I am personally not really worried about "dying linux". I had given up on Linux desktop in 2000 but I still from time to time pop in a Linux distro to replace a windows box and viceversa. I swap.
But it really never was a problem since the money at least for me is on the server-side. Since I am an Open Source professional (meaning I make a living at it with JBoss) server-side java with Linux is a winning proposition.
I am amused by the alarmist tones in these threads here. Come on! there is no fucking way Linux dissapears on the server side. You can put pee in a pool you can't take it out. It has what 20-30% market share? Linux has DEFEATED microsoft in its tracks on server, mostly thanks to java.
So instead of weeping at the obvious, that there is a desktop monopoly and no one really cares, you should rejoice at the strength, really the amazing success of Linux as a server platform and join the ongoing battle for the webOS>
as a java professional i chuckle when I read that kind of story...
it is obvious that linux + java is the "tip of the sword" against XP dominance on the server.
You kids still wonder why you are fighting the wrong war ? it's like netscape vs microsoft and all the press was focusing on the *browser*, while apache was taking over the server side. GAME OVER, who gives a flying FUCK that IE owns the desktop, the server side is where the game is at and that is what real-men are fighting on these days.
Focus on the strenght, drop the kiddy idealism, make the vision work on the server and Open Source software will become the defacto monopoly.
I operate in the J2EE world, the java enterprise world. we don't give a rats ass what OS we run linux/solaris/windows same crap to us btw the state of virtual machines on linux trails windows just fyi...
The modern application server the.net the j2ee should be in java just because is buys you teh app. then you compete solely on the vm field and that is a sweet position, level playing field.
it is the app server stupid, the web-app server is the key to adoption.
the article does mention linux+apache as a deployed solution "but it doesn't go much father" that is correct and why we need strong support of Java VM on linux, the J2EE open source groups are there: see JBoss, they have a full J2EE implementation and web services support
I did not know the story behind EDS. It's a good one. Frankly $1m/week IS a lot of money, still today, it is real money despite your claims to the contrary.
In a way the current impact of OSS is poorly measured as it is an undoing of license as the primary source of revenue and frankly I am not sure it is a good thing. Not everywhere. What I mean by that is that many many business models succesfully operate on licenses. For end-user applications it makes sense. For infrastructure on the other hand it makes sense to use "public domain" software.
I don't aplaude for EDS, I just think that we now have a finer understanding for software, we understand it better. There are applications there is infrastructure, Open Source, sponsored by the govt should exist in the second sphere.
I am convinced that a natural business model for open source software is closer to the way top technology research programs operate. Sponsoring, conscious sponsoring through private investment and govt funding (NFS etc) is probably the way of the future.
The trick is going to be in balancing the need for $ motivation that was killed in academia, and the wild greed of VC bozos.
interesting if not funny. I don't know the demographics of other projects but go see our team here.
yes many of them are actually stealing time on their job but many are also professionals taking the jump. I for one live of open source, I don't have a dumb job, haven't for the past year or so. It is ok, better living, more money, but it is not a "millionaire dot-com thing".
Bottom line: don't dismiss the open source model for a way FOR INDIVIDUALS TO MAKE MONEY.
I seriously think that one of the problems here is that you all assume that you must be working for some stupid corporation to make a living. Actually you can make a living too in open source it is not difficult.
Wow that is the first time that I hear this... in fact it makes no sense and seems to be an odd-datapoint. I see exactly the opposite in all the accounts I work with, that people are really rushing to Open source to save some bucks, remember it is un-american to waste money.
So you will excuse me but you are working for a crazy man. and in the long run "free and good" is a great position to be.
people don't buy support for JBOSS because THEY DON"T NEED IT. We don't force them to (unlike our competition BEA that has MANDATORY support).
Then there is exactly the reverse, motherfucker at some big company in the UK that wants a feature done and when we quote him a price to do it (free software != free developers) he says that is "not open source". Fucking jerk expects it for FREE! Needless to say we don't care!!!!
No, get real, the services companies are the most succesful ones out there (EDS, Cap Gemini, even IBM!) and you guys talk like nothing existed outside the sales of licenses.
They don't want to see big non-industry related gaps in your resume
I beg to differ. One of our contributors in JBoss landed a high profile job, not because he was wasting time in cubeland but because he used his sinking company time to work on JBoss while at work. The competition on his job was fierce the guys picked the one who coded for the "love of coding".
the point that was made was that a Open Source track record shows you LOVE coding, you do it for free. Beware of impostors now but the point is clear
OK, the article is actually interesting. Having founded JBoss Group, a commercial entity behind JBoss I relate to many of the points.
