsofts and AT&Ts and AOLs are more concerned with market-share, but that's a whole category of business the Linux community isn't even close to.
Take Sun, for example. Here we have a very successful, public company whose products do not suck.
Most of the commercial UNIX variants do not suck. So Linux becomes a commercial UNIX variant. Why should it, unlike all its cousins, start sucking? That doesn't make sense.
SCO sucks because they have lost touch with what else is out there, and have lost touch with their own userbase. Does the author REALLY think that Linux faces this danger?
The Linux stocks may very well eventually crash and burn into oblivion, but Linux will emerge from the fire and keep right on chugging so long as there are geeks.
JMHO
--- Tao
The little cartoons are pretty amusing, but I think that they miss the point (calling KDE and Gnome development pointless double effort is very clueless).
The people that are coding now have been doing it for months without any monetary reward, several have been doing it for years now. They do it because they like it. Suddenly they are paid for it. Perhaps some of the coders will fall victim to the evils of money, perhaps some new people will join up hoping to get rich. The folks who have been doing this out of love aren't going to care, they still love to fiddle with the code, in fact this may help them, maybe they will be able to quit there day job and fiddle full time now.
Personally I wonder how market forces are going to be able to influence Linux development. Most coders out there don't have a marketing team telling them "what the people want". Sure perhaps Redhat or Caldera or "insert favoprite Linux company here" sponsored development efforts will be market driven, but there is nothing barring any Joe Blow from going the opposite direction.
We shall see, I personally have more faith in my fellow man than Suck apparently does.
Q.
These people have been in Gate's back pocket for a while now; why should this be any different?
Suck used to be good, now they're bad. This is the last straw.
Sure some will make money off selling other peoples software, but to do that they must add value to the products (or who the hell is going to buy it?) RedHat has contributed many things to Linux, like RPM, GNOME, and a support line. They fund kernel developers like Alan Cox. Just because software is Open Source does not mean people won't buy it. Hell I would buy MORE software if it included the source code! In fact the model that id Software is taking (release source code a few years after its initial product launch) might be a first step for a lot of companies looking to do open source.
It also doesn't mean that's the whole story. The one thing I've heard over and over since I started using Linux (about three years now) is that it's a fundamentally different beast. This was true then, it's true now. What that means in the current context is that while all that Suck said is true (and it is; don't delude yourself), Linux is in the unique situation of being able to maintain infinite alternate realities.
As an example - I go to LinuxWorld. I talk to many people. We discuss who uses what. Most people seem to run RedHat or Debian (I was in the Debian booth, so that may be skewed). On this, most run WindowMaker or E with KDE or GNOME (in order of popularity). These are the hot new things, many being driven by some of these new forces at play. Myself? I run a version of AfterStep 1.0 that I've done some hacking on (and I'm not even a programmer; I'm a hardware guy). Do these guys have functionality I don't? Not really. Themeing, but I don't consider that important, and I can get most of that functionality other ways. Some stuff like drag n' drop in KDE or GNOME, but I don't use that.
And there my friends, is the big difference. All these new things are available, becoming part of the system, and I don't have to use them. It's all optional. As long as the source remains available, there will be versions of Linux out there driven purely by the motives it has always been driven by. It's every bit as sure as the fact that versions and products will appear that are driven purely by greed. They're both human nature.
"Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."
I dont know about you guys .... but I know NONE of my users like that DAMNED little paperclip!! Where does this guy work, A pre-school? Little kids are the only people I know that like that thing.
Of all the things I miss
Now, there is some small truth to the fact that a particular distribution may be forced to bow down to the collective pressure of the alighty dollar (to use a Suckish phrase) but we're already starting to see changes in the lineup of distributions. RedHat has been Johnny On Top for the last couple of years, but recently Caldera has been coming on strong and Mandrake has seemingly come from nowhere to wow the world. (although admittedly, Mandrake is based on RedHat, so without RedHat, Mandrake may not be anywhere. I suspect, however, that now that they are huge, they can concentrate on seperating themselves from being dependent on RedHat and focus on only being based on or derived from RedHat.) Even if these companies are forced to become "run of the mill" commercial operations, the only thing that can suffer is their particular distribution. And since so much of a Linux-the-OS system is based on free code, there is very little chance that any particular distribution could ever get proprietary enough to severely hurt the rest of the market. To do so would be to require that an entirely proprietary system like Solaris or AIX or HP/UX be built, tools and all, which is the one thing these Linux companies don't want to do.
