Folks! If Dell can get people to pay it then great! If not, then Dell can a) not offer the service, b) lower the price. This is called c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-m. Remember that Dell's marketing emphasizes customization, so don't be suprised if a wide list of options for linux show up on Dell's website. That's going to be much more labor intensive then simply spewing a win9x image onto a drive, and therefore more expensive.
You didn't expect them to install it for you for free did you? Get a grip!
There is such a huge difference between simply making source code available and offering a product under the GPL or other simular agreement that I don't think they can even be compared.
politics: social relations involving authority or power.
--Webester
The wimps who are whining "oh, lets just get along, this makes the open source community look bad" should shut their holes.
Just like any GPL'ed product, people cannot plan, plot and calculate exactly what the resulting piece of software will be. Obviously you whimpering fools have not read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." What was the number one lesson? Fetchmail evolved. "When you start community-building," wrote Eric Raymond, "what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future."
Think about that. Will coders flock to Apple's code to work tirelessly on it like people are doing right now with KDE and GNOME? Who knows? Only time will tell. But if Apple's code is incompatable with GPL'ed work, serious limitations manifest themselves. For one, distribution will be slowed. This will only hurt Apple, and the rate that people can update the code. Remember, exhaustive testing is just as much part of the open source concept as open source! If Apple has limitations on how compiled versions of their code is distributed, (which they do) then beta testers become rare and product evolution will slow.
This debate is important because it is helping shape an open source business model. This debate is part of the evolutionary process. Both sides are making very good points, and these points are going to be useful in the future to build this model.
If you don't like this debate you can:
Refuse to help code for Apple because you don't like their license
Code for Apple because you think their license is great
But if you do neither, shut the hell up! Don't dismiss this as immature bickering. This debate is part of open source. Open source is inherently political because it involves social relations with authority or power (i.e. $$$, standards, freedom.) Get used to it.
Socialism-- A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor.
--Webster
Perhaps your question should be worded as "why do leftists always view anyone's act of generosity. . .." This does pose some interesting psychological questions, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to point out elements of socialism in a close community working together without pay for a common cause.
mp3 has become a movement that is converting audio cds into a better format; this is being done by people voluntarily. How is a firm going to compete with that? Not unless they offer a more compact format and offer content for free. But so what? It's still the same concept as mp3s. Of course eventually mp3s will be replaced by another format-- a better one. This is no profound statement. Mediums are constantly changing. Of course, if the new medium is open source then you can bet it will evolve faster then a proprietary one.
I can't see how the "disasters" of GNOME was the result of rpms. You're talking about lib conflicts, which would occur even if you'd compiled every tarball yourself. Besides, those conflicts were in versions 1.0, and that sort of thing is to be expected. I say that getting software to work properly with libs is part of the debug process, which GNOME has now fixed.
So far, everything redhat offers is GPL'ed, even the linuxconf tool. The source can be found on the CD. That means anybody can use it.
Also, if you think redhat has some weird directory defaults, try slackware. Apache is spread from hell to breakfast! (BTW I like slackware much better then rh)
Anyway, if all you're doing is RPMing stuff onto your machine, it's the decision of the people that made the.rpm where those files go, not redhat.
That's right. The Nation has been around since like 1700. It's in no way ultra-left wing. The fact that it can even been considered even mildly leftist is a sad commentry on how ultra-RIGHT wing this country has become.
So what if Linux users look like a bunch of freaks? Linux is already gaining corporate acceptance, and that was due to the quality of the OS, not it's image. This display is only going to look weird to outsiders, who may not have even heard of Linux yet and see this Monday's events on the news when they get home from work or school. A rebellious edge can't hurt. The timid will not use Linux until the brave have gone first, and that's the people who count right now. Once the leaders embrace Linux, then the lemmings will follow. . .
The idea that since invasion of privacy is an inevitable result of technology, we must embrace it or else be subjected to the rich and powerful, is a crock. Who cares if we embrace it or not? We ll never have access Bill Gate s financial data, nor be able to peer into his home through a web cam. (Not like anybody would want to.) And even if we could, where would that get us? Submission will not produce equality.
