I'd just like to point out to many people I don't think that OSS is a very simple, obvious concept.
It depends upon how they were brought up. When you've spent your whole life being told "software must be controlled by the author", then it's very hard to grok the concept of open source software. If you don't understand the concept of source code, then understanding the difference between proprietary freeware (IExploder) and open source freeware (Mozilla) is very difficult.
Although I'm not as old and decrepit at RMS and ESR, I entered the computing world when the whole "everything must be proprietary" concept was just getting started. As a consequence, it was very easy for me to understand the FOSS concept because I had a glimpse of what the computing world was like back before the public got brainwashed by two decades of ZDNet and Microsoft.
If you find that people are confused, use the analogy of a recipe. If someone asks you for your chili recipe, do you give it to them, or do you tell them they must license it from you under an NDA?
My question is though, why should we even worry about whether or not Linux will surpass OS X in desktop usage or sales.
Well, if the average Linux advocate can't sleep at night knowing that someone somewhere is using a different distro than they are, then of course they're going to be all hot and bothered that someone is using a completely different OS. After all, the motto of Linux is "world domination"...
If I read the article correctly, SCO are claiming that code written by IBM engineers, at IBM in fact belongs to SCO, because that work done by IBM is a derivative work of Unix.
If SCO believes that, they're blithering idiots. Copyright owners have zero ownership in derivative works. Zero, nada, zilch. They may have legal priviledge to regulate its creation and distribution, but they are not the owners. They need to go and actually read Title 17.
Cable TV is subject to competition? Quick, what country is this, I might want to emigrate! Here in the US all cable TV providers are local monopolies mandated by the local government.
By changing your program to a different UI, and eliminating useful key-combinations, you ignored your target audience's user-model, and this pissed them off. Naturally.
Not at all. The reason the customers did not like the "new" interface was not because they were used to the "classic". They disliked it because it was an inefficient interface. The interface interrupted their workflow. It was easier to learn but harder to use. And usability is about "use".
Another analogy is WordPerfect versus MSWord. Back in the day WordPerfect was king. There were key combinations that did everything and the menu itself was very rarely used. Even when the graphical version of WordPerfect came about, the users in large part ignored the mouse and stuck to the keyboard. WordPerfect was efficient. So why did MSWord become king? Because there were more new users of word processors than old users during the entire decade of the nineties. The new breed of word processing professional is no where near as efficient as the old WordPerfect typist.
Usability isn't just about learning how to use the software, it's more about how efficient the software is to use. Please, make your software easy because I am a lazy person. But don't make it simple because I am not a simpleton.
For doctors just learning to use your program, if they have to read the manual, then it will simply annoy and frustrate them.
Sorry for the pause there, I was spewing Dr. Pepper out my nose...
What's more frustrating than the doctor having to read the manual, is for the doctor trying to perform twenty ultrasound exams on an unfamiliar system during a workday.
I'm sure it's frustrating for automobile mechanics to read their repair manuals. But guess what? They do it because they are professionals.
A good thing to do would probably be to have a logical menu bleeding into the top of the screen, and perhaps a toolbar bleeding into one of the other edges, with the key-combination for each function to the left of it (if it's a menu item) or underneath it (if it's a button).
You just described the "new" interface almost precisely. There aren't any "key-combinations" because you have to use an ultrasound with only one hand (the other holds the transducer), but we have the equivalent concept.
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I will agree with you 100% that there should be a common menu structure and key-commands between all systems that have menus and keyboards. But so much stuff in the UI is ad-hoc and unrelated to menus and keyboards. Just because Microsoft does it and 90% of the users use Windows does not mean that it's usable.
90% of all desktop users are using MS. If they attempt to migrate to GNU/Linux and no key-combinations work as expected, they will not think the software is good.
90% of all consumers in the US eat greasy hamburgers and fries. But I don't see fine restaurants scrambling all over themselves in an attempt to reproduce that particular bland flavor of fries left too long under the heat lamp.
The point of your software is that users should be able to get used to it quickly.
Absolutely not! The point of my software is that users can be able to use it for a long time. Newbies become intermediate users who become experienced users who become experts. To ignore everyone but the greenhorn newbie is ludicrous.