In other words, the story is just so much crap intended to incite the villagers.
let's see how some other things styacked up against greed
Capitalism(not democracy) vs. Greed
no contest, they would help each tother and do. No arguements needed here. You could almost argue they are the same.
Socialism vs. Greed
I believe is most what leads to facism. greed has a way of turning a government that is trying to help it's people into an over powering ruling part.Most governments fall around socialism, some more communistic and some more democratic. In any case, I argue that greed leads socialism to fail.
Communism vs. Greed
We all know communism lost this one(even though after many hours of playing Civilization, I have concluded Communism is the best form of government...though that is something to be argued at another time). Communism might have survived if everyone was in it for the greater society and not themselves. We know this is a dream though and in the end, greed wins out. I would argue that the OS movement is most like communism, and unless steps are made to ensure that everyone remain good-hearted, we may suffer a similar fate. The GPL and others like it are our constitution that keep everyone good-natured. Even so, these documents are not binding and could be the undoing of the community.
One could also argue that the community is much like a democracy. I argue that in reality, we aren't. Our leaders aren't voted in. Our documents weren't ratified by us(though we do have representitives, sort of). We don't vote on how the OS movement should go. So I stick with my arguement that we are most like a Communist Society, all working for the better of everyone. But we had better watch out, for greed may lurk.
Not a bad article, unfortunately it looks like someone wrote it from the outside looking in - Linux will not take the same path that everyone else takes. Linux will grow and evolve because the leaders of the technological age (ie: geeks) say it will, regardless of what the general public thinks or knows - we already stick a Linux box do whatever menial task we can think about ... just think what will happen in a couple more years.
I don't see the logic behind his claims. "Linux" is the kernel, the core OS. I don't forsee any money-slingers talking Linus (or any other core kernel developers) into putting crappy code into the kernel. I get the feeling this guy is only thinking in terms of applications that run on Linux. And no matter how much people want to spend or charge for some bloated pile of crap application, there will always be an alternativec Open Source(TM) project to turn to. Linux is just now building up steam, and there are many promising projects underway, but they take time. I'm willing to wait, and I'll do everything I can to keep from using M$ Office. A revolution is coming--he just can't see it yet.
"Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow 'er."
-- Grow up and use mutt.
But what do you do when you've got YEARS of history in this field that have shown corporations like Redhat. Hell, look at Microsoft, they were giving out stuff long before they incorporated, and now everyone hates them. I dont' wanna say that Redhat will be the next MS, but they're on the same path Microsoft was on. This Open Source stuff is kinda a red herring. It doesn't matter anymore. The end user that redhat is selling to often doesn't really give a damn. Their target doesn't give a damn about opensource. The stockholders who generally give a damn about tech stocks don't care about Open Source.. they care about their money. I know that's cold, but the way Linux has survived thus far is by being an untouchable entity.. an entity that is not reachable by money. Now that Redhat and everyone else is getting into the IPO game, the focus shifts from "What can I do for the code?" to "What can I do for the stockholders?" You see.. now Redhat owes the stockholders more than they owe the community, and whether or not the community has a piece of the pie is pointless. It's not nearly significant. Doom and gloom? Yes. Being Open Source is NOT enough to distinguish ourselves from the exact same path Microsoft took around 20 years ago, and the same path that IBM took so long ago, and the same path that every other major computer company that we hate is taking. We survived by not playing the major company's games. Now we're playing their games, and we're no different from them. Just another tech-stock. Magnwa
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Linus Torvalds still decides what and when things are included into the Linux kernel, right?
If so, then it all depends upon him. People will keep sending him useful code for obscure but important pieces of the OS if he continues to respect their effort and prioritize well. But if Linus starts caving into pressure by stockholders (relayed to him by Red Hat et al), and making neat but useless bells and whistles his priority, then Suck is right and Linux as a whole will sell out.
The other option for Red Hat (and VA, etc) is to cut Linus out of the loop, and do their own development of useless bells and whistles. That leads to fragmentation. Personally I don't see fragmentation as a threat to Linux as long as a central, unspoiled version of it exists...which again, depends on Linus Torvalds.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
We must not forget that Linux is young and developed by young people. There are no miracles: or those people earn their money with Linux or with something else.
