Just like lowering trade barriers has negative affects on some U.S. businesses, it also has negative affects on certain parts of Third world businesses. Believe it or not there are people in these countries that don't want to change the status quo despite the fact that it would help their country as a whole because it would hurt them. The mere fact that they have the money (or their company has sponsored them) to be in the United States should clue you into the fact that these are not the poor and unemployed that could use the jobs that foreign investment would bring. These people are the rich that are currently enslaving their own people. The American companies that are paying the poverty level wages that we always hear about are only giving them competition by offering wages to their trained workers that they can't match. When I realized that the American companies in Peru offered the best paying jobs around it absolutely floored me, but that is the simply truth.
I am not saying that I have the answers, nor am I saying that the IMF and the WTO are not bad, because they are. They are way too abrupt, and they have the souls of bankers. But it is naive to think that you know how to solve people's problems without even visiting their country. People in America are so concerned about the rights of the poor in other countries that they are robbing them of what would be a good paying job and a chance to learn some skills that would help them get ahead in life.
I can understand if you are doing this to protect American jobs, but to say that you are doing it to protect some foreigner's rights, well that I find hard to swallow.
I would be the first to admit that the WTO and the IMF are not saints, but that article does not necessarily point out what is wrong with either of these institutions.
Sure the Bolivians were upset. The price of the water was going to skyrocket. Although "as much as $20 a month or more" is pretty vague. Is this an average, or is it the maximum. Not everyone is poor in Cochabamba, there are houses there with yards the size of counties. Their water bills could easily go up by $20 with just a small increase. I am not as familiar with Bolivia as I am with Peru, but I saw riots in Lima over the smallest increases in the government controlled prices.
This probably says more about the corruption in the Bolivian government than anything. The article doesn't say anything about how Aguas del Tunari was chosen, nor why it was that they were going to raise the rates so high. In Bolivia you can't rule out bold faced corruption (Aguas del Tunari could have simply paid the right sum of money to the right people). On the other hand, there is a good chance that the government is merely losing a big pile of money every year subsidizing the water supply in Cochabamba. This is good for the citizens in the capital, but it is bad for the entire rest of the country. After all that is the reason why the World Bank refuses to lend money unless changes are made. There is no sense lending money to Bolivia unless it is going to help them fix the problems with their economy.
Raising the price of water in Cochabamba is bound to make the inhabitants cranky, but privatization is not generally a bad thing because governments almost always do a worse job of providing service than companies. After all, right now these citizens are paying good money for water that you probably wouldn't use to water your lawn. If the higher costs meant that they got a real water system it might even be worth it (depending, of course on how much the average water bill was really going to be).
The fact of the matter is that Bolivia is always going to be near the bottom of the heap until they get their economy into the 21st century. The South American countries with the most conservative fiscal policies (namely Chile) are years ahead of the countries where the government is still running the show. The status quo in Bolivia is crushing poverty, and wishing is not going to make it better.
It would also be good to know how much the people expecting the cushy factory jobs know about what exactly is going on.
They know. The problem is that they don't necessarily have any choice. People will take the jobs for the same reason that the Irish used to sell themselves as indentured servants for the chance to come to America. Their only other choices are worse.
The good news is that even the lowest of factory jobs require more education than many Peruvians have. You need to be able to read, you need to be able to write. Addition and subtraction are going to come in handy. The Peruvian people are plenty sharp, but there are lots of people who don't receive even the most rudimentary education. So employers in these countries end up subsidizing education so that they can hire people with the skills that they need. More education leads to better government (ie, the people don't get duped as easily), and it also leads to higher wages and all of the other fun things that we enjoy in the first world.
When I moved from Peru to Chile this process was quite evident. Peru and Chile have a common border, but other than that they are literally worlds apart.
The only real info I've heard of so far pertains to unfair trade agreements, wherein somtimes harsh stipulations are made to nations that are trying to get involved in global trade.
I've heard horror stories of countries that were formerly self-sufficient running into problems because they're required to purchase x amount of, say, grain before they can export x amount of, say, coffee.
This type of thing certainly does happen, and it's another part of the reason that Americans are not too well liked in the third world. Whether it's our fault or not we always get blamed for these sorts of deals.
Of course, the only way to fix this kind of problem is to lower trade barriers across the board, which isn't necessarily what the WTO is all about. The only other option is education. Countries need to realize that they are dealing with the mother of all horse traders when the guys in suits from the WTO show up. If you blink you will get screwed. However, in today's economy if you aren't trading globally you are as good as screwed anyhow. It might be time to simply acquire a taste for whatever type of grain you need to buy:).
I'd prefer the best balance of power possible. I'd prefer to see progression toward empowering individuals over greedy corporate interests. Again, we're somewhat in agreement, and I totally agree with you on the Web/Internet's ability to let more of us have our voices heard. I'm trying hard to stay away from the standard rhetoric, but it's not easy to do. The last 16 years of government legislation have been bulding toward protecting businesses rather than individuals. Well-funded lobbyists speak louder than the rest of us.
Yes, we should continuously have a goal of obtaining the Good Society. I would even agree that steps should be taken to keep corporations in check.
However, I think that you are completely mistaken in how your message was received overseas. Especially in the poorest of the third world countries. I went to high school in Lima, Peru, and then spent several years in the Quinta region of Chile, and I can guarantee that they don't see the protestors as sticking up for their rights. They see them as denying them the chance to work in a cushy factory job for $250 a year. Actually, they would need considerably more than that in Chile, but that is only because years of military dictatorship raised the education level and lowered the corruption level to the point where it is now possible to do business there.
It's no wonder that Americans have such a poor reputation in foreign countries. The demonstrators that I saw on television didn't look like they had two clues to rub together, and they probably didn't. By the time that their amazing rhetoric was translated into Spanish they probably sounded quite a bit like Tarzan.
As for the government raid, well that is truly unfortunate. The people that had the foresight to set up first aid stations probably were much more informed than the people "out in the streets."
I am not saying that I disagree with the protestors of the WTO, but I do disagree with anyone that believes that the manipulation of uniformed people. What makes you so much better than the corporate heads that are likewise manipulating the people? I also disagree that the protests help generate support from foreign countries. You probably gain the support of likeminded people in the first world, but the third world almost certainly sees it differently.
And this is different from the rest of history in what way? Would you perhaps prefer feudalism?
At least in our present society the powers that be have to trick us into buying their products. Take Microsoft for example. They pushed, and they pushed and now they are going to be split up. IBM did the same, as did AT&T. Next will probably be AOL-Time Warner.
