I agree. The tech was an idiot. Changing someone's OS, even if the software is unsupported is amazingly stupid, and almost criminally inept. He deserves to be fired.
But his actions are completely irrelevant to the meat of the argument. That doesn't mean that RedHat's help desk should support MS Word, and more importantly it does not mean that Linux is not ready for the desktop.
In fact, it illustrates how far Linux has come in a relatively short time, and how ridiculous the author's assumptions are. Applixware was really the only useable Office suite when I started using Linux, and now there are several Office suites that are much better. Saying that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because Applixware sucks is like saying that Windows wasn't ready for the desktop because WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows was so bad (after all Word for Windows was great). If Applixware doesn't cut it Linuxers can easily use OpenOffice, Abiword, or KWord, and if you don't mind using commercial software you can use WordPerfect. All of these will happily teach you to spell web site.
Imagine you worked at a company that had standardized on Windows for the desktop, and you went to the helpdesk because you couldn't get your KDE themes on your Linux laptop to work. Would you be surprised when the help desk folks simply formatted your hard drive and reinstalled Windows?
If you are going to use non-standard software, then you are going to have to support it yourself, that's how every helpdesk I have ever heard of works. Now most aren't pricks about it. They wouldn't simply format the drive and tell the user to lump it, but they wouldn't help her out either.
Users get stuck using software that doesn't do the job very well but is the "standard" all of the time. Why should RedHat be any different?
Besides, switching your OS because the spell checker doesn't know the correct spelling of "web site" (which was the example the article gave) is ridiculous. Especially if you are the web master. Geez, if your webmaster doesn't know how to spell web site, then you truly are screwed.
Besides, when preparing text for a web site (especially one that would be serving a lot of Linux users) you don't need a word processor, and you especially don't want to be using MS Word. Imagine how the "real" webmasters felt having to pass all of this lady's text through the demoronizer so that it would work with Netscape. And she wondered why they formatted her hard drive. A real BOFH would simply have allowed her to post stories that would be full of '?' for many of her users. Someone should have set up Emacs for her so that it would automatically load flyspell and told her to write her columns in plain text. Using Emacs for this sort of thing is no harder than Using MS Word. In fact, it would be easier.
Besides, I haven't used Applixware for a while, but it's spellchecker worked fine for me (4 years ago). The whole premise is bogus.
Either way, you can't expect the helpdesk to support non-standard software, and you can't expect RedHat to standardize on MS Word.
Inertia is good for Windows marketshare, but Microsoft doesn't make any money off of their past releases.
If no one buys Windows XP, then Microsoft makes no money, and unlike the Linux community, they need huge revenues to survive. If Windows XP doesn't sell, then Microsoft will miss their earnings expectations, their stock price will drop, their investors will leave, their developers will be left with a mediocre salary and worthless options, and their attempts to set new de-facto standards will be stymied.
Make no mistake. Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, it's old versions of their own software. If no one upgrades to the new versions then Microsoft is just as screwed as if everyone switched overnight to Linux. Either way they make precisely the same amount of cash.
You just aren't looking at small enough companies:). There are plenty of folks that have made a living providing support for software they have released as Free Software. Many are very small software shops (one or two people), but Cygnus did it for years, and they were pretty good sized.
As for competing, I think that you would be hard pressed to say that Free Software wasn't at least holding its own against commercial software. Everywhere I look Free Software use is on the rise.
Yes, there are several examples of Free Software companies that had stupid business plans that are now out of business. However, there are a lot more commercial software companies with stupid business plans that are now out of business. That doesn't necessarily mean that commercial software companies aren't feasible.
It's true that Free Software is never going to be the type of high margin high volume business that Microsoft has built, but then again what new software venture is likely to product Microsoft like results. None! That's why RedHat's goal is not to try and take over Microsoft's billion dollar market, but instead turn that billion dollar market into a 100 million dollar market that they control a large part of.
And that's the danger of trying to compete against Free Software. They are willing to work for less, and can afford to do so because they put their end users to work for them.
Yeah, well this good sysadmin sees all of the work that must go into securing Outlook on each and every box and I can't help but think that the obvious solution is to use a different email client.
Sure, Outlook probably can be secured, but what's the point. It's much simpler to use an email client that wasn't specifically designed as a virus breeding ground. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable email clients that have a much better security history than Outlook.
In following with your gun analogy Outlook is a Saturday night special holdout pistol that is nearly as likely to blow your hand off as to work correctly. It's cheap, it's got some neat features, but it's dangerous. Using some other email client accomplishes the same thing without the the added risk and work of securing Outlook.
Yes, that's correct. Of course, with commercial software Alex doesn't get paid for making a web browser, a personal firewall, CD burning software, and a whole host of other programs because Microsoft has already bundled them into their operating system.
The days when the developer could pick and choose what projects they wanted to work on are over. Most of the software people use has become a commodity. Free Software doesn't change that fact, it simply allows smaller development houses the chance to build projects that have some chance of competing with the big boys.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if that was the case. My guess is that it won't stop MP3 sharing, but instead it will only make people that actually buy the CD angry.
I personally would be pretty upset if I the only way I could listen to the CD I purchased on my computer would be to download an illegally ripped MP3 from the net. Especially since I am working on ripping my CDs to ogg.