For a long time now I wondered about this problem: could there be a way os paying all those volunteers, and try to keep them working for the good of the cause?
I believe that the answer hs been found by RedHat. The developers must be shareholders of as many Linux related companies as possible. Those companies need to keep them active in the development. And RedHat was just the first. I would be surprised if any upcoming IPO would not bring another "letter" to developers.
And I what about those idealists, capable of working solely for the pleasure of hacking? There always be more coming as new generations arrive. As long as the GPL is understood and respected Linux wil be home to idealists. What's wrong if the best of those get rewarded with some wealth?
I just would love to know how many shares did RH offer to Linus. They must! As they put it: "the company's propects would be adversely affected if Linux Torvalds ever decided to stop developing Linux."
No *.BSDcon for Kansas I bet.
Much better than Hurd from a conceptual point of view, and it's even shipping.
When I started using Linux in 1995 there was hardly anyone who was sold out that I knew of. But Linux wasn't that popular and hardly anyone had heard of it. I talked, even with people in the CS industry, about Linux and they said "What's that?" If everybody but a handful sells out tomorrow then we will still be better off than before.
Think about it: Say everyone sells out but a hundred people. When this thing started we had Stallman doing applications and Linus doing a kernel, so after that everyone sells out we have 50 times as many people and a huge codebase. Now what do you think the chances are that only a hundred people will resist the temptation?
That's about where the truth stops. Just because we add simpler interfaces does not mean that the power (which requires complexity) goes away. Linux has done a great job so far layering simple interfaces over powerful features. That's the best of both worlds. You can get to the power if you want, and if you don't you'll use the easy interface.
Will companies write the talking paperclip and other idiot tools? Absolutely, and I say more power to them. They will sell a lot of them, just not to me or any of the other power users. That's just fine.
Will the power users stop developing powerful software? No, why should they? They do it now. They will continue to do so. They won't care about selling it to the masses. Someone else may write a fancy interface over the top and sell it. So what? If you wrote it originally without the interface why should you care? It serves the same purpose for you.
Finally, I'm going to get on my soapbox at this point. Companies like Cygnus and Precision Insight are the future of free software. We've got people funding us to write code that we give away. We get to do top notch technical work and pay top notch people to do it. We can provide support and a corporate backing for our open source work. This has all the benefits of open source with the stability commercial customers require. Companies based around this model will do very well in the future of open source.
- |Daryll
The cited article is nothing more than subsidized flame-bait.
:-).
I, for example, have been contributing to open source *long* before
it was called open source. Yes, it would have been nice to get in
on the IPO offer. But I wasn't offered and I don't care. I did not
make my contributions in the hope of "getting rich" off them then,
I don't now, and I don't plan to in the future.
I do it because it amuses me.
I know that drives suits and people like those at Suck mad with
incomprehension. I call that a bonus
Do I think all these happenings will effect Linux? Sure, but I develop FS/OSS stuff, and I personally am not in it for the money and plan on continuing as I am. Just like liars assume everyone else is lying, people obsessed with money assume everyone else is too.
Sure it would be nice to be a millionaire, but I didn't start coding for the money and don't see that changing anytime soon. I am not gonna get rich at my day job, but I am plenty comfortable and happy.
Rather than jumping up and down and calling each other names, lets see what the developers do, I'm willing to bet that there are a lot like me, but only time will show for sure.
-chris (gandalf@darkcorner.net)
The Bazaar is JUST a piece or writing. The author is not God (although he needs to be told) The 'Bazaar' is merely an opinion. The 'Bazaar' is how a few get rich and the majority stay poor. Also known as 'Market Forces' Get a grip!
Suck's whole shtick is cheap cynicism. This article is not a surprise. Nor is it very
interesting.
>>esr>>
What do I think?
I think I cannot be bothered to read something that displays as 5 words per line.
Does this diplay normal to anyone?
F
As those inside know, it's not about money. It's about respect. We want the world-at-large to notice and adopt the *community values* that linux--and thus Red Hat--embodies. Thus, it was very important that the little guys not be shut out by E-Trade, because this movement is all about the little guys. This is a battle, and we can't stand to lose the ground.
