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Is Media Attention Bad for Linux?
Ender_Stonebender writes "Yahoo's Internet Report news page has an interesting article on why why media attention could be bad for Linux development. They have a byline saying it's from salon.com, but I can't find it there. "
The Windows refund day proves that media attention can be bad. I recently rewatched my MPEG copies of the news stories on that, and realised that the person dressed up as someone from Star Wars just completly took any seriousness that the protest had. If Linux people want good media attention, they need to start acting like professionals and not people at Star Trek conventions.
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So, in order to not piss anyone off, who should I approach with my linux questions? I would assume the developers would know the most, but I shouldn't waste their time, right?
Where should I go with all my linux questions? (i.e. Websites, IRC channels...)
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
While, I think the idea of a survey of Open Source data-points (e.g. employment, work habits, motivation, etc) would be great, I don't get this. If you actually read Eric Raymond's writing, most of it is based on real-world experience with the projects that he has worked on and those that he has had direct contact with. Netscape, for example, provides a wealth of data in their release of the Mozilla source. How much work can be harnessed from the community? Look at the changelogs....
Same goes for things like GNOME. We know exactly how fast a given sized group of hackers can put together a large Open Source software effort, because we've seen it.
What we don't have numbers for, and I don't think that a survey can establish this any better than ESR can, is this: what happens if your company wants to create an Open Source effort around your product? Answering that requires the answers to these questions:
For example, if Sun opened up the source to their C++ compiler, I'm sure the GCC/EGCS folks would enjoy getting a look at how Sun handles some of the SPARC optimization, but I can't see a lot of developers clustering in to help Sun develop their product. It's just not technically interesting enough. It's not portable, it has less than 5 language front-ends and it just doesn't have the clout in the community that GCC has.
On the other hand, if Adobe were to open up the source to Illustrator, and really convince the community that they wanted to jump in with both feet, the way Netscape did, they would have a huge developer interest.
In the end, Open Source is not so much a "phenomenon". This is the way software worked pre-80's. Hiding source seemed to make about as much sense to most people as trying to hide how a lightbulb works. Now, we're coming full circle, and people are cluing in to that. The "Open Source Phenomenon" is just a bunch of people trying to figure out how to make the intervening 20 years of industry make sense....
It's not like excessive media attention hurts "Linux, the company". Linux is, fundamentally, an operating system that is built for the use and pleasure of those who develop it. For most of the developers, it's a hobby, and only a few (albeit a high-placed few) are paid to develop Linux. Most packages are built simply because a small group of people think it'd be useful to have software Foo, so they hack on Foo.
Even if Linux, the commercial proposition, died tomorrow, we'd still have a bunch of handy distros that are sold for the sake of convenience, but built for the love of the system.
Andrew Leonard has been pretty good at covering the movement, but the thing that he (and most others) tends to miss is that the traditional rules just don't apply to Linux. If they did, we wouldn't have gotten this far.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Is it just me, or did they just define what an open source evangelist is for. That's why we have Eric S. Raymond, Chris DiBona, etc. They are the media hypers -- they are the ones that are cool. I do OSS development a bit, and I know people that do it pretty hardcore -- I don't think any of them getting irritated when someone says, "Hey man! Great job, I have this problem though..."
I actually enjoy it a bit when I get feedback, even if they are reporting bugs/help, etc.
Linux will get media hype, that's a definite -- it just means that we'll have more evangelists, that enjoy speaking about Linux than writing code, which those people are just as important as the programmers.
I personally love it when people come up to me and say, "Hey -- I heard about that linux thing in and it looks pretty cool, but does it run on windows?" -- I often times wear nerd shirts (Including free shirts from VA,etc) -- then they get enlightened when I say that it is a replacement for windows, they ask where to get more info, and I give them a list of about 5-10 URL's to check out. Silly me.. aside from me I can't think of any developers that get their valuable time taken away. Thank you, drive through.
-= Making the world a better place =-
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
As far as the average consumer is concerned, repeated media attention instills product recognition in the mind. Couple this with the noticeable shelfspace given to certain flavors of Linux at stores like Best Buy and CompUSA and you have people thinking, "hmmm, I've been hearing about that lately - maybe I will try it". It's understandable that some people who have been using Linux for a few years or more nay feel alienated by the fact that it's becoming accessible to the average consumer. But hey, it's Open Source.
