The `Free' in `Free Software' is quite uncorrelated to `free as in free beer' freeness.
On the other hand, it is directly related to the fact that you can pay a developer to add the feature you want.
That you find something laughable in what you quote only shows that you do not understand what you are talking about.
A company doesn't care about abstract philosophy. If it's more expensive to use Free Software than it is to use Commercial Software, they will just do that. You can pay a developer to write an MS Office plugin just as well. OpenOffice is commercial software, it just happens to be free software too. The opposite of free software is proprietary software, meaning that the rights the publisher keeps to itself, and doesn't give to the user, are more.
Copmanies don't care about asbtract philosophy, but they should care about licensing deals, and small print. There's money involved. And companies care about money.
Of course, it's more difficult to understand how free software affects your bottomline, but there's money involved, so it's worth to try and understand it.
The issue is that with free software, the user gets more power, so a 500 seat installation can improve or fix their software, while the same can't be said with MS voume deals (at a 500 seat installation). There is money to be lost when you don't have a feature that you need.
So the whole idea is that it's necessary to crunch the numbers, and compare costs. In lots of scenarios, the free software way is the more sensible, especially if you take into account future licensing costs, and risk associated with lack of control over tools that affect your core bussiness.
SVN would be far superior for source code, web files (.html,.css, etc). Sharepoint works better in most scenarios for office documents. For ms office documents! OpenDocument is XML, and is great for versioning with svn.
Wow, it is just great to see how people use the -1 Troll mod to double as -1 Disagree. But you _are_ a troll. You just don't mean it, but you are. Nobody was talking politics! You are offtopic, and your parent is not.
I don't live in the US, but like most of the world population who watches international news, I dislike US policies. This administration does awful things to people from other countries, but with respect to global affairs, the difference with the other party is quantitaive, not qualitative.
But I don't think that jokes about GWB occur beacuse people hate him (and lots of people do), but because the guy is funny!!!
He says lots of stuff you can make fun of. Creationists are and endless source of fun. All the newspeak rethoric about terrorists is fun, too.
Of course, in a pathetic sense of "fun", but it is fun. And funny is always on-topic, and relevant to the subject. Star wars jokes would be on-topic in this thread, too. That is the way "Funny" works.
We all know everybody makes fun of GWB, it's not a political thing, they are not trying to get you to vote the democrats, it's just that the guy does everything he can to get people to laugh at him!
He didn't write glibc, ls, find, or Gnome, for that matter.
I don't have half those things on my computer. (Slackware... I don't install gnome and I'm not sure I have find either to tell you the truth). That's the point - they are accessories to the operating system. So many slashdotters complain about the extra functionality in Windows - media player, search etc - and that it isn't part of the operating system - shouldn't the same standard hold to Linux?
A standard, or a minimal Slackware installation, even without Gnome, is comprised of a lot more lines of GNU code than Linux code. Edit a photo? I don't know about your company, but I have never worked in a place where every employee had a Photoshop license.
Maybe not photoshop, but yea, I've seen it. Along with full copies of Acrobat. And other software. Even people that just use it once or twice a year. The loss of productivity just isn't worth it in some industries.
I don't know what you mean there. You talked about editing a picture, ok, editing a picture needs special software on windows, and for most users it does too, on GNU/Linux. Not relevant.
Streaming of their favorite music channel is the same, click the link, and hope that the network admins let you use streaming media.
All things being equal that is not the issue, the issue is the codec's on the users machine. Now, while I can get windows media files to play on my linux box, the average joe might not find it so easy.
It's not about the average joe, it's about corporate usage. Corporate users don't install their own software, so that is not an issue. It's trivial to push Totem codecs to 500 Ubuntu desktops, that is where the money you saved from the 500 licenses comes in handy. Pay some guy to do that, keep some money for similar tasks, and spend the rest in office decoration.
I don't know what SharePoint is. Sorry.
Sharepoint is everything the other poster said, and more. I actually had to help migrate a project server from linux LAMP to SharePoint last year. It is a full featured project server, with integration with Outlook, etc. It's amazing, really, so far as productivity is concerned.
Like a proprietary wiki/groupware thingy, ok. That's the msoffice thing again. That is the problem, not the mswindows platform. Migrating from msoffice is always difficult. That was exactly my point.