Even worse for these so-called monopolists it is getting harder and harder to really exert control over the populace. Thirty years ago the power of the media was firmly entrenched in the hands of very few. Nowadays any punk kid from Wisconsin can create a news site that rivals the biggest names in the business. Or a computer science undergraduate can create the seeds of an operating system that now has the market lead in web serving (the hottest new strategic market).
People that join causes without understanding why these causes are important are inevitably being duped. Chances are good that they are even serving the cause of some of the same people that they hate.
Power has always had the tendency to consolidate in the hands of few people. World history has quite literally been one uprising after another where the despots were kicked out only to be replaced with another despot. That's part of the reason that the U.S. government was set up with so many checks and balances, and it's also the reason why our founding fathers wanted to make sure that the citizenry had the right to bear arms.
Those are good points. I can see how the deep immersion in Unix tools could possibly prejudice researchers.
I imagine that part of the reason that I was so vitriolic in my first post was that I am a convert to Unix tools like Emacs and TeX. Before 1995 I had never used Unix before, and so when I first started to grok Linux (my first *nix-like OS) there was no way that I was going back to those clunky old tools I used to use. The Linux tools of 1995 had a whole lot more rough edges than they do now, but they were so much more powerful than what I had before that I can't imagine being without them.
Now that Plan 9 is going to be Open Source I probably will have to get a copy so that I can see what it will do. I will make sure that I give Acme a try, and if I like it better than Emacs I might never come back:).
I agree with you that I probably shouldn't feel so giddy that Microsoft is finally "going down," but one has to admit that Microsoft has done everything in its considerable power to hold back Open systems.
Now instead of trying to reverse engineer Microsoft's strange protocols and formats there is at least some hope that we can start implementing truly innovative technologies. For example, this ruling means that there is some chance that I might soon be able to roll out Coda instead of having to deal with SMB. Even the Samba developers have nothing good to say about SMB. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Open systems are poised to win big at this point, and that is definitely a good thing.
Bill could probably do whatever he wants with the APIs to Windows 2002, as long as he publishes them. However, I would guess that unless they are very similar to the APIs in Windows 2000 then applications vendors will just switch to Linux and be done with it.
Heck, they might even be tempted to switch to Plan 9:).
After all, if you are going to have to port to a new API, you might as well simply bite the bullet and port to Posix. I imagine that the major hardware OEMs will start pushing the software guys that direction anyway. After all, why should they have to pay licensing fees for Windows if they can get a better OS for nothing. Even more ironic is the fact that Intel will probably be pushing the hardest. After all, Linux is already 64 bit on Itanium, while Windows is still working on it.
All in all Windows is starting to look like the protaganist of a classic greek tragedy. They were at the top of the world and their hubris has brought them crashing back to earth.
I would certainly agree that Emacs has a higher learning curve than Microsoft's Visual tools, but once you learn to use it then anything else becomes a less than optimal solution.
I learned to use Emacs because I didn't want to pay for Visual Studio. Now I can afford to use whatever tools I want, and so I experimented with other tools, and Emacs is still my favorite development environment.
Besides, Emacs will intelligently edit any kind of text you can name. It does a bang up job on everything from email and news to complex SGML documents. Oh, and it is an excellent code text editor with a host of built-in tools. The fun part is the skills you learn editting your mail are often directly applicable to editting your code! After all, it's all one big integrated environment.
In short, Emacs is a _lot_ more than just a fancy text editor. It might be harder to learn than Visual Studio, but once you learn it there is no giving it up.
On the other hand, it is easy to consider yourself a decently moral person if you hold no faith whatsoever. Even atheists believe in something. They believe that God does not exist.
Personally I think that the real problem is that as a society we are becoming more and more self-centered. It is not enough to simply do no ill, a person needs to get out and do some good. When they do, they invariably find that helping people out makes them feel good. Whether you believe that this "good" feeling comes from Jesus, Buddha, Isis, Zeus, or from something more mundane like the biological need that is left over from our evolution from simple herd animals is really quite irrelevant.
I personally believe in a concrete "truth," but most credos get close enough to this truth so that careful adherents make good neighbors. In a practical sense being a good neighbor is what really matters.
Now that is a rebuttal. If I had moderator points I would promptly mod my original post down and mod this up. In my defense I wasn't necessarily trying to say that Perl, Python, and Tcl were revolutionary. I was mostly trying to rebut the slide on page six that is subtitled "Hardware has changed dramatically; software is stagnant." I should not have used the word innovative, as you are correct, the languages in question are not exactly bleeding edge (although Python certainly is nice:). Still Mr. Pike should have mentioned the fact that scripting languages have become an important force in the Unix culture, even if it didn't fit into his hypothesis. And while it is true that many of the same software tools are still being used it is slightly disigenuous to state that the software has been stagnant. The software tools that he mentions have changed since 1990. For example, I would bet that the 1990 version of Emacs didn't include a web browser (Microsoft seems to think that this is innovative:).
In fact, it seems to me that it would be nearly as easy to say that hardware has been stagnant while the software has changed, but since I didn't use Unix in 1990 (it was too expensive) perhaps I am completely out to lunch there as well. Linux of today certainly seems innovative compared to what I was using in 1990!
I also imagine that a paper describing how to scale Gnutella to the point where it would still be useful with two orders of magnitude more users would also be "research material." But then I don't know, not being a researcher.
I appreciate your post. It made me rethink my position. I suppose that I do agree with Mr. Pike in the fact that Systems Research is becoming irrelevant. The difference is that I don't necessarily think that we should do anything about it. There is plenty of room for research without reinventing all of the wheels that makes the Internet possible. Standards are good. Voluntary, open, and evolving standards are better.
This is what people who advocate standard do not "get". If you build a new OS, the entire point is to be able to develop new types of applications. Nobody wants to runs the same old applications - that is the point. The reason to build a new OS is to present new ideas for application development. People run applications, not OS'es, and then run the OS which has the applications. When you advocate standards, you are basically saying, any program which will ever be created must run on current machines, and any machine which will ever exist in the future must be able to run current applications.
Yes, people run applications. For example, I happen to run Emacs. Any OS that doesn't run Emacs is at a disadvantage as far as I am concerned. Now if the new OS had an application that was a better Emacs than Emacs then I might be interested in learning what the system had to offer.
The fact of the matter is that most applications don't need an innovative new operating system. They might need a new layer added to venerable old Unix (like Corba or X Windows), but for the most part there is no need to rewrite from scratch. Give me an example of an innovation that would be impossible to implement on Unix and perhaps I might change my mind.
Standards, particularly POSIX, are _the_ biggest barrier to real software innovation.