Unfortunately, some of my rant was poorly-written and easily-misconstrued to be whining for my piece of the pie. I tried to be clearer in my follow-up piece; maybe I was successful. But Suck's way off track, here. The Red Hat IPO rewarded *precisely* the developers who Suck claimed would get ignored: the little guys who hacked some obscure feature of a random network driver or some such. It included them *because* we fought for it, and indeed that is the whole reason I pressed Salon to publish an article on the E-Trade fiasco in the first place.
We're trying to preserve a community here. Sometimes we collide with the financial world, but ultimately it's the *community* that's important. Suck just doesn't get it.
[
Tho, I don't buy the overall conclusion of Suck's predictions for Linux and the community. I use Red Hat distros at home and work - get paid for using Linux and maintaining it, and I try to keep my admin skills up on Linux so's I can get paid more later to work on more better bigger Linux boxen. So, I've been making money - sort of - from Linux for the past two years. Unfortunately I can't code well enough to give back that way, but I try to in others.
Okay, so Bob and some folks at Red Hat are getting filthy rich 'cause they have a Linux-based company and went public; maybe VA and Linuxcare will follow the lead. So what? People will make money, all things being equal. Even RMS said making money from free software ain't a sin. So, what's the point Suck is trying to make here? I mean Linus is making good money because of Linux, in an indirect way, and he hasn't changed into a greedy capitalist running dog, now has he?
I think the fella that wrote the article sort of understands Linux and what it has become, but he sounds like he doesn't get it.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Who designs there web page? This "article" uses a large font, it's double spaced and only covers 1/8 the width of the screen.
If they don't have geeks there that can make a web page presentable, then where did the author learn about Linux.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
*burp*
Most of the complaints about Linux's ease of use stem from 3 sources: Actually having to install the OS, Configuring X and all that entails, and configuring PPP. Anyone who's ever had to install Windows will tell you that the Linux install process is generally easier. Configuring X IS intimidating to the new user (Takes me about 5 minutes.) and PPP has lots of happy front-ends these days. Take installing the OS and configuring X out of the end-user arena and guess what, you have an OS suitable for an end-user. A LICENSE-FREE OS suitable for the end user.
With Windows being one of the most expensive components of the computer these days, market forces alone may force the continued growth of Linux.
Companies will always make crappy stuff. They'll always put profit first. With Linux, we don't have to worry about that right now because we have many choices when it comes to picking a distro. We can even make our own.
The real problem is when big business uses its muscle to influence the law. When they start filing lawsuits and lobbying for new laws that will give them an edge in their industry, that's when we really have problems. That's what I'm really worried about.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The articles has lots of truth. its Satire and someones beliefs
Example. RedHat.com is the new nasdaq baby, and a boom for many people who already have money and greed in mind rather then superior software. I'm sorry, but how can a company go public off public software and still keep enough shares to let its presidents and VP's have a networth of ~40 million a piece and on up to whatever..
GNU/FSF Foundataion.. i don't "buy" that for what its worth. Free software my ass. It would be great if we all got donations and cash awards. I would believe it, but go to www.gnu.org, you see make donations and make contributions and this is what needs to be done. Whats so free about that?
Open Source, Now that is something *I* Believe in. I learn from it, i can add to it, or i can support it. I can see what i'm running with my own eyes, i can educate myself and others on how it works, and its purpose. And i could care less if it costs money to license it or for support for it. Its something i can peak into and optimize for my needs
Linux has lost its vision. who gives a rats ass about microsoft. i run Windows on plenty of machines, it works great for playing falcon 4.0 and most of all i wouldn't consider running these games on linux even if i could since its not optimized at all for graphics performance not now or anytime in the near future.
I would like to see a company go public, offer its shares of stocks on sourceXchange or some kind of reward for development website. Screw all the hippies at redhat, they're deceptive and evil for keeping that much for themselves. Organizing a company and a business around linux is great, organizing a foundation such as GNU/FSF is great to. they work to provide stability, but come on redhat, give back what gave you so much.. and if you plan on giving back, get your investor and redhat site updated to offer some feedback of what your raping the public for.
As it is right now, Linux is a baby of one person and a dollar sign for a broker.. why can't we just develop a technologically advanced and superior system instead of building something to defeat microsoft or make us money.
I want a small, tight kernel. I want new and forward looking technological advancements, superior systems, and spinoffs into other variens such as taligent and other breakthrough os's.