Aside from the msoffice thing, non proprietary Wikis/Groupware thingys are used in lots of places. The issue of course is msoffice integration.
They are accustomed to _not_ having a consistent look, and _not_ having a consistent behavior, shortcuts, etc, in Windows apps
Except for Winamp and Media Player, my apps look consistent.... but try cross-loading KDE, GTK apps sometime...
I have used some kde apps in my gnome desktop, for example kmobiletools. They look the same as Gnome tools, and use your desktop themes. There is no such thing as kmobiletools available for the mswindows machine at work, but eventually I got a Motorola software (that didn't respect the XP look and feel) and I could synchronize my phone.
Right now, I am using Firefox, notepad, google talk, Eclipse, and Outlook. They don't look like they belong in the same world. Most shortcuts, they don't shared them. MS _translates_ some shortcut keys for spanish language translations!!! In my Ubuntu desktop I have the same programs, and all the widgets look the same, but I use evolution for the Exchange mail instead of msoutlook, and gedit instead of notepad. A couple (as in two or three) shortcuts are not consistent, but it's a more consistent experience.
You are using arguments from the nineties.
Unfortunately, I don't think much has changed. It has been the year of the desktop for how many years? Nobody cares about the year of the desktop. It won't be the year of the desktop until msoffice ceases to be the basis of corporate computing.
Linux has nothing to do with it, because it's just a kernel. Kernels don't have anything to do with office packages.
Linux is an operating system. A distribution may choose to contain the GNU userland. from kernel.org: "Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net." They can say whatever they want, but Linux is a kernel. That is what Linus Torvalds wrote from scratch. He didn't write glibc, ls, find, or Gnome, for that matter. There is more to an OS than a kernel. In fact, users don't even get to see Linux in a GNU/Linux distro, it's indistinguishable from FreeBSD, or any other environment that uses similar userland.
_if_ and only if you already use OpenOffice and Firefox, changing to, for example, a GNU/Linux distribution is not traumatic at all, if even noticed.
That's a completely outlandish statement. Of course it will be traumatic. While office may be where employees spend a vast majority of their time, what happens when they have to edit a photo? Stream their favorite music channel? What happens when they want Exchange-like server functionality? Or SharePoint? Etc. What about a constant, consistent theme in programs? There are plenty of things to *notice*. Edit a photo? I don't know about your company, but I have never worked in a place where every employee had a Photoshop license.
An imperfect way to edit a picture would ebm, in either case, to right-click-edit them, which would bring Microsoft Photo Editor or the Gimp, none of which is suitable for the needs of an office employee. Both are too hard to use, and ms photo editor is too underpowered.
In both cases, installing Picasa would be a nice fix. In a company environment, that is not so difficult to deploy.
Streaming of their favorite music channel is the same, click the link, and hope that the network admins let you use streaming media.
Exchange-like server functionality? msoffice is needed for that. That is the issue. msoffice is difficult to replace. mswindows is easy.
I don't know what SharePoint is. Sorry.
About a consistent look, I don't think they would complain for the change. They are accustomed to _not_ having a consistent look, and _not_ having a consistent behavior, shortcuts, etc, in Windows apps, why would they complain when they get a consistent looking and functioning Gnome (e.g.) desktop?
You are using arguments from the nineties. Gnu/Linux has changed a lot since then.
Your right. But if they couldn't get OO to work for them, what do you think the chances are of them ever considering moving to Linux? Installing OO on a few boxes is putting your toe in the water, installing Linux as an end-user environment, relatively speaking, is swimming with sharks. Or penguins, what have you. Not at all. Linux has nothing to do with it, because it's just a kernel. Kernels don't have anything to do with office packages. If what you mean is a GNU/Linux distribution ( a posix-style free software OS),_if_ and only if you already use OpenOffice and Firefox, changing to, for example, a GNU/Linux distribution is not traumatic at all, if even noticed. The big issue with ms is that it's very difficult to migrate from, or to interact with, msoffice documents. mswindows is only useful because it runs msoffice. The big issue is replacing msoffice. It's not a toe in the water, FireFox might be a toe in the water, and more like a leg, considering that webapps are used for actual work. The office package is the motivation for a computer, in most places.