As long as POSIX exists, software will not innovate. It will just develop. Sure, a Unix implementation is better than one from 1980, but it's still the same thing: it's just been tweaked. As long as Unix orthodoxy continues - it will be the only choice, along with all of its problems. I started using Unix 10 years ago, and I've been saying "been there, done that" for the past 3. The whole Unix world is incredibly stagnant. The only thing new is incremental changes or copies of other stuff. Nothing revolutionary. It hasn't even caught up to what VMS had 20 years ago, not to mention all of the changes which would have occurred if Unix hadn't halted all OS development.
And there's your axe to grind. You wish that Unix and Posix were replaced my VMS. VMS had some great ideas, but the applications happened on Unix because it was open. Sure, Unix still has some problems, and it probably will always have problems, but point me out an application that can be written on VMS (or Plan 9) that can't be written on Unix and I will change my tune.
Chances are you can't. The VMS or Plan 9 version may be more elegant, it may run faster, or be easier to debug, but in the end anything you can do on VMS you can do on Unix, and people like Unix. And when it comes to operating systems it is the end users that count. That is why Linuxers are trying so hard to create a system that will be useable by normal folks. After all, most Linuxers actually prefer clunky tools like Emacs and a whole pile of xterms, but we know that if Linux is going to take the next step it needs to appeal to the average Joe. So we are creating the applications necessary for normal people to use our system.
After all, it isn't how innovative your filesystem cache is that matters, it is how easy it is for your users to get stuff done. Linux is a pretty compelling system if you happen to be a programmer (even if it isn't as innovative as some other OSes that could be named).
Pike's been around for a while, as in version 0.1 of AT&T Unix circa 1970. So, if he hasn't seen any real innovations, he'd pretty much be an authority on the subject.
As for your comments wrt "the standard tools", I'd tend to agree with Rob. My usage of Emacs, TeX, and the GNU C compiler hasn't changed in 10 years. However, even I have to give MS a few points for the Visual XXX environments -- they may have been acquired, but they've been packaged nicely. Try getting Emacs to manage a Java code project the way Visual J++ does (w/o manually editing and crafting Makefile.am's, etc)!
I realize that Mr. Pike has a ton more experience than I do with Unix, but that still doesn't invalidate my basic premise. The reason that developers still use tools like Emacs, TeX and Unix is that they work. In fact, novelty in this area would actually be a bad thing in that it would make it impossible for all of the Unix codgers to successfully leverage their hard earned skills. For example, the reason that you use Emacs gcc and TeX the same way that you always have is that no one has been able to show you tools that are a substantial improvement. It is a good thing that I can take C code written 10 years ago and still get it to work on my fancy new hardware. It is a good thing that I can still typeset TeX documents written in the 1990s.
However, nowadays Emacs does a lot more than it used to do. For one thing, you weren't using it to surf the web in 1990. You probably also weren't using it to edit DocBook SGML documents (and if you were it wasn't nearly as easy as it is now). TeX has made improvements as well. LyX didn't exist 10 years ago, for example, and LaTeX wasn't nearly what it is today. The fact that these technologies are built on the successes of yesterday is a good thing, it means that they have a solid base on which to grow.
The comparison of Emacs to Visual J++ proves my point completely. Microsoft has spent a ton of money on their Visual development tools and yet when they are done they end up with something that is basically a fancy text editor with a system for automatically creating dependency files. I doubt that Mr. Pike would regard that as innovation either. After all, we have had fancy text editors and dependency generators for quite some time. For the most part Visual J++ is just the same old same old (repackaged attractively). If this is innovation at all it is innovation of a very gradual nature, much the same way that LyX is innovative when compared with writing raw TeX in ed.
I did not mean to state in my original post that only old software was good. New software is quite often better than old software. After all, the new architects are able to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. My point was that novelty is only useful inasmuch as it helps the end user. Novelty should not be an end to itself.
Unfortunately Mr. Pike's pet operating system Plan 9 is not generally as useful as Windows (or even Linux), and he bemoans the fact that people aren't nearly as interested in novelty as they used to be. Well, I would be interested in Plan 9's novelty if it ran the host of powerful software that Linux does and was as easy to keep updated as Debian GNU/Linux, but it doesn't.
Mr. Pike is just upset because his beloved innovative Plan 9 is being completely and totally eclipsed by Unix-like operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD.
He bemoans the fact that computer scientists still tend to use such crufty old tools as Unix, Emacs, and TeX, despite the fact that these tools are still very capable and that they grow more capable every day. The Novelty that Mr. Pike is so obsessed with is only useful when it constitutes an improvement over what is currently in use.
Perhaps the most absurd part of Mr. Pike's lament was his comments on Standards. He states that "With so much externally imposed structure, there is little slop left for novelty." Clearly, however this is both untrue and unfair. Mr. Pike could easily create his own little completely novel computer world. He undoubtedly has the talents. However, unless this new system allows the end user to do the things that they traditionally use their computer for what's the point? Why would I want an innovative new system that can't send email or surf the web (or run Emacs for that matter)? I wouldn't, no matter how novel it might be.
More importantly it is certainly possible to innovate within the standards that he complains about. Napster, Gnutella, and FreeNet are all innovative ways of sharing files, yet all of them rely on existing standards. Mr. Pike also totally belittles the success of scripting languages like Perl, Tcl, and Python. I certainly don't use C or C++ on my new development projects. These languages all represent innovation, but they probably aren't available for Plan 9, so they don't count.
If Plan 9 were in Linux's position you can bet that Mr. Pike would be singing a different tune, even if all Plan 9 were being used for was to run Emacs, TeX, and Netscape.
Exactly. For once you would think that even the most rabid anti-RMS folk would realize the good sense in what RMS is saying. You would be a fool to fall prey to the Open Group's ploy and use Motif at this point. After all, GTK will allow you to develop commercial applications on any platform that it runs on (which is nearly everything at this point, GTK certainly compiles on as many platforms as Motif). QT will allow you to produce GPLed software for an equally wide range of platforms, and for a small fee you can produce commercial applications.
If you absolutely must use Motif, well then, LessTif is becoming quite a viable alternative. If you code to it's particular subset of the Motif API you will be able to create genuine Motif apps for those platforms that have Motif, and the BSDs and Linux can use LessTif.
The Open Group did too little too late. Their investment in Motif is already worth next to nothing.
Linux is already in the position of the Macintosh. There is already a big pile of Windows only software that it won't run. And the only way that we are going to be able to replace Windows as the "You can buy software for it at Walmart" leader is to make sure that there are machines in normal people's hands that run Linux.
If a Linux-based Internet appliance were in millions of homes, then you can bet your life that applications would magically appear for Linux. AOL would probably even encourage other software companies porting their applications to the AOL appliance (ie Linux).
