I think you've created a false dichotomy. Both engineers and scientists value elegance and parsimony. Think of Occam's Razor (Science) and the KISS principle (Engineering). MS products are built using a third principle, Marketing, that results in massive feature sets with little effort to make them orthogonal and organized in logical hierarchies. They are, instead, focused on specific "market segments," and even if this means that there are half a dozen slightly different ways to perform a particular task, MS will include all of them. It's bad Engineering and bad Science, but it's excellent Marketing.
One of the bits of MS disinformation that people often accept without question is that more features equals more power. Even hackers fall into this trap (just look at how many options the average GNU tool supports compared to the Unix original).
Rob Pike of Bell Labs presented an interesting paper at USENIX (around '86 or so) titled "'cat -n' Considered Harmful" where he illustrated the dangers of hacking random features into a tool when reasonable alternatives already existed. "cat", he argued, was for copying a list of files to standard output. The "pr" command was for formatting listings, and thus was the more appropriate place for introducing line numbers. (Try "pr -n -t".) This was just one of many examples of unneeded complexity he presented, and the trend he identified has grown greatly over 13 years. Over time these things have had a similar effect on Unix to what MS's Market-Think has had on its products, making Unix harder to learn and use than it ought to be.
I don't think the danger is in making Unix too easy to use. Rather, I think the danger is in making Unix as feature-laden as MS's products. It may seem a radical idea, but many of the solutions for Unix usability might be found by going back to its roots. We need to seek quality of features rather than quantity--MS will always win the latter game. It's our job to show the world that their victory is in reality a meaningless exercise in artificially segmenting the market.
*BSD has had subsantialy more success, it's called SUN, HP-UX, Digital Unix, BSDI.....
Sorry, but with the exception of BSDI, those all derive from System V (originally from AT+T's Unix System Group) and not BSD. System V Release 4 was an attempt by USG to integrate as much BSD into SysV as possible, but SysV still predominated. (Just about every commercial Unix out there--Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, etc.--derives from SysV R4.)
Linux, on the other hand, will not let this happen. It can't happen because of the GPL. the GPL ensures that Linux will always remain open to the users.
And BSD isn't open? Just because Joe Random Corporation can grab BSD and make a proprietary system does nothing to lock up the original source code. There are arguments for the GPL, but I don't think this is one of them...
Seems that most folks here seem to accept that Gore's "I invented the Internet" claim has absolutely no basis. I've no great love for the man, but IMHO he probably has as much claim to the Internet as any other politician.
First off, go look up the original quote; "I took the inititive in creating the Internet" is a bit different than saying "I invented the Internet." It's an overstatement, but not an outright falsehood: he had nothing whatever to do with the original ARPANET, but he did have a lot to do with aiding its extension beyond military contactors at a point when DARPA was reducing its funding and becoming increasingly strict as to how the ARPANET was used. He certainly wasn't the only legislator who supported NSFNET (the entity which became the Internet's backbone during its transitional phase), but his office had a major role in forming legislation for it.
Such explanations don't make for good sound-bites, though, and even some original ARPAnauts seem unaware of what transpired in the late '80s and early '90s, insulated as they were at places (like MIT) that were major defense contractors.
Personally, I suspect that a fair amount of Gore's original technophile reputation had to do with his Senate staffers, and that at the time the only "networks" he had an understanding of had initials like "CBS" or "NBC." But he acquired enough of a reputation that as VP he's automatically assigned as the point man for all technical issues that pass through the Clinton administration, from Clipper and V-chip to Y2K. So it makes a certain amount of sense to judge him on his technical savvy (and I think I'm with the majority here is thinking that he's demonstarted none of late). You may be certain that very little in technical policy originates with him; I'd suggest judging him on other grounds.
Corporations want to make money from their "Open Source" software. You may as well ask a tiger to become vegetarian as to ask a corporation to not make money. There are indirect ways to make money from OSS--hardware, services, additional software. And there are good, practical reasons why open source can make better software so that more money can be made through these means. So I think that the IBM's, Apple's, and others may well be honest in their support of OSS, for this reason. But one thing that these companies absolutely do not want to do is allow competitors to take advantage of their sourcecode in ways that they have (at least temporarily) renounced--for instance, by creating a new un-open product. So they want to explicitly prohibit competitors from this, while not prohibiting themselves from changing their minds about this open-source business in the future.