And that's precisely what this is all about. People who take Linux too seriously. I've got no truck leaving Linux on a whim. It serves my purposes for the time being, but I'm not going to break a sweat trying to beat it into the media or writing flame-email to a CEO who didn't spell Alan Cox' last name correctly. It's not worth the time. Open Source, is great, and I do care about that, but the specific code (like Linux) aren't that important to me.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I care as much about OpenSource/Linux as the next guy, but I'm sick of reading journalists and web-publishers telling us why something is the way it is. Here's the truth: Stuff happens in complex systems and to try to explain it using two or three examples (like Linux and Apache to explain Open Source) is silly. The computer industry is complicated and I guess I'm just tired of all this hoopla over stuff.
My point? If you like something, and you believe in it, then do it. Write the code you find useful and use the programs you like. Stop worrying whether Linux will overtake Microsoft. Don't lose any sleep over how the Mozilla project is doing. Use what works, and work on what doesn't -- Or don't. But talk is cheap and predictions are even cheaper.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As far as I can see, there is _nothing_ to analyze about open source coding. It can be explained in a simple demonstration:
A: Hey, check out this (algorithm/program/driver) I wrote.
B: That's pretty cool, can I take a look at it?
A: Sure [mails foo.tar.gz]
B: oh man, that's a lot of global variables you're using there
A: I know, gotta get around to fixing that
B: here have this patch, I've managed to kill about half of the globals [mails foo.patch]
A: that rocks, thanks!
scale, repeat
-Laxative
Linux might overtake Windows. Then again, it might not. The bottom line is that the end result won't make a huge difference on computing. The real revolutionary stuff isn't tied down to specific operating systems because it's mostly hardware related.
Take speech-recognition for example. It will inevitably replace the majority of keyboard text entry -- I think that's a safe bet. But it doesn't have anything to do with any particular platform. You could write a speech-recognition engine for any platform that can handle a microphone. The only thing it depends on is CPU power and software algorithms. Any algorithm that depends on an OS isn't worth looking at.
So Linux? It's nice, yeah, but I'd leave it in a second if something better came along. So while I'll invest my time in making Linux better, I won't kid myself in thinking that it's anything special. It's just an OS. A tool that I use to run my programs with.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
The Slashdot Headline has very little to do with "why media attention could be bad for Linux development." This issue is brought up in the first paragraph, but is stated in order to bring the real point of the story in a silly by-the-way manner. Did either the submittor or the moderator _read_ the article?
The article itself doesn't say anything except, "Gee, I wonder if this study will get Slashdotted." There isn't a single hard fact in the whole thing, except that there's going to be an acedemic study about Linux GUIs, and that the name of the study is a bad pun of a song by the Kingsmen.
Bad Slashdot. No biscuit.
Bad Salon (or whoever wrote this silly thing) No biscuit.
What a great point to bring up! I've been waiting for this subject to pop up for a while. Here's my angle:
This reminds me of something my friend said to me. I was lamenting about how unfriendly the Linux install and setup was to people new to the system, particularly for people new to computers in general. He replied, "no offense, but we, I mean the people who develop Linux, don't really give a damn about those kind of people."
Needless to say, I took offense. It is kind of hard not to.
Now, I understand that point of view. It makes sense for most of the hobiests and moonlighting developers of Linux. But I find it terminally sad that there isn't somebody out there that cares about the newbies. As a "community," if there is such a thing, I'd think you'd be insulted that companies like Microsoft think that they have a better handle on user friendliness than you do.
For the concept of training new developers, it makes perfect sense to be surly and cold towards the newbies. Forcing them to Read The Flatulant Manual first is actually a good exercise. And then after reading the manual having to put the ecoteric connections together breeds a better programmer. And if Linux is only for programmers, that's fine.
And it made me feel smart having to do all that. It was fun.
But, isn't there somebody out there in the development world who thinks that an OS like Linux, with the quality of Linux, could be developed for the layperson?
Wouldn't it just be damned neat?
Can it not be done?
Of course, I'm an art student, and I don't program worth beans. Maybe that's why I care. And maybe my opinion doesn't count in this, because I can't contribute the code. And since I can't contribute the code, I'm not part of the community.