Perhaps WMA files will be good enough for the majority of folks, but they aren't likely to be good enough for me. I no longer have any Windows machines lying around.
My guess is the harder the RIAA cracks down the more likely it becomes that consumers will look for an alternative source for music. After all, there are plenty of bands that are happy to let you download MP3s of their music. The question is how much will the RIAA's customer base put up with before they start experimenting with the new methods of marketing and distribution that the Internet affords.
There are many reasons why Java has never taken off in the Free Software world, but probably the biggest reason is that Free Software advocates couldn't care less about Java's so-called platform independence. First of all, Java didn't support any Free Software platforms for quite a while, and even now there isn't really a decent Java 2 JVM for the BSDs. What's the use of platform independence if it doesn't support any of the platforms you are interested in? Secondly, the Free Software developers failed to see the benefits of using Java. One of the real draws to using Java was the binary compatibility across platforms. But that is only a minor feature if the source is open and gcc will compile it. Most Free Software developers would gladly give up binary compatibility across platforms if the source is portable to a pile of platforms and can be compiled to the native instruction set. This gives you all of the advantages of Java's Write Once Run Anywhere without the performance penalty of interpretted code.
And to top it off Sun won't even open up the code to Java. So that leaves the Free Software community with the tedious chore of creating their own implementation of Java and chasing after Sun's official version. It's a small wonder that most Free Software developers have simply chosen to focus on improving Free Software tools instead.
My guess is that this hands off attitude will pay off in the long run. Microsoft is making a concerted effort to shift Java developers to C#. Since most Java developers currently develop and deploy on Windows machines Sun is vulnerable to Microsoft's marketing in this area. If Sun wants Java to continue to thrive, then they are going to need the Open Source communities, and they aren't going to get them until they pony up the source code.
Even then there's no guarantee that Free Software developers will adopt Java. After all, Free Software developers, by and large, are pretty happy with the tools they are using now.
Believe it or not, most people don't agree with Nader, for a variety of reasons. He is certainly pro-consumer, but that message is only one of many that he presents, and he takes the idea to a fairly radical extreme.
In other words just because Nader doesn't even come close to having a chance at a National election doesn't necessarily mean that big business is destined to run the world. Politicians kow-tow to business, especially the entertainment businesses, because publicity is necessary for them. However, at the end of the day the politicians know that they have to be elected and that requires not upsetting a major portion of their constituency.
What is far more likely is that independent artists, novelists, and even small publishing companies will simply ignore DRM and release their content in open formats. Check out www.baen.com for how this might possibly work.
If you don't like what the entertainment industry is doing in this area, then don't buy their products. No one is forcing you to buy DVDs for example, and in the music industry you can go one step further by listening to the wide array of independent artists that have selected works available as MP3s.
If you like books read something from the Baen free library (I personally enjoyed 'An Oblique Approach'), and then purchase a Baen book (or a web subscription).
The Internet is making it much easier to distribute content than ever before, and there are plenty of people that are willing to use this power to grow their business, even if it means smaller margins. Those businesses that resist will simply be fodder for their competitors that adopt these new technologies. In the end, content is going to be less expensive than it is now, and many of the folks that currently market and distribute content are going to have to find something else to do.
Congress can pass all the laws they want, they aren't likely to make it illegal to give your work away, or to sell it at a vastly lower price than your competitors. And that is exactly what will happen.
Yes, that is a good point. If laws are passed that make open formats illegal, then we will have a serious problem. Fortunately nearly every U.S. citizen would have a problem with that sort of a law.
Imagine the outcry when people were told that home movies were no longer legal. Or worse, imagine the outcry when they are told that all of their classic CDs and VHS cassettes are illegal. U.S. citizens are not likely to stand for that. Even Microsoft isn't making that sort of a land grab. They are putting the features in place so that it will be possible to contain the distribution of content, but they will still play MP3s. DVD players are the same way. Not all of them are region encoded, or encrypted at all.
Of course, the entertainment industry will try and make these things illegal anyhow, but I can't imagine a law like that lasting very long.
What's more likely is that they will write their thesis in LaTeX or Open Office or some other piece of free software. Quite frankly, for a thesis LaTeX is already a better tool. And they will probably listen to music from unsigned (but good) artists that release much of their music in open formats.
The government isn't going to throw anyone into jail, because all of this will be legal. Companies that spend most of their time and effort trying to make their products and services of less value to their customer never do well in the long run. The Internet is making it easy to distribute content, companies that try and put the genie back in the bottle are guaranteed to fail eventually.
If you are worried about the power of these big corporations don't steal their intellectual property, use someone else's. There are plenty of musicians, artists, novelists, and programmers that are working outside the umbrella of the estabilishment. And in most cases, these folks are finding a wider and wider audience. In the case of music, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of years a hit single was generated from Internet marketing alone. If the Dancing baby can become a part of Americana, then a well written song could easily be spread in the same manner. The band that pulls this off first will probably see significant CD sales without having to pay any RIAA middle men.
Once that happens, hell will break loose in the music industry. While it doesn't take a whole lot of brains to be a rock star, even the dimmest of these folks can do basic math.