But somehow the thinking is backwards still, thinking with old filters. One of the fundamental flaws of business in open source is that you give away your core competency.
But then OSS existed before companies tried to grow on its ground (Linux) and very succesful service companies existed independently of Open Source (EDS). So there must be a middle ground.
I believe part of the problem is that is that business folks out there (mostly VCs, I have met my share of arrogance back in the good ol days of the valley, confusion!) well VCs try to apply the old model of company building on the new way of producing software. It doesn't work. Open Source CANNOT support fat and overhead and corporate structures, just because IT CAN'T.
My (small) company is profitable and we are growing but I clearly see that I cannot AND SHOULD NOT grow with employees, just not flexible enough. As research on business plans goes, I understand that JBoss even though it is in the very rich field of enterprise software (and there is a lot of service), well JBoss for all its success cannot support a massive company right now. And again it is probably not the right structure ANYWAY. VCs got it wrong, most business men are scratching their heads, we at JBoss Group are trying, trying hard. Can't say we got it, we don't, but like many others in open source we make a living.
We offer many services around our free product are thinking about subscriptions and paying for information. The product is free, the service is not. The information is not (documentation, help, support, training (plug: http://www.jboss.org)).
Training is our biggest gig, people want to meet the developers of the framework. Also I don't think this would work with "GUI" frameworks. Just not enough customization to go by. If it is hard in the J2EE field, I can imagine how much harder it is in other fields.
Had I taken VC money (not that it was offered) or had I hired anybody left and right with borrowed money (what VC money is in the first place), well I WOULD BE DEAD TODAY.
It's a bitch out there, but I for one still believe, believe strong, we'll get it
I did not know that (and couldn't read the full description as the site is totally/.ed:(
I design JBoss, the leading J2EE server and at THE HEART of it is the capicity to dynamically deploy new applications on our application server. I mean that is what application servers are ALL ABOUT.
in fact (plug) in JBoss we go the extra mile and allow you to hot-deploy (dynamically add classes) the server classes themselves, which neither IBM nor BEA, nor Oracle do.
So I was curious to know who would win the.net webservices race but it is extremelly clear in my mind, J2EE frameworks will deliver with webservices easier than any C# framework will
Why? well imagine that ANY time you change your class in C# YOU NEED TO REBOOT THE APPLICATION SERVER, yes, boys and girls that is the simple thing that "dynamic class loading" affords you, without it, the VM is tied to whatever you have at startup.
You are asking for a lot of trouble and I doubt you will be satisfied with your hackies result.
I am a typical "power-user" and have cycled through many laptops and machines but it seems I am settling on my laptop just for mail, and do all my development on a box. Just the raw power makes a huge difference.
I used to love my Linux laptop about 2 years ago, I felt so sophisticated. Tell you the truth I am running w2k on it now (A Sony Vaio), just wasn't worth the trouble. Then my box runs Linux (RH) and I do most of my java development on it, I am very happy with it.
Bottom line is this: Laptops and boxes are very different in how sensitive they are to "fucking around". It is pretty simple to assemble a box from scratch, even fun and economical but with Laptops I wouldn't fuck with quality, you need high end material and high end assembly, otherwise you are going to have a clunky thing that doesn't hold up... and then the linux choice to boot is imho a mistake, but that is another story.
Get real,
marcf
I am bored to tears with modern games, am I old?
on
Are Videogames Art?
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· Score: 1
I just tried Black and White and put it on the shelf after 4 hours of mind numbing stupidity.
I went back to playing "Sokoban" on linux...
I like the way it teases my brain, the graphics are crappy, the action is nil, it is all in the brain.
That being said I am 32, soon to be 33, and I guess that is old so I don't relate to the new games out there.
While I agree with your premise about scaling services, however in Lutris' case they had the added disadvantage of basing their services on a non-existent product.
You can smoke the ego-stroking "told-ya-so, Open Source isn't a real business model yaada yaada yaade" all you want but it doesn't change the name of the game. Good software for free (or cheap) tends to win. Bad software even for free doesn't fly, period, not these days.
It doesn't invalidate the oss business model, it must be out there, in fact many people today make a living at Open Source, the question you raise is can you really grow fat in Open Source, the answer is probably no, not in the early stages. But maybe one day, you too can be throwing money out the window and flashing it around town. There are very succesful services companies (EDS, CAP) and an Open Source equivalent is in the making
Example: Imagine a small company who realizes they need to develop a J2EE application server because of an esoteric requirement. Before open source, the cost would be prohibitive. Nowadays, they'll probably join some project like JBoss, and add the features they particularly need.
in fact this is the largest set of contributions we see nowadays (I should know I am the founder of the JBoss project;-).