If that isn't gonna happen, i just suggest redhat to merge with BeOS and work on taking over microsoft.. as that seems to be there only goal.. atleast BeOS has media performance and linux has loyalty.. so that would be my recommendation right now.
The issue that Suck.com talks about is valid. Before RH went public, people worked on Linux for the pure joy of contributing something for the greater good. But now, people are going to start thinking about why they should do anything that directly benefits the big corporations.
This is why Netscape/Mozilla is having such a hard time attracting outside help. Nobody wants to work on something that they get nothing for but somebody else gets rich off of. In the early times of Linux, nobody was making money, but now people are (big $$), and that's going directly against the idea if OSS.
Suck mentions the war between KDE and Gnome. Both parties are going after the "unified desktop", but their ultimate goals are trying to create a business out of it. (The interview with Migel from Gnome states that they have started a support business)
Hopefully, the different distibutions will keep people interested in developing the software instead of feeling like they are doing work for the big corp for free. If help from the opensource community dies off and RH, Caldara, etc. are the only ones left developing, Linux is dead.
The RH IPO brought out the greediness in a lot of people. I hope this rotten apple doesn't ruin the whole bunch.
First it was "Linux is not ready for business."
Then, "Linux is not ready for the enterprise."
Next, "Linux is not ready for the desktop."
Then, "Linux is going to fragment."
And finally "Linux will be destroyed by Wall Street."
Really?
While I am the proud owner of some Redhat stock, the money has very little to do with Linux. There is more to economic reward than just money. What about the reward of not having your computers held hostage by the bandits in Redmond? What about the reward of uptime? What about the reward of your freedom?
Wars are fought over economic freedom. Freedom like you get from free software. As Eric Raymond points out, programmers write code not just because they can sell it (and how many actually get to sell it?) but also because there is a problem that annoys them and they want to fix it.
I don't care if somebody makes a pile of money off of Linux. Bob Young deserves his money, he earned it. Hell, Bill Gates deserves his money. He earned his by, amazingly, convincing the world that they should pay lots of money for crap.
What they do makes no difference. We just want our freedom.
My computer, my way. Linux.
--
Howard Roark, Architect
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
Also, that power is a collective power. Sure, if Linus got pissed off and refused to work on Linux, that would cause a lot off problems for a lot of companies, but most Linux developers are more easily replaced. The key is that together, we have tremendous power. If RedHat pissed off Linux developers as a whole, and we got together to deal with the problem, we could force RedHat to do what we wanted, wealthy investors or no.
And that's how it should be. It may be true that a bunch of lazy rich people will necessarily get richer off of our hard work, but ultimately we hold the power -- if we choose to recognize that fact.
I know it's intentional, but it's still all style over content.
As other posters have said, it's fun to be bitter and jaded once in a while but SUCK gets tired very quickly. Although they do their research, and you won't catch any glaring technical errors, you can't trust their opinions.
It's odd that so many journalists seem to think that mass-market acceptance will kill Free Software. Especially when we've already seen that even USERS, who proprietary developers consider worse than scum, are contributing to Free Software by reporting bugs, suggesting ideas, testing pre-releases and contributing documentation.
MONEY can only change Free Software for the better. Today there are fewer projects which are proceeding slowly or not at all because of lack of funds. Companies like Red Hat can afford to buy standards documents, join industry groups and get at information which would otherwise be inaccessible to Free Software.
The worst problem Free Software faces from mass-market popularity is the splitting of some non-GPL projects when some members decide that there's profit in taking the code closed-source. Fortunately I think most really big projects (XFree, *BSD, Apache) have too much momentum to be badly hurt if/ when this happens.
Nick.
1. Suck gets my vote for the Crappiest Site Format Award of the Year. I'm not a caveman; I can read more than 2 words per line.
2. There isn't just "some guy" willing to make distributions for free on the net. It is a requirement of the GPL that source be made available to the public. Because the linux source is GPL'ed, Redhat's modifications must be GPL'ed as well.
This article brings up many points which need thinking about. I'm having trouble sorting them out in my mind, so I'll just put them in a list and hope that someone more eloquent than I can express them.
In conclusion, I was scared by this article. I can picture a future where the community is so angry at one distro that people begin saying, "I don't want my program to be included in their package." Once that starts, what's next???