If I can make my software intuitively easy for the new user while keeping it powerful and flexible enough for the expert user, I will do so. But it's rarely possible. So I choose to support my existing users instead of those demoing for the first time. I wish I could please everyone but I can't.
I do not believe in catering to the lowest common denominator. I have a much higher regard for my users than that. I will provide tutorials for my software. I will provide context sensitive help for all controls. I will attempt to discover what works for them and what does not. But I will not slap my more experienced users in the face just to please someone trying out my software for the first time.
My company makes premium medical ultrasound systems. We are the leaders in the world in this industry with approx 60% marketshare. But we recently got bought out by a huge multinational. Our "classic" platform is still number one in the market. Their "new" platform that was to replace ours is failing miserably.
Both platforms had teams of UI designers working on it. For the "classic" platform our UI designers expected the systems to be used by people trained in their use. After all, this is medical diagnostic equipment, not a word processor. We never expected that some greenhorn newbie would be using it. Much of the UI design was done not by copying another platform, but by creating mockups and actually seeing how people used them. An extraordinary amount of effort was taken into gathering use metrics. Because of this, the "classic" platform has received many UI awards and is the preferred UI of users.
On the other hand, the "new" platform is a joke. Just as much UI manpower was placed into it. But the UI emphasis was to make it easy for the newbie. The user interface was deliberately designed to resemble the Windows desktop, because that's what the users were supposedly used to. Too many controls on the keyboard was too confusing, they said, so the elminated most keys and replaced them with onscreen icons and a playstation-style control pad. It's absolutely unusable for its intended purpose. It does sell somewhat well in Europe, but the reason it does is because physicians and sonographers don't make purchasing decision in Europe like the do in North America. Instead hospital administrators or government bureaucrats do. And since the "new" interface is easy enough for the non-technical admin or bureaucrat to use, they like it. But the people who actually have to use the system can't stand it. Which is a shame because underneath the skin it really is a fine system.
Take a trivial example, word processing. Throw an illiterate person in front of the UI. Absolutely pointless. That's why you need testers knowledgable in the task.
So now throw a professional fiction author in front of the UI. Better right? But what if the only word processor they've ever used was MSWord? The parts of the UI where they stumble and falter will be marked down by your metrics as bad, when its merely a result of unfamiliarity. Or to take an extreme case, take a subject who has never before used a computer. Wow, talk about skewing your study!
Throwing someone in front of a program or system won't tell you a damned thing. If they're already used to doing things in one particular way, then give them a lot of time to become familiar with the new way. That means giving them time to read the manual, and giving them time to make mistakes and blunders without those mistakes and blunders being counted in the metrics.
We are all ignorant of the long term effects of rampant and unchecked msimm posts. The consequences of such posts could be exceptional. I mean do you really trust msimm?
I can barely breath with all this bullshit that SCO is throwing around, I certainly don't need you to add to the mix.
Canopy has 5.8% stock in Trolltech. Trolltech employees have 70% stock in Trolltech. Trolltech is not a publicly traded corporation. Canopy does not own Trolltech!
Just like long division, there are times when you need to write your own search or sort algorithm. Why?
1) Sometimes it's easier to write your own sort than to write a weird ass adaptor for your weird ass data.
2) Sometimes "good enough" isn't "good enough" and you need that extra 15% performance increase you get for writing a search/sort customized for your data.
3) Actually knowing how stuff works is good for the brain. After you learn basic bonehead algorithms, take some time to learn long division as well.
4) Just to prove that you aren't a code monkey destined for the dustheap of history when you turn thirty.
Philisophy is one of the most important matters for me.
By all means. For example Blackbox as a Free Software window manager should have different usability goals then Blackbox as an Open Source window manager. When you think to yourself "I want a window manager that gives me free speech, fresher breath, and an insufferable smugness" then you're in Free Software mode and the window manager should behave one way. But when you think to yourself "I want a window manager that is pragmatic, well groomed, and quibbles over obscure meanings of the word 'the' in software licenses" then you're in Open Source Software mode and the widnow manager should behave in a completely different way.
In fact, the Blackbox configuration should let you choose between --free-software and --open-source at build time...
Grab someone and ask them if your program is easy to use. Sit them down in front of it -- without a manual -- and ask them to do something that the program was designed to do.
I agree with everything else except this. Let me rephrase the beginning of your statement slightly to make it work:
"Grab someone knowledgable in the domain...