Who knows when it will happen, but if you want to speed it up listen to independent music, and share with your friends.
I share at least some of your skepticism about U.S. law makers. The mere fact that there are even a few law makers that think that the SSSCA is a good idea, should make all of us pause and think about the safety of our society.
However, I don't personally think that laws like the SSSCA will shield the entertainment industry from a serious turn of affairs. Laws like the SSSCA make it harder and harder to copy copyrighted works, but that is a small part of the battle. A much larger concern, especially for the music industry, is how easy it is to create and distribute the material. Right now, to get your music, movie, book, or whatever into the hands of the American consumer you have to sell your soul to the devil, but that is changing.
Slashdot is an excellent example of how the Internet is leveling the playing field. A couple of punk kids from Michigan have created a site that is more widely read than many very expensive publishing industry ventures. Journalists have been the first to switch over to the web, but it won't be too long before novelists, musicians, and even movie producers also start to take a look at the powerful distribution method that is the Internet.
Heck, I have already read two novels that were released on the Internet because the writers couldn't find a publisher. One of them was even pretty good:). And there is literally an entire world of music written by artists that want you to download their music. Even movies aren't really that safe. In ten years every teenage kid is going to have enough computer power to create and render realistic digital movies, and he or she will probably have enough bandwidth to consider sharing their work as well.
The high costs of distribution (and in the case of movies the high cost of creation) is what has created the necessity for the big production houses with their massive investments, and disgustingly large margins. But it is getting easier and easier to distribute and promote your art over the Internet.
How much longer are we really going to need the entertainment companies? Your guess is as good as mine, but I can guarantee that the harder they squeeze the faster we will find a way to reward the artists, novelists, musicians, and actors directly, without their help.
And you wonder why people consider these kinds of people to be wackos. Forcing me to care about your "concerns" through "direct action" is nothing but thinly veiled terrorism.
If you are strongly involved in any cause that A) no one cares about, and B) is willing to resort to force, then this definitely says something about your cause.
There are all sorts of causes that I care about, but there isn't a single solitary cause that I care about enough to curtail someone else's right to life, liberty, or property. Groups that are willing to cut these corners to promote their ends are wrong, whatever their beliefs might be.
I agree, most people do not change their minds simply because someone has chained themselves to a tree, blocked a road, set their hair on fire, or whatever crazy stunt that wackos are up to nowadays. If you aren't able to convince people by reasoning with them, then perhaps that says something about your cause.
The address book is no problem. LDAP works fine for that. It even works with Outlook.
The shared calendar, on the other hand, is more problematic. HP's OpenMail (I think that is what they call it) is pretty much a direct Exchange replacement, but for some reason HP has end-of-lifed it.
Yes, and the fact that you and I could potentially write music for a worldwide audience without the music industry's help is what has really got the RIAA's panties in a wad.
They know that their power basically stems from their control of the music pipeline. But that control is eroding, no matter how many tricky formats they come up with.
Yes, assuming, of course, that Microsoft can talk the Supreme Court into listening to their case later. It also means that the current judge can go ahead with the penalty phase of the trial. That's a big deal. Microsoft has been prancing around pretending that nothing was going to happen, and now it will.
They might be able to get the Supreme court to reverse the decision later, but by the time that happens they will already be under sentence. Then delays and stalling tactics will work in favor of the DOJ. And once again, it assumes that the Supreme Court might be interested in hearing the case in the future. There is a very good chance they won't ever be interested.
Microsoft is rapidly running out of escape avenues, and the Findings of Fact still stand.
I already have a 5 CD changer. It works fairly well (not nearly as well as having all of my songs available in an XMMS playlist, but nice enough).
I have played a bit with oggenc to see what it is capable of, but for now it hasn't been worth the extra time it would take to convert all my music. The setup I have now works, and I have had better uses for my cycles.
I totally agree, however, that compressed formats like MP3 and OGG are the future of music (at least until is is easy to cary around gigabytes of information). The people that I know that are still listen to and buy pop music all have large collections of MP3s. The target audience of the music industry is clamoring for MP3, and if the music industry ignores them, they do it at their own peril.
The biggest reason that I have managed to "steer clear" of the MP3 craze is quite simple. I started learning to play the guitar, and I am finding it to be more enjoyable to make my own music, than listen to someone else's.
Not everyone is going to learn to be a musician for the same reasons that not everyone is willing to learn to write their own software. But if the music industry continues to act aggressively against their own customers, then they will soon find that their customers have found new sources for their music.
Steve Heckler: "Once consumers can no longer get free music, they will have to buy the music in the formats we choose to put out."
Or alternatively, consumers may simply start listening to bands from alternative labels that do most of their promoting with free music samples over the Internet. The fact of the matter is that the record labels are not nearly as useful as they were when distributing music meant putting vinyl records on shelves, and promoting it required convincing radio stations to give it air time.
I personally have steered clear of this whole MP3 craze. So I couldn't care less what happens. But history and simple economics would suggest that the time is ripe for alternatives to the current music distribution scheme.
As a developer why should I consider using your RAND standards over the proprietary standards of the vendor of my choice? What exactly would be the difference? Many proprietary standards don't even require a fee.