(FreeBSD users are laughing their asses off at this article's truth right now, before resuming their superior glow.) ;)
Wah!
Bob Young was smart enough to share some of the money around. It's only $30K but that's $30K more than Bill Gates ever gave me.
Plus when I go to my day job I get screwed and hosed every day by lack of source code for the tools I have to use. I'm really looking forward to the day when I come into work and the video driver gives me attitude and I can FIX ITS LITTLE RED WAGON. Bob Young's my best chance of ever seeing a world like that so I'm happy that Red Hat is the moonshot of the year.
Has anyone seen all the media coverage devoted to KDE2 and Gnome2 lately? They are talking about all of these new features when what we have now isn't even working correctly. Now why would they be working on things like 'embedding applications' and such when the damned menu editor doesnt even work and it takes me half a day to setup application bindings? Seems to me they are putting new features ahead of getting the current ones working. This is bad. The motivitation? The media coverage, the money, the competition, whatever.. it sucks. Well when KDE2 and Gnome2 comes out ill upgrade in hopes that they fixed the bugs and improved the interface, all the while adding tons of features that I will never use. Hrmm.. Upgrading in hopes of getting bugfixes and being spoonfed features that I don't want. Where have I seen this before.... Anyways I realize KDE and Gnome are not linux, but those are just two examples, what else is going to go that way?
Hmmm. I gues they forgot that the only thing RedHat is really selling is support and service. They will make very little money off of their own Dist. And they freely admit, there is nothing to prevent anyone from taking their dist, tweaking it and reselling it(like Mandrake). As a matter of fact they view that as part of the Open Source process (to their credit).
Funny how the media (both mainstream and digital) completely ignore this. I guess they can't get MS out of their brains, even when refering to Linux.
Anyone who get into Linux for the money, raise your hand.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will keep doing what we've been doing since 91.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I like money. It comes in enormously handy; you can exchange it for food, shelter, fun toys to play with, or anything else you may need to make your stay here a little more tolerable.
Certainly, there are people out there who become so obsessed with money that they can no longer see beyond the confines of a balance sheet. This is a tremendously unhealthy situation, and those who suffer from it should be pitied, not scorned.
I like Linux, too.
Why, then, is it considered some kind of taint if I combine these two interests?
You can certainly get obsessed with Linux, too, which is just as unhealthy as being obsessed with money. But, as long as you keep a sense of balance, and not let any one thing rule your destiny, what's the problem?
Of course, this is the media we're dealing with here. Balance is not a concept they understand. If something isn't white, it must be black. If something isn't totally free of the corrupting influence of money, it must be evil. The media only understands extremes.
This mentality is certainly easy -- you don't have to think about anything. It's also totally bogus.
Anyways, most successful Open Source developers seem, at least as far as I can see, to have developed some kind of balance in their lives. This, I suspect, will be proof enough against "corruption" through becoming totally obsessed with money.
There are greedy people in the world. Duh. Some people are likely to let their desire for money get in the way of doing something worthwhile. Duh.
Linux proponents are godlike Edenists who are falling from grace? That's just plain silly. There are lots of people with lots of motivations in the community. Many of us continue to believe that free software is an inherently good and worthwhile thing, and keep looking for opportunities to advance it. Maybe Red Hat will be there with us, maybe not. If not, they're likely to lose a lot of developer support....
You know, we hear this same type of FUD almost everday now. "Oh no! Redhat has IPOd! Oh no! VA might IPO! Oh no! Oh no! Linux has sold out to the man! Somebody is making money off Linux! Linus has sold his soul to Redmond! OH no!". Am I the only one sick of hearing this crap? You can't compare Linux to other types of software, especially other operating systems. You can't tell me that bugs in a NIC driver aren't going to get fixed because it isn't a profitable or highly visible or "sexy" piece of coding. I see hundreds of bugs get fixed with each kernel revision. I see more and more software appearing on Freshmeat And you know what? The vast majority of that software is still free (as in beer AND speech) and is better (or will be better) than it's commercial equivalent. And not all of it is "cool" or "fun" software. I'm continually amazed at the number of utilities and productivity tools (like billing systems, spreadsheets, etc...) that pop up on Freshmeat every day.