The dream of "armies" of **free** developers that the articles conveys is not true. Just not true. It smells of teen spirit to me (like most of/. these days...). You have to understand that.NET and J2EE is "enterprise" class software.
I am a bit dubious when Mr Icaza switches from "gui toolkits" to "distributed computing" in 6 seconds flat. I just don't buy it.
The biggest help we get these days is from highly motivate and *skilled* individuals from startups and consultancies. The clustering, the ejb container, the administration, the database accelerators, it is all done by a small, tightly knit team of "common interest" capitalists.
The need they have for solutions on J2EE/.NET makes them interested in contributing. The rest as described in the washington post article is propaganda.
I just finished reading the article and the first thing that comes to my mind is a big "so what"...
so you can spend $30 and get a so called "productivity" machine. He doesn't get it, what is stopping microsoft is not the small low end machines it is the big dataserver class machines with Linux.
See I develop on JBoss.org, a J2EE middleware in Java, what we see is people using us on Linux (and windows and solaris and AIX and...) with BIG BOXES. THAT is really hurting microsoft, that "mid range" enterprise market that they thought they were going to "own" and therefore kill Unix.
The only reason it is failing so far is that the server side is impossible for them to control due to Linux there. I don't really care that you can turn your PalmOS in a router, I do care that you can create a cheap datacenter with Linux boxens at Rackspace with JBoss on it.
The article seems to claim that running on small hardware will hurt MS, no, it barely hurts Intel and Intel will push Linux where Java takes it in the enterprise application arena.
the rest is kiddies scripting their enlightment settings
It is standard tactics for microsoft lovers to say "oh microsoft is SOOOOO bad, SOOOOOOO Bad BAD BAD!!!!!" because, don't you get it? it makes you think about them. I am serious now... mind games...
Ok onto SOAP. Follow the BOSS (http://www.jboss.org) and check out what the J2EE folks are doing with SOAP. JAVA LOVES SOAP. and we also know a little truth that.net folks forget... that Client Server is dead so that Corba/Soap/RMI are dead protocols anyway...
Microsoft is playing a "meetoo" and using usual tactics of "look how bad bad bad we are" so that you are afraid and go with them (he he). But frankly with 90% of the app server market in J2EE WHO CARES???????
So the browser is IE?? WHO CARES???? I was using netscape, went to IE cause I got tired, and tried Gecko netscape 6 yesterday, it's quite ok.. but REALLY WHO CARES?????????????????
THE REAL BATTLE IS ON THE SERVER and there Microsoft is misfiring with windows 2000. Yes, sure they ship it as much as they can but DON'T YOU SEE LINUX IS A FORMIDABLE CONTENDER AT THE LOW END, and it will be a cold day in hell before win2k replaces SOLARIS at the high end. DON'T YOU SEE???? THEY DON"T HAVE A STANDARD, IN FACT THEY ****BARELY**** HAVE A SAY IN WHAT TECHNOLOGY SHAPES THE SERVER WEB (PHP/J2EE). So f*ck them, that article was stupid, tried and true tactics from a self-loathing pro-MS "pseudo" technologist.
Did you get the reference to "Open Source Programmers have embraced it" SURE WE DO BIOTCH! we got it in JBoss.org and we think it is a good little kinky technology for CS calls. Do I think it is the future? no biotch, no! WE ARE THE FUTURE.
I was what 14? and i used to sneak out at night to go to a friends house and program the z80 chip for a game we were doing... man so much fun... I am weepy.
Am I the only one that thinks it was a GREAT chip (the Z80) when compared to say the 6502 AppleII had inside?
We used to program an adventure game on ZX81 went pretty far but never released the final game. I remember we used to code with the loads of buffers that came with it and when I switched to 6502 I found it clumsy compared to the Z80.
Too bad it only had 16 k of RAM with the extensions and it was pretty hard to do much of anything and it used to just die on us since our connection to the RAM was screwed.
But what really amazes me now is that we had an expensive AppleII but had more fun programming assembly on the ZX...
I also remember that my parents were surprised that I sneaked out at night (yeah they eventually found out) to go programming all nighters!!! They, I guess, were expecting me to sneak out to go to parties and drink beer and smoke pot but no... we would do it for programming. I guess it was pretty obvious what I would be doing later.