"A roadmap for the future" ??? You're just as much at the mercy of M$ as you to the OO.o developers. What kind of security can one kind in M$'s supposed "roadmap for the future". Bah! That is measurable. You can look into previous roadmaps, and measure how much they have come through in the past. You can do the same with open source, and free software projects.
OO didn't have any issues coming through with planned features in the past.
I don't think MS had any issues with roadmaps, my Longhorn Tablet PC works great with WinFS right now.
it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing
Sounds like there's a disconnect between the IT staff and the business side of the house. Any CIO worth their salt would have had before-and-after metrics to compare. I think that should not be overlooked. If it was almost impossible to work out the cost, it can't be a problem with the software, but with their metrics. And it isn't a real reason to change their packages. The issue is orthogonal to the products used. Just because msoffice has a licensing cost, (OO does, too, zero), it doesn't mean the other costs are more easily accounted for.
Of course, in any office package change, there should be more money devoted to support, but with OO it could be easier due to licensing costs saved.
I think they probably didn't buy support from the beginning, and thought that OO had free (as in beer) support. That is not true, of course. And probably that is why they can't measure the costs.
Yeah, and the R&D probably cost 'em $50, a couple pizzas, a case of beer, and a long weekend. R&D doesn't have marginal cost. The whole idea of selling at a loss is gaining traction in order to sell big volumes. Nintendo could sell the Wii at $1000 to pay for R&D, but probably they pay for it sooner selling tons of units at a cheaper price, because R&D doesn't have marginal cost! R&D is a sunk cost. It doesn't affect unit price. They price stuff based on marginal cost, and marketing.
It's the total earnings that count. Even selling at a loss is good for paying R&D costs, because you can get licensing contracts that amount to lots of money.
Also, by the way, your whole argument is moot anyway because the OLPC project is focusing on "developing" countries -- those that are slightly beyond the "basic survival" phase of development. The children under consideration do have food, water, and shelter; just not cable TV and malls.
I am from Uruguay, the first OLPC country. They _do_ have access to cable TV (paid or unpaid) and malls, but the issue is that poor kids don't get the same opportunities in life that we get. We have virtually universal alphabetization, but differences in education are huge, nonetheless. Poor kids don't get to finish high school, and seldom get a college degree. Public education is not bad, but middle class kids can buy books, get private teachers, have internet, and also get extra curricular activities. This kind of thing can make it feasible (as in less hours -> cheaper) for public school teachers to help poor kids with their homework, for making school texts universal, and research material too.
I think this kind of thing is a cornerstone to giving them more fair opportunities to compete in the real world.
It's lost on people. They just want to hate a company to hate. There is nothing wrong with sony trying to stop people from copying their stuff. I was once a Sony fanboy, too. They still make some of the most beautiful electronic products, but they don't make the best anymore. But this is about Sony music.
There is something wrong with preventing copying. They don't sell discs, they sell the "right" to listen to music. You are supposed to be able to listen to it, as you need it. You might have some needs that are accomplished by a CD, and not by a DRM CD. So you would be buying a defective product, and would not be able to listen to the music you bought a license for.
The company they hired pushed faulty software. They sold defective CDs with defective software. Nobody cares about who they bought it from. People bought Sony products, not "some company" products. The whole idea of trademarks is that they gain respect, and you use them to choose what stuff to buy. It is their responsibility, when it has their name on it.
I don't fully understand how a monster company like IBM can act like this, while virtually every other huge corporation out there seems to be guided by Dilbert's boss. Don't let him fool you. Dilbert would be as bad as his boss if he could make any decision, after all, he endorses the BSA!!
Some Oracle chap tried to speak about "Free Software" offerings from Oracle in a conference in Belfast... he was shouted down and asked to describe it as 'cost-less' instead. Oracle will get behind Open Source AFTER Duke Nukem gets released, AFTER hell freezes over, AFTER Ballmer stops distributing chairs. Not anytime soon. Or AFTER they lose their dominant market position. And that could happen before Duke Nukem Forever.
