Appearence of the computer is not relevent to me. However the additional cost of the system is something I was willing to pay for OS X, which mops the floor with any GUI available for Linux.
Plus, nobody except those doing numeric intensive computing, or complex data modeling (or desiring to play Doom III someday) actually needs that much raw speed. Really, I got by just fine for the longest time with a 500MHz K6-2. When I upgraded to an 800Mhz Mac, I got a nice speed boost but it was not necessary. The speed simply wasn't a major factor for me.
Well, I guess that is not entirely true for everyone, there seem to be plenty of slashdot posters who think speed is of vital importance, but it might come as a suprise to you that there are some people who don't count raw processing speed as the most important attribute in a computer.
Seriously, if open source is going to thrive (not merely survive) then corporations will have to take it up and that will require making money off of it somehow.
I would say open source has thrived quite a bit without figuring out how to make money in the traditional "selling for software" sense, so why should you expect that to change?
I've never seen so many people so horribly confused.
For everyone who is running off at the mouth saying "You greedy open source people, this is how they are supposed to make money, paying for support is fine, stop demanding everying for free, etc", wake up and actually read the article.
Nobody is complaining that they are charging for documentation or support. The problem here is they are making their customers basically sign an NDA that prevents them for sharing any knowledge they gain from the documentation with others. This has nothing to do with copyrights, and it is nothing like photocopying a manual. This is about you promising to never help anyone you know who has the same software. Microsoft does not sue me if I tell you a Windows XP trick I read about in a book by Microsoft Press.
Personally, I don't hold this against the webGUI people. It is their right if they want to do it, but damn, what a crappy business model. That will only provide them with a revenue stream until some code savvy customers write their own documentation from the source code (which from other posts looks like it has already happened)
So really there is nothing to see here folks. Just another company trying yet another flawed way to make money using open source software.
As to the broader topic everyone seems to be bringing up about how this is a fatal flaw in open source (namely that companies cannot figure out how to make money off it), there is no problem. Nobody cares if companies can figure out how to make money off of every tiny little open source project out there. The larger ones have funding from companies that use them (IBM funds Apache and some others) and the rest are written by people in their spare time or as part of their job.
I make money with open source software by using it to solve my company's (well, university's) problems. I also make enhancements to various packages we use and feed them back to the community. Everyone benefits and I still get paid.
If you are a programmer who thinks you should be getting a six figure salary because you can write a little software utility, then cries when the open source community makes a better one for free, tough luck. Either evolve with the times or get left behind. The days when you can whip out a little program and charge for it are done. If it is truely a good program, you can bet someone else will be motivated to reimplement the concept as an open source project. It may not have happened yet (Gimp is not a complete replacement for Photoshop for example) but over time it will.
Right, but I fail to see what "designer's intent" has to do with ANYTHING.
I mean, there have been plenty of software programs in which the designer's intent was to create a hacking (cracking) tool, but it was discovered to be a useful tool for the 'forces of good' as well (think BackOrifice)
The original intent of the knife was to kill as well, so we should ignore any and all other uses anyone can come up with and make knives illegal on that basis alone
Plus you are making the assumption that killing is always bad. I'll bet you would find it hard to find someone who felt that there was NEVER a valid reason to kill someone. As distastful as it is, sometimes in is necessary (and legal), whether it be self defence or to stop a violent crime in progress.
This is not a simple "guns are bad, mkay" black and white issue. Just as it is not a "hacking software is bad, mkay" type issue.
And never be in a job or position where you have to enforce any kind of rules, policy, or heaven forbid, have anyone working for you. That is just asking for someone to falsely accuse you of sexual harassment.
Finkployd
Re:fear mongering
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well geeze, where were you if you knew these four planes were being hijacked to ram into buildings? You should have been telling the military to shoot down any hijacked planes because unlike the vast majority of hijacked planes, you know these ones were going to use used in this way. What a gift your forsight could have been, it is a shame our President did not have the gift you appearently did.
Wrong wrong wrong! They are breaking no hardware at all. They are simply making a decision that they will not bend over backward to accomadate binary only drivers. Lately making sure the kernel supports, debugging around, and dealing with these drivers has been a serious pain in the ass. Not to mention technically a violation of the GPL. I suppose it is much easier to call them asswhipe primadonnas than to actually educate youself regarding the reasons and technical issues surrounding thus stuff.