I am not sure I fully agree with the conclusion of this article.
I started and still run a medium sized open source project (50 developers, 10 core, many 10,000 users) jboss.org (www.jboss.org) and we develop an EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) container.
I suppose every project leader has his style and the domain in which they operate dictates the structure they finally adopt but for the J2EE infrastructure we found that the "modular" approach works best for us. I will argue (for those that are looking for a short message) that for "Operating Systems" like efforts (Linux, J2EE) you need a mix of strong central management and a SELF MAINTAINING CODE ARCHITECTURE (modular, ala Linux 2.0) something I believe the article misses.
Here is the deal, we are today in our third iteration. The first iteration was done by self, really a "let's get started" code base that passed the first stage of putting some people together around the project (2 years ago). The second iteration was a clean rewrite with some advanced concepts given by the group and some of its most outstanding contributors. jboss1.0 was released with that code base. It was a fully featured container but we QUICKLY ran into a wall: it was too complex for a casual contributor or even for 3rd party contributors to come in the code base and integrate.
The lesson there for us was kinda trivial, OS like system grow extremelly complex extremelly quickly and there is little chance (or time) for people to wrap their heads around it. There was no significant growth of the code base, not because we were not dedicated (we were full time on it) but because we could not manage/teach the flow of contributions.
We took a good look at what Linux had done over the years and realized that Linux2.0 based systems were relying on a "modular" approach to Systems design. why not try the same for web-systems design? In clear the idea is to isolate the parts of the container (our kernel) so that folks that want to include a Transaction Monitor, or a Database persistence Engine, can focus on a few places and not worry about the whole architecture of the system. It is the equivalent of "divide and conquer". We modularized our container with interceptors and plugins and released an early version of the clean architecture.
The payoff was immediate, we started seeing contributions pouring in, both from corporations and star developers since they could spend one night to understand the scope of their work and start banging on it right away, knowing that the integration was PURELY CODE BASED. That was one of the advantages of Java's Object Orientation and interfaces for us, it was trivial to do.
The point that I am trying to make, and that the article misses imho is that these contributions are sort of automated. Sure we look at all new modules and we OK-notOK projects but we have given RW passwords to our CVS to litterally EVERY contributor on our list (I think we have like 40 guys on CVS). Sure now and then we will see bad fixes, but these are limited and the interfaces and modular approach ensures us that the integration is almost SELF MANAGED.
I don't claim that this applies to every succesful open source project (yes we are succesful;-) but that the ONLY way to manage complexity of Open source systems is through a modular approach that largely tends to a peer-to-peer model. It is an interesting thing that the code produced through modularization tends to be of great quality as well.
Code can be automated, in the integration sense, and if you don't have that, you won't keep the exponential growth of code base... there is NO management (read no man/woman) that can replace it.
we benchmarked EJBoss on solaris 2.7 (UII) Wintel and Lintel. Yes EJBoss is 100% java.
Wintel came first, not thanks to the win part since it was the SUN 1.3 vm, not even the tel part since the chip was Athlon. Lintel did OK but not as good as Wintel DUE TO THE SHITTY STATE OF VMs TODAY (still waiting for a VM 1.3 port). Slowlaris... ahem, ahem... showed up last! ultraSPARC II is just DOG SLOW.
What irony, java is creating a level playing field that clearly shows that SPARC is behind x86? ouch!
This should also be a clear sign for the Linux Vendors, PUT OUT A GOOD VM on linux and I will switch from Windows to Linux IN A HEARTBEAT... because I DON"T CARE ABOUT THE OS!!!!!!
Something strikes me when talking to the two communities. C++ guys will talk about features of the "language" and will wax poetic on STL. Java guys will consider STL as "just another library" and in java's case java.util.Collection.* but will talk about the API's, software design, extreme programming, and the high level libraries.
In my case EJBoss is based on many 3rd party libraries (BullSoft, IBM, SUN, W3C, Apache, Dreambean, Telkel). That REUSE is possible given that java comes with bytecode format and a DEFACTO ABI..
This to me is the main difference between the two class of people. One is "stuck" at the language layer, and the only interesting discussions will be on compilers ( i am not saying they are not deep just that they are stuck in a "low level" language world). The other one is REUSING libraries and discussing software functionality. The design of large sofware frameworks is based on this. OOP Reuse is REAL in java and seems non-existent in C++ due to the lack of ABI. Please turn off the light in the C++ camp, as this to me is the future of programming i.e. online component based development.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on... everyone is hurting.