Slashdot Mirror
Folks! If Dell can get people to pay it then great! If not, then Dell can a) not offer the service, b) lower the price. This is called c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-m. Remember that Dell's marketing emphasizes customization, so don't be suprised if a wide list of options for linux show up on Dell's website. That's going to be much more labor intensive then simply spewing a win9x image onto a drive, and therefore more expensive.
You didn't expect them to install it for you for free did you? Get a grip!
There is such a huge difference between simply making source code available and offering a product under the GPL or other simular agreement that I don't think they can even be compared.
--Webester
The wimps who are whining "oh, lets just get along, this makes the open source community look bad" should shut their holes.
Just like any GPL'ed product, people cannot plan, plot and calculate exactly what the resulting piece of software will be. Obviously you whimpering fools have not read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." What was the number one lesson? Fetchmail evolved. "When you start community-building," wrote Eric Raymond, "what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future."
Think about that. Will coders flock to Apple's code to work tirelessly on it like people are doing right now with KDE and GNOME? Who knows? Only time will tell. But if Apple's code is incompatable with GPL'ed work, serious limitations manifest themselves. For one, distribution will be slowed. This will only hurt Apple, and the rate that people can update the code. Remember, exhaustive testing is just as much part of the open source concept as open source! If Apple has limitations on how compiled versions of their code is distributed, (which they do) then beta testers become rare and product evolution will slow.
This debate is important because it is helping shape an open source business model. This debate is part of the evolutionary process. Both sides are making very good points, and these points are going to be useful in the future to build this model.
If you don't like this debate you can:
Refuse to help code for Apple because you don't like their license
Code for Apple because you think their license is great
But if you do neither, shut the hell up! Don't dismiss this as immature bickering. This debate is part of open source. Open source is inherently political because it involves social relations with authority or power (i.e. $$$, standards, freedom.) Get used to it.
Socialism-- A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor.
." This does pose some interesting psychological questions, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to point out elements of socialism in a close community working together without pay for a common cause.
--Webster
Perhaps your question should be worded as "why do leftists always view anyone's act of generosity. . .
mp3 has become a movement that is converting audio cds into a better format; this is being done by people voluntarily. How is a firm going to compete with that? Not unless they offer a more compact format and offer content for free. But so what? It's still the same concept as mp3s. Of course eventually mp3s will be replaced by another format-- a better one. This is no profound statement. Mediums are constantly changing. Of course, if the new medium is open source then you can bet it will evolve faster then a proprietary one.
perl ate the &...; code for my less then character; forgot to post as html
I can't see how the "disasters" of GNOME was the result of rpms. You're talking about lib conflicts, which would occur even if you'd compiled every tarball yourself. Besides, those conflicts were in versions 1.0, and that sort of thing is to be expected. I say that getting software to work properly with libs is part of the debug process, which GNOME has now fixed.
So far, everything redhat offers is GPL'ed, even the linuxconf tool. The source can be found on the CD. That means anybody can use it.
.rpm where those files go, not redhat.
Also, if you think redhat has some weird directory defaults, try slackware. Apache is spread from hell to breakfast! (BTW I like slackware much better then rh)
Anyway, if all you're doing is RPMing stuff onto your machine, it's the decision of the people that made the
That's right. The Nation has been around since like 1700. It's in no way ultra-left wing. The fact that it can even been considered even mildly leftist is a sad commentry on how ultra-RIGHT wing this country has become.
So what if Linux users look like a bunch of freaks? Linux is already gaining corporate acceptance, and that was due to the quality of the OS, not it's image. This display is only going to look weird to outsiders, who may not have even heard of Linux yet and see this Monday's events on the news when they get home from work or school. A rebellious edge can't hurt. The timid will not use Linux until the brave have gone first, and that's the people who count right now. Once the leaders embrace Linux, then the lemmings will follow. . .
--curtisf
The idea that since invasion of privacy is an inevitable result of technology, we must embrace it or else be subjected to the rich and powerful, is a crock. Who cares if we embrace it or not? We ll never have access Bill Gate s financial data, nor be able to peer into his home through a web cam. (Not like anybody would want to.) And even if we could, where would that get us? Submission will not produce equality.