You certainly seem to have some major aggression issues with the kernel maintainers. Have you considered simply not using Linux? I'm not tring to be an asshole but since you hate it and it's development idealogy so much, do you really think it is the right solution for you?
As you correctly point out, "it is the customers stupid". The customers have been demanding open source drivers for hardware for quite a long time now, I know I personally have been on Cisco's ass to make their crappy VPN driver open source, and many people I know who work with visualization technologies are after nVidia about their crummy drivers. I know of NO CUSTOMER who prefers a closed source driver which must be updated with every kernel release. A binary only driver that does not keep up with the kernel revisions, and only works on x86 hardware in not acceptable, these companies NEED to start listening to the customer.
Linux got where it is today following the development procedures and idealogies that you feel are not right for a prject of it's importance. However you fail to understand that it is this that allowed Linux to be a success where most other similar attempts have failed. Why would you have Linux now "play the game" and bow down to the corporate philosphy which has killed so many other operating systems?
I'm not convinced they are being arrogant assholes. They do not respond well to others who have not proven themselves as reliable programmers making demands as to how they should design the kernel, but who would? The technical decisions behind the kernel always seem to be sound, only when these decisions conflict with someone's personal agenda or a corporation's fiscial agenda are they blasted as being arrogant assholes.
Sure there are occational in-fights regarding differences of opinion in technical matters, but you need that for the best ideas to be accepted.
They DO listen, just not to every wannabe kernel hacker who comes out of the woodwork and demands that their crappy code be integrated into the kernel that they know next to nothing about. You want to propose a complete rewrite to the VM? First you have to establish yourself with good solid work and make ourself known as a intelligent programmer. Having a.sig that says "Senior Systems Programmer at XYZ" is not enough to jump in and start making demands.
Despite that, everyone still has to play by the developer's rules. These rules may piss off some of these multibillion dollar corporations, but their development models obviously cannot produce their own kernel that has the same success.
Handguns most certainly had been invented. Not like we have now, but one could make the argument that since the houses we live in now are not like they were then, unlawful search must be allowed. Like you said, it has to be a living documemt, and lines have to be drawn. Somewhere between not allowing anyone to have anything remotly resembling a firearm and allowing everyone to have a thermo-nuclear device. This whole debate is nothing more than finding that line.
Plenty of people have been shot robbing stores (and othe people) at knifepoint, you were the one who assumed that the robber was armed with a gun. Case in point there were a rash of convience store robberies around here (state college, pa) a while ago, where the criminal was armed with only a knife. I'm sure that is pretty rare, but does happen.
Actually, cell phone companies do not own networks (well Audovox/Qualcomm has the patent on CDMA I think).
Your question is similar to asking why I cannot use my Bluetooth chip to communicate with an 802.11b network, because they are different. Verizon uses CDMA, AT&T uses TDMA, Sprint uses (I think) a GSM like network. These are completly different network protocols, and while I believe there are some phones that will work on multiple networks, most are designed to just work with one.
The real issue here which technology should we standardize one? Pretty much all of Europe uses GSM, and they have a real nice situation going for them in that regard. TDMA is clearly the worst (technically speaking) but AT&T will not let it go. CDMA is probably the best but it is not compatible with GSM. Isn't the free market fun?:)
The simple reason for this is they use different cell technologies. Verizon uses CDMA, AT&T uses the older TDMA, and I believe Sprint uses a GSM variation.
As mentioned elsewhere, 802.1x solves the authentication problem. That is the ONLY problem, there is no sniffing problem that is any worse than wired ethernet. You want data security, use a secure protocol like SSH, or SSL for web stuff. Don't force all the overhead of needlessly encrypting all the traffic or forcing everyone through a VPN consentrator, that is a horrible solution. Just use secure protocols when you want security.
Slashdot Mirror
Appearence of the computer is not relevent to me. However the additional cost of the system is something I was willing to pay for OS X, which mops the floor with any GUI available for Linux.
Plus, nobody except those doing numeric intensive computing, or complex data modeling (or desiring to play Doom III someday) actually needs that much raw speed. Really, I got by just fine for the longest time with a 500MHz K6-2. When I upgraded to an 800Mhz Mac, I got a nice speed boost but it was not necessary. The speed simply wasn't a major factor for me.
Well, I guess that is not entirely true for everyone, there seem to be plenty of slashdot posters who think speed is of vital importance, but it might come as a suprise to you that there are some people who don't count raw processing speed as the most important attribute in a computer.