OMG...can you just be a man and drink a cup of coffee? As it stands now with your Diet Mountain Dew, you're just a little girl with a frilly dress. Coffee is for sissies too. Otherwise, there would be no room for Starbucks. Real Men (TM) drink bitter mate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage) ) in the mornings, and throughout the day. The concentration of caffeine is much less, but you can drink one or two liters of the stuff, and it doesn't hurt your stomach. It's great for long coding sprees, because you drink it gradually, and as time passes, you become more and more stimulated.
Doesn't the fact that the article you quote gives the price of component with five (5!) significant figures tell you all you need to know about it? Also, since when is development costs 0?
It's stupid to try and price an item by the price you think the components cost, ok. But it's a nice number to guess, with 1 or 2 signifcant figures. Development does have a marginal cost of 0. When you are trying to know the benefit of a sale, it would be price - marginal costs. The development cost is a sunk cost, so it is irrelevant to each sale, because it won't change.
That said, I fail to see how AT&T stands to lose from morons turning their expensive toy into an iPod. They still have to pay their monthly fees. If I were AT&T, I'd encourage that behaviour. Talk about free money!
Let's not talk about lack of freedom of speech, executions without trial, or with fake trials, because that is not inherent to Cuba and its regime.
I think you meant "unique", not "inherent". It certainly is inherent to Cuba and its regime since the current regime is the one practicing this behavior. It isn't unique, but that doesn't make it right. So why can't we talk about it? Did you make the same argument about embargoes of South Africa under apartheid?
Your correction is accurate. I will be more specific. What I mean is that a change of regime in Cuba, for a regime favorable to the US (what the US seems to be looking for ) is not a way of fixing those things, because those things happen in the US, and in countries that have changed their regimes due to the US intervention. So I don't expect those things to to change if the embargo actually "worked".
You get decent health care and a good education...
Let me rephrase that more accurately: "You get health care and education...." Unless you consider health care "decent" when there isn't enough penicillin to go around, or when patients have to bring their own toilet paper to the hospital. Unless you consider education "good" when one of the primary measurements is how well you can recite government ideology.
Let me rephrase it, taking into account what you say: "You get health care and education on a level above most countries, and above many developed countries, including specifically the US, the ones that want to change their regime". Unless you think doctrine (ideology is not bad, per se) is only taught in communist countries, and universality is not important for education. That doesn't count as decent, you are right.
Anyhow, all of my post was not about how nice Cuba is, but about the effect that the embargo is supposed to have.
Anyhow, the embargo works. Right now, there are some good and bad things in Cuba. You get decent health care and a good education, but no car, bad food, bad paid jobs and stuff (a lot of bad stuff, in fact). Let's not talk about lack of freedom of speech, executions without trial, or with fake trials, because that is not inherent to Cuba and its regime. If Cuba was allowed to trade freely, there would be a possibility that life in Cuba would be better (or not, of course), and that could be perceived as their system not being thaaat bad (of course, it wouldn't prove anything, but perception is key), and fighting communism outside of the US wouldn't seem that obviously necessary.
Because it's beautiful, and they are different things. A Yaris is not a beautiful car, and a Smart is. Buying a car is not about saving mney in gas, if that was the issue, the only sane way to buy cars would be following a TCO study of each model, because the price of the car is an issue in fuel economy.
Oh, yeah, in dictatorships & communist countries that squash common freedoms in the name of..... (Fill in blank) You don't need to say both. I don't know a communist country which isn't a dictatorship, but even if there were one of them, common freedoms wouldn't necessarily be squashed in such a communist country.
Java is going to be free software they've been saying that for years and have made some token releases (javac has very little value afaict as the java language is not that complex and most optimisation is done later, hotspot undoubtablly has some good tech in but its not much use without the class libraries to go with it) but until we actually see them do it i remain skeptical. From http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/projec t_overview.jsp/ : "The components of the Java SE implementation that Sun is releasing initially are the Java programming-language compiler (javac) and the Java HotSpot virtual machine. In 2007, Sun will release all unencumbered source-code modules of JDK 6 and JDK 7, along with full build scripts; a few encumbered modules will be released as binary plugins. The code will be available under the GPL v2 license plus the ClassPath Exception."
There is no reason to think that Sun is lying in our faces. Other companies have, but they still have credit, I think.