I love Linux, I use it. I love /., it rocks. But attitudes blackenned against the welcoming of new users just leave the public cold, and are bad overall for any sort of movement. And if there is indeed a movement, like OSS. Then somebody needs to put some thought into this.
-- "So far, I have not found the science" -Soul Coughing
Tux the penguin has nothing revolutionary going for him. It's just an implementation of Unix. It's a good one, but it's still comparable to Solaris and others.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
This is the way I see things. Large opensource projects usually have maintainers of a certain area - pieces of code and whatnot. Why not have a certain person be the "PR Maintainer" - "all emails should be addressed to foo.bar@project.org. Any media queries sent to the developers will be ignored and deleted unread."
;-)
This guy could also maintain the website, for example, or run the announcement mailing list. In fact, I'd be surprised if there aren't major projects out there not doing this already.
You don't have to be a coder to help with the coding
I've worked for the last four years as a developer for media institutions, and I've seen how they operate. I've seen positive stories written about Linux, and I've seen negative stories written. However, I've seen very few stories written by people who know Linux.
I don't like journalism, and I don't like writting. But, I feel that it's important that I do write about Linux in the press, only because there are so few people that know what they are talking about. And to be honest, I don't see the situation changing -- not too many journalists are going to be picking up Linux any time in the near future. And, I honestly believe that when and if the initial hype over Linux dies down, the fact that few journalists know Linux will ultimately hurt the system.
So what's the solution? Well, I'll continue to write pieces occassionally for publication. And, if you can write, I suggest that you write articles as well. It's easy -- did you write good essays in English? If so, you can probably write for publication. Write a piece -- it's easier if it's something you believe in -- and contact the editor of some magazine. Ask them if they'll read your article. If it's any good, they'll run it. It's also easier to get published on the Web (and possibly more effective) -- paper's expensive.
Cheers,
Travis
..the hub around which hackers organize their efforts! *cough* get a life idiot media types *cough* ever heard of Usenet? *cough* Seriously, though, people who work on projects in the free software community tend to organize their efforts around the most unlikely of things.. like the developer's mailing list for the project(s) in question? (and what's this damn CVS thingie!? ok, so I'm not being totally serious.. who cares? you'll get my point or you won't)
During the cDc discussion someone was saying how cDc made "us" [Slashdot] look like a bunch of hackers who were concerned with our public image, and this was somehow exemplified by the hacker/cracker debate that would go on for years to come. There is, however, a glaring contradiction. Any hacker (and indeed, anyone motivated enough to look at the Jargon File or read a copy of John Levy's Hackers.. or, for that matter, exist for very long around somehow who is clued in) knows what a hacker is, and what a cracker is. Anyone who thinks the terms mean the same thing, or that "cracker is only a food product", is obviously not a hacker.
The other interesting note is this: how many hackers really care about their "public image"? If that was really the case, there would be more of an effort to debunk the media's inappropriate usage of the term. But then, I haven't seen any Web sites chalk full of hacker != cracker propaganda (that is, it is devoted solely to that purpose), which is likely what it would take a /lot/ of. Point is, most hackers prefer to spend their time, hmm.. hacking? ESR is not our "brain leader" (less people agree with him than he or the media seems to think, at least with regards to any number of his "major" stances on issues.. I doubt anyone disagrees with /everything/ he does/says). Hackers are not Borg. Most boring, pointless generalizations will fail to stick, and only serve to prove that the speaker really doesn't understand the topic of their discourse.
So, since there is so much controversy on the subject, it seems reasonable to conclude that, indeed, most of Slashdot's readership does not include hackers. This is "News for Nerds", not "News for J. Random Hacker". Geeks, supposed uber geeks, and yes, hackers, read this site, but if you think most of the people here are hackers.. well.. heh. What can I say?
Ok, now I'm going back to sleep. Maybe I'll wish I had edited this, because I tend to do some pretty odd things without caffeine and/or rest. ;)
~ Kish
Media attention on Linux is just that, attention. There are good and bad points, I have a short film on the subject. Would someone please get the lights?