More importantly AOL pushing Mozilla will basically guarantee that the web maintains some semblance of standards. After all, AOL has a lot of clout when it comes to the Internet. I imagine that the mere suggestion that AOL might switch to Mozilla is enough to make the IE coders shiver in their boots. AOL could almost single handedly tip the browser war back into Mozilla's court.
I am a huge fan of Perl, and have used it successfully for years, but I honestly hope that Python continues to gain mindshare.
Let's face it, Perl is not a very readable language. TMTOWTDI basically guarantees that I am going to do something differently than my buddy in the next cubicle, and if you have ever tried to extend stuff from CPAN it becomes apparent there are a LOT more than one ways to do it.
Python isn't perfect either, but it is a lot easier to read. And when combined with wxWindows you have a easy way to create cross-platform (well Windows and *nix anyway) GUIs. Yes, I know, Perl has Perl/Tk, and no I don't think that counts:).
Besides, how cool it is to have a language where it is encouraged to put excerpts from Monty Python scripts in the comments? Very cool in my opinion.
In short I think that the Perl community should stop wasting their time on Perl and start working on Python instead:). Barring that, I think that we should all just get along and use whatever tools we like best. In the Free software community there is bound to be some overlap (just like in the commercial software community). The good news is that the success of Python does not necessarily mean that Perl will wither and die. It simply means the Perl hackers will have to raise the bar.
While the article wasn't exactly news I personally found the article to be quite entertaining. I especially enjoyed the quote by Larry Wall. The Open Source folks come across as pragmatic, intelligent, and law abiding.
As for ZDnet's ad revenues, I don't have a problem with them. If ZD is willing to post content that I am interested in then that is good for both ZD and for me. I actually like targetted ads that don't rely on software that follows me around on the web figuring out where I surf. Matching your advertisements with story content is perfectly acceptable in my book. It should be encouraged. Slashdot is really no different. There is a banner on every page. The difference is that companies that want to advertise on Slashdot generally sell something that I am at least potentially interested in. If ZD were to do the same thing, that would be great.
``Intel is doing well in the server area but the margins on the server parts have not been that much better than the PC parts,'' Gwennap said. ``Now they will be able to charge these high prices and they have their cost structure under control...The new version is so much more economical.''
In other words Intel is really excited about this new chip because it is much more cost effective to manufacturer. Of course, this doesn't mean that the consumer will pay less, it simply means that Intel will make more.
Unless, of course, the consumer isn't a moron and realizes that there are alternatives. On the other hand, If you are running Windows and you need SMP then I guess you don't have any alternatives. Not that this should come as a surprise, Windows users are already used to paying extra.
So when are the SMP capable AMD chips going to come out (or did I just miss something)?
Ah, I see what you mean. That's another question altogether. Maintenance is clearly important, but it is the "masses" that are truly critical to Free Software projects.
Part of the fun of Free Software is that the success of a particular piece of software depends entirely on the users. We don't currently have 20 versions of Emacs because users don't like to be stranded. Just because the software is free doesn't mean that the users want to get stuck in some technological backwater.
For example, let's say that the maintainers of Apache all got way too much sun and decided that they would no longer support the English language but would instead standardize on Pig Latin. They could praise Pig Latin until they were blue in the face, and could write tons of code that would automatically translate your HTML to Pig Latin for you, but their users would still ignore them completely. Someone would get a recent copy of the CVS source before the Pig Latin decision and their would be a new version of Apache called Apache-No-Pigs within the week. The users would find bugs in Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, patches would flow towards Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, and all would be right with the world.
The biggest reason that Linus's word is law when it comes to the Linux kernel is that the people that disagree with Linus know that their version of Linux would have to be extraordinarily more useful than Linus's version for it to fly. And they would have maintain their advantage long enough for their version to get enough users to maintain itself. Linus has the support of the Linux community, and unless someone can come up with something much cooler he will continue to have that support. Linus's versions gets tested, Linus's version gets patched, and Linus's version sets the standard.
That is why people work so hard to get their source included in the kernel distribution. They know that if they can't make their software exciting enough that Linus will include it in Linux that they will be stuck maintaining their own version of Linux by themselves. Which, of course, would be a major hassle.
The same thing is true of gcc. If the contribution is good enough, then it will get in. If not, you can bet that no code that depends on it will make it in either:).
I am convinced that this sort of a story is a myth. In the real world people get fired for being incompetent. Especially if they bungle an expensive software development project by choosing the wrong tools for the job.
After all, the CEO doesn't care that it's Microsoft's fault, he only cares that his software doesn't work, and his competitor's does.
Many years ago it was believed that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM." And then, very suddenly this motto became very, very untrue. Some of your competitors may lead you to believe that you are better off with commercial software because it gives you a finger to point, but in the real world that simply isn't true. If your job is on the line, make sure you pick the best tools for the job. If it appears to be a toss up, give precedence to software that you yourself can fix personally.
In fact, one of the good things about Free Software is that it is inexpensive to test. You can easily run preliminary tests while the software is still in the design phase. If the free software tools are good enough, then you're set. If not, you haven't really spent any money, and the hardware is still available for the proprietary tools. If the software works, the non-technical folks won't even ask what tools you used, and if it doesn't work, the fact that the project failed because of Microsoft will probably not save you.
Free Software advocates are very concerned about "forking," but I don't see the big deal. Emacs isn't any worse because JWZ forked XEmacs. In fact, the competition has improved it quite a bit. It adds a little extra work for the Emacs community, but it is work that apparently people are willing to do to be able to maintain their choice of text editor.
The same is true for the even more famous BSD forks. Is anyone worse off because their are three BSDs. Their market share might not look as good on paper because it is divided among three different OSes, but I would bet that the FreeBSD user that wants to run a BSD on his new Sparc is glad for NetBSD, and I would also bet that he is glad to have a "secure by default" variant for his firewall.
Forks happen, and if they people forking the software are good enough, we get a horserace. Competition is good for software, and as long as the source code is available everyone wins.
Of course nowadays most media companies actually see Microsoft as competition. They don't call it MSNBC for nothing, you know.
Not to mention the fact that even the computer rags have a vested interest in maintaining customer choice. Sure, just about every magazine outside of the Linux Journal has a substantial amount of advertisements for Microsoft products, but they also have ads from Microsoft's competitors. If Microsoft were to drive everyone else out of business then the computer magazines would be out of a job as well.
There will always be pro-Microsoft media outlets, but I think that it is also safe to say that there will also always be anti-Microsoft outlets. What's more, even the most pro-Microsoft outlets will carry anti-Microsoft news if they think that it will help them sell more papers (or get more hits). And anti-Microsoft news has been pretty popular lately.
