I didn't say that Linux was popular, I said that Linux is successful. And it is by all reasonable definitions of the term. And the market it's successful in is full of geeks. Stick it in another market and the maybe a few "wannabe geeks" or "radicals";-) will end up using it.
You are not speaking of the GNU/GPL'd license or any BSD based license (the two most popular OSS licenses). What you are speaking of it closer to Microsoft's Shared Source license.
And, of course, your Open Source software is not GPL'd, seeing as your Closed software (I'm assuming your Commercial software is Closed) would have to be Open Source as well if it was:-).
The cost for distributing software, once it is developed, is zero. So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.
Are you kidding? Do you know why states heavily tax a Semi that uses a road? Because of the incredible amount of maintenance that they cause. The same goes with software. Distributing software costs quite a bit of money. Open Source is about sharing code. However, software is not about programming. It's only 1/5th of the equation. The cost to develop may be the biggest cost, but that doesn't negate the cost to produce CD's, documentation, technical support, marketing (trust me, it's needed), general administrative costs to handle updates and customer feedback, etc.
I *like* the fact that there's tons of window managers to choose from.
Which is exactly why Linux is so successful. Because it's written by geeks, FOR geeks. It's much more difficult to write software for someone else, because what you think is important may be completely irrelevant to someone else.
I suggest you read a book like "Compiling for the.NET CLR" which is written by a computer scientist who has been working with Abstract Stack Machines for many years (the JVM included). A fool is thought to be wise when he keeps his mouth shut.
Just remember that Mozilla is a few years "late" (eg. It essentially sucked until a few months ago"). Opera and IE have been much more competent browsers of late. The same goes for OS's on the desktop. OSS needs at least a few more years of refinement before you can compare Win2K or even XP to KDE or Gnome.
That's what I've found. I'm running Mozilla 1.0 rev. OMGITACUALLYGOTRELEASED and Opera 6.0.3. My current gripes about Moz so far is A) it's 2.5 times larger then Opera, B) it's subjectively slower then Opera (I'd be interested to see if this is true or not), and C) it renders CSS 3D stylized borders (like "ridge" etc.) in a very bland and boring way (like Opera) whereas IE uses a nice gradient and semi-dropshadow effect that makes it look great (and yes, IE DOES follow the CSS standard in this case).
Thank you for your reply. Do you have any references regarding claims such as "one developer can only maintain 10-20K lines of code"? The studies of software development and sizes of teams are of great interest to me. I've mainly worked in relatively small teams (no more then 4 devs on one project), and I've always faught against managers that wanted to add 2-3 more "temps" to a late project (as if it would increase time-to-market).
One of the biggest arguments for Open Source Software has been the "More Eyeballs" argument. Granted, if I use OSS I can view/edit the source myself, however, my company doesn't have the time nor the human resources to wade through the source code of even the smallest app. The other side is that with apps like Linux there can easily be multiple companies "distributing" their own versions, however, in the long term we haven't seen if this is a viable business model, especially outside of Linux.
I'm no MCSD, MCSE, or MCDBA (yet!), but I'm very involved in the MS developer community - in particular the.NET community. I go to the Redmond campus at least once a month and know quite a few people that work there. What's interesting is most "MS Tech Geeks" aren't generally anti-OSS and many actually have experience with Linux and other OS's. Sure, there's also a large group that's feeds off of MS dogma but the rest aren't really all that bad. There really are a lot of smart people that either work for MS or primarily work with MS technology that get quite frustrated atMS's marketing FUD. We're all educated (in theory) enough to make our own decisions based on the MERIT OF THE TECHNOLOGY. We don't need restrictive licenses, stupid marketing FUD, or silly gimicks like 100 page color brochures sent to our houses every day. Marketing and PR types can make the image of a company, however, they generally break the image of a company in the eyes of techies which employ simple FUD avoidance algorithms.
I have certain critiques about OSS, moreso GPL's based licenses and less so BSD based licenses, but I'm not about to agree to this "OSS will increase terrorism" BS. Come on MS (et all), STOP TREATING US LIKE IDIOTS!
Well, from where I was it looked *great*. I will be seing it at least one more time there, but I'll probably be sitting a bit farther away from the screen.
I saw AOTC at the Cinerama in Seattle. It was incredibly crisp, didn't have the subtle "flicker" and "scratches" that film had, and the sound was phenominal.
Although Moizlla has caught up recently you are right that Opera has been way ahead for most of the race. Even now, aside from a few features (Mozilla has smarter popup control, for example) I still agree that Opera seems more stable and it is a very lightweight browser. It just doesn't get as much recognition here because it's Closed Source.
Text is a type of content. Just because a web page can have a Style Sheet and formatting doesn't mean that it's not simply content. The point is a web page is not software.
During the Roman Empire, Caesar used the term "Bread and Circus". Give them food and sports/entertainment and they won't care what's going on around them".
You are comparing "keeping people dumb about the government and the world around them" to "people not caring about changing the font on their TV". Most people don't know that you can change the font on their TV, nor do they care. The same goes for the a web browser. If it works well for them, why should they care about 100 features that are irrelevant to them? Just because you may have a personal interest in them doesn't mean that people should be "educated" about them. You and I are geeks, they aren't. They have more important things to think about.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose.