Good Effects: Joe User walks into Software Hut and sees a box of {insert your fav. distro here} sitting on a shelf. Thinks "Hey isn't this that new OS everyone's trying?" Joe has just supported the Cause. Due to supporting the Cause, Mr. Software company sees Joe's purchase and decides to build more apps, thus furthering the Cause. Joe may see something in the OS that he doesn't like, and may learn programming to fix it. Joe gets that nice feeling of accomplishment, posts fix to a user group and gets mild recognition for his discovery.
Bad Effects: Joe User thinks that the install will be just like it is on Windoze and tries to use it on some non-supported stuff. Joe User is not familiar with the concept of checking for a more recent build or drivers. Joe User is fustrated by lack of boxed software and keeps on using Ms Windows. More people start to think that Linux can "Save the World" and get really upset when they find that "Yes, it breaks like any other piece of software out there"
As a community we really to need to make sure that the Media knows that Linux is not a cure-all, yet. It is an excellent option for someone who knows what they are doing and is not afraid to tinker. We must avoid the "Holier-then-thou" mentality that I see perodically affecting the Mac world. Most newbies are really skittish about not being comfortably in the majority where each need is attended to by some thing you are not allowed to change. This is a brave new world gentlemen, and we must see that the way is made ready for the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I ask each of you to take a newbie in hand and explain to them the ins and outs, don't send them packing off to a FAQ without an explanation. Remember, you were once new as well.
But, in all seriousness, whatever attention Linux gets at this point is good. Look at what John C. Davorak did for the iBook.
At least they used the term "hackers" in its real meaning. Quite refreshing read this in a place like Yahoo, even if the article originated from elsewhere. (Salon seems to be a bit more clueful about these things than most media outlets.)
Ideology is for ideots.
Media attention can be bad for Linux and the OSS community, but only if it deludes the community into playing by the media's rules. You see, you have to understand how the media operates.
Take political coverage, for example. In politics, liberals complain that the media is biased towards conservatives, and conservatives complain that the media is biased towards liberals. Both camps are missing the point. The media does have a bias, all right, but it's not towards liberals or conservatives -- it's towards controversy, which sells newspapers and attracts eyeballs. Thus, the Prime Directive is, if controversy exists, great; if not, find something that could be construed as controversial and put it front and center -- even if the controversy is artificial.
You can see this same dynamic occuring in coverage of the open source movement. Every journalist who wants to write about Linux wants to do so in the context of Linux vs. Windows. When will Linux push Windows off the desktop? This is the only question journalists care about. Why? Because it's dramatic -- and it's easy to get people to pay attention to a story with inherent drama.
The problem with this is, a story about Linux vs. Windows isn't, when you think about it, really about Linux. Linux is just filling the "designated MS challenger" role in these stories -- ten years ago it would have been Apple, five years ago Netscape, now it's Linux. It's an artificial controversy. Nobody here really believes that Linux is ready for the consumer desktop, right? What's important is that Linux is smacking NT around in the server space, Apache is wiping the floor with IIS in web serving, etc.
But the danger here is if people in the community start believing those stories -- and decide that Linux's destiny is to kill MS. This fits the media's agenda more than it does the community's, because it will stir up huge amounts of controversy around something that's basically very silly. And then, because Linux isn't really ready for the desktop yet, the media will declare MS the winner, and go looking for the next story -- and the bubble of interest in Linux will burst. It's the classic game from the schoolyard, "Let's You and Him Fight", writ large -- and just like in the schoolyard, it'd be a mistake to get suckered into playing.
Read my blog.
The reason that journalists and web publishers try to overanalyze trends is very simple. Their readers/subscribers are concerned about the unknown and what it all means.
They want to know: do I brush up on my Unix skills and get Red Hat Linux certification? For my Oracle skills, should I be W2K certified, or is *nix certification more marketable?
We know where the future is going, but they don't.
Will in Seattle
Right ... so we have a few people dressed up as Borg and a few other characters. They'll look much more professional ...
Will in Seattle
Almost but not quite.
If you are a newbie it is okay to ask questions to gurus as long as you tell them that you have looked for the information and give them some idea that you know what you are doing. Don't worry about being flammed unless you are being a jerk. Half the gurus are jerks themselves. You need to sound confident and not desperate.
