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?

Comments

Required reading

[Kaa]

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

Advocacy, Slashdot, and things that inhale...

[evilpenguin]

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?)

Rant 1: Re: People who complain about /. 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 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.

Moderate this post down...

[Tim]

...because I'm going to defy the great penguin.

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 /. 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.