The reason that I got into Linux over FreeBSD in 1995 when I decided to give the Free Unixes a whirl was quite simple. FreeBSD didn't support my cd-rom drive and Linux did. All of my friends were staunch BSD supporters. They weren't interested in Linux because it was a "toy" OS. As far as I could tell the BSD folks were not even interested in patches that would allow better support of my ATAPI CD-Rom drive. Real production systems used SCSI kit after all.
Which is funny, because, if Salon is to be believed, part of the reason that BSD Unix was so popular was that it ran on inexpensive "junk" hardware. Nowadays, of course, BSDers scoff at Linux because of all of the weird hardware it supports. Of course, it's only weird if you don't own it.
It is also quite true that Linux is geared more towards the UNIX initiate. This could be fixed easily enough. Heck, even setting the default shell to something other than sh would make FreeBSD more palatable to the newbie. However, from what I have gleaned from BSD advocacy sites like Daemonnews.org, there is very little effort to change the different flavors of BSD so that they are more user friendly. They are content to let Linux bring them converts to the *NIX way of thinking.
Which is just as well, I suppose. However, many Linuxers find that the benefits of the BSDs don't quite warrant leaving.
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Just like lowering trade barriers has negative affects on some U.S. businesses, it also has negative affects on certain parts of Third world businesses. Believe it or not there are people in these countries that don't want to change the status quo despite the fact that it would help their country as a whole because it would hurt them. The mere fact that they have the money (or their company has sponsored them) to be in the United States should clue you into the fact that these are not the poor and unemployed that could use the jobs that foreign investment would bring. These people are the rich that are currently enslaving their own people. The American companies that are paying the poverty level wages that we always hear about are only giving them competition by offering wages to their trained workers that they can't match. When I realized that the American companies in Peru offered the best paying jobs around it absolutely floored me, but that is the simply truth.
I am not saying that I have the answers, nor am I saying that the IMF and the WTO are not bad, because they are. They are way too abrupt, and they have the souls of bankers. But it is naive to think that you know how to solve people's problems without even visiting their country. People in America are so concerned about the rights of the poor in other countries that they are robbing them of what would be a good paying job and a chance to learn some skills that would help them get ahead in life.
I can understand if you are doing this to protect American jobs, but to say that you are doing it to protect some foreigner's rights, well that I find hard to swallow.
I would be the first to admit that the WTO and the IMF are not saints, but that article does not necessarily point out what is wrong with either of these institutions.
Sure the Bolivians were upset. The price of the water was going to skyrocket. Although "as much as $20 a month or more" is pretty vague. Is this an average, or is it the maximum. Not everyone is poor in Cochabamba, there are houses there with yards the size of counties. Their water bills could easily go up by $20 with just a small increase. I am not as familiar with Bolivia as I am with Peru, but I saw riots in Lima over the smallest increases in the government controlled prices.
This probably says more about the corruption in the Bolivian government than anything. The article doesn't say anything about how Aguas del Tunari was chosen, nor why it was that they were going to raise the rates so high. In Bolivia you can't rule out bold faced corruption (Aguas del Tunari could have simply paid the right sum of money to the right people). On the other hand, there is a good chance that the government is merely losing a big pile of money every year subsidizing the water supply in Cochabamba. This is good for the citizens in the capital, but it is bad for the entire rest of the country. After all that is the reason why the World Bank refuses to lend money unless changes are made. There is no sense lending money to Bolivia unless it is going to help them fix the problems with their economy.
Raising the price of water in Cochabamba is bound to make the inhabitants cranky, but privatization is not generally a bad thing because governments almost always do a worse job of providing service than companies. After all, right now these citizens are paying good money for water that you probably wouldn't use to water your lawn. If the higher costs meant that they got a real water system it might even be worth it (depending, of course on how much the average water bill was really going to be).
The fact of the matter is that Bolivia is always going to be near the bottom of the heap until they get their economy into the 21st century. The South American countries with the most conservative fiscal policies (namely Chile) are years ahead of the countries where the government is still running the show. The status quo in Bolivia is crushing poverty, and wishing is not going to make it better.
They know. The problem is that they don't necessarily have any choice. People will take the jobs for the same reason that the Irish used to sell themselves as indentured servants for the chance to come to America. Their only other choices are worse.
The good news is that even the lowest of factory jobs require more education than many Peruvians have. You need to be able to read, you need to be able to write. Addition and subtraction are going to come in handy. The Peruvian people are plenty sharp, but there are lots of people who don't receive even the most rudimentary education. So employers in these countries end up subsidizing education so that they can hire people with the skills that they need. More education leads to better government (ie, the people don't get duped as easily), and it also leads to higher wages and all of the other fun things that we enjoy in the first world.
When I moved from Peru to Chile this process was quite evident. Peru and Chile have a common border, but other than that they are literally worlds apart.
This type of thing certainly does happen, and it's another part of the reason that Americans are not too well liked in the third world. Whether it's our fault or not we always get blamed for these sorts of deals.
Of course, the only way to fix this kind of problem is to lower trade barriers across the board, which isn't necessarily what the WTO is all about. The only other option is education. Countries need to realize that they are dealing with the mother of all horse traders when the guys in suits from the WTO show up. If you blink you will get screwed. However, in today's economy if you aren't trading globally you are as good as screwed anyhow. It might be time to simply acquire a taste for whatever type of grain you need to buy :).
Yes, we should continuously have a goal of obtaining the Good Society. I would even agree that steps should be taken to keep corporations in check.
However, I think that you are completely mistaken in how your message was received overseas. Especially in the poorest of the third world countries. I went to high school in Lima, Peru, and then spent several years in the Quinta region of Chile, and I can guarantee that they don't see the protestors as sticking up for their rights. They see them as denying them the chance to work in a cushy factory job for $250 a year. Actually, they would need considerably more than that in Chile, but that is only because years of military dictatorship raised the education level and lowered the corruption level to the point where it is now possible to do business there.
It's no wonder that Americans have such a poor reputation in foreign countries. The demonstrators that I saw on television didn't look like they had two clues to rub together, and they probably didn't. By the time that their amazing rhetoric was translated into Spanish they probably sounded quite a bit like Tarzan.
As for the government raid, well that is truly unfortunate. The people that had the foresight to set up first aid stations probably were much more informed than the people "out in the streets."
I am not saying that I disagree with the protestors of the WTO, but I do disagree with anyone that believes that the manipulation of uniformed people. What makes you so much better than the corporate heads that are likewise manipulating the people? I also disagree that the protests help generate support from foreign countries. You probably gain the support of likeminded people in the first world, but the third world almost certainly sees it differently.
And this is different from the rest of history in what way? Would you perhaps prefer feudalism?