I can understand why some of the organizations that make up the W3C would be interested in RAND standards. After all, it allows them to use the W3C to shill for their business. New FOOGazo technology is a W3C standard, just $1.95 per download!
Just because this sort of an arrangement is good for the large software development companies with their piles of patents doesn't make it a good thing for the developers that have, up until this point, relied on the W3C for guidance in which standards to use. Most developers that use the W3C guidelines don't work for commercial software companies. We work for corporations that have moved to web development because it is an easy way to cut costs. That being the case, why would you alienate your users by pushing RAND standards?
All the more reason for Germany to be interested in encryption. The U.S. might be shoving the genie back in the bottle for normal citizens, but you can bet that the government itself will continue to use encryption.
Likewise the Germans know that they can't run their government without encryption, but they realize that they can't expect the U.S. based software industry to supply it, and they can't really trust the U.S. based software industry not to create backdoors in the software they do supply. So the Germans are doing the only sane thing. They are writing their own crypto programs.
This is why the U.S. will fail to crack down on encryption. The genie is loose, and there are too many people that want it to stay loose.
It's good to hear that email counts a little higher because mail-bombing my congressmen with 50,000 emails would probably get me arrested as a terrorist under the upcoming PATRIOT law.
I could probably talk my way out of 1000 emails by pretending that the emails were simply due to a bug in the pre-beta version of Evolution that I used to send the message. But 50,000 is a little over the top.
The difference, of course, is that Open Office is Free Software. Meaning, of course, that if AOL were to get too heavy handed their customers could simply get the software from somewhere else.
The only reason that consumers currently put up with Microsoft (especially other large corporations) is that they have billions of dollars tied up in Microsoft document formats. If Open Office (or Star Office) were to take MS Office's place then your software vendor wouldn't have that kind of leverage. After all, you could get the software from any number of other vendors. All of which would have exactly the same access to the source code, and all of whom would be happy to take your money.
Microsoft gives us no such choice.
Star Office is going to become more widely distributed. Either the OEMs are going to give it away with new PCs, or perhaps AOL or someone else will give it away with their CDs like you propose.
Either way there are simply too many companies that are gunning for a piece of Microsoft for an opportunity like this to go unused.
Perhaps you are right, but that seems nearly suicidal to me. Microsoft has made billions controlling the desktop, and they are poised to control it for as long as they are willing to give their customers some breathing room.
What's more, Microsoft needs to retain its control of the client software so that they can dictate terms for their backend enterprise software. If Microsoft isn't careful they will find that by the time they get their enterprise software in place, and they are finally in a position to charge their customers each time they use their software, that their competitors will have jumped into the gap with inexpensive replacements for both the client and server software that Microsoft is peddling. Microsoft is going to have a hard time convincing their customers to go to a software leasing model, a credible, free as in free beer, competitor will give them a lot of trouble.
Giving away Internet Explorer has been a positive thing for Microsoft. And yet when faced with a low cost alternative to MS Office that is at least a somewhat credible replacement Microsoft raises prices and turns the screws on their customers to guarantee that they get paid every last cent (and then some). What are they thinking? No one would pay two seconds of attention to Star Office if Microsoft played a little nicer.
More troubling I don't see a single Microsoft business that has even the faintest hope of maintaining current revenue levels without their maintenance of the desktop lock in. Intel based servers are going to remain a commodity market no matter who wins. Linux will drive down server software prices even if it doesn't gain any more market share. Already it is almost impossible to find someone willing to pay a premium price for a Windows server for file and print services. It's simply too easy to use Linux for these tasks (either roll your own, or as part of some device). I have been migrating to PostgreSQL from MS SQL Server, and I imagine that in the next year or so that is likewise going to be a common refrain. That leaves Exchange, but that's replaceable on the backend as well (not with Free Software, but that will come as well). Microsoft's only edge is to use their desktop monopoly to force their customers towards their more expensive services.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, "the tighter they squeeze the more star systems will slip through their fingers." Up until now the threat to switch to Star Office (or worse, to Linux on the desktop) wasn't a very credible threat. It couldn't credibly be done. It's much closer to being possible now. Microsoft's timing couldn't hardly be worse. If Windows XP fails to bring PC buyers to the table then even the OEMs are likely to rethink their Star Office strategy.
If Star Office came bundled, matter of course, on most PCs, then Microsoft really would be hard pressed to sell MS Office. Times are likely to get tough in the PC market, and a preloaded Star Office would give the PC manufacturer a powerful incentive at a dynamite price.
I can't help but think that the folks at Sun are geniuses. Microsoft is spending billions trying to break into Sun's business with Windows. Sun, on the other hand, with a few millions, is aiming a dagger right at Microsoft's cash cow. And because of the OpenOffice connection, they don't even have to pay all of the developer costs, and they certainly are getting more than their fair share of free marketing.
WordPerfect and Lotus have failed to compete with MS Office simply because MS Office was quite literally free to most home users. They simply borrowed a copy from work. Why pay for Perfect Office for your home computer when you can have a copy of the de-facto standard for the price of a blank CD. Small businesses generally have a similar practice of purchasing one copy and sharing it.