I am personally not really worried about "dying linux". I had given up on Linux desktop in 2000 but I still from time to time pop in a Linux distro to replace a windows box and viceversa. I swap.
But it really never was a problem since the money at least for me is on the server-side. Since I am an Open Source professional (meaning I make a living at it with JBoss) server-side java with Linux is a winning proposition.
I am amused by the alarmist tones in these threads here. Come on! there is no fucking way Linux dissapears on the server side. You can put pee in a pool you can't take it out. It has what 20-30% market share? Linux has DEFEATED microsoft in its tracks on server, mostly thanks to java.
So instead of weeping at the obvious, that there is a desktop monopoly and no one really cares, you should rejoice at the strength, really the amazing success of Linux as a server platform and join the ongoing battle for the webOS>
as a java professional i chuckle when I read that kind of story...
it is obvious that linux + java is the "tip of the sword" against XP dominance on the server.
You kids still wonder why you are fighting the wrong war ? it's like netscape vs microsoft and all the press was focusing on the *browser*, while apache was taking over the server side. GAME OVER, who gives a flying FUCK that IE owns the desktop, the server side is where the game is at and that is what real-men are fighting on these days.
Focus on the strenght, drop the kiddy idealism, make the vision work on the server and Open Source software will become the defacto monopoly.
marcf
I operate in the J2EE world, the java enterprise world. we don't give a rats ass what OS we run linux/solaris/windows same crap to us btw the state of virtual machines on linux trails windows just fyi...
.net the j2ee should be in java just because is buys you teh app. then you compete solely on the vm field and that is a sweet position, level playing field.
The modern application server the
it is the app server stupid, the web-app server is the key to adoption.
the article does mention linux+apache as a deployed solution "but it doesn't go much father" that is correct and why we need strong support of Java VM on linux, the J2EE open source groups are there: see JBoss, they have a full J2EE implementation and web services support
Interesting.
I did not know the story behind EDS. It's a good one. Frankly $1m/week IS a lot of money, still today, it is real money despite your claims to the contrary.
In a way the current impact of OSS is poorly measured as it is an undoing of license as the primary source of revenue and frankly I am not sure it is a good thing. Not everywhere. What I mean by that is that many many business models succesfully operate on licenses. For end-user applications it makes sense. For infrastructure on the other hand it makes sense to use "public domain" software.
I don't aplaude for EDS, I just think that we now have a finer understanding for software, we understand it better. There are applications there is infrastructure, Open Source, sponsored by the govt should exist in the second sphere.
I am convinced that a natural business model for open source software is closer to the way top technology research programs operate. Sponsoring, conscious sponsoring through private investment and govt funding (NFS etc) is probably the way of the future.
The trick is going to be in balancing the need for $ motivation that was killed in academia, and the wild greed of VC bozos.
There is a middle ground.
marcf
yes many of them are actually stealing time on their job but many are also professionals taking the jump. I for one live of open source, I don't have a dumb job, haven't for the past year or so. It is ok, better living, more money, but it is not a "millionaire dot-com thing".
Bottom line: don't dismiss the open source model for a way FOR INDIVIDUALS TO MAKE MONEY.
I seriously think that one of the problems here is that you all assume that you must be working for some stupid corporation to make a living. Actually you can make a living too in open source it is not difficult.
marcf
Wow that is the first time that I hear this... in fact it makes no sense and seems to be an odd-datapoint. I see exactly the opposite in all the accounts I work with, that people are really rushing to Open source to save some bucks, remember it is un-american to waste money.
So you will excuse me but you are working for a crazy man. and in the long run "free and good" is a great position to be.
Bull shit,
people don't buy support for JBOSS because THEY DON"T NEED IT. We don't force them to (unlike our competition BEA that has MANDATORY support).
Then there is exactly the reverse, motherfucker at some big company in the UK that wants a feature done and when we quote him a price to do it (free software != free developers) he says that is "not open source". Fucking jerk expects it for FREE! Needless to say we don't care!!!!
No, get real, the services companies are the most succesful ones out there (EDS, Cap Gemini, even IBM!) and you guys talk like nothing existed outside the sales of licenses.
ridiculous and against current facts
I beg to differ. One of our contributors in JBoss landed a high profile job, not because he was wasting time in cubeland but because he used his sinking company time to work on JBoss while at work. The competition on his job was fierce the guys picked the one who coded for the "love of coding".
the point that was made was that a Open Source track record shows you LOVE coding, you do it for free. Beware of impostors now but the point is clear
OK, the article is actually interesting. Having founded JBoss Group, a commercial entity behind JBoss I relate to many of the points.