I think you're missing the point, which is that the OSS philosophy that someone will just come along and pick up the project is quite different from reality, as evidenced by the cratering of ReiserFS since this happened. If you're using a product from a business, it's a different story since a business can hire someone experienced enough to replace the previous developer. You're right that a business could pick up the project since the code is out there, but then why isn't that happening with ReiserFS? You are comparing two different things. You say that big companies, not people, should be behind the products you use. That has its advantages, and its disadvantages, of course.
The thing of using for example, free software, is orthogonal to that. Java is going to be free software, and is supported by a big company. Eclipse too. MySQL too.
Oracle is bigger, and _maybe_ the risk of them dissapearing from the face of the earth are smaller than those of MySQL, but the consequences to people commited to them would be much bigger. Supporting your own MySQL databases is hard, but feasible. Oracle is next to impossible.
This may be one of them. How much does it matter if you can't speak a string of hexes for copyright/DMCA reasons? It doesn't.
Dude it's a number. Granted a large number, but still just a number.
Are you telling me that projects like the one trying to find the largest prime can't publish that they've tested this number as a prime?
There are certain things you should NOT be allowed to own - a number is one of them. All information can be codified as a number. As much as I disklike copyrights themselves,saying it's just a number doesn't change the issue one bit.
Slashdot Mirror
The `Free' in `Free Software' is quite uncorrelated to `free as in free beer' freeness.
On the other hand, it is directly related to the fact that you can pay a developer to add the feature you want.
That you find something laughable in what you quote only shows that you do not understand what you are talking about.
A company doesn't care about abstract philosophy. If it's more expensive to use Free Software than it is to use Commercial Software, they will just do that. You can pay a developer to write an MS Office plugin just as well. OpenOffice is commercial software, it just happens to be free software too.
The opposite of free software is proprietary software, meaning that the rights the publisher keeps to itself, and doesn't give to the user, are more.
Copmanies don't care about asbtract philosophy, but they should care about licensing deals, and small print. There's money involved. And companies care about money.
Of course, it's more difficult to understand how free software affects your bottomline, but there's money involved, so it's worth to try and understand it.
The issue is that with free software, the user gets more power, so a 500 seat installation can improve or fix their software, while the same can't be said with MS voume deals (at a 500 seat installation). There is money to be lost when you don't have a feature that you need.
So the whole idea is that it's necessary to crunch the numbers, and compare costs. In lots of scenarios, the free software way is the more sensible, especially if you take into account future licensing costs, and risk associated with lack of control over tools that affect your core bussiness.
OpenDocument is XML, and is great for versioning with svn.
You just don't mean it, but you are.
Nobody was talking politics!
You are offtopic, and your parent is not.
I don't live in the US, but like most of the world population who watches international news, I dislike US policies.
This administration does awful things to people from other countries, but with respect to global affairs, the difference with the other party is quantitaive, not qualitative.
But I don't think that jokes about GWB occur beacuse people hate him (and lots of people do), but because the guy is funny!!!
He says lots of stuff you can make fun of.
Creationists are and endless source of fun.
All the newspeak rethoric about terrorists is fun, too.
Of course, in a pathetic sense of "fun", but it is fun.
And funny is always on-topic, and relevant to the subject. Star wars jokes would be on-topic in this thread, too. That is the way "Funny" works.
We all know everybody makes fun of GWB, it's not a political thing, they are not trying to get you to vote the democrats, it's just that the guy does everything he can to get people to laugh at him!
I don't have half those things on my computer. (Slackware... I don't install gnome and I'm not sure I have find either to tell you the truth). That's the point - they are accessories to the operating system. So many slashdotters complain about the extra functionality in Windows - media player, search etc - and that it isn't part of the operating system - shouldn't the same standard hold to Linux?
A standard, or a minimal Slackware installation, even without Gnome, is comprised of a lot more lines of GNU code than Linux code.
Edit a photo? I don't know about your company, but I have never worked in a place where every employee had a Photoshop license.
Maybe not photoshop, but yea, I've seen it. Along with full copies of Acrobat. And other software. Even people that just use it once or twice a year. The loss of productivity just isn't worth it in some industries.