Liability. The most altruistic corporation in the world can't get away from this one: they may be sued for what other people do to and with their software. In a rational world without a superabundance of lawyers, they wouldn't have as much to worry about here. But they are risking something few individual developers have--a deep, deep pocket to attract frivolous lawsuits over liability, intellectual property, and so forth. OSS gives their lawyers the shakes, and, sadly, I don't think they're being entirely paranoid.
Thus I don't believe that many, if any, corporations will be adopting the GPL very soon. It might not even be a good thing if they did--in fact, I doubt very much that such a move would be anything but suicide for most software companies in today's corporate environment.
The transcontinental telegraph put the pony express out of business. Prior to the telegraph, messages could only travel as fast as people could or, in limited circumstances, over lines of sight. So the transition to low-latency was sudden, but it is over a hundred years old, and actually hasn't improved much since its advent.
The special property that makes the Internet revolutionary can be summed up in one word: routing.
> In what way, exactly, does a flame threaten freedom?
It doesn't. However, flames only harden the flamer and flamee into their respective positions. They rarely communicate anything beyond hostility, no matter how factual or well-argued. It's just one of life's little truths. Ignore it if you want to--you have that freedom--even if flaming actually marginalizes your point of view rather than conveying it.
This is actually the crux of the whole matter. Showing by example and patient explanation may seem a tiring way to convince someone, but it is the only way that works. And even then it's not sure-fire. RMS used to be a leader, by his own uncompromising example and his tireless explanations of his point of view. But lately he's seemed to have a large chip on his shoulder. What's worse, the media seems quite willing to goad him into keeping it there. (Makes good copy.)
This is an unfortunate situation, since many people's first awareness of free software will be focused on what seem to be petty disputes between embittered men. They aren't going to have much incentive to look further and see RMS and others as the remarkable individuals they are.
As far as I know, no military money went into the development of Linux. On the other hand, DARPA helped fund BSD--specifically, the development of its network code. Oh, and better stop using TCP/IP, too, since its design and development was paid for by the military. Forget about the Internet, of course, since it was funded for years by the military. Stop using anything with IC's, since they were developed for missile guidance. In fact, stop using computers altogether, since much of early computer research was paid for by the military. Take up fabric arts, or soybean farming, or open a shoeshine stand. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we'll go on using military technology for non-military purposes, with a smile on our faces, since no one can own us.
Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard. You can deal with complexity by organizing it into simpler elements. That only takes time. But to find a useful simplification takes experience and a wisdom which only comes from repeatedly risking failure. Life is never just a simple matter of programming.
This, as I see it, is the message of the movie. It's a little scary to see people taking its protagonist as a role model...
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I think you've created a false dichotomy. Both engineers and scientists value elegance and parsimony. Think of Occam's Razor (Science) and the KISS principle (Engineering). MS products are built using a third principle, Marketing, that results in massive feature sets with little effort to make them orthogonal and organized in logical hierarchies. They are, instead, focused on specific "market segments," and even if this means that there are half a dozen slightly different ways to perform a particular task, MS will include all of them. It's bad Engineering and bad Science, but it's excellent Marketing.
One of the bits of MS disinformation that people often accept without question is that more features equals more power. Even hackers fall into this trap (just look at how many options the average GNU tool supports compared to the Unix original).
Rob Pike of Bell Labs presented an interesting paper at USENIX (around '86 or so) titled "'cat -n' Considered Harmful" where he illustrated the dangers of hacking random features into a tool when reasonable alternatives already existed. "cat", he argued, was for copying a list of files to standard output. The "pr" command was for formatting listings, and thus was the more appropriate place for introducing line numbers. (Try "pr -n -t".) This was just one of many examples of unneeded complexity he presented, and the trend he identified has grown greatly over 13 years. Over time these things have had a similar effect on Unix to what MS's Market-Think has had on its products, making Unix harder to learn and use than it ought to be.