After all, if someone through me in front of a circuit simulator, I would be lost no matter how elegant and correct the interface, simply because I know nothing about circuits.
The desktop is a slightly different market than the server, primarily because the user base is largely uneducated with regards to computers.
Once Windows got a certain marketshare it snowballed. It could have been another environment, but it was Windows that hit that magical number first. That magical number was when everyone knew someone else using Windows. When you don't know computers very well, it's reassuring to know that a couple of neighbors are using the same system you do. You can just call them up on the phone and ask your questions.
If the internet was as ubiquitious ten years ago as it is now, then the situation might have been different. But when you don't have instant access to all the answers to all your questions online, your tendency is to use whatever everyone else is using.
During the time that Microsoft was becoming a monopoly I was using DRDOS, GeoWorks and OS/2. I saw the monopoly happen. It didn't happen because Microsoft abused their monopoly power, because they DIDNT have a monopoly at the time! All of the nefarious schemings people acuse Microsoft of are perfectly legal and ethical if you are not a monopoly. Other environments were preloaded on some computers (GeoWorks). Other office tools had proprietary closed lock-in formats (WordPerfect). What made Microsoft different was that they managed to reach a certain critical marketshare before anyone else did around 1993 or so.
This can't be true. All the draconian IP laws come from the US. The MPAA and RIAA come from the US. The DMCA and UCITA are US laws. Microsoft and its DRM partners are all lcoated in the US. Alan Cox is boycotting the US. Every few weeks some random Slashdot poster threatens to emigrate from the US to preserve their dwindling freedoms.
But this is Sweden! As with all non-US nations, it's a socialist paradise of digital liberty. Is Holland going to criminalize marijuana next? Either this is April 1st in the Mayan Calendar or this must be a transcription error...
I never said Microsoft didn't do anything to hinder open source software. But to suggest that if Microsoft wasn't a monopoly that significantly more people would be using Linux on their home systems is wrong.
For example, if Microsoft had never been a monopoly their file formats for MSWord would still have been proprietary and closed. The evidence for this can be seen in the proprietary closed file formats for Framemaker, WordPerfect, WordPro, etc. People would STILL be locked into MSWord, and would STILL be choosing to use Window because of that lockin.
This USB CD Writer that I have checks for the USB speed. So imagine this scenario:
Customer buys a new computer with "USB 2" and a USB CD Writer. Customer goes home happy and smug. Customer proceeds to burn a CD. Customer sees the following message:
"USB 1.1 detected, limiting burn speed to x4..."
Who does the customer sue? The CD writer manufacturer? The burner software manufacturer? The dealer he bought his computer? The OEM? There is real criminal fraud here, but the odds are that the LAST person to be sued will be the actual people responsible.
What would happen if the Open Office folks suddenly had $5 million to hire programmers and work on making Open Office better?
Yeah, that would be nice. But it ain't going to happen. No way, no how, not even if this proposal passes in every nation in the world. Why? Because OpenOffice.org isn't a part of the "system". There are tens of thousands of people who know how to work the "system" and OpenOffice is going to be standing in line after them. They don't know how to lobby. They don't know how to apply for tax funding. They don't know where to pay their baksheesh.
The marketplace DOES work in the presence of a monopoly, so long as that monopoly is not mandated by the government. Open Source Software is SUCCESSFULLY competing against Microsoft.
Huh? Did you hear that right? Yes you did! Apache is the number one webserver, and still growing in marketshare. Linux and BSD are slowly but definitely eroding Microsoft's share on the server. The only place OSS isn't gaining a firm foothold is on the corporate and home desktop. The only reason it isn't doing well there has nothing to do with the Microsoft monopoly, but rather because OSS has not targetted that market segment in a rational manner.
Your third point is the most immediately compelling to me.
Dealing with the government imarketplace" is a specialized skill that extremely few Open Source developers have. For example, Oracle was able to overcharge California millions because MySQL didn't even have the contacts to know that a bid was available. The people who know how to work the system are going to be the ones getting pieces of this new tax pie. And those people won't be Open Source developers.
When the typical person sees a problem they instinctively say "we need a law!" If this person is slightly more sophisticated they might say "we need a regulation, tax, fee, oversight committee, etc". But no matter what words they use, the typical response to a problem is an increase in government power.