But somehow the thinking is backwards still, thinking with old filters. One of the fundamental flaws of business in open source is that you give away your core competency.
But then OSS existed before companies tried to grow on its ground (Linux) and very succesful service companies existed independently of Open Source (EDS). So there must be a middle ground.
I believe part of the problem is that is that business folks out there (mostly VCs, I have met my share of arrogance back in the good ol days of the valley, confusion!) well VCs try to apply the old model of company building on the new way of producing software. It doesn't work. Open Source CANNOT support fat and overhead and corporate structures, just because IT CAN'T.
My (small) company is profitable and we are growing but I clearly see that I cannot AND SHOULD NOT grow with employees, just not flexible enough. As research on business plans goes, I understand that JBoss even though it is in the very rich field of enterprise software (and there is a lot of service), well JBoss for all its success cannot support a massive company right now. And again it is probably not the right structure ANYWAY. VCs got it wrong, most business men are scratching their heads, we at JBoss Group are trying, trying hard. Can't say we got it, we don't, but like many others in open source we make a living.
We offer many services around our free product are thinking about subscriptions and paying for information. The product is free, the service is not. The information is not (documentation, help, support, training (plug: http://www.jboss.org)).
Training is our biggest gig, people want to meet the developers of the framework. Also I don't think this would work with "GUI" frameworks. Just not enough customization to go by. If it is hard in the J2EE field, I can imagine how much harder it is in other fields.
Had I taken VC money (not that it was offered) or had I hired anybody left and right with borrowed money (what VC money is in the first place), well I WOULD BE DEAD TODAY.
It's a bitch out there, but I for one still believe, believe strong, we'll get it
marcf
I did not know that (and couldn't read the full description as the site is totally /.ed :(
.net webservices race but it is extremelly clear in my mind, J2EE frameworks will deliver with webservices easier than any C# framework will
I design JBoss, the leading J2EE server and at THE HEART of it is the capicity to dynamically deploy new applications on our application server. I mean that is what application servers are ALL ABOUT.
in fact (plug) in JBoss we go the extra mile and allow you to hot-deploy (dynamically add classes) the server classes themselves, which neither IBM nor BEA, nor Oracle do.
So I was curious to know who would win the
Why? well imagine that ANY time you change your class in C# YOU NEED TO REBOOT THE APPLICATION SERVER, yes, boys and girls that is the simple thing that "dynamic class loading" affords you, without it, the VM is tied to whatever you have at startup.
GEEEEZZZ!
Look,
You are asking for a lot of trouble and I doubt you will be satisfied with your hackies result.
I am a typical "power-user" and have cycled through many laptops and machines but it seems I am settling on my laptop just for mail, and do all my development on a box. Just the raw power makes a huge difference.
I used to love my Linux laptop about 2 years ago, I felt so sophisticated. Tell you the truth I am running w2k on it now (A Sony Vaio), just wasn't worth the trouble. Then my box runs Linux (RH) and I do most of my java development on it, I am very happy with it.
Bottom line is this: Laptops and boxes are very different in how sensitive they are to "fucking around". It is pretty simple to assemble a box from scratch, even fun and economical but with Laptops I wouldn't fuck with quality, you need high end material and high end assembly, otherwise you are going to have a clunky thing that doesn't hold up... and then the linux choice to boot is imho a mistake, but that is another story.
Get real,
marcf
I just tried Black and White and put it on the shelf after 4 hours of mind numbing stupidity.
I went back to playing "Sokoban" on linux...
I like the way it teases my brain, the graphics are crappy, the action is nil, it is all in the brain.
That being said I am 32, soon to be 33, and I guess that is old so I don't relate to the new games out there.
marcf
While I agree with your premise about scaling services, however in Lutris' case they had the added disadvantage of basing their services on a non-existent product.
You can smoke the ego-stroking "told-ya-so, Open Source isn't a real business model yaada yaada yaade" all you want but it doesn't change the name of the game. Good software for free (or cheap) tends to win. Bad software even for free doesn't fly, period, not these days.
It doesn't invalidate the oss business model, it must be out there, in fact many people today make a living at Open Source, the question you raise is can you really grow fat in Open Source, the answer is probably no, not in the early stages. But maybe one day, you too can be throwing money out the window and flashing it around town. There are very succesful services companies (EDS, CAP) and an Open Source equivalent is in the making
marcf
in fact this is the largest set of contributions we see nowadays (I should know I am the founder of the JBoss project;-).