At least in our present society the powers that be have to trick us into buying their products. Take Microsoft for example. They pushed, and they pushed and now they are going to be split up. IBM did the same, as did AT&T. Next will probably be AOL-Time Warner.
Even worse for these so-called monopolists it is getting harder and harder to really exert control over the populace. Thirty years ago the power of the media was firmly entrenched in the hands of very few. Nowadays any punk kid from Wisconsin can create a news site that rivals the biggest names in the business. Or a computer science undergraduate can create the seeds of an operating system that now has the market lead in web serving (the hottest new strategic market).
People that join causes without understanding why these causes are important are inevitably being duped. Chances are good that they are even serving the cause of some of the same people that they hate.
Power has always had the tendency to consolidate in the hands of few people. World history has quite literally been one uprising after another where the despots were kicked out only to be replaced with another despot. That's part of the reason that the U.S. government was set up with so many checks and balances, and it's also the reason why our founding fathers wanted to make sure that the citizenry had the right to bear arms.
But that's another story...
Those are good points. I can see how the deep immersion in Unix tools could possibly prejudice researchers.
I imagine that part of the reason that I was so vitriolic in my first post was that I am a convert to Unix tools like Emacs and TeX. Before 1995 I had never used Unix before, and so when I first started to grok Linux (my first *nix-like OS) there was no way that I was going back to those clunky old tools I used to use. The Linux tools of 1995 had a whole lot more rough edges than they do now, but they were so much more powerful than what I had before that I can't imagine being without them.
Now that Plan 9 is going to be Open Source I probably will have to get a copy so that I can see what it will do. I will make sure that I give Acme a try, and if I like it better than Emacs I might never come back :).
Thanks for the post.
I agree with you that I probably shouldn't feel so giddy that Microsoft is finally "going down," but one has to admit that Microsoft has done everything in its considerable power to hold back Open systems.
Now instead of trying to reverse engineer Microsoft's strange protocols and formats there is at least some hope that we can start implementing truly innovative technologies. For example, this ruling means that there is some chance that I might soon be able to roll out Coda instead of having to deal with SMB. Even the Samba developers have nothing good to say about SMB. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Open systems are poised to win big at this point, and that is definitely a good thing.
Bill could probably do whatever he wants with the APIs to Windows 2002, as long as he publishes them. However, I would guess that unless they are very similar to the APIs in Windows 2000 then applications vendors will just switch to Linux and be done with it.
Heck, they might even be tempted to switch to Plan 9 :).
After all, if you are going to have to port to a new API, you might as well simply bite the bullet and port to Posix. I imagine that the major hardware OEMs will start pushing the software guys that direction anyway. After all, why should they have to pay licensing fees for Windows if they can get a better OS for nothing. Even more ironic is the fact that Intel will probably be pushing the hardest. After all, Linux is already 64 bit on Itanium, while Windows is still working on it.
All in all Windows is starting to look like the protaganist of a classic greek tragedy. They were at the top of the world and their hubris has brought them crashing back to earth.
We live in interesting times.
I would certainly agree that Emacs has a higher learning curve than Microsoft's Visual tools, but once you learn to use it then anything else becomes a less than optimal solution.
I learned to use Emacs because I didn't want to pay for Visual Studio. Now I can afford to use whatever tools I want, and so I experimented with other tools, and Emacs is still my favorite development environment.
Besides, Emacs will intelligently edit any kind of text you can name. It does a bang up job on everything from email and news to complex SGML documents. Oh, and it is an excellent code text editor with a host of built-in tools. The fun part is the skills you learn editting your mail are often directly applicable to editting your code! After all, it's all one big integrated environment.
In short, Emacs is a _lot_ more than just a fancy text editor. It might be harder to learn than Visual Studio, but once you learn it there is no giving it up.
On the other hand, it is easy to consider yourself a decently moral person if you hold no faith whatsoever. Even atheists believe in something. They believe that God does not exist.
Personally I think that the real problem is that as a society we are becoming more and more self-centered. It is not enough to simply do no ill, a person needs to get out and do some good. When they do, they invariably find that helping people out makes them feel good. Whether you believe that this "good" feeling comes from Jesus, Buddha, Isis, Zeus, or from something more mundane like the biological need that is left over from our evolution from simple herd animals is really quite irrelevant.
I personally believe in a concrete "truth," but most credos get close enough to this truth so that careful adherents make good neighbors. In a practical sense being a good neighbor is what really matters.
Now that is a rebuttal. If I had moderator points I would promptly mod my original post down and mod this up. In my defense I wasn't necessarily trying to say that Perl, Python, and Tcl were revolutionary. I was mostly trying to rebut the slide on page six that is subtitled "Hardware has changed dramatically; software is stagnant." I should not have used the word innovative, as you are correct, the languages in question are not exactly bleeding edge (although Python certainly is nice :). Still Mr. Pike should have mentioned the fact that scripting languages have become an important force in the Unix culture, even if it didn't fit into his hypothesis. And while it is true that many of the same software tools are still being used it is slightly disigenuous to state that the software has been stagnant. The software tools that he mentions have changed since 1990. For example, I would bet that the 1990 version of Emacs didn't include a web browser (Microsoft seems to think that this is innovative :).
In fact, it seems to me that it would be nearly as easy to say that hardware has been stagnant while the software has changed, but since I didn't use Unix in 1990 (it was too expensive) perhaps I am completely out to lunch there as well. Linux of today certainly seems innovative compared to what I was using in 1990!
I also imagine that a paper describing how to scale Gnutella to the point where it would still be useful with two orders of magnitude more users would also be "research material." But then I don't know, not being a researcher.
I appreciate your post. It made me rethink my position. I suppose that I do agree with Mr. Pike in the fact that Systems Research is becoming irrelevant. The difference is that I don't necessarily think that we should do anything about it. There is plenty of room for research without reinventing all of the wheels that makes the Internet possible. Standards are good. Voluntary, open, and evolving standards are better.
Yes, people run applications. For example, I happen to run Emacs. Any OS that doesn't run Emacs is at a disadvantage as far as I am concerned. Now if the new OS had an application that was a better Emacs than Emacs then I might be interested in learning what the system had to offer.
The fact of the matter is that most applications don't need an innovative new operating system. They might need a new layer added to venerable old Unix (like Corba or X Windows), but for the most part there is no need to rewrite from scratch. Give me an example of an innovation that would be impossible to implement on Unix and perhaps I might change my mind.
And there's your axe to grind. You wish that Unix and Posix were replaced my VMS. VMS had some great ideas, but the applications happened on Unix because it was open. Sure, Unix still has some problems, and it probably will always have problems, but point me out an application that can be written on VMS (or Plan 9) that can't be written on Unix and I will change my tune.