I know that people are basically greedy. And I know that given the opportunity, a greedy group of individuals could drive even the most stalwart company or concept into the ground. But please stop feeding me these FUD-bars for breakfast. Redhat is not Linux. VA Research is not Linux. Caldera is not Linux. And even Linus will tell you that he isn't Linux. No single company or group of companies is going to dictate the general course that Linux takes. Linux's future will be dictated by it's user base and by the 1000s of individual developers who dontate their time to Linux because they love Linux and they do believe that Open Source software is a good thing.
When most of the people who have written code for Linux sat down and started coding, they did it because they enjoyed it. They, like me, enjoyed writing the code, enjoyed seeing their work used by others, and saw something that they wanted done, so they did it. Most Linux contributors never even considered that Linux might become so popular and that there might be a lot of money to be made. They saw a need, and liked coding so they did it. Now there are a bunch of people whining because others are getting rich. As far as I can see, the whiners aren't even the contributors.
I'm by no means RMS, or Linus, or Donald Becker, or Mandrake, or any of the other big time contributors, I've spent a piddly couple hundred hours on bug fixes and a couple small programs, and I've loved every second of it. I have what I consider to be the best OS in existance sitting on my personal machine and I have a really fun hobby. What do I care that Bob Young got rich and I didn't? No, I didn't get "the letter" and I haven't made a dime off of Linux. If I had, that would make me even happier, but as it is I'm already elated with what I've gotten back from Linux.
I see all this bad mouthing of RedHat here because they made money off of Linux. I say "Good for them!" They have made some valuble contributions to Linux. They have a great package managment tool that has made maintaining my system much easier. They have poured lots of funding into the development of Gnome, which I think is great (though it still needs a lot of work). And they have convinced a lot of other companies to support Linux. That makes my life that much better, why would I complain?
The money was offered to us for what we had helped RedHat to accomplish - ever hear of, "What goes around comes around." Or, perhaps this one, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." RedHat is doing "The Right Thing"(tm) and here we are shaming them and the community which has put forth so much light to make Linux what it is and is becoming.
It is all good though, Linux is and will remain successful because we do not fall to these minor external issues. (No sarcasm)
--
Marques Johansson
displague@linuxfan.com
Marques Johansson
A while back someone grepped out all the email addresses from all the source on a redhat dist (5.0 AFAIR) and cut out all obvious non-programmers (doc writers) and sent them a poll.. They average Linux developers age is something like 35.. And about 22% of them have PHDs.
If you're so concerned about making a buck, why don't you just start your own business and compete with RedHat rather than just whining on Slashdot. I suspect it's because you don't even have what it takes to be bad free programmers, much less successful businesspeople.
perhaps the next version of the Linux kernel needs to be released under a more restricting license that doesn't allow for people to distribute modifications without the development team's consent.
---Got Coffee?---
All forms of government and various institutions of social order were created to combat scarcity. Or more to the poing, to deal with the fact that supplies are finite.
THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO SOFTWARE. Software is not finite, I can copy something a million times over, all are exactly the same, AND I still have the original. This moves it into a realm where all previous models of how to deal with it do not apply. You can, of course, argue that the TIME used to create the software is finite, which is true, but that changes the whole scope and texture of the argument.
+&x
preview is a good thing (even when /. is slow)..DOH!
+&x
I think that OSS will continue to thrive as long as those who IPO and become worth trillions still adhere to the principles. Redhat has a history of providing for the community by releasing it's developments in GPL. I hope that this continues.
I started thinking of how the community should deal with this when I first heard about the Redhat IPO. I think that a non-profit organization should be set up that Companies who are wealthy because of Linux and Open Source can contribute to that will help the continued development. It could use the money to provide machines, manuals, whatever to projects in the open source area. I think it is also important that the organization not be tainted by people in suits making decision about how and what to work on..... We should get one of these going. Then Redhat or any company who wanted to do the right thing and contribute to the further development could indirectly help all of open source, while not tainting it! (whooo that was a mouth full)
I read this article and loved every word of it, despite disagreeing with most of it. It's a pessimistic view of what could happen if we're not careful and Linux gets seduced by "the Dark Side".
I thought its outlook had a similarity to "Animal Farm", sortof like at the end where there was no difference between the animals in charge and the humans.
Anyway this one's going in my favourites archives, next to the "Cathedral and the Bazaar".