The new versions of Office will stop this sort of casual piracy, and home users, and many small businesses will take a long hard look at Perfect Office, but Star Office has many of the same features, and it is essentially free.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. The tech was an idiot. Changing someone's OS, even if the software is unsupported is amazingly stupid, and almost criminally inept. He deserves to be fired.
But his actions are completely irrelevant to the meat of the argument. That doesn't mean that RedHat's help desk should support MS Word, and more importantly it does not mean that Linux is not ready for the desktop.
In fact, it illustrates how far Linux has come in a relatively short time, and how ridiculous the author's assumptions are. Applixware was really the only useable Office suite when I started using Linux, and now there are several Office suites that are much better. Saying that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because Applixware sucks is like saying that Windows wasn't ready for the desktop because WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows was so bad (after all Word for Windows was great). If Applixware doesn't cut it Linuxers can easily use OpenOffice, Abiword, or KWord, and if you don't mind using commercial software you can use WordPerfect. All of these will happily teach you to spell web site.
Imagine you worked at a company that had standardized on Windows for the desktop, and you went to the helpdesk because you couldn't get your KDE themes on your Linux laptop to work. Would you be surprised when the help desk folks simply formatted your hard drive and reinstalled Windows?
If you are going to use non-standard software, then you are going to have to support it yourself, that's how every helpdesk I have ever heard of works. Now most aren't pricks about it. They wouldn't simply format the drive and tell the user to lump it, but they wouldn't help her out either.
Users get stuck using software that doesn't do the job very well but is the "standard" all of the time. Why should RedHat be any different?
Besides, switching your OS because the spell checker doesn't know the correct spelling of "web site" (which was the example the article gave) is ridiculous. Especially if you are the web master. Geez, if your webmaster doesn't know how to spell web site, then you truly are screwed.
Besides, when preparing text for a web site (especially one that would be serving a lot of Linux users) you don't need a word processor, and you especially don't want to be using MS Word. Imagine how the "real" webmasters felt having to pass all of this lady's text through the demoronizer so that it would work with Netscape. And she wondered why they formatted her hard drive. A real BOFH would simply have allowed her to post stories that would be full of '?' for many of her users. Someone should have set up Emacs for her so that it would automatically load flyspell and told her to write her columns in plain text. Using Emacs for this sort of thing is no harder than Using MS Word. In fact, it would be easier.
Besides, I haven't used Applixware for a while, but it's spellchecker worked fine for me (4 years ago). The whole premise is bogus.
Either way, you can't expect the helpdesk to support non-standard software, and you can't expect RedHat to standardize on MS Word.
Inertia is good for Windows marketshare, but Microsoft doesn't make any money off of their past releases.
If no one buys Windows XP, then Microsoft makes no money, and unlike the Linux community, they need huge revenues to survive. If Windows XP doesn't sell, then Microsoft will miss their earnings expectations, their stock price will drop, their investors will leave, their developers will be left with a mediocre salary and worthless options, and their attempts to set new de-facto standards will be stymied.
Make no mistake. Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, it's old versions of their own software. If no one upgrades to the new versions then Microsoft is just as screwed as if everyone switched overnight to Linux. Either way they make precisely the same amount of cash.
You just aren't looking at small enough companies :). There are plenty of folks that have made a living providing support for software they have released as Free Software. Many are very small software shops (one or two people), but Cygnus did it for years, and they were pretty good sized.
As for competing, I think that you would be hard pressed to say that Free Software wasn't at least holding its own against commercial software. Everywhere I look Free Software use is on the rise.
Yes, there are several examples of Free Software companies that had stupid business plans that are now out of business. However, there are a lot more commercial software companies with stupid business plans that are now out of business. That doesn't necessarily mean that commercial software companies aren't feasible.
It's true that Free Software is never going to be the type of high margin high volume business that Microsoft has built, but then again what new software venture is likely to product Microsoft like results. None! That's why RedHat's goal is not to try and take over Microsoft's billion dollar market, but instead turn that billion dollar market into a 100 million dollar market that they control a large part of.
And that's the danger of trying to compete against Free Software. They are willing to work for less, and can afford to do so because they put their end users to work for them.
Yeah, well this good sysadmin sees all of the work that must go into securing Outlook on each and every box and I can't help but think that the obvious solution is to use a different email client.
Sure, Outlook probably can be secured, but what's the point. It's much simpler to use an email client that wasn't specifically designed as a virus breeding ground. There are plenty of perfectly acceptable email clients that have a much better security history than Outlook.
In following with your gun analogy Outlook is a Saturday night special holdout pistol that is nearly as likely to blow your hand off as to work correctly. It's cheap, it's got some neat features, but it's dangerous. Using some other email client accomplishes the same thing without the the added risk and work of securing Outlook.
Yes, that's correct. Of course, with commercial software Alex doesn't get paid for making a web browser, a personal firewall, CD burning software, and a whole host of other programs because Microsoft has already bundled them into their operating system.
The days when the developer could pick and choose what projects they wanted to work on are over. Most of the software people use has become a commodity. Free Software doesn't change that fact, it simply allows smaller development houses the chance to build projects that have some chance of competing with the big boys.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if that was the case. My guess is that it won't stop MP3 sharing, but instead it will only make people that actually buy the CD angry.
