Now, I can understand why I might want that functionality. But...why should I be paying $100 for functionality I don't use?
There's your example for the "appliances". No assumption that you have other appliances to handle otherfunctions for you.
You wont pay it but others will. Furthermore the single purpose-built multi-function appliance will always have a buyer becasue of ease of use.
If Sony were to put Linux+PPP+Netscape on a PSX cd and give it to everyone with their Playstation 2 for free along with 30 days of Sony Online, How is that not attractive to your average PC user. Sure, there's no MS Office (Who really uses it at home anyway?) but there's plenty of Internet and 3d games, and the machine has a life span of a few years rather than a few months. What you want and what people can sell do not always collide.
Absolutely GCC and glibc are incredibly important. But before any of this was even an issue scores of other programers and projects were making important contributions to Linux as well. If we want to give credit, what we should be doing is giving credit to everyone. Take a look through some of the kernel source and read the history behind Linux, there's alot of invisible people with whom Linux as we know it now would have never existed. I applaud RMS and GNU for their work. I also applaud BSD. I also applaud Linus, MCC and SLS and TAMU, the people at nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu.
When I got into linux around 0.99pl4/SLS not as much software was GNU as you'd think. Yes the libc was an offshoot of GNU libc, yes GCC was of monumental importance, but there was a heck of a lot of BSD code in there as well. Almost all the inetd services were BSD, much of the networking stuff was hand-rolled and/or BSD based. Does GNU even have a vi clone in the GNU project? Just offhand I can think of ps, w, vi, finger, last, login, getty, kermit, elm, mail, smail, and xc, which were all BSD ports, existing non-GNU Open Source, or hand rolled programs some of which were vitally important to the operation of Linux. As Linux became a more popular OS, and started to become the predominant GNU system more stuff became GPL'ed and more GNU code was brought in for it's functionality, but the early days it was take what you can port, and GNU's code spaghetti was not always the easiest thing to get working.
My point is RMS has no right to hoard all the credit anymore than anyone else does. While RMS was still concentrating on HURD before he started blabbering about credit there were alot of other programmers making incredibly important contributions to Linux and ultimatly the Open Source movement as well. If he wants to assume credit he'd better be willing to share it with everyone else who gave his GNU software the kernel and low level utilites ultimately leading to it's success.
Dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-GNU, as I said GNU was paramount to the existance of Linux. But so was BSD. So was Linus, So were the folks involved in MCC. So was Peter MacDonald with SLS. So were alot of people other than RMS.
-Rich
I guess I would feel better about it...
on
Slashdot:Mark 2
·
· Score: 1
I guess I would feel better about it... if any of them were funny. Or believable. Or interesting.
I think the UserFriendly/Segfault joke was beliveable. If you look at User Friendly daily you know that they have been talking about this for about a week. UserFriendly readers organized a site for Illiad's defense, made logos to link to your web page, etc.. It was very well played out. Rob even posted a legitimate (or so we thought) link a few days ago discussing it. It wasn't until this morning that those who had been following it realized they had been taken, and it some of them still dont get it:-)
And I dont see how anyone could have not laughed at the Linux Riot story.
Many years ago on comp.os.linux.announce Matt Welsh made a post about Linux being ported to the Mac, (back when linux only ran on 386/486) nad that was truly one of the best Linxu related ones I ever read. It was just believable enough to start a flame war between mac haters and Linux lovers.
It's only in that 70's show timeslot for another week or two. As fox does with every show, they're sandwiching it in between Simpsons and X files to give it a following before they send it off to a lesser night. Hopefully they wont treat it like the critic and doom it to fight a show it could never beat.
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Now, I can understand why I might want that functionality. But...why should I be paying $100 for functionality I don't use?
There's your example for the "appliances". No assumption that you have other appliances to handle otherfunctions for you.
You wont pay it but others will. Furthermore the single purpose-built multi-function appliance will always have a buyer becasue of ease of use.
If Sony were to put Linux+PPP+Netscape on a PSX cd and give it to everyone with their Playstation 2 for free along with 30 days of Sony Online, How is that not attractive to your average PC user. Sure, there's no MS Office (Who really uses it at home anyway?) but there's plenty of Internet and 3d games, and the machine has a life span of a few years rather than a few months. What you want and what people can sell do not always collide.
Absolutely GCC and glibc are incredibly important.
But before any of this was even an issue scores of other programers and projects were making important contributions to Linux as well. If we want to give credit, what we should be doing is giving credit to everyone. Take a look through some of the kernel source and read the history behind Linux, there's alot of invisible people with whom Linux as we know it now would have never existed. I applaud RMS and GNU for their work. I also applaud BSD. I also applaud Linus, MCC and SLS and TAMU, the people at nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu.
-Rich
When I got into linux around 0.99pl4/SLS not as much software was GNU as you'd think. Yes the libc was an offshoot of GNU libc, yes GCC was of monumental importance, but there was a heck of a lot of BSD code in there as well. Almost all the inetd services were BSD, much of the networking stuff was hand-rolled and/or BSD based. Does GNU even have a vi clone in the GNU project? Just offhand I can think of ps, w, vi, finger, last, login, getty, kermit, elm, mail, smail, and xc, which were all BSD ports, existing non-GNU Open Source, or hand rolled programs some of which were vitally important to the operation of Linux. As Linux became a more popular OS, and started to become the predominant GNU system more stuff became GPL'ed and more GNU code was brought in for it's functionality, but the early days it was take what you can port, and GNU's code spaghetti was not always the easiest thing to get working.
My point is RMS has no right to hoard all the credit anymore than anyone else does. While RMS was still concentrating on HURD before he started blabbering about credit there were alot of other programmers making incredibly important contributions to Linux and ultimatly the Open Source movement as well. If he wants to assume credit he'd better be willing to share it with everyone else who gave his GNU software the kernel and low level utilites ultimately leading to it's success.
Dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-GNU, as I said GNU was paramount to the existance of Linux. But so was BSD. So was Linus, So were the folks involved in MCC. So was Peter MacDonald with SLS. So were alot of people other than RMS.
-Rich
I guess I would feel better about it... if any of them were funny. Or believable. Or interesting.
:-)
I think the UserFriendly/Segfault joke was beliveable. If you look at User Friendly daily you know that they have been talking about this for about a week. UserFriendly readers organized a site for Illiad's defense, made logos to link to your web page, etc.. It was very well played out. Rob even posted a legitimate (or so we thought) link a few days ago discussing it. It wasn't until this morning that those who had been following it realized they had been taken, and it some of them still dont get it
And I dont see how anyone could have not laughed at the Linux Riot story.
-Rich
*laugh*
It's the disinformation that makes this all so great. It just adds to the humor value.
-Rich
Many years ago on comp.os.linux.announce Matt Welsh made a post about Linux being ported to the Mac, (back when linux only ran on 386/486) nad that was truly one of the best Linxu related ones I ever read. It was just believable enough to start a flame war between mac haters and Linux lovers.
-Rich
It's only in that 70's show timeslot for another week or two. As fox does with every show, they're sandwiching it in between Simpsons and X files to give it a following before they send it off to a lesser night. Hopefully they wont treat it like the critic and doom it to fight a show it could never beat.
To paraphrase the epic short Hardware Wars:
Was that the one with Ham Salad and the Refrigerator troopers?
Whenever I heard the word cracker I think of my plumber... But that's just me.
:-)