The dream of "armies" of **free** developers that the articles conveys is not true. Just not true. It smells of teen spirit to me (like most of
I am a bit dubious when Mr Icaza switches from "gui toolkits" to "distributed computing" in 6 seconds flat. I just don't buy it.
The biggest help we get these days is from highly motivate and *skilled* individuals from startups and consultancies. The clustering, the ejb container, the administration, the database accelerators, it is all done by a small, tightly knit team of "common interest" capitalists.
The need they have for solutions on J2EE/.NET makes them interested in contributing. The rest as described in the washington post article is propaganda.
marcf
I just finished reading the article and the first thing that comes to my mind is a big "so what"...
so you can spend $30 and get a so called "productivity" machine. He doesn't get it, what is stopping microsoft is not the small low end machines it is the big dataserver class machines with Linux.
See I develop on JBoss.org, a J2EE middleware in Java, what we see is people using us on Linux (and windows and solaris and AIX and...) with BIG BOXES. THAT is really hurting microsoft, that "mid range" enterprise market that they thought they were going to "own" and therefore kill Unix.
The only reason it is failing so far is that the server side is impossible for them to control due to Linux there. I don't really care that you can turn your PalmOS in a router, I do care that you can create a cheap datacenter with Linux boxens at Rackspace with JBoss on it.
The article seems to claim that running on small hardware will hurt MS, no, it barely hurts Intel and Intel will push Linux where Java takes it in the enterprise application arena.
the rest is kiddies scripting their enlightment settings
Don't you touch my Athlon CPU 1.4Ghz you little punk...
Yes I run Linux, and yes I do Java development for a living on www.jboss.org
marcf
At least in the J2EE copycat that .NET is.
.net folks forget... that Client Server is dead so that Corba/Soap/RMI are dead protocols anyway...
It is standard tactics for microsoft lovers to say "oh microsoft is SOOOOO bad, SOOOOOOO Bad BAD BAD!!!!!" because, don't you get it? it makes you think about them. I am serious now... mind games...
Ok onto SOAP. Follow the BOSS (http://www.jboss.org) and check out what the J2EE folks are doing with SOAP. JAVA LOVES SOAP. and we also know a little truth that
Microsoft is playing a "meetoo" and using usual tactics of "look how bad bad bad we are" so that you are afraid and go with them (he he). But frankly with 90% of the app server market in J2EE WHO CARES???????
So the browser is IE?? WHO CARES???? I was using netscape, went to IE cause I got tired, and tried Gecko netscape 6 yesterday, it's quite ok.. but REALLY WHO CARES?????????????????
THE REAL BATTLE IS ON THE SERVER and there Microsoft is misfiring with windows 2000. Yes, sure they ship it as much as they can but DON'T YOU SEE LINUX IS A FORMIDABLE CONTENDER AT THE LOW END, and it will be a cold day in hell before win2k replaces SOLARIS at the high end. DON'T YOU SEE???? THEY DON"T HAVE A STANDARD, IN FACT THEY ****BARELY**** HAVE A SAY IN WHAT TECHNOLOGY SHAPES THE SERVER WEB (PHP/J2EE). So f*ck them, that article was stupid, tried and true tactics from a self-loathing pro-MS "pseudo" technologist.
Did you get the reference to "Open Source Programmers have embraced it" SURE WE DO BIOTCH! we got it in JBoss.org and we think it is a good little kinky technology for CS calls. Do I think it is the future? no biotch, no! WE ARE THE FUTURE.
So check us out http://www.jboss.org
marc
I was what 14? and i used to sneak out at night to go to a friends house and program the z80 chip for a game we were doing... man so much fun... I am weepy.
Am I the only one that thinks it was a GREAT chip (the Z80) when compared to say the 6502 AppleII had inside?
We used to program an adventure game on ZX81 went pretty far but never released the final game. I remember we used to code with the loads of buffers that came with it and when I switched to 6502 I found it clumsy compared to the Z80.
Too bad it only had 16 k of RAM with the extensions and it was pretty hard to do much of anything and it used to just die on us since our connection to the RAM was screwed.
But what really amazes me now is that we had an expensive AppleII but had more fun programming assembly on the ZX...
I also remember that my parents were surprised that I sneaked out at night (yeah they eventually found out) to go programming all nighters!!! They, I guess, were expecting me to sneak out to go to parties and drink beer and smoke pot but no... we would do it for programming. I guess it was pretty obvious what I would be doing later.
marc
I am not sure I fully agree with the conclusion of this article.