I speak from personal experience.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
He replied, "no offense, but we, I mean the people who develop Linux, don't really give a damn about those kind of people." ... I find it terminally sad that there isn't somebody out there that cares about the newbies.
You are talking about one guy, how can you make a generalization from that? There are obviously lots of people involved with Linux that care about newbies - who do you think is putting together the new graphical installs, the KDE gui stuff, etc, etc? Who writes all the howtos? And there are lots of Linux companies coming into the game that care a lot about newbies. There are also zillions of people out there hanging on chat channels for the express purpose of helping newbies (incidently, most of them are hardly out of the newbie category themselves).
Just remember that if you're a complete newbie, you have to be careful not to jump into the middle of forums where developers are exchanging ideas and start grabbing the bandwidth for yourself. Better to just sit and lurk, soak up what you can, then go off to find a more suitable forum for your questions.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Have you developed a proper maintenance schedule for your media? Checked for bad sectors and lost files?
Have you defragmented lately?
Do you make frequent backups?
Not only is media attention good for Linux, its good for any OS.
Tux the penguin has nothing revolutionary going for him. It's just an implementation of Unix. It's a good one, but it's still comparable to Solaris and others.
Yes and no. The greatest difference isn't the specific technology but the development model. In a commercial world where a company wants to make a profit, it doesn't pay off to keep working on a released product, it's more profitable to publish a new full version instead of just an update. Whatever is released is already outdated at the time of public retail, the creators are already working on a better version that is supposed to replace the old one once it isn't selling well enough anymore. The moment you buy some new software, it's already old stuff for the producer, they don't want to fix it (for existing customers) but concentrate on the successor (which is supposed to bring them more new customers). That's why products die and are replaced so quickly in the commercial world.
But Linux is different. The latest technology is already there right now, publically available for all who're interested (i.e. developers), open to be examined and enhanced. That's the special thing about Open Source. Sure, there are many other benefits, but the best thing is the guaranteed evolution. Open source software will be maintained as long as there is interest, and with all the time and energy invested in Linux already, people won't just drop it once something "better" comes along. Instead it can be made better all the time, it is actively evolved, it thrives in the open (contrary to commercial proprietary products). The philosophy is not to reinvent the wheel all the time, a problem should be solved only once, so all that energy can be used for other work that has not been done before. Sometimes there are drastic changes but thanks to Linux's open source nature, it's pretty easy to adapt it to a different environment, and you can always keep the theory and design principles if the actual code ever became useless (Quantum computing or something totally different from our binary computers). If anything, it's Linux and other open source projects that have best chances to be useful and up-to-date for a long time to come...
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
Like others have said here, the Media doesn't get Linux any more than they really get the elegence of shared memory. But the Media has become a fine-honed nose for that ineffable shift in social winds, and they pounce on it.
So, in the case of Linux, what are they really sensing? There's several assumptions that have been laid down by interested parties in the IT industry that are being challenged by Linux:
1) Quality software can't be created unless it is by a micro-managed team of programmers.
2) The commercial marketplace will never stand for an 'unsupported' product for their mission-critical applications.
3) Closed source software is inherently more secure than open source versions of same.
4) The best programmers are motivated by money, not fame, or the satisfaction of producing a quality product.
Obviously, we in the Linux community know these assumptions to be nothing but commercial pap. But as more commercial users quietly integrate Linux and its bretheren into their IT workloads, enlightenment occurs, and the established closed source companies start feeling pressure from lost sales and less control.
That is the phenomenon that the Media senses and is reporting on. They may or may not connect the dots, and realise that the internet and linux have blown open the doors of information distribution in other ways, eventually toppling dictatorships and two-party systems alike. Now there is a story worthy of print.
But beware: there will come a time when Linux is on the downslope of its lifecycle. Most of the hip hackers will have moved on to the Next Great Thing, and those who stubbornly cling to the glory days of linux will be viewed much like the BBS operators today who view the internet as the technology which put them out of business, and out of control of their own little domains.
Well, I'm a Linux newbie, started last Nov, and I learned a lot about linux just because the media has been lately been so focussed on linux. I learned about slashdot.org through a blrb somewhere. The more people become aware about linux .. its strenghths and weaknesses too, the better OS it will continue to evolve into ;))) My 2 bits ;)
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18