I personally would be pretty upset if I the only way I could listen to the CD I purchased on my computer would be to download an illegally ripped MP3 from the net. Especially since I am working on ripping my CDs to ogg.
Perhaps WMA files will be good enough for the majority of folks, but they aren't likely to be good enough for me. I no longer have any Windows machines lying around.
My guess is the harder the RIAA cracks down the more likely it becomes that consumers will look for an alternative source for music. After all, there are plenty of bands that are happy to let you download MP3s of their music. The question is how much will the RIAA's customer base put up with before they start experimenting with the new methods of marketing and distribution that the Internet affords.
There are many reasons why Java has never taken off in the Free Software world, but probably the biggest reason is that Free Software advocates couldn't care less about Java's so-called platform independence. First of all, Java didn't support any Free Software platforms for quite a while, and even now there isn't really a decent Java 2 JVM for the BSDs. What's the use of platform independence if it doesn't support any of the platforms you are interested in? Secondly, the Free Software developers failed to see the benefits of using Java. One of the real draws to using Java was the binary compatibility across platforms. But that is only a minor feature if the source is open and gcc will compile it. Most Free Software developers would gladly give up binary compatibility across platforms if the source is portable to a pile of platforms and can be compiled to the native instruction set. This gives you all of the advantages of Java's Write Once Run Anywhere without the performance penalty of interpretted code.
And to top it off Sun won't even open up the code to Java. So that leaves the Free Software community with the tedious chore of creating their own implementation of Java and chasing after Sun's official version. It's a small wonder that most Free Software developers have simply chosen to focus on improving Free Software tools instead.
My guess is that this hands off attitude will pay off in the long run. Microsoft is making a concerted effort to shift Java developers to C#. Since most Java developers currently develop and deploy on Windows machines Sun is vulnerable to Microsoft's marketing in this area. If Sun wants Java to continue to thrive, then they are going to need the Open Source communities, and they aren't going to get them until they pony up the source code.
Even then there's no guarantee that Free Software developers will adopt Java. After all, Free Software developers, by and large, are pretty happy with the tools they are using now.
Believe it or not, most people don't agree with Nader, for a variety of reasons. He is certainly pro-consumer, but that message is only one of many that he presents, and he takes the idea to a fairly radical extreme.
In other words just because Nader doesn't even come close to having a chance at a National election doesn't necessarily mean that big business is destined to run the world. Politicians kow-tow to business, especially the entertainment businesses, because publicity is necessary for them. However, at the end of the day the politicians know that they have to be elected and that requires not upsetting a major portion of their constituency.
What is far more likely is that independent artists, novelists, and even small publishing companies will simply ignore DRM and release their content in open formats. Check out www.baen.com for how this might possibly work.
If you don't like what the entertainment industry is doing in this area, then don't buy their products. No one is forcing you to buy DVDs for example, and in the music industry you can go one step further by listening to the wide array of independent artists that have selected works available as MP3s.
If you like books read something from the Baen free library (I personally enjoyed 'An Oblique Approach'), and then purchase a Baen book (or a web subscription).
The Internet is making it much easier to distribute content than ever before, and there are plenty of people that are willing to use this power to grow their business, even if it means smaller margins. Those businesses that resist will simply be fodder for their competitors that adopt these new technologies. In the end, content is going to be less expensive than it is now, and many of the folks that currently market and distribute content are going to have to find something else to do.
Congress can pass all the laws they want, they aren't likely to make it illegal to give your work away, or to sell it at a vastly lower price than your competitors. And that is exactly what will happen.
Yes, that is a good point. If laws are passed that make open formats illegal, then we will have a serious problem. Fortunately nearly every U.S. citizen would have a problem with that sort of a law.
Imagine the outcry when people were told that home movies were no longer legal. Or worse, imagine the outcry when they are told that all of their classic CDs and VHS cassettes are illegal. U.S. citizens are not likely to stand for that. Even Microsoft isn't making that sort of a land grab. They are putting the features in place so that it will be possible to contain the distribution of content, but they will still play MP3s. DVD players are the same way. Not all of them are region encoded, or encrypted at all.
Of course, the entertainment industry will try and make these things illegal anyhow, but I can't imagine a law like that lasting very long.
What's more likely is that they will write their thesis in LaTeX or Open Office or some other piece of free software. Quite frankly, for a thesis LaTeX is already a better tool. And they will probably listen to music from unsigned (but good) artists that release much of their music in open formats.
The government isn't going to throw anyone into jail, because all of this will be legal. Companies that spend most of their time and effort trying to make their products and services of less value to their customer never do well in the long run. The Internet is making it easy to distribute content, companies that try and put the genie back in the bottle are guaranteed to fail eventually.
If you are worried about the power of these big corporations don't steal their intellectual property, use someone else's. There are plenty of musicians, artists, novelists, and programmers that are working outside the umbrella of the estabilishment. And in most cases, these folks are finding a wider and wider audience. In the case of music, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of years a hit single was generated from Internet marketing alone. If the Dancing baby can become a part of Americana, then a well written song could easily be spread in the same manner. The band that pulls this off first will probably see significant CD sales without having to pay any RIAA middle men.
Once that happens, hell will break loose in the music industry. While it doesn't take a whole lot of brains to be a rock star, even the dimmest of these folks can do basic math.
