Those companies are full of windows-users, and installing Linux on their computers at work will NOT make them become linux-users.
Of course, Linux is 'free', of course, it's more flexible, powerful, etc Of course, people knowing about Linux will probably be more effective in any ways.
However, I must insist : it costs MONEY to get someone using Linux at work, as a tool. Are you people forgeting that those employees only used windows for their entire lives ?? It's not something that can be learned in two hours (not at work, not as an essential tool.)
Please, stop behaving like kids, asking every two months if the time when windows gets down has come or not. 2009 is NOT going to be Linux on anything year. Just like 2008 wasn't and 2007 wasn't. 2009 is going to be another year of increasing overal market share of Linux, like other years. There will be no revolution.
Please, understand that the kind of adoption of Linux you are hoping for will not be a "one-year" revolution. Maybe much people will begin using Linux on their desktop, and it's good. But before Linux becomes proeminent or even common in large companies Linux has to stop being "that cool system that everybody heard about but nobody in the company really masters". If there is recession, those moving-to-linux costs will be too important. The only way Linux gets enough market share in large companies is that those people working with computers, already made contact with Linux at HOME, and thus don't need any formation.
Just wait.. wait for Linux to be known, used and mastered by the lambda user, and then our society will have the choice to move to Linux without prohibitive costs.
Agreed. I think what Opera needs is to be better known. However, like most people here, I don't feel confortable with that "divide the non-IE browser market share" idea... Let's keep it secret : "Opera can be, depending of your point of view, as good or even better than Firefox"
Once there is place for a true and equal competitivity between browsers out there, we'll spear the word. For now just install Firefox on your friends computers.
Well, as far is I know, nobody complains about (gk)sudo in Ubuntu. Nobody. And trust me I know much people installing ubuntu over XP or Vista, saying "it's just so much clear to understand, and warnings/errors/pop-ups make so much sense. I can now understand and know what's happening."
UAC is just, as usual, something inspired by an existing technology (sudo on linux) implemented so stupidly that it gets useless in most cases, dangerous for your system in some cases, and almost useful by accident.
Seriously, there is no debate or troll to do on UAC, things are pretty clear, it is useless.
-In a luser point of view it is not useful. Just annoying, and won't save anything/anybody as they don't read them, just click "yes" when the prompt appears. -In a sysadmin point of view, it's useless too, look : am I admin ? does the computer know I'm the boss ? If it knows I know what I'm doing, why is it asking "are you sure you want to do what you want to do ?", and if it does not know if I'm the boss on the computer, why can I do the shit I want just by clicking "yes" ?
Imagine an idiot visiting The White House, entering private rooms, infiltrating secret meetings, and launching a nuclear strike on the US just by saying security agents "yes, I want to do it", Who The Hell Forgot to check his identity ?
-in a malware point of view..... well, crap, I need the user to click 'yes' on an ambiguous and non-explicit message box, too bad, I will have to do some software phishing (EASY, and yes, that 'easy' deserves the caps on, as as said in a former post : we don't know what's happening, who's doing what to what file or even what the name in the message box is/means/represents, for lambda users) -in an IT point of view....... Well it's somewhere between the BSOD and the "Error : unknown error" usefulness.
TFA is insightful, that troll isn't. Linux users say it's crap, Windows users say it's crap, Windows developers say it's crap...
Google irritated a large number of users that would have been most likely to try and promote Chrome and to give contributions to the code- those NOT using MS-Windows
Agreed. Why is Chrome OS ? They almost killed any possible kind of "Chrome's Linux Community", and Microsoft community has POOR OS contributing experience, so they are trapped with almost no possible contribution to their Source code.
Thing are even worse than that : Google Chrome's developers have shown a good (let's not troll about their choices) ability to stick different parts of different browsers together, but what about developing that patchwork software ? As it has already been said, they don't know the code enough to master it... Their choice (pasting existing stuff here and there) seems to reveal their poor experience of browser developing. So please , how will that browser grow ?
That patchwork software is going to be a pain in the... to develop at this point, they have poor browser experience, and killed any possibility of contributions. Ok. Can they deal with those problems ? Well, at the moment they do, the browser is there (they got to a beta release ! Hooray.), it's fast, and people like it (it being new).