Finkployd
Seriously, if open source is going to thrive (not merely survive) then corporations will have to take it up and that will require making money off of it somehow.
I would say open source has thrived quite a bit without figuring out how to make money in the traditional "selling for software" sense, so why should you expect that to change?
Finkployd
I've never seen so many people so horribly confused.
For everyone who is running off at the mouth saying "You greedy open source people, this is how they are supposed to make money, paying for support is fine, stop demanding everying for free, etc", wake up and actually read the article.
Nobody is complaining that they are charging for documentation or support. The problem here is they are making their customers basically sign an NDA that prevents them for sharing any knowledge they gain from the documentation with others. This has nothing to do with copyrights, and it is nothing like photocopying a manual. This is about you promising to never help anyone you know who has the same software. Microsoft does not sue me if I tell you a Windows XP trick I read about in a book by Microsoft Press.
Personally, I don't hold this against the webGUI people. It is their right if they want to do it, but damn, what a crappy business model. That will only provide them with a revenue stream until some code savvy customers write their own documentation from the source code (which from other posts looks like it has already happened)
So really there is nothing to see here folks. Just another company trying yet another flawed way to make money using open source software.
As to the broader topic everyone seems to be bringing up about how this is a fatal flaw in open source (namely that companies cannot figure out how to make money off it), there is no problem. Nobody cares if companies can figure out how to make money off of every tiny little open source project out there. The larger ones have funding from companies that use them (IBM funds Apache and some others) and the rest are written by people in their spare time or as part of their job.
I make money with open source software by using it to solve my company's (well, university's) problems. I also make enhancements to various packages we use and feed them back to the community. Everyone benefits and I still get paid.
If you are a programmer who thinks you should be getting a six figure salary because you can write a little software utility, then cries when the open source community makes a better one for free, tough luck. Either evolve with the times or get left behind. The days when you can whip out a little program and charge for it are done. If it is truely a good program, you can bet someone else will be motivated to reimplement the concept as an open source project. It may not have happened yet (Gimp is not a complete replacement for Photoshop for example) but over time it will.
Finkployd
and it makes julian fries
Finkployd
Right, but I fail to see what "designer's intent" has to do with ANYTHING.
I mean, there have been plenty of software programs in which the designer's intent was to create a hacking (cracking) tool, but it was discovered to be a useful tool for the 'forces of good' as well (think BackOrifice)
Finkployd
The original intent of the knife was to kill as well, so we should ignore any and all other uses anyone can come up with and make knives illegal on that basis alone
Plus you are making the assumption that killing is always bad. I'll bet you would find it hard to find someone who felt that there was NEVER a valid reason to kill someone. As distastful as it is, sometimes in is necessary (and legal), whether it be self defence or to stop a violent crime in progress.
This is not a simple "guns are bad, mkay" black and white issue. Just as it is not a "hacking software is bad, mkay" type issue.
Finkployd
No, but I had a really hard time not shouting out "Bring out your dead" when they were evacuating Edoras. (old men on carts, it was just too easy)
:)
Also I fought the temptation to say "The power of Christ compels you" during the slightly over the top Theoden exorcism scene
As great a movie as it was, there were some parts that begged for a little mystery science 3k action.
Finkployd
Unfortunatly mine broke, but there are some good emulators out there.
Finkployd
Boy was that a cool system, it was also my first computer. Tunnels of Doom and Parsec were my favorites.
Finkployd
And never be in a job or position where you have to enforce any kind of rules, policy, or heaven forbid, have anyone working for you. That is just asking for someone to falsely accuse you of sexual harassment.
Finkployd
Well geeze, where were you if you knew these four planes were being hijacked to ram into buildings? You should have been telling the military to shoot down any hijacked planes because unlike the vast majority of hijacked planes, you know these ones were going to use used in this way.
What a gift your forsight could have been, it is a shame our President did not have the gift you appearently did.
Finkployd
Wrong wrong wrong! They are breaking no hardware at all. They are simply making a decision that they will not bend over backward to accomadate binary only drivers. Lately making sure the kernel supports, debugging around, and dealing with these drivers has been a serious pain in the ass. Not to mention technically a violation of the GPL. I suppose it is much easier to call them asswhipe primadonnas than to actually educate youself regarding the reasons and technical issues surrounding thus stuff.