I don't think the danger is in making Unix too easy to use. Rather, I think the danger is in making Unix as feature-laden as MS's products. It may seem a radical idea, but many of the solutions for Unix usability might be found by going back to its roots. We need to seek quality of features rather than quantity--MS will always win the latter game. It's our job to show the world that their victory is in reality a meaningless exercise in artificially segmenting the market.
Seems that most folks here seem to accept that Gore's "I invented the Internet" claim has absolutely no basis. I've no great love for the man, but IMHO he probably has as much claim to the Internet as any other politician.
First off, go look up the original quote; "I took the inititive in creating the Internet" is a bit different than saying "I invented the Internet." It's an overstatement, but not an outright falsehood: he had nothing whatever to do with the original ARPANET, but he did have a lot to do with aiding its extension beyond military contactors at a point when DARPA was reducing its funding and becoming increasingly strict as to how the ARPANET was used. He certainly wasn't the only legislator who supported NSFNET (the entity which became the Internet's backbone during its transitional phase), but his office had a major role in forming legislation for it.
Such explanations don't make for good sound-bites, though, and even some original ARPAnauts seem unaware of what transpired in the late '80s and early '90s, insulated as they were at places (like MIT) that were major defense contractors.
Personally, I suspect that a fair amount of Gore's original technophile reputation had to do with his Senate staffers, and that at the time the only "networks" he had an understanding of had initials like "CBS" or "NBC." But he acquired enough of a reputation that as VP he's automatically assigned as the point man for all technical issues that pass through the Clinton administration, from Clipper and V-chip to Y2K. So it makes a certain amount of sense to judge him on his technical savvy (and I think I'm with the majority here is thinking that he's demonstarted none of late). You may be certain that very little in technical policy originates with him; I'd suggest judging him on other grounds.
Two reasons:
Thus I don't believe that many, if any, corporations will be adopting the GPL very soon. It might not even be a good thing if they did--in fact, I doubt very much that such a move would be anything but suicide for most software companies in today's corporate environment.
The transcontinental telegraph put the pony express out of business. Prior to the telegraph, messages could only travel as fast as people could or, in limited circumstances, over lines of sight. So the transition to low-latency was sudden, but it is over a hundred years old, and actually hasn't improved much since its advent.
The special property that makes the Internet revolutionary can be summed up in one word: routing.
> In what way, exactly, does a flame threaten freedom?
It doesn't. However, flames only harden the flamer and flamee into their respective positions. They rarely communicate anything beyond hostility, no matter how factual or well-argued. It's just one of life's little truths. Ignore it if you want to--you have that freedom--even if flaming actually marginalizes your point of view rather than conveying it.
This is actually the crux of the whole matter. Showing by example and patient explanation may seem a tiring way to convince someone, but it is the only way that works. And even then it's not sure-fire. RMS used to be a leader, by his own uncompromising example and his tireless explanations of his point of view. But lately he's seemed to have a large chip on his shoulder. What's worse, the media seems quite willing to goad him into keeping it there. (Makes good copy.)
This is an unfortunate situation, since many people's first awareness of free software will be focused on what seem to be petty disputes between embittered men. They aren't going to have much incentive to look further and see RMS and others as the remarkable individuals they are.
As far as I know, no military money went into the development of Linux. On the other hand, DARPA helped fund BSD--specifically, the development of its network code. Oh, and better stop using TCP/IP, too, since its design and development was paid for by the military. Forget about the Internet, of course, since it was funded for years by the military. Stop using anything with IC's, since they were developed for missile guidance. In fact, stop using computers altogether, since much of early computer research was paid for by the military. Take up fabric arts, or soybean farming, or open a shoeshine stand. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we'll go on using military technology for non-military purposes, with a smile on our faces, since no one can own us.
Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard. You can deal with complexity by organizing it into simpler elements. That only takes time. But to find a useful simplification takes experience and a wisdom which only comes from repeatedly risking failure. Life is never just a simple matter of programming.
This, as I see it, is the message of the movie. It's a little scary to see people taking its protagonist as a role model...
-Ed