Is there a problem with the balance of FS and PS in the marketplace? Of course! But why must we instinctively rush to the government to solve the problem? We do we treat government as a god that we pray to for health, wealth and bountiful harvests?
If there is a bad law then by all means it is proper to eliminate it via a good law. If the FS/PS disparity is due to bad law, then let's eliminate that bad law. If it's due to obsolete bidding rules then let's change the bidding rules.
But this proposal doesn't do that. It's a prayer to the god'vernment to save the petitioner from the heathen proprietary hordes.
The concept of naming files, and sorting them in directories isn't a very good concept, and the proof of it is looking at how everyone here uses playlists to handle media files.
Another poster mentioned phone numbers. An even better analogy is email addresses. The concept of email addresses and typing them into a TO field isn't a very good concept, and the proof of it is looking at how many people use address books to handle email addresses. Why type in an email address when you can just type in (or select) "tom"?
Thus I have the situation at work where I can't find anyone's email address. I want to send an email to "John Smith" down the hall. But the company exchange server is global, so I have to scroll down an Outlook list poring over 50,000 John Smith entries to make sure I don't accidentally send it to the John Smith in Kuala Lampur instead of the John Smith down the hall. I finally find the right John Smith and I expect to see the email address so I can write it down for later. But no! It's not available! The way my company has Exchange set up there is no actual email to be found. So I can only send email to John Smith from Outlook, because Evolution, KMail, Netscape, etc., keep complaining that "John Smith" isn't a valid address.
If that's the kind of situation you want for my file system, then may I suggest you take a long walk off a short pier. There are valid reasons for file names just as there are valid reasons for email addresses. Just because you use a playlist does not mean that the filenames for your MP3s are irrelevant.
This obviously doesn't require a database filesystem, but I think it's gotten to the point where we *need* some way to assign metadata to files and then deal with files *soley* by metadata.
We (my, myself and the mouse in my pocket) are already dealing with files solely by metadata, because the path of a file is metadata. Maybe it's not metadata that you want or care for, but there's a lot of people that do. I'm all for having a lot of metadata attached to my data. But you haven't explained why we need to eliminate the current metadata in order to get new ones.
p.s. Have you ever seen how the typical Windows user works? There are fifty icons on the desktop in no particular order and every document they create goes into a single "My Documents" directory. What makes people think they won't just shove everything into the same metadata category of "unfiled"? I know if I had to specify four or five different categories every time I had to save some work, I would probably shove a crowbar through my monitor within the first week.
Right now I have the choice of using a file system or a database. Why must this choice be eliminated? Does the concept of a file system offend you so much that you have to eliminate everyone else's use of one? Can't you just go use a database and let the rest of use work the way we want to work?
Now, for an example, let's say that Microsoft releases the source to Windows, but it comes with a license that restricts what you can or cannot do with the source.
It would depend upon what those restrictions are as to whether it is Open Source and Free Software. The restriction that you had to pay $1000 for every copy you handed out would disqualify both definitions. But a restriction that you had to provide the source to everyone you provided a binary to would meet both definitions.
Although there may be profound religious differences between the Open Source and Free Software movements, the only difference between the definitions is one of detail.
Free Software is very loosely defined. Open Source is very narrowly defined. Since they both attempt to define the same class of software, it follows that it there will be some Free Software that doesn't meet the criteria of Open Source, but no Open Source software that doesn't meet the criteria of Free Software. All dogs are canines but not all canines are dogs.
But feel free to disagree. Name one piece of Open Source Software that does not meet the four freedoms of Free Software.
Slashdot Mirror
I know what you mean. Perhaps it was my rural upbringing that prevented that city materialism from infecting me.
Sad how capitalism got replaced by corporate materialism in the modern world.
I'd just like to point out to many people I don't think that OSS is a very simple, obvious concept.
It depends upon how they were brought up. When you've spent your whole life being told "software must be controlled by the author", then it's very hard to grok the concept of open source software. If you don't understand the concept of source code, then understanding the difference between proprietary freeware (IExploder) and open source freeware (Mozilla) is very difficult.
Although I'm not as old and decrepit at RMS and ESR, I entered the computing world when the whole "everything must be proprietary" concept was just getting started. As a consequence, it was very easy for me to understand the FOSS concept because I had a glimpse of what the computing world was like back before the public got brainwashed by two decades of ZDNet and Microsoft.