Now remember that IE is learning from his mistakes, interested in the "one tab = one process" concept, is developing their own code, and do it for years (slowly, but they do.), remember that Firefox grows up fast (very fast, thanks to community, and answering to what the community asks, unlike IE), has a perfect knowledge of his code, masters it almost perfectly and has an entire community for little annoying patches, letting core devs care about huge/important stuff without being distracted. (plus huge plugins choice)
I don't see how Chrome is going to get half the development speed/efficiency both IE and Firefox have, Chrome came with some advantages, but IE/FF are going to kill Chrome in long-term. And at the very moment that Firefox will get better than Chrome, all that "a new browser to compete with IE on the windows world" stuff will get obsolete, and chrome will be left behind, as it is:
While you can just choose not to use it, it's not a reason to expose yourself to people who actually don't care.
There are lots of people in the world, you know, if unwanted pictures of me are published on the internet, the only fact that every of those "bad" people can access it is a problem for me.
You can trust yourself not using it, you can trust your neighbor, but what about those thousand of people you don't know and have NO reason to trust AT ALL ?
Those statements "people know it's bad, just tell them they shouldn't do it, and after that we'll be so safe !" are Stupid. That's how in the 90's (Mitnick's era) nothing was encrypted, nothing was secure, nearly everything could be hacked. People not expecting to be hacked, people not expecting to be looked at, people not expecting their private data to be sold... It's the same ! You just walk around without asking yourself the basic and simple question "what if someone dears to do something bad ?"
For me, privacy issues should not be fixed in a "they shouldn't do it." way, but in a "they can't do it" way
# ERROR N-1: using electronic ways of doing non-electronic-meant things.
(what is the goal ? time ? people can't just sit a few hours, or just sleep forgetting elections until tomorrow, or next day ?)
# ERROR N-2: doing such an important thing on an electronic device wired to the internet, or other unsafe interconnections [deduced from #2-b]
# ERROR N-2-b: installing an antiviral software on such an important device. (remember anti-viruses are NOT trustful softwares) [see #2 why antiviral is useless]
# CRITICAL ERROR: installing and using windows on such an important device for such an important task as any non-pc (or simply non windows), reliable architecture (or simply reliable OS) is supposed to be able to deal with two variables and numbers.
Due to CRITICAL ERROR the system will reboot now. Please do NOT save any presidential vote later than 1999, so that they can be lost.
Please. If you do so, there will be cake for everyone.
what about longtime use ? what about using this for..let's say... 3-4 hours a day (even 1 hour !) there is no way your arms, your legs, your back can handle it. Even if you sit down the weight of your arms will hurt your back... (no utility for any geek, any nerd, any professional any "IM-kid"... and 80% of games market
- looks cool, yeah, looks great on a movie (first saw on Final Fantasy : The movie, remember ?) but NO WAY it can manage my 10 virtual desktops Desktop, it's just impossible to use 4-5 application minimum at the same time, and I don't even want to ear talking about gnome/KDE with this, it's not made for it. It needs specific WM, unless really good ideas it will be a pain to use. Using a computer it a little bit more complicated than spinning pictures and drawing circles.
- poor image resolution from the user's point of view, as far as I know holograms can't reach enough resolution, too blur to use it for real.
Verdict : Useful for "powerpoint" presentations, public conferences and...that's all. Stop saying it's all you've ever wanted for your desktop, it's just ridiculous, it's not even the purpose !
Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced. If it was, most of us wouldn't be here.
Go tell that to the MTV Generation growing up nowadays, go tell them clothes, popularity, money, sex, fame, stupidity (as a feature... I still can't believe we got to that point.) are not the moral values worth fighting, worth dying.
While self-esteem IS important those kids are just not able of thinking "ok, I'm just different, I don't care about being appreciated by fashion-nazi's, the way I am, the way I think looks good to ME, and so will I be."
even if an idiot says on a public multimedia support (read "internet, msn, youtube, myspace, facebook...") one of those kids is "not cool" or "not worth it", even of that kid knows perfectly it's an idiot, he will be affected way too much, he will answer you that with that other people will think he's a looser, that he will never get any friend anymore, that his social live is dead.
IMO the problem is, while series, movies, brothers, parents, books etc delivers the good message (yes, for that, series and movies, even those who looks stupid, at least develop a decent way of thinking about yourself), ways of communication being closer to kids are telling the opposite...
see ads on the TV, just look at them, that's ridiculous, as ridiculous as what MTV tells us, but that's the message television and society delivers to our kids, and because it's primitive, because it's easier to accept, because it looks true in an "animal" way of thinking, they are more likely to believe it.