;-) but that the ONLY way to manage complexity of Open source systems is through a modular approach that largely tends to a peer-to-peer model. It is an interesting thing that the code produced through modularization tends to be of great quality as well.
I started and still run a medium sized open source project (50 developers, 10 core, many 10,000 users) jboss.org (www.jboss.org) and we develop an EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) container.
I suppose every project leader has his style and the domain in which they operate dictates the structure they finally adopt but for the J2EE infrastructure we found that the "modular" approach works best for us. I will argue (for those that are looking for a short message) that for "Operating Systems" like efforts (Linux, J2EE) you need a mix of strong central management and a SELF MAINTAINING CODE ARCHITECTURE (modular, ala Linux 2.0) something I believe the article misses.
Here is the deal, we are today in our third iteration. The first iteration was done by self, really a "let's get started" code base that passed the first stage of putting some people together around the project (2 years ago). The second iteration was a clean rewrite with some advanced concepts given by the group and some of its most outstanding contributors. jboss1.0 was released with that code base. It was a fully featured container but we QUICKLY ran into a wall: it was too complex for a casual contributor or even for 3rd party contributors to come in the code base and integrate.
The lesson there for us was kinda trivial, OS like system grow extremelly complex extremelly quickly and there is little chance (or time) for people to wrap their heads around it. There was no significant growth of the code base, not because we were not dedicated (we were full time on it) but because we could not manage/teach the flow of contributions.
We took a good look at what Linux had done over the years and realized that Linux2.0 based systems were relying on a "modular" approach to Systems design. why not try the same for web-systems design? In clear the idea is to isolate the parts of the container (our kernel) so that folks that want to include a Transaction Monitor, or a Database persistence Engine, can focus on a few places and not worry about the whole architecture of the system. It is the equivalent of "divide and conquer". We modularized our container with interceptors and plugins and released an early version of the clean architecture.
The payoff was immediate, we started seeing contributions pouring in, both from corporations and star developers since they could spend one night to understand the scope of their work and start banging on it right away, knowing that the integration was PURELY CODE BASED. That was one of the advantages of Java's Object Orientation and interfaces for us, it was trivial to do.
The point that I am trying to make, and that the article misses imho is that these contributions are sort of automated. Sure we look at all new modules and we OK-notOK projects but we have given RW passwords to our CVS to litterally EVERY contributor on our list (I think we have like 40 guys on CVS). Sure now and then we will see bad fixes, but these are limited and the interfaces and modular approach ensures us that the integration is almost SELF MANAGED.
I don't claim that this applies to every succesful open source project (yes we are succesful
Code can be automated, in the integration sense, and if you don't have that, you won't keep the exponential growth of code base... there is NO management (read no man/woman) that can replace it.
marc
so linux works there and so what?
boring...
we benchmarked EJBoss on solaris 2.7 (UII) Wintel and Lintel. Yes EJBoss is 100% java.
Wintel came first, not thanks to the win part since it was the SUN 1.3 vm, not even the tel part since the chip was Athlon. Lintel did OK but not as good as Wintel DUE TO THE SHITTY STATE OF VMs TODAY (still waiting for a VM 1.3 port). Slowlaris... ahem, ahem... showed up last! ultraSPARC II is just DOG SLOW.
What irony, java is creating a level playing field that clearly shows that SPARC is behind x86? ouch!
This should also be a clear sign for the Linux Vendors, PUT OUT A GOOD VM on linux and I will switch from Windows to Linux IN A HEARTBEAT... because I DON"T CARE ABOUT THE OS!!!!!!
marc
Something strikes me when talking to the two communities. C++ guys will talk about features of the "language" and will wax poetic on STL. Java guys will consider STL as "just another library" and in java's case java.util.Collection.* but will talk about the API's, software design, extreme programming, and the high level libraries.
In my case EJBoss is based on many 3rd party libraries (BullSoft, IBM, SUN, W3C, Apache, Dreambean, Telkel). That REUSE is possible given that java comes with bytecode format and a DEFACTO ABI..
This to me is the main difference between the two class of people. One is "stuck" at the language layer, and the only interesting discussions will be on compilers ( i am not saying they are not deep just that they are stuck in a "low level" language world). The other one is REUSING libraries and discussing software functionality. The design of large sofware frameworks is based on this. OOP Reuse is REAL in java and seems non-existent in C++ due to the lack of ABI. Please turn off the light in the C++ camp, as this to me is the future of programming i.e. online component based development.
marc
With me, I got short military hair, but heck!
:)
I would let it grow if MS went open source
come on *that* insightful?
marc
marc