Chances are you can't. The VMS or Plan 9 version may be more elegant, it may run faster, or be easier to debug, but in the end anything you can do on VMS you can do on Unix, and people like Unix. And when it comes to operating systems it is the end users that count. That is why Linuxers are trying so hard to create a system that will be useable by normal folks. After all, most Linuxers actually prefer clunky tools like Emacs and a whole pile of xterms, but we know that if Linux is going to take the next step it needs to appeal to the average Joe. So we are creating the applications necessary for normal people to use our system.
After all, it isn't how innovative your filesystem cache is that matters, it is how easy it is for your users to get stuff done. Linux is a pretty compelling system if you happen to be a programmer (even if it isn't as innovative as some other OSes that could be named).
I realize that Mr. Pike has a ton more experience than I do with Unix, but that still doesn't invalidate my basic premise. The reason that developers still use tools like Emacs, TeX and Unix is that they work. In fact, novelty in this area would actually be a bad thing in that it would make it impossible for all of the Unix codgers to successfully leverage their hard earned skills. For example, the reason that you use Emacs gcc and TeX the same way that you always have is that no one has been able to show you tools that are a substantial improvement. It is a good thing that I can take C code written 10 years ago and still get it to work on my fancy new hardware. It is a good thing that I can still typeset TeX documents written in the 1990s.
However, nowadays Emacs does a lot more than it used to do. For one thing, you weren't using it to surf the web in 1990. You probably also weren't using it to edit DocBook SGML documents (and if you were it wasn't nearly as easy as it is now). TeX has made improvements as well. LyX didn't exist 10 years ago, for example, and LaTeX wasn't nearly what it is today. The fact that these technologies are built on the successes of yesterday is a good thing, it means that they have a solid base on which to grow.
The comparison of Emacs to Visual J++ proves my point completely. Microsoft has spent a ton of money on their Visual development tools and yet when they are done they end up with something that is basically a fancy text editor with a system for automatically creating dependency files. I doubt that Mr. Pike would regard that as innovation either. After all, we have had fancy text editors and dependency generators for quite some time. For the most part Visual J++ is just the same old same old (repackaged attractively). If this is innovation at all it is innovation of a very gradual nature, much the same way that LyX is innovative when compared with writing raw TeX in ed.
I did not mean to state in my original post that only old software was good. New software is quite often better than old software. After all, the new architects are able to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. My point was that novelty is only useful inasmuch as it helps the end user. Novelty should not be an end to itself.
Unfortunately Mr. Pike's pet operating system Plan 9 is not generally as useful as Windows (or even Linux), and he bemoans the fact that people aren't nearly as interested in novelty as they used to be. Well, I would be interested in Plan 9's novelty if it ran the host of powerful software that Linux does and was as easy to keep updated as Debian GNU/Linux, but it doesn't.
Mr. Pike is just upset because his beloved innovative Plan 9 is being completely and totally eclipsed by Unix-like operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD.
He bemoans the fact that computer scientists still tend to use such crufty old tools as Unix, Emacs, and TeX, despite the fact that these tools are still very capable and that they grow more capable every day. The Novelty that Mr. Pike is so obsessed with is only useful when it constitutes an improvement over what is currently in use.
Perhaps the most absurd part of Mr. Pike's lament was his comments on Standards. He states that "With so much externally imposed structure, there is little slop left for novelty." Clearly, however this is both untrue and unfair. Mr. Pike could easily create his own little completely novel computer world. He undoubtedly has the talents. However, unless this new system allows the end user to do the things that they traditionally use their computer for what's the point? Why would I want an innovative new system that can't send email or surf the web (or run Emacs for that matter)? I wouldn't, no matter how novel it might be.
More importantly it is certainly possible to innovate within the standards that he complains about. Napster, Gnutella, and FreeNet are all innovative ways of sharing files, yet all of them rely on existing standards. Mr. Pike also totally belittles the success of scripting languages like Perl, Tcl, and Python. I certainly don't use C or C++ on my new development projects. These languages all represent innovation, but they probably aren't available for Plan 9, so they don't count.
If Plan 9 were in Linux's position you can bet that Mr. Pike would be singing a different tune, even if all Plan 9 were being used for was to run Emacs, TeX, and Netscape.
Exactly. For once you would think that even the most rabid anti-RMS folk would realize the good sense in what RMS is saying. You would be a fool to fall prey to the Open Group's ploy and use Motif at this point. After all, GTK will allow you to develop commercial applications on any platform that it runs on (which is nearly everything at this point, GTK certainly compiles on as many platforms as Motif). QT will allow you to produce GPLed software for an equally wide range of platforms, and for a small fee you can produce commercial applications.
If you absolutely must use Motif, well then, LessTif is becoming quite a viable alternative. If you code to it's particular subset of the Motif API you will be able to create genuine Motif apps for those platforms that have Motif, and the BSDs and Linux can use LessTif.
The Open Group did too little too late. Their investment in Motif is already worth next to nothing.
Linux is already in the position of the Macintosh. There is already a big pile of Windows only software that it won't run. And the only way that we are going to be able to replace Windows as the "You can buy software for it at Walmart" leader is to make sure that there are machines in normal people's hands that run Linux.
If a Linux-based Internet appliance were in millions of homes, then you can bet your life that applications would magically appear for Linux. AOL would probably even encourage other software companies porting their applications to the AOL appliance (ie Linux).
More importantly AOL pushing Mozilla will basically guarantee that the web maintains some semblance of standards. After all, AOL has a lot of clout when it comes to the Internet. I imagine that the mere suggestion that AOL might switch to Mozilla is enough to make the IE coders shiver in their boots. AOL could almost single handedly tip the browser war back into Mozilla's court.
I am a huge fan of Perl, and have used it successfully for years, but I honestly hope that Python continues to gain mindshare.
Let's face it, Perl is not a very readable language. TMTOWTDI basically guarantees that I am going to do something differently than my buddy in the next cubicle, and if you have ever tried to extend stuff from CPAN it becomes apparent there are a LOT more than one ways to do it.
Python isn't perfect either, but it is a lot easier to read. And when combined with wxWindows you have a easy way to create cross-platform (well Windows and *nix anyway) GUIs. Yes, I know, Perl has Perl/Tk, and no I don't think that counts :).
Besides, how cool it is to have a language where it is encouraged to put excerpts from Monty Python scripts in the comments? Very cool in my opinion.
In short I think that the Perl community should stop wasting their time on Perl and start working on Python instead :). Barring that, I think that we should all just get along and use whatever tools we like best. In the Free software community there is bound to be some overlap (just like in the commercial software community). The good news is that the success of Python does not necessarily mean that Perl will wither and die. It simply means the Perl hackers will have to raise the bar.