Ok, it's nothing new, it has been discussed many times before but nobody thought it could come that far, now we face the weakest child generation ever (both intellectually and by maturity), and big problems seems to come. (it's extreme but imagine people leading US president to suicide, just imagine kids don't grow up in this topic, just imagine they grow up without any right example) and we must act.
PLEASE, parents, educate your child, do NOT let them get the education profit's society want them to have.
For all those reasons, the fact that an Adult acts so stupidely is a moral crime. Adults must help kids, must teach kids essential things, if a weak point is revealed the last thing an adult should come to do is exploit it to hurt a kid.
Adults are the solution, the only fix. Shame on those who are part of the problem.
(oh my god, I'm not the only Belgian here in/. ? Am I less marginal than I thought ?)
it's like avoiding you to request the less "bad guy for environment" fuel when everybody uses hydrogen.
anyway, what's that society where the minimal effort is still too much of an "energy waste" !? Come on people, it's fuel energy we save, no ours ! Be brave : ask your paper bag yourself, don't use cookies to logon to/., build your system yourself... no, wait, create your own system by your own !
assholes like apple and google who take other peoples hard work and commercialize it.
And where do you think microsoft's products come from ?
their employees ?
come on ! be serious..
Plus, if FOSS has a license to allow companies to use and commercialize their code, it's just a benefit for the overall software level. While this example is not OS, remember the mouse ? The fact that several companies could use that device to enhance user interface (even if it's by copying and stealing) leads the user interface to what we know right now.
I don't think using other people's code (who permits it.) to enhance one's products is being an asshole (while I disagree with M$ using this strategy to build 80% of their products, or just buy and let patents sleep, and die.). I mean, you know that sharing code is the goal of FOSS, right ?
Linux distros are a huge pissing contest between egoistical morons who instead of contributing to one distribution fork and rob distros of the already scarce resource - the free developer.
I don't see why you criticize that.
OK, they are a much distro's, they are forks, but at the end, how much distro's are powerful enough, user-friendly enough, to get the attention of people ?
gentoo ? no way normal people choose this by default.
slackware, debian, and other geek-obscure-freeky systems that lambda users wouldn't even get to boot ?
In fact, the true is that even with forks, with plenty of distro's and soever users have choice, but no confusion : there is Mandriva (uurk), fedora, and others (like ubuntu, the most known) and if they don't understand the difference between those, they'll choose Ubuntu.
so what is the problem with distro's ? actually there isn't, the only problem is that the potential power of developers is quite not concentrated in few tasks but in much (having no future-)distro's.
Nobody is going to ship proprietary commercial bits using apt or whatever crappy management software is out there
well, if it's commercial, it won't be given free to ubuntu servers, so your statement is pointless. They will ship their softwares in DVDs (or by Steam) with a Linux client (see ID Software, but in a more user-friendly way) and just to let you know, every lambda user I know and saw apt-get working told me several times that it was the greatest way to manage installed softwares they ever saw. IMO it's a Very Good package manager (for a binary distro I mean)
for sure, I use Gentoo for two years now, have used ubuntu for 2-3 years, Mandrake/mandriva for 2 years, Slackware for one year and suffered windows all before that. I think I have basis knowledge of problems with forks, with package managers and with FOSS realities.
The services model sucks. The only OSS projects that do well are those that have commercial backing and those that actually pay developers to write quality code.
sure having full-time paid developers enhances quality and fast development while it's not the only criteria (remember many people doing little stuff being well coordinated can be most efficient than a single well paid developer.). However, if you see a good project and want it to grow, if you REALLY don't want to contribute to the code's development, nor the languages translations, please, don't wait a commercial company to buy and pay the project, just donate money (not much). You see, companies are not the only ones having the possibility to pay developers. People too. And much people giving little money can do the difference.
Ok, if those companies continue stealing OUR (opensource) code, and violating OUR licences, I will forget about the "you must pay" term of their licences. And redistribute their softwares the way I decided To.
So we can't use softwares we don't pay for.
We can't reditribute their products the way we want.
We can't use their patented code.
How come they think they can ?
It's no fairplay, they can us stealers, cyber-terrorists, but they sell millions of copy of softwares (at high prices) they don't even really OWN.
Slashdot Mirror
We TOTALLY need a Pirate Party here in France/Belgium, I hope we will get one before the next electionsâ¦
Here is how I see it :
Those companies are full of windows-users, and installing Linux on their computers at work will NOT make them become linux-users.
Of course, Linux is 'free', of course, it's more flexible, powerful, etc
Of course, people knowing about Linux will probably be more effective in any ways.