So show Microsoft the market research that people care. YOU care, maybe I care, but where's the data that shows that the end user really want's to make these kind of choices.
Wrong. Security issues set aside, I know a lot of people who prefer IE for it's rendering speed and accuracy. Personally, I've been following Opera very closely. It's definitely faster then IE in most cases, but it still doesn't render things (W3C things, not "Microsoft Standard" things) quite right. And the latest version of Netscape (6.2.3?) was not much to call home about on any front. Personally, I love the features in Opera. Actually, from what I've read Mozilla seems to have an even stronger feature set. However, asking the common user you'll find that they could give a crap about the 100's of options - many people don't even care about pop-ups (this I do not understand).
Of course I have no real data to back any of this up, but in my experience IE has been chosen, not forced. Once/if Opera or another browser comes out significantly ahead, I'll be happy to switch - even if I have to pay for it.
There is a huge problem with frame rate comparison between multiple graphics libraries. The main issue is graphics quality. It is very difficult to prove that the test running on WineX is in fact performing the exact same operations that DirectX is (and visa versa). Especially with different drivers and hardware platforms it's even more difficult to compare (ATI "Quak3.exe" anyone?).
I have bought Athlon the past two times I built a computer.
Maybe my emphasis points to why you are having problems:-)... j/k.
Seriously, with all of the potential points of failure how can you know that it's not the OS, App, Cheap RAM, the Chipset, etc. Plus, I've never been a huge fan of MSI (no concrete reason). If you want rock solid stability go with Asus. I've been running on an Athlon1.2Ghz with Win2K and I have incredible uptime with the box - the only "hard" lockup I've ever had is when I tried overclocking it to 1.6Ghz just for fun. I had an Intel pII350 before that and it wasn't nearly as stable, but I can tell you that it was most likely due to my Win98 install and not the CPU. Finally, I have an old AMD K6 266 that's still running great as my MP3 server/CD Burning station. Really, with all of the "Math" bugs found in the Pentiums, and after the K6's proved AMD's stability, I don't think that there's any objective data that shows that one CPU is more stable then the other.
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I didn't say that Linux was popular, I said that Linux is successful. And it is by all reasonable definitions of the term. And the market it's successful in is full of geeks. Stick it in another market and the maybe a few "wannabe geeks" or "radicals" ;-) will end up using it.
You are not speaking of the GNU/GPL'd license or any BSD based license (the two most popular OSS licenses). What you are speaking of it closer to Microsoft's Shared Source license.
And, of course, your Open Source software is not GPL'd, seeing as your Closed software (I'm assuming your Commercial software is Closed) would have to be Open Source as well if it was :-).
The cost for distributing software, once it is developed, is zero. So, take roads, for example. Roads have a high fixed cost, but it doesn't cost anything extra to use it.
Are you kidding? Do you know why states heavily tax a Semi that uses a road? Because of the incredible amount of maintenance that they cause. The same goes with software. Distributing software costs quite a bit of money. Open Source is about sharing code. However, software is not about programming. It's only 1/5th of the equation. The cost to develop may be the biggest cost, but that doesn't negate the cost to produce CD's, documentation, technical support, marketing (trust me, it's needed), general administrative costs to handle updates and customer feedback, etc.
I *like* the fact that there's tons of window managers to choose from.
Which is exactly why Linux is so successful. Because it's written by geeks, FOR geeks. It's much more difficult to write software for someone else, because what you think is important may be completely irrelevant to someone else.
the CLS runtime is a cheap knockoff of the JVM
.NET CLR" which is written by a computer scientist who has been working with Abstract Stack Machines for many years (the JVM included). A fool is thought to be wise when he keeps his mouth shut.
I suggest you read a book like "Compiling for the
Ya, I found that kind of silly myself.
Just remember that Mozilla is a few years "late" (eg. It essentially sucked until a few months ago"). Opera and IE have been much more competent browsers of late. The same goes for OS's on the desktop. OSS needs at least a few more years of refinement before you can compare Win2K or even XP to KDE or Gnome.
Actually, IE for WinXP looks pretty slick.
That's what I've found. I'm running Mozilla 1.0 rev. OMGITACUALLYGOTRELEASED and Opera 6.0.3. My current gripes about Moz so far is A) it's 2.5 times larger then Opera, B) it's subjectively slower then Opera (I'd be interested to see if this is true or not), and C) it renders CSS 3D stylized borders (like "ridge" etc.) in a very bland and boring way (like Opera) whereas IE uses a nice gradient and semi-dropshadow effect that makes it look great (and yes, IE DOES follow the CSS standard in this case).
Thank you for your reply. Do you have any references regarding claims such as "one developer can only maintain 10-20K lines of code"?
The studies of software development and sizes of teams are of great interest to me. I've mainly worked in relatively small teams (no more then 4 devs on one project), and I've always faught against managers that wanted to add 2-3 more "temps" to a late project (as if it would increase time-to-market).