While the article wasn't exactly news I personally found the article to be quite entertaining. I especially enjoyed the quote by Larry Wall. The Open Source folks come across as pragmatic, intelligent, and law abiding.
As for ZDnet's ad revenues, I don't have a problem with them. If ZD is willing to post content that I am interested in then that is good for both ZD and for me. I actually like targetted ads that don't rely on software that follows me around on the web figuring out where I surf. Matching your advertisements with story content is perfectly acceptable in my book. It should be encouraged. Slashdot is really no different. There is a banner on every page. The difference is that companies that want to advertise on Slashdot generally sell something that I am at least potentially interested in. If ZD were to do the same thing, that would be great.
Oops, should have said when are the SMP capable AMD chipsets going to come out :). I actually knew that the Athlons were based on the EV6 bus.
Thanks for the information all the same. SMP Athlon boxes would rock. I think I have an idea what I want for Christmas!
Exactly. I love the wording from the article:
In other words Intel is really excited about this new chip because it is much more cost effective to manufacturer. Of course, this doesn't mean that the consumer will pay less, it simply means that Intel will make more.
Unless, of course, the consumer isn't a moron and realizes that there are alternatives. On the other hand, If you are running Windows and you need SMP then I guess you don't have any alternatives. Not that this should come as a surprise, Windows users are already used to paying extra.
So when are the SMP capable AMD chips going to come out (or did I just miss something)?
Ah, I see what you mean. That's another question altogether. Maintenance is clearly important, but it is the "masses" that are truly critical to Free Software projects.
Part of the fun of Free Software is that the success of a particular piece of software depends entirely on the users. We don't currently have 20 versions of Emacs because users don't like to be stranded. Just because the software is free doesn't mean that the users want to get stuck in some technological backwater.
For example, let's say that the maintainers of Apache all got way too much sun and decided that they would no longer support the English language but would instead standardize on Pig Latin. They could praise Pig Latin until they were blue in the face, and could write tons of code that would automatically translate your HTML to Pig Latin for you, but their users would still ignore them completely. Someone would get a recent copy of the CVS source before the Pig Latin decision and their would be a new version of Apache called Apache-No-Pigs within the week. The users would find bugs in Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, patches would flow towards Apache-No-Pigs instead of Apache, and all would be right with the world.
The biggest reason that Linus's word is law when it comes to the Linux kernel is that the people that disagree with Linus know that their version of Linux would have to be extraordinarily more useful than Linus's version for it to fly. And they would have maintain their advantage long enough for their version to get enough users to maintain itself. Linus has the support of the Linux community, and unless someone can come up with something much cooler he will continue to have that support. Linus's versions gets tested, Linus's version gets patched, and Linus's version sets the standard.
That is why people work so hard to get their source included in the kernel distribution. They know that if they can't make their software exciting enough that Linus will include it in Linux that they will be stuck maintaining their own version of Linux by themselves. Which, of course, would be a major hassle.
The same thing is true of gcc. If the contribution is good enough, then it will get in. If not, you can bet that no code that depends on it will make it in either :).
I am convinced that this sort of a story is a myth. In the real world people get fired for being incompetent. Especially if they bungle an expensive software development project by choosing the wrong tools for the job.
After all, the CEO doesn't care that it's Microsoft's fault, he only cares that his software doesn't work, and his competitor's does.
Many years ago it was believed that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM." And then, very suddenly this motto became very, very untrue. Some of your competitors may lead you to believe that you are better off with commercial software because it gives you a finger to point, but in the real world that simply isn't true. If your job is on the line, make sure you pick the best tools for the job. If it appears to be a toss up, give precedence to software that you yourself can fix personally.
In fact, one of the good things about Free Software is that it is inexpensive to test. You can easily run preliminary tests while the software is still in the design phase. If the free software tools are good enough, then you're set. If not, you haven't really spent any money, and the hardware is still available for the proprietary tools. If the software works, the non-technical folks won't even ask what tools you used, and if it doesn't work, the fact that the project failed because of Microsoft will probably not save you.
Free Software advocates are very concerned about "forking," but I don't see the big deal. Emacs isn't any worse because JWZ forked XEmacs. In fact, the competition has improved it quite a bit. It adds a little extra work for the Emacs community, but it is work that apparently people are willing to do to be able to maintain their choice of text editor.
The same is true for the even more famous BSD forks. Is anyone worse off because their are three BSDs. Their market share might not look as good on paper because it is divided among three different OSes, but I would bet that the FreeBSD user that wants to run a BSD on his new Sparc is glad for NetBSD, and I would also bet that he is glad to have a "secure by default" variant for his firewall.
Forks happen, and if they people forking the software are good enough, we get a horserace. Competition is good for software, and as long as the source code is available everyone wins.
Of course nowadays most media companies actually see Microsoft as competition. They don't call it MSNBC for nothing, you know.
Not to mention the fact that even the computer rags have a vested interest in maintaining customer choice. Sure, just about every magazine outside of the Linux Journal has a substantial amount of advertisements for Microsoft products, but they also have ads from Microsoft's competitors. If Microsoft were to drive everyone else out of business then the computer magazines would be out of a job as well.
There will always be pro-Microsoft media outlets, but I think that it is also safe to say that there will also always be anti-Microsoft outlets. What's more, even the most pro-Microsoft outlets will carry anti-Microsoft news if they think that it will help them sell more papers (or get more hits). And anti-Microsoft news has been pretty popular lately.
The reason that I got into Linux over FreeBSD in 1995 when I decided to give the Free Unixes a whirl was quite simple. FreeBSD didn't support my cd-rom drive and Linux did. All of my friends were staunch BSD supporters. They weren't interested in Linux because it was a "toy" OS. As far as I could tell the BSD folks were not even interested in patches that would allow better support of my ATAPI CD-Rom drive. Real production systems used SCSI kit after all.
Which is funny, because, if Salon is to be believed, part of the reason that BSD Unix was so popular was that it ran on inexpensive "junk" hardware. Nowadays, of course, BSDers scoff at Linux because of all of the weird hardware it supports. Of course, it's only weird if you don't own it.
It is also quite true that Linux is geared more towards the UNIX initiate. This could be fixed easily enough. Heck, even setting the default shell to something other than sh would make FreeBSD more palatable to the newbie. However, from what I have gleaned from BSD advocacy sites like Daemonnews.org, there is very little effort to change the different flavors of BSD so that they are more user friendly. They are content to let Linux bring them converts to the *NIX way of thinking.
Which is just as well, I suppose. However, many Linuxers find that the benefits of the BSDs don't quite warrant leaving.