However, I must insist : it costs MONEY to get someone using Linux at work, as a tool. Are you people forgeting that those employees only used windows for their entire lives ?? It's not something that can be learned in two hours (not at work, not as an essential tool.)
Please, stop behaving like kids, asking every two months if the time when windows gets down has come or not.
2009 is NOT going to be Linux on anything year. Just like 2008 wasn't and 2007 wasn't.
2009 is going to be another year of increasing overal market share of Linux, like other years. There will be no revolution.
Please, understand that the kind of adoption of Linux you are hoping for will not be a "one-year" revolution. Maybe much people will begin using Linux on their desktop, and it's good. But before Linux becomes proeminent or even common in large companies Linux has to stop being "that cool system that everybody heard about but nobody in the company really masters". If there is recession, those moving-to-linux costs will be too important.
The only way Linux gets enough market share in large companies is that those people working with computers, already made contact with Linux at HOME, and thus don't need any formation.
Just wait.. wait for Linux to be known, used and mastered by the lambda user, and then our society will have the choice to move to Linux without prohibitive costs.
Agreed.
I think what Opera needs is to be better known. However, like most people here, I don't feel confortable with that "divide the non-IE browser market share" idea...
Let's keep it secret : "Opera can be, depending of your point of view, as good or even better than Firefox"
Once there is place for a true and equal competitivity between browsers out there, we'll spear the word. For now just install Firefox on your friends computers.
Well, as far is I know, nobody complains about (gk)sudo in Ubuntu. Nobody. And trust me I know much people installing ubuntu over XP or Vista, saying "it's just so much clear to understand, and warnings/errors/pop-ups make so much sense. I can now understand and know what's happening."
UAC is just, as usual, something inspired by an existing technology (sudo on linux) implemented so stupidly that it gets useless in most cases, dangerous for your system in some cases, and almost useful by accident.
Seriously, there is no debate or troll to do on UAC, things are pretty clear, it is useless.
-In a luser point of view it is not useful. Just annoying, and won't save anything/anybody as they don't read them, just click "yes" when the prompt appears.
-In a sysadmin point of view, it's useless too, look : am I admin ? does the computer know I'm the boss ? If it knows I know what I'm doing, why is it asking "are you sure you want to do what you want to do ?", and if it does not know if I'm the boss on the computer, why can I do the shit I want just by clicking "yes" ?
Imagine an idiot visiting The White House, entering private rooms, infiltrating secret meetings, and launching a nuclear strike on the US just by saying security agents "yes, I want to do it", Who The Hell Forgot to check his identity ?
-in a malware point of view..... well, crap, I need the user to click 'yes' on an ambiguous and non-explicit message box, too bad, I will have to do some software phishing (EASY, and yes, that 'easy' deserves the caps on, as as said in a former post : we don't know what's happening, who's doing what to what file or even what the name in the message box is/means/represents, for lambda users)
-in an IT point of view....... Well it's somewhere between the BSOD and the "Error : unknown error" usefulness.
TFA is insightful, that troll isn't. Linux users say it's crap, Windows users say it's crap, Windows developers say it's crap...
Google irritated a large number of users that would have been most likely to try and promote Chrome and to give contributions to the code- those NOT using MS-Windows
Agreed. Why is Chrome OS ? They almost killed any possible kind of "Chrome's Linux Community", and Microsoft community has POOR OS contributing experience, so they are trapped with almost no possible contribution to their Source code.
Thing are even worse than that : Google Chrome's developers have shown a good (let's not troll about their choices) ability to stick different parts of different browsers together, but what about developing that patchwork software ? As it has already been said, they don't know the code enough to master it... Their choice (pasting existing stuff here and there) seems to reveal their poor experience of browser developing. So please , how will that browser grow ?
That patchwork software is going to be a pain in the ... to develop at this point, they have poor browser experience, and killed any possibility of contributions. Ok. Can they deal with those problems ? Well, at the moment they do, the browser is there (they got to a beta release ! Hooray.), it's fast, and people like it (it being new).
Now remember that IE is learning from his mistakes, interested in the "one tab = one process" concept, is developing their own code, and do it for years (slowly, but they do.), remember that Firefox grows up fast (very fast, thanks to community, and answering to what the community asks, unlike IE), has a perfect knowledge of his code, masters it almost perfectly and has an entire community for little annoying patches, letting core devs care about huge/important stuff without being distracted. (plus huge plugins choice)
I don't see how Chrome is going to get half the development speed/efficiency both IE and Firefox have, Chrome came with some advantages, but IE/FF are going to kill Chrome in long-term. And at the very moment that Firefox will get better than Chrome, all that "a new browser to compete with IE on the windows world" stuff will get obsolete, and chrome will be left behind, as it is :
a Patchwork Browser with no future.