Who knows when it will happen, but if you want to speed it up listen to independent music, and share with your friends.
I share at least some of your skepticism about U.S. law makers. The mere fact that there are even a few law makers that think that the SSSCA is a good idea, should make all of us pause and think about the safety of our society.
However, I don't personally think that laws like the SSSCA will shield the entertainment industry from a serious turn of affairs. Laws like the SSSCA make it harder and harder to copy copyrighted works, but that is a small part of the battle. A much larger concern, especially for the music industry, is how easy it is to create and distribute the material. Right now, to get your music, movie, book, or whatever into the hands of the American consumer you have to sell your soul to the devil, but that is changing.
Slashdot is an excellent example of how the Internet is leveling the playing field. A couple of punk kids from Michigan have created a site that is more widely read than many very expensive publishing industry ventures. Journalists have been the first to switch over to the web, but it won't be too long before novelists, musicians, and even movie producers also start to take a look at the powerful distribution method that is the Internet.
Heck, I have already read two novels that were released on the Internet because the writers couldn't find a publisher. One of them was even pretty good :). And there is literally an entire world of music written by artists that want you to download their music. Even movies aren't really that safe. In ten years every teenage kid is going to have enough computer power to create and render realistic digital movies, and he or she will probably have enough bandwidth to consider sharing their work as well.
The high costs of distribution (and in the case of movies the high cost of creation) is what has created the necessity for the big production houses with their massive investments, and disgustingly large margins. But it is getting easier and easier to distribute and promote your art over the Internet.
How much longer are we really going to need the entertainment companies? Your guess is as good as mine, but I can guarantee that the harder they squeeze the faster we will find a way to reward the artists, novelists, musicians, and actors directly, without their help.
And you wonder why people consider these kinds of people to be wackos. Forcing me to care about your "concerns" through "direct action" is nothing but thinly veiled terrorism.
If you are strongly involved in any cause that A) no one cares about, and B) is willing to resort to force, then this definitely says something about your cause.
There are all sorts of causes that I care about, but there isn't a single solitary cause that I care about enough to curtail someone else's right to life, liberty, or property. Groups that are willing to cut these corners to promote their ends are wrong, whatever their beliefs might be.
I agree, most people do not change their minds simply because someone has chained themselves to a tree, blocked a road, set their hair on fire, or whatever crazy stunt that wackos are up to nowadays. If you aren't able to convince people by reasoning with them, then perhaps that says something about your cause.
The address book is no problem. LDAP works fine for that. It even works with Outlook.
The shared calendar, on the other hand, is more problematic. HP's OpenMail (I think that is what they call it) is pretty much a direct Exchange replacement, but for some reason HP has end-of-lifed it.
Yes, and the fact that you and I could potentially write music for a worldwide audience without the music industry's help is what has really got the RIAA's panties in a wad.
They know that their power basically stems from their control of the music pipeline. But that control is eroding, no matter how many tricky formats they come up with.
Yes, assuming, of course, that Microsoft can talk the Supreme Court into listening to their case later. It also means that the current judge can go ahead with the penalty phase of the trial. That's a big deal. Microsoft has been prancing around pretending that nothing was going to happen, and now it will.
They might be able to get the Supreme court to reverse the decision later, but by the time that happens they will already be under sentence. Then delays and stalling tactics will work in favor of the DOJ. And once again, it assumes that the Supreme Court might be interested in hearing the case in the future. There is a very good chance they won't ever be interested.
Microsoft is rapidly running out of escape avenues, and the Findings of Fact still stand.
I already have a 5 CD changer. It works fairly well (not nearly as well as having all of my songs available in an XMMS playlist, but nice enough).
I have played a bit with oggenc to see what it is capable of, but for now it hasn't been worth the extra time it would take to convert all my music. The setup I have now works, and I have had better uses for my cycles.
I totally agree, however, that compressed formats like MP3 and OGG are the future of music (at least until is is easy to cary around gigabytes of information). The people that I know that are still listen to and buy pop music all have large collections of MP3s. The target audience of the music industry is clamoring for MP3, and if the music industry ignores them, they do it at their own peril.
The biggest reason that I have managed to "steer clear" of the MP3 craze is quite simple. I started learning to play the guitar, and I am finding it to be more enjoyable to make my own music, than listen to someone else's.
Not everyone is going to learn to be a musician for the same reasons that not everyone is willing to learn to write their own software. But if the music industry continues to act aggressively against their own customers, then they will soon find that their customers have found new sources for their music.
My favorite quote:
Or alternatively, consumers may simply start listening to bands from alternative labels that do most of their promoting with free music samples over the Internet. The fact of the matter is that the record labels are not nearly as useful as they were when distributing music meant putting vinyl records on shelves, and promoting it required convincing radio stations to give it air time.
I personally have steered clear of this whole MP3 craze. So I couldn't care less what happens. But history and simple economics would suggest that the time is ripe for alternatives to the current music distribution scheme.
As a developer why should I consider using your RAND standards over the proprietary standards of the vendor of my choice? What exactly would be the difference? Many proprietary standards don't even require a fee.