One of the biggest arguments for Open Source Software has been the "More Eyeballs" argument. Granted, if I use OSS I can view/edit the source myself, however, my company doesn't have the time nor the human resources to wade through the source code of even the smallest app. The other side is that with apps like Linux there can easily be multiple companies "distributing" their own versions, however, in the long term we haven't seen if this is a viable business model, especially outside of Linux.
I'm no MCSD, MCSE, or MCDBA (yet!), but I'm very involved in the MS developer community - in particular the .NET community. I go to the Redmond campus at least once a month and know quite a few people that work there. What's interesting is most "MS Tech Geeks" aren't generally anti-OSS and many actually have experience with Linux and other OS's. Sure, there's also a large group that's feeds off of MS dogma but the rest aren't really all that bad. There really are a lot of smart people that either work for MS or primarily work with MS technology that get quite frustrated atMS's marketing FUD. We're all educated (in theory) enough to make our own decisions based on the MERIT OF THE TECHNOLOGY. We don't need restrictive licenses, stupid marketing FUD, or silly gimicks like 100 page color brochures sent to our houses every day. Marketing and PR types can make the image of a company, however, they generally break the image of a company in the eyes of techies which employ simple FUD avoidance algorithms.
I have certain critiques about OSS, moreso GPL's based licenses and less so BSD based licenses, but I'm not about to agree to this "OSS will increase terrorism" BS. Come on MS (et all), STOP TREATING US LIKE IDIOTS!
Well, from where I was it looked *great*. I will be seing it at least one more time there, but I'll probably be sitting a bit farther away from the screen.
I saw AOTC at the Cinerama in Seattle. It was incredibly crisp, didn't have the subtle "flicker" and "scratches" that film had, and the sound was phenominal.
Although Moizlla has caught up recently you are right that Opera has been way ahead for most of the race. Even now, aside from a few features (Mozilla has smarter popup control, for example) I still agree that Opera seems more stable and it is a very lightweight browser. It just doesn't get as much recognition here because it's Closed Source.
Text is a type of content. Just because a web page can have a Style Sheet and formatting doesn't mean that it's not simply content. The point is a web page is not software.
During the Roman Empire, Caesar used the term "Bread and Circus".
Give them food and sports/entertainment and they won't care what's going on around them".
You are comparing "keeping people dumb about the government and the world around them" to "people not caring about changing the font on their TV". Most people don't know that you can change the font on their TV, nor do they care. The same goes for the a web browser. If it works well for them, why should they care about 100 features that are irrelevant to them? Just because you may have a personal interest in them doesn't mean that people should be "educated" about them. You and I are geeks, they aren't. They have more important things to think about.
It would make a world of sense for MS to bite the bullet, declare apache their web server, and add MS-only content in the form of proprietary mods.
It would make more sense if they used IIS6 which has been practically rewritten from the ground up. XML configuration files, "more secure", etc.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose.
So show Microsoft the market research that people care. YOU care, maybe I care, but where's the data that shows that the end user really want's to make these kind of choices.
HTML as "Open Source" is a bad example because HTML is not "software". The intellectually property is not the tag it's the content itself.
Wrong. Security issues set aside, I know a lot of people who prefer IE for it's rendering speed and accuracy. Personally, I've been following Opera very closely. It's definitely faster then IE in most cases, but it still doesn't render things (W3C things, not "Microsoft Standard" things) quite right. And the latest version of Netscape (6.2.3?) was not much to call home about on any front. Personally, I love the features in Opera. Actually, from what I've read Mozilla seems to have an even stronger feature set. However, asking the common user you'll find that they could give a crap about the 100's of options - many people don't even care about pop-ups (this I do not understand).
Of course I have no real data to back any of this up, but in my experience IE has been chosen, not forced. Once/if Opera or another browser comes out significantly ahead, I'll be happy to switch - even if I have to pay for it.
A lot of people seem to belive that it's about network security. It is about hacking the boot procedure for the X-Box.
Correct. And when did this become a "security hole" - oh, it makes people bash MS. Nevermind, carry on.
There is a huge problem with frame rate comparison between multiple graphics libraries. The main issue is graphics quality. It is very difficult to prove that the test running on WineX is in fact performing the exact same operations that DirectX is (and visa versa). Especially with different drivers and hardware platforms it's even more difficult to compare (ATI "Quak3.exe" anyone?).
I have bought Athlon the past two times I built a computer.
:-)... j/k.
Maybe my emphasis points to why you are having problems
Seriously, with all of the potential points of failure how can you know that it's not the OS, App, Cheap RAM, the Chipset, etc. Plus, I've never been a huge fan of MSI (no concrete reason). If you want rock solid stability go with Asus. I've been running on an Athlon1.2Ghz with Win2K and I have incredible uptime with the box - the only "hard" lockup I've ever had is when I tried overclocking it to 1.6Ghz just for fun. I had an Intel pII350 before that and it wasn't nearly as stable, but I can tell you that it was most likely due to my Win98 install and not the CPU. Finally, I have an old AMD K6 266 that's still running great as my MP3 server/CD Burning station. Really, with all of the "Math" bugs found in the Pentiums, and after the K6's proved AMD's stability, I don't think that there's any objective data that shows that one CPU is more stable then the other.