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
There's a difference between having a job, and having a Job. Any decent programmer can find a job. But the Job is a different story. The Job being that you're able to do what you want to do (GNU/Linux) for pay, 12 hours a day, instead of being forced to do it in the evening and on weekends.
They (and others) think KDE vs Gnome is pointless duplication of effort?
Why is there pointless duplication of design effort in the auto industry? If automakers didn't re-design and change models every year, prices could be lower. We need ONE car design and everyone has to like it!
Why is there pointless duplication of design and manufacturing effort in the aerospace industry. We all know one size plane fits all, and one size satellite fits all.
Why is there pointless duplication of effort in phones, calculators, lawn mowers, and bicycles?
People want it, and will pay for it.
Get over it.
The rant about KDE/Gnome is pointless duplication of flaming effort. Don't waste flamage.
I agree that there are two overriding motivations for Linux development:
1) acclaim/prestige and 2) money
Okay, maybe writing drivers and providing minor bug fixes here and
there is not particularly sexy and will not garner much acclaim, but
I am of the opinion that Linux is to the point now where hardware
companies realize that there is money to be had by ensuring that
there products work with Linux. I think the days of: "Windows 95/98/NT
required" are numbered [more or less]. So the ball has been set and
motion and I am not so sure that there is a need for the "community"
to beg [and beg and beg] h/w companies for specs any longer to develop
their own drivers. The *companies* will now make sure that there products
work with Linux.
Point #2... The "fun" stuff like SMP development will always interest
people. I think that there is a good chance that there will always
be people interested in doing this sort of development for free (money
wise anyhow). Sure, input from companies (SGI) with this sort of
experience is welcome, but I do not think that it is possible for
any one company to "take over" development of any particular area
thus putting their needs ahead of the communities'. Or worse yet,
for say two or three players to form warring factions over whose
SMP implementation (or you name it) should go into the core code
base.
Sorry for the novel all. I guess what I am really trying to get across
is that I believe Linux is currently in an absolutely *terrific*
position to ensure its survival and continued growth and success.
If there's anyone or company to get rich off of Linux, I think it
will be a couple of key system providers (Penguin, VA perhaps) and
application developers. The way things look *now*, I am not so sure
that there will ever be tons of money to be had performing kernel
development, but for the reasons mentioned above, I do not think
that will affect kernel development.
Thanks.
SUCK nuff sed (sorry about the AC; forgot my password)
There is some truth to this. A few linux distributions are already not freely available. Sure they may offer a stripped version w/o the properitary goodies, but as I understand the GPL there is nothing forcing any distribtion to be freely available, only the source to paying customers.
Many distros are already catering to the masses and some people swear by the GUI tools of a particular distro w/o knowledge of how to repair problems, set up services w/o them. Well will most definitely see this continue in the future.
Is suck suggesting that the overall quality of linux will decrease? I do not think this to be the case as the truly useful tools come from the GNU people who seem unconcerned w/ big payoffs. I do forsee many, many more GUI tools that will provide easy replacements to originals to please the novice.
Really, who cares if Bob Young or anyone else gets rich? Good for them. Bob didn't take any money out of the pockets of Linux or GNU coders. He didn't take food off their tables. OSS was not "raped". If Redhat hadn't floated an IPO would the free software community have been better off? Would thaey have had one red cent more than they have today? No. They might've been poorer but certainly no richer. It sounds like you're envious.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
The truth hurts, huh?
Definitely. And I never use that console mouse crap, anyway. Lose the trademark.
at the way some people are saying that Red Hat is Linux. RH is a distribuiton. for goodnes sakes.
And another thing, how can you get too excited about the prospects of a company who's main product can be copied and and sold as if it were your own. They lost money last year. They charge $80 and cheapbytes charges $2. What's they $78 for? service? The nice book and box?
I understand free but I don't understand RH selling stock.
All the cash in the world doesn't (by itself) undo what has already been done. That would take a techonological breakthrough that leaves Linux and GNU in the dust, but is also closed source. I don't see it. Do you?
Software is too easy to copy (legally or illegally) for it to remain tied up in a basement in Redmond. The open source community has pointed that out, and extended the concept by setting the bits free. That this is being accepted by Wall Street just underlines the fact that we were right from the beginning. That Wall Street is here now will change things. We just don't know how.