I can understand why some of the organizations that make up the W3C would be interested in RAND standards. After all, it allows them to use the W3C to shill for their business. New FOOGazo technology is a W3C standard, just $1.95 per download!
Just because this sort of an arrangement is good for the large software development companies with their piles of patents doesn't make it a good thing for the developers that have, up until this point, relied on the W3C for guidance in which standards to use. Most developers that use the W3C guidelines don't work for commercial software companies. We work for corporations that have moved to web development because it is an easy way to cut costs. That being the case, why would you alienate your users by pushing RAND standards?
All the more reason for Germany to be interested in encryption. The U.S. might be shoving the genie back in the bottle for normal citizens, but you can bet that the government itself will continue to use encryption.
Likewise the Germans know that they can't run their government without encryption, but they realize that they can't expect the U.S. based software industry to supply it, and they can't really trust the U.S. based software industry not to create backdoors in the software they do supply. So the Germans are doing the only sane thing. They are writing their own crypto programs.
This is why the U.S. will fail to crack down on encryption. The genie is loose, and there are too many people that want it to stay loose.
It's good to hear that email counts a little higher because mail-bombing my congressmen with 50,000 emails would probably get me arrested as a terrorist under the upcoming PATRIOT law.
I could probably talk my way out of 1000 emails by pretending that the emails were simply due to a bug in the pre-beta version of Evolution that I used to send the message. But 50,000 is a little over the top.
The difference, of course, is that Open Office is Free Software. Meaning, of course, that if AOL were to get too heavy handed their customers could simply get the software from somewhere else.
The only reason that consumers currently put up with Microsoft (especially other large corporations) is that they have billions of dollars tied up in Microsoft document formats. If Open Office (or Star Office) were to take MS Office's place then your software vendor wouldn't have that kind of leverage. After all, you could get the software from any number of other vendors. All of which would have exactly the same access to the source code, and all of whom would be happy to take your money.
Microsoft gives us no such choice.
Star Office is going to become more widely distributed. Either the OEMs are going to give it away with new PCs, or perhaps AOL or someone else will give it away with their CDs like you propose.
Either way there are simply too many companies that are gunning for a piece of Microsoft for an opportunity like this to go unused.
Perhaps you are right, but that seems nearly suicidal to me. Microsoft has made billions controlling the desktop, and they are poised to control it for as long as they are willing to give their customers some breathing room.
What's more, Microsoft needs to retain its control of the client software so that they can dictate terms for their backend enterprise software. If Microsoft isn't careful they will find that by the time they get their enterprise software in place, and they are finally in a position to charge their customers each time they use their software, that their competitors will have jumped into the gap with inexpensive replacements for both the client and server software that Microsoft is peddling. Microsoft is going to have a hard time convincing their customers to go to a software leasing model, a credible, free as in free beer, competitor will give them a lot of trouble.
Giving away Internet Explorer has been a positive thing for Microsoft. And yet when faced with a low cost alternative to MS Office that is at least a somewhat credible replacement Microsoft raises prices and turns the screws on their customers to guarantee that they get paid every last cent (and then some). What are they thinking? No one would pay two seconds of attention to Star Office if Microsoft played a little nicer.
More troubling I don't see a single Microsoft business that has even the faintest hope of maintaining current revenue levels without their maintenance of the desktop lock in. Intel based servers are going to remain a commodity market no matter who wins. Linux will drive down server software prices even if it doesn't gain any more market share. Already it is almost impossible to find someone willing to pay a premium price for a Windows server for file and print services. It's simply too easy to use Linux for these tasks (either roll your own, or as part of some device). I have been migrating to PostgreSQL from MS SQL Server, and I imagine that in the next year or so that is likewise going to be a common refrain. That leaves Exchange, but that's replaceable on the backend as well (not with Free Software, but that will come as well). Microsoft's only edge is to use their desktop monopoly to force their customers towards their more expensive services.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, "the tighter they squeeze the more star systems will slip through their fingers." Up until now the threat to switch to Star Office (or worse, to Linux on the desktop) wasn't a very credible threat. It couldn't credibly be done. It's much closer to being possible now. Microsoft's timing couldn't hardly be worse. If Windows XP fails to bring PC buyers to the table then even the OEMs are likely to rethink their Star Office strategy.
If Star Office came bundled, matter of course, on most PCs, then Microsoft really would be hard pressed to sell MS Office. Times are likely to get tough in the PC market, and a preloaded Star Office would give the PC manufacturer a powerful incentive at a dynamite price.
I can't help but think that the folks at Sun are geniuses. Microsoft is spending billions trying to break into Sun's business with Windows. Sun, on the other hand, with a few millions, is aiming a dagger right at Microsoft's cash cow. And because of the OpenOffice connection, they don't even have to pay all of the developer costs, and they certainly are getting more than their fair share of free marketing.
WordPerfect and Lotus have failed to compete with MS Office simply because MS Office was quite literally free to most home users. They simply borrowed a copy from work. Why pay for Perfect Office for your home computer when you can have a copy of the de-facto standard for the price of a blank CD. Small businesses generally have a similar practice of purchasing one copy and sharing it.
The new versions of Office will stop this sort of casual piracy, and home users, and many small businesses will take a long hard look at Perfect Office, but Star Office has many of the same features, and it is essentially free.