You certainly seem to have some major aggression issues with the kernel maintainers. Have you considered simply not using Linux? I'm not tring to be an asshole but since you hate it and it's development idealogy so much, do you really think it is the right solution for you?
As you correctly point out, "it is the customers stupid". The customers have been demanding open source drivers for hardware for quite a long time now, I know I personally have been on Cisco's ass to make their crappy VPN driver open source, and many people I know who work with visualization technologies are after nVidia about their crummy drivers. I know of NO CUSTOMER who prefers a closed source driver which must be updated with every kernel release. A binary only driver that does not keep up with the kernel revisions, and only works on x86 hardware in not acceptable, these companies NEED to start listening to the customer.
Linux got where it is today following the development procedures and idealogies that you feel are not right for a prject of it's importance. However you fail to understand that it is this that allowed Linux to be a success where most other similar attempts have failed. Why would you have Linux now "play the game" and bow down to the corporate philosphy which has killed so many other operating systems?
Finkployd
I'm not convinced they are being arrogant assholes. They do not respond well to others who have not proven themselves as reliable programmers making demands as to how they should design the kernel, but who would? The technical decisions behind the kernel always seem to be sound, only when these decisions conflict with someone's personal agenda or a corporation's fiscial agenda are they blasted as being arrogant assholes.
.sig that says "Senior Systems Programmer at XYZ" is not enough to jump in and start making demands.
Sure there are occational in-fights regarding differences of opinion in technical matters, but you need that for the best ideas to be accepted.
They DO listen, just not to every wannabe kernel hacker who comes out of the woodwork and demands that their crappy code be integrated into the kernel that they know next to nothing about. You want to propose a complete rewrite to the VM? First you have to establish yourself with good solid work and make ourself known as a intelligent programmer. Having a
Finkployd
As a long time Final Fantasy fan, I am severely disappointed with what passes for an airship these days.
Finkployd
Note: this really only applies to drivers, not applications.
Finkployd
Despite that, everyone still has to play by the developer's rules. These rules may piss off some of these multibillion dollar corporations, but their development models obviously cannot produce their own kernel that has the same success.
Finkployd
Perhaps, but they sure produce a great product with these attitudes...
Finkployd
Handguns most certainly had been invented. Not like we have now, but one could make the argument that since the houses we live in now are not like they were then, unlawful search must be allowed. Like you said, it has to be a living documemt, and lines have to be drawn. Somewhere between not allowing anyone to have anything remotly resembling a firearm and allowing everyone to have a thermo-nuclear device. This whole debate is nothing more than finding that line.
Finkployd
Plenty of people have been shot robbing stores (and othe people) at knifepoint, you were the one who assumed that the robber was armed with a gun. Case in point there were a rash of convience store robberies around here (state college, pa) a while ago, where the criminal was armed with only a knife. I'm sure that is pretty rare, but does happen.
Finkployd
I was wondering what that annoying sound on campus was
Finkployd
PSU Programmer
Actually, cell phone companies do not own networks (well Audovox/Qualcomm has the patent on CDMA I think).
:)
Your question is similar to asking why I cannot use my Bluetooth chip to communicate with an 802.11b network, because they are different. Verizon uses CDMA, AT&T uses TDMA, Sprint uses (I think) a GSM like network. These are completly different network protocols, and while I believe there are some phones that will work on multiple networks, most are designed to just work with one.
The real issue here which technology should we standardize one? Pretty much all of Europe uses GSM, and they have a real nice situation going for them in that regard. TDMA is clearly the worst (technically speaking) but AT&T will not let it go. CDMA is probably the best but it is not compatible with GSM. Isn't the free market fun?
Finkployd
The simple reason for this is they use different cell technologies. Verizon uses CDMA, AT&T uses the older TDMA, and I believe Sprint uses a GSM variation.
Finkployd
The hardware.
That is like saying "if linux is so free, why does a quad xeon machine running linux cost more than a 386 running linux?"
There simply IS no comparable palm model, however a comparison with the iPaq would be fair....
Finkployd
As mentioned elsewhere, 802.1x solves the authentication problem. That is the ONLY problem, there is no sniffing problem that is any worse than wired ethernet. You want data security, use a secure protocol like SSH, or SSL for web stuff. Don't force all the overhead of needlessly encrypting all the traffic or forcing everyone through a VPN consentrator, that is a horrible solution. Just use secure protocols when you want security.
Finkployd
What is XML Encryption, btw?
W3C XML Encryption Working Group
Finkployd