I don't know what you mean there. You talked about editing a picture, ok, editing a picture needs special software on windows, and for most users it does too, on GNU/Linux. Not relevant.
Streaming of their favorite music channel is the same, click the link, and hope that the network admins let you use streaming media.
All things being equal that is not the issue, the issue is the codec's on the users machine. Now, while I can get windows media files to play on my linux box, the average joe might not find it so easy.
It's not about the average joe, it's about corporate usage. Corporate users don't install their own software, so that is not an issue.
It's trivial to push Totem codecs to 500 Ubuntu desktops, that is where the money you saved from the 500 licenses comes in handy.
Pay some guy to do that, keep some money for similar tasks, and spend the rest in office decoration. I don't know what SharePoint is. Sorry.
Sharepoint is everything the other poster said, and more. I actually had to help migrate a project server from linux LAMP to SharePoint last year. It is a full featured project server, with integration with Outlook, etc. It's amazing, really, so far as productivity is concerned.
Like a proprietary wiki/groupware thingy, ok. That's the msoffice thing again. That is the problem, not the mswindows platform. Migrating from msoffice is always difficult. That was exactly my point.
Aside from the msoffice thing, non proprietary Wikis/Groupware thingys are used in lots of places. The issue of course is msoffice integration.
They are accustomed to _not_ having a consistent look, and _not_ having a consistent behavior, shortcuts, etc, in Windows apps
Except for Winamp and Media Player, my apps look consistent.... but try cross-loading KDE, GTK apps sometime
I have used some kde apps in my gnome desktop, for example kmobiletools. They look the same as Gnome tools, and use your desktop themes. There is no such thing as kmobiletools available for the mswindows machine at work, but eventually I got a Motorola software (that didn't respect the XP look and feel) and I could synchronize my phone.
Right now, I am using Firefox, notepad, google talk, Eclipse, and Outlook.
They don't look like they belong in the same world.
Most shortcuts, they don't shared them.
MS _translates_ some shortcut keys for spanish language translations!!!
In my Ubuntu desktop I have the same programs, and all the widgets look the same, but I use evolution for the Exchange mail instead of msoutlook, and gedit instead of notepad.
A couple (as in two or three) shortcuts are not consistent, but it's a more consistent experience. You are using arguments from the nineties.
Unfortunately, I don't think much has changed. It has been the year of the desktop for how many years? Nobody cares about the year of the desktop.
It won't be the year of the desktop until msoffice ceases to be the basis of corporate computing.
Linux is an operating system. A distribution may choose to contain the GNU userland. from kernel.org: "Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net." They can say whatever they want, but Linux is a kernel. That is what Linus Torvalds wrote from scratch. He didn't write glibc, ls, find, or Gnome, for that matter.
There is more to an OS than a kernel.
In fact, users don't even get to see Linux in a GNU/Linux distro, it's indistinguishable from FreeBSD, or any other environment that uses similar userland. _if_ and only if you already use OpenOffice and Firefox, changing to, for example, a GNU/Linux distribution is not traumatic at all, if even noticed.
That's a completely outlandish statement. Of course it will be traumatic. While office may be where employees spend a vast majority of their time, what happens when they have to edit a photo? Stream their favorite music channel? What happens when they want Exchange-like server functionality? Or SharePoint? Etc. What about a constant, consistent theme in programs? There are plenty of things to *notice*. Edit a photo? I don't know about your company, but I have never worked in a place where every employee had a Photoshop license.
An imperfect way to edit a picture would ebm, in either case, to right-click-edit them, which would bring Microsoft Photo Editor or the Gimp, none of which is suitable for the needs of an office employee. Both are too hard to use, and ms photo editor is too underpowered.
In both cases, installing Picasa would be a nice fix.
In a company environment, that is not so difficult to deploy.
Streaming of their favorite music channel is the same, click the link, and hope that the network admins let you use streaming media.
Exchange-like server functionality? msoffice is needed for that. That is the issue. msoffice is difficult to replace. mswindows is easy.
I don't know what SharePoint is. Sorry.
About a consistent look, I don't think they would complain for the change. They are accustomed to _not_ having a consistent look, and _not_ having a consistent behavior, shortcuts, etc, in Windows apps, why would they complain when they get a consistent looking and functioning Gnome (e.g.) desktop?