"Wait and see" actually is the most 'results/energy' efficient
isn't it already done ?
Logic problem here.
While you can just choose not to use it, it's not a reason to expose yourself to people who actually don't care.
There are lots of people in the world, you know, if unwanted pictures of me are published on the internet, the only fact that every of those "bad" people can access it is a problem for me.
You can trust yourself not using it, you can trust your neighbor, but what about those thousand of people you don't know and have NO reason to trust AT ALL ?
Those statements "people know it's bad, just tell them they shouldn't do it, and after that we'll be so safe !" are Stupid. That's how in the 90's (Mitnick's era) nothing was encrypted, nothing was secure, nearly everything could be hacked. People not expecting to be hacked, people not expecting to be looked at, people not expecting their private data to be sold... It's the same ! You just walk around without asking yourself the basic and simple question "what if someone dears to do something bad ?"
For me, privacy issues should not be fixed in a "they shouldn't do it." way, but in a "they can't do it" way
# ERROR N-1: using electronic ways of doing non-electronic-meant things.
(what is the goal ? time ? people can't just sit a few hours, or just sleep forgetting elections until tomorrow, or next day ?)
# ERROR N-2: doing such an important thing on an electronic device wired to the internet, or other unsafe interconnections [deduced from #2-b]
# ERROR N-2-b: installing an antiviral software on such an important device. (remember anti-viruses are NOT trustful softwares) [see #2 why antiviral is useless]
# CRITICAL ERROR: installing and using windows on such an important device for such an important task as any non-pc (or simply non windows), reliable architecture (or simply reliable OS) is supposed to be able to deal with two variables and numbers.
Due to CRITICAL ERROR the system will reboot now. Please do NOT save any presidential vote later than 1999, so that they can be lost.
Please. If you do so, there will be cake for everyone.
Cakes never lie. Presidents do.
Please, sit down, calm down, and see how useless is this.
- no contact feedback (seems few things, but makes typing nearly impossible.)
- PAIN, PAAAAAIIN ! (torture, suffering, tears, suicide...)
what about longtime use ? what about using this for..let's say... 3-4 hours a day (even 1 hour !) there is no way your arms, your legs, your back can handle it. Even if you sit down the weight of your arms will hurt your back...
(no utility for any geek, any nerd, any professional any "IM-kid"... and 80% of games market
- looks cool, yeah, looks great on a movie (first saw on Final Fantasy : The movie, remember ?) but NO WAY it can manage my 10 virtual desktops Desktop, it's just impossible to use 4-5 application minimum at the same time, and I don't even want to ear talking about gnome/KDE with this, it's not made for it. It needs specific WM, unless really good ideas it will be a pain to use. Using a computer it a little bit more complicated than spinning pictures and drawing circles.
- poor image resolution from the user's point of view, as far as I know holograms can't reach enough resolution, too blur to use it for real.
Verdict : Useful for "powerpoint" presentations, public conferences and...that's all. Stop saying it's all you've ever wanted for your desktop, it's just ridiculous, it's not even the purpose !
Suicide is not a natural response to bullying, especially when that's not even face-to-face, which is what we experienced. If it was, most of us wouldn't be here.
Go tell that to the MTV Generation growing up nowadays, go tell them clothes, popularity, money, sex, fame, stupidity (as a feature... I still can't believe we got to that point.) are not the moral values worth fighting, worth dying.
While self-esteem IS important those kids are just not able of thinking "ok, I'm just different, I don't care about being appreciated by fashion-nazi's, the way I am, the way I think looks good to ME, and so will I be."
even if an idiot says on a public multimedia support (read "internet, msn, youtube, myspace, facebook...") one of those kids is "not cool" or "not worth it", even of that kid knows perfectly it's an idiot, he will be affected way too much, he will answer you that with that other people will think he's a looser, that he will never get any friend anymore, that his social live is dead.
IMO the problem is, while series, movies, brothers, parents, books etc delivers the good message (yes, for that, series and movies, even those who looks stupid, at least develop a decent way of thinking about yourself), ways of communication being closer to kids are telling the opposite...
see ads on the TV, just look at them, that's ridiculous, as ridiculous as what MTV tells us, but that's the message television and society delivers to our kids, and because it's primitive, because it's easier to accept, because it looks true in an "animal" way of thinking, they are more likely to believe it.