You are using arguments from the nineties. Gnu/Linux has changed a lot since then.
Linux has nothing to do with it, because it's just a kernel. Kernels don't have anything to do with office packages.
If what you mean is a GNU/Linux distribution ( a posix-style free software OS),_if_ and only if you already use OpenOffice and Firefox, changing to, for example, a GNU/Linux distribution is not traumatic at all, if even noticed.
The big issue with ms is that it's very difficult to migrate from, or to interact with, msoffice documents.
mswindows is only useful because it runs msoffice. The big issue is replacing msoffice. It's not a toe in the water, FireFox might be a toe in the water, and more like a leg, considering that webapps are used for actual work. The office package is the motivation for a computer, in most places.
You can look into previous roadmaps, and measure how much they have come through in the past.
You can do the same with open source, and free software projects.
OO didn't have any issues coming through with planned features in the past.
I don't think MS had any issues with roadmaps, my Longhorn Tablet PC works great with WinFS right now.
Sounds like there's a disconnect between the IT staff and the business side of the house. Any CIO worth their salt would have had before-and-after metrics to compare. I think that should not be overlooked.
If it was almost impossible to work out the cost, it can't be a problem with the software, but with their metrics.
And it isn't a real reason to change their packages. The issue is orthogonal to the products used.
Just because msoffice has a licensing cost, (OO does, too, zero), it doesn't mean the other costs are more easily accounted for.
Of course, in any office package change, there should be more money devoted to support, but with OO it could be easier due to licensing costs saved.
I think they probably didn't buy support from the beginning, and thought that OO had free (as in beer) support. That is not true, of course. And probably that is why they can't measure the costs.
Linux has nothing to do with OpenOffice.
The whole idea of selling at a loss is gaining traction in order to sell big volumes.
Nintendo could sell the Wii at $1000 to pay for R&D, but probably they pay for it sooner selling tons of units at a cheaper price, because R&D doesn't have marginal cost!
R&D is a sunk cost. It doesn't affect unit price. They price stuff based on marginal cost, and marketing.
It's the total earnings that count.
Even selling at a loss is good for paying R&D costs, because you can get licensing contracts that amount to lots of money.
Also, by the way, your whole argument is moot anyway because the OLPC project is focusing on "developing" countries -- those that are slightly beyond the "basic survival" phase of development. The children under consideration do have food, water, and shelter; just not cable TV and malls.
I am from Uruguay, the first OLPC country. They _do_ have access to cable TV (paid or unpaid) and malls, but the issue is that poor kids don't get the same opportunities in life that we get.We have virtually universal alphabetization, but differences in education are huge, nonetheless.
Poor kids don't get to finish high school, and seldom get a college degree.
Public education is not bad, but middle class kids can buy books, get private teachers, have internet, and also get extra curricular activities.
This kind of thing can make it feasible (as in less hours -> cheaper) for public school teachers to help poor kids with their homework, for making school texts universal, and research material too.
I think this kind of thing is a cornerstone to giving them more fair opportunities to compete in the real world.
They still make some of the most beautiful electronic products, but they don't make the best anymore. But this is about Sony music.
There is something wrong with preventing copying. They don't sell discs, they sell the "right" to listen to music. You are supposed to be able to listen to it, as you need it.
You might have some needs that are accomplished by a CD, and not by a DRM CD. So you would be buying a defective product, and would not be able to listen to the music you bought a license for. The company they hired pushed faulty software. They sold defective CDs with defective software. Nobody cares about who they bought it from. People bought Sony products, not "some company" products.
The whole idea of trademarks is that they gain respect, and you use them to choose what stuff to buy. It is their responsibility, when it has their name on it.
And that could happen before Duke Nukem Forever.
Real Men (TM) drink bitter mate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage) ) in the mornings, and throughout the day.
The concentration of caffeine is much less, but you can drink one or two liters of the stuff, and it doesn't hurt your stomach. It's great for long coding sprees, because you drink it gradually, and as time passes, you become more and more stimulated.
It's stupid to try and price an item by the price you think the components cost, ok.But it's a nice number to guess, with 1 or 2 signifcant figures.