Ok, it's nothing new, it has been discussed many times before but nobody thought it could come that far, now we face the weakest child generation ever (both intellectually and by maturity), and big problems seems to come. (it's extreme but imagine people leading US president to suicide, just imagine kids don't grow up in this topic, just imagine they grow up without any right example) and we must act.
PLEASE, parents, educate your child, do NOT let them get the education profit's society want them to have.
For all those reasons, the fact that an Adult acts so stupidely is a moral crime. Adults must help kids, must teach kids essential things, if a weak point is revealed the last thing an adult should come to do is exploit it to hurt a kid.
Adults are the solution, the only fix. Shame on those who are part of the problem.
(oh my god, I'm not the only Belgian here in /. ? Am I less marginal than I thought ?)
it's like avoiding you to request the less "bad guy for environment" fuel when everybody uses hydrogen.
anyway, what's that society where the minimal effort is still too much of an "energy waste" !? Come on people, it's fuel energy we save, no ours ! /., build your system yourself... no, wait, create your own system by your own !
Be brave : ask your paper bag yourself, don't use cookies to logon to
assholes like apple and google who take other peoples hard work and commercialize it.
And where do you think microsoft's products come from ?
their employees ?
come on ! be serious..
Plus, if FOSS has a license to allow companies to use and commercialize their code, it's just a benefit for the overall software level. While this example is not OS, remember the mouse ? The fact that several companies could use that device to enhance user interface (even if it's by copying and stealing) leads the user interface to what we know right now.
I don't think using other people's code (who permits it.) to enhance one's products is being an asshole (while I disagree with M$ using this strategy to build 80% of their products, or just buy and let patents sleep, and die.). I mean, you know that sharing code is the goal of FOSS, right ?
Linux distros are a huge pissing contest between egoistical morons who instead of contributing to one distribution fork and rob distros of the already scarce resource - the free developer.
I don't see why you criticize that.
OK, they are a much distro's, they are forks, but at the end, how much distro's are powerful enough, user-friendly enough, to get the attention of people ?
gentoo ? no way normal people choose this by default.
slackware, debian, and other geek-obscure-freeky systems that lambda users wouldn't even get to boot ?
In fact, the true is that even with forks, with plenty of distro's and soever users have choice, but no confusion : there is Mandriva (uurk), fedora, and others (like ubuntu, the most known) and if they don't understand the difference between those, they'll choose Ubuntu.
so what is the problem with distro's ? actually there isn't, the only problem is that the potential power of developers is quite not concentrated in few tasks but in much (having no future-)distro's.
Nobody is going to ship proprietary commercial bits using apt or whatever crappy management software is out there
well, if it's commercial, it won't be given free to ubuntu servers, so your statement is pointless. They will ship their softwares in DVDs (or by Steam) with a Linux client (see ID Software, but in a more user-friendly way) and just to let you know, every lambda user I know and saw apt-get working told me several times that it was the greatest way to manage installed softwares they ever saw. IMO it's a Very Good package manager (for a binary distro I mean)
for sure, I use Gentoo for two years now, have used ubuntu for 2-3 years, Mandrake/mandriva for 2 years, Slackware for one year and suffered windows all before that. I think I have basis knowledge of problems with forks, with package managers and with FOSS realities.
The services model sucks. The only OSS projects that do well are those that have commercial backing and those that actually pay developers to write quality code.
sure having full-time paid developers enhances quality and fast development while it's not the only criteria (remember many people doing little stuff being well coordinated can be most efficient than a single well paid developer.). However, if you see a good project and want it to grow, if you REALLY don't want to contribute to the code's development, nor the languages translations, please, don't wait a commercial company to buy and pay the project, just donate money (not much). You see, companies are not the only ones having the possibility to pay developers. People too. And much people giving little money can do the difference.
Something will save us from Vista.
Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu.
Yeah, and what will save us from *buntu ?
Lucky we've got Gentoo to save our souls...
Ok, if those companies continue stealing OUR (opensource) code, and violating OUR licences, I will forget about the "you must pay" term of their licences. And redistribute their softwares the way I decided To. So we can't use softwares we don't pay for. We can't reditribute their products the way we want. We can't use their patented code. How come they think they can ? It's no fairplay, they can us stealers, cyber-terrorists, but they sell millions of copy of softwares (at high prices) they don't even really OWN.