Development does have a marginal cost of 0.
When you are trying to know the benefit of a sale, it would be price - marginal costs. The development cost is a sunk cost, so it is irrelevant to each sale, because it won't change. That said, I fail to see how AT&T stands to lose from morons turning their expensive toy into an iPod. They still have to pay their monthly fees. If I were AT&T, I'd encourage that behaviour. Talk about free money!
I think you meant "unique", not "inherent". It certainly is inherent to Cuba and its regime since the current regime is the one practicing this behavior. It isn't unique, but that doesn't make it right. So why can't we talk about it? Did you make the same argument about embargoes of South Africa under apartheid?
Your correction is accurate.I will be more specific. What I mean is that a change of regime in Cuba, for a regime favorable to the US (what the US seems to be looking for ) is not a way of fixing those things, because those things happen in the US, and in countries that have changed their regimes due to the US intervention. So I don't expect those things to to change if the embargo actually "worked".
Let me rephrase that more accurately: "You get health care and education...." Unless you consider health care "decent" when there isn't enough penicillin to go around, or when patients have to bring their own toilet paper to the hospital. Unless you consider education "good" when one of the primary measurements is how well you can recite government ideology.
Let me rephrase it, taking into account what you say: "You get health care and education on a level above most countries, and above many developed countries, including specifically the US, the ones that want to change their regime". Unless you think doctrine (ideology is not bad, per se) is only taught in communist countries, and universality is not important for education.That doesn't count as decent, you are right.
Anyhow, all of my post was not about how nice Cuba is, but about the effect that the embargo is supposed to have.
Anyhow, the embargo works.
Right now, there are some good and bad things in Cuba.
You get decent health care and a good education, but no car, bad food, bad paid jobs and stuff (a lot of bad stuff, in fact).
Let's not talk about lack of freedom of speech, executions without trial, or with fake trials, because that is not inherent to Cuba and its regime.
If Cuba was allowed to trade freely, there would be a possibility that life in Cuba would be better (or not, of course), and that could be perceived as their system not being thaaat bad (of course, it wouldn't prove anything, but perception is key), and fighting communism outside of the US wouldn't seem that obviously necessary.
Because it's beautiful, and they are different things.
A Yaris is not a beautiful car, and a Smart is.
Buying a car is not about saving mney in gas, if that was the issue, the only sane way to buy cars would be following a TCO study of each model, because the price of the car is an issue in fuel economy.
I don't know a communist country which isn't a dictatorship, but even if there were one of them, common freedoms wouldn't necessarily be squashed in such a communist country.
Some companies are still to be trusted, in some regards :)
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http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/08/15
They didn't finish making java free, but it's very close right now.
they've been saying that for years and have made some token releases (javac has very little value afaict as the java language is not that complex and most optimisation is done later, hotspot undoubtablly has some good tech in but its not much use without the class libraries to go with it) but until we actually see them do it i remain skeptical. From http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/proje
"The components of the Java SE implementation that Sun is releasing initially are the Java programming-language compiler (javac) and the Java HotSpot virtual machine. In 2007, Sun will release all unencumbered source-code modules of JDK 6 and JDK 7, along with full build scripts; a few encumbered modules will be released as binary plugins. The code will be available under the GPL v2 license plus the ClassPath Exception."
There is no reason to think that Sun is lying in our faces. Other companies have, but they still have credit, I think.
Comes somewhat close.
You say that big companies, not people, should be behind the products you use.
That has its advantages, and its disadvantages, of course.
The thing of using for example, free software, is orthogonal to that.
Java is going to be free software, and is supported by a big company. Eclipse too. MySQL too.
Oracle is bigger, and _maybe_ the risk of them dissapearing from the face of the earth are smaller than those of MySQL, but the consequences to people commited to them would be much bigger.
Supporting your own MySQL databases is hard, but feasible. Oracle is next to impossible.
Dude it's a number. Granted a large number, but still just a number.
Are you telling me that projects like the one trying to find the largest prime can't publish that they've tested this number as a prime?
There are certain things you should NOT be allowed to own - a number is one of them. All information can be codified as a number. As much as I disklike copyrights themselves,saying it's just a number doesn't change the issue one bit.