If you find that people are confused, use the analogy of a recipe. If someone asks you for your chili recipe, do you give it to them, or do you tell them they must license it from you under an NDA?
My question is though, why should we even worry about whether or not Linux will surpass OS X in desktop usage or sales.
Well, if the average Linux advocate can't sleep at night knowing that someone somewhere is using a different distro than they are, then of course they're going to be all hot and bothered that someone is using a completely different OS. After all, the motto of Linux is "world domination"...
If I read the article correctly, SCO are claiming that code written by IBM engineers, at IBM in fact belongs to SCO, because that work done by IBM is a derivative work of Unix.
If SCO believes that, they're blithering idiots. Copyright owners have zero ownership in derivative works. Zero, nada, zilch. They may have legal priviledge to regulate its creation and distribution, but they are not the owners. They need to go and actually read Title 17.
Cable TV is subject to competition? Quick, what country is this, I might want to emigrate! Here in the US all cable TV providers are local monopolies mandated by the local government.
By changing your program to a different UI, and eliminating useful key-combinations, you ignored your target audience's user-model, and this pissed them off. Naturally.
Not at all. The reason the customers did not like the "new" interface was not because they were used to the "classic". They disliked it because it was an inefficient interface. The interface interrupted their workflow. It was easier to learn but harder to use. And usability is about "use".
Another analogy is WordPerfect versus MSWord. Back in the day WordPerfect was king. There were key combinations that did everything and the menu itself was very rarely used. Even when the graphical version of WordPerfect came about, the users in large part ignored the mouse and stuck to the keyboard. WordPerfect was efficient. So why did MSWord become king? Because there were more new users of word processors than old users during the entire decade of the nineties. The new breed of word processing professional is no where near as efficient as the old WordPerfect typist.
Usability isn't just about learning how to use the software, it's more about how efficient the software is to use. Please, make your software easy because I am a lazy person. But don't make it simple because I am not a simpleton.
For doctors just learning to use your program, if they have to read the manual, then it will simply annoy and frustrate them.
Sorry for the pause there, I was spewing Dr. Pepper out my nose...
What's more frustrating than the doctor having to read the manual, is for the doctor trying to perform twenty ultrasound exams on an unfamiliar system during a workday.
I'm sure it's frustrating for automobile mechanics to read their repair manuals. But guess what? They do it because they are professionals.
A good thing to do would probably be to have a logical menu bleeding into the top of the screen, and perhaps a toolbar bleeding into one of the other edges, with the key-combination for each function to the left of it (if it's a menu item) or underneath it (if it's a button).
You just described the "new" interface almost precisely. There aren't any "key-combinations" because you have to use an ultrasound with only one hand (the other holds the transducer), but we have the equivalent concept.
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I will agree with you 100% that there should be a common menu structure and key-commands between all systems that have menus and keyboards. But so much stuff in the UI is ad-hoc and unrelated to menus and keyboards. Just because Microsoft does it and 90% of the users use Windows does not mean that it's usable.
90% of all desktop users are using MS. If they attempt to migrate to GNU/Linux and no key-combinations work as expected, they will not think the software is good.
90% of all consumers in the US eat greasy hamburgers and fries. But I don't see fine restaurants scrambling all over themselves in an attempt to reproduce that particular bland flavor of fries left too long under the heat lamp.
The point of your software is that users should be able to get used to it quickly.
Absolutely not! The point of my software is that users can be able to use it for a long time. Newbies become intermediate users who become experienced users who become experts. To ignore everyone but the greenhorn newbie is ludicrous.
If I can make my software intuitively easy for the new user while keeping it powerful and flexible enough for the expert user, I will do so. But it's rarely possible. So I choose to support my existing users instead of those demoing for the first time. I wish I could please everyone but I can't.
I do not believe in catering to the lowest common denominator. I have a much higher regard for my users than that. I will provide tutorials for my software. I will provide context sensitive help for all controls. I will attempt to discover what works for them and what does not. But I will not slap my more experienced users in the face just to please someone trying out my software for the first time.
My company makes premium medical ultrasound systems. We are the leaders in the world in this industry with approx 60% marketshare. But we recently got bought out by a huge multinational. Our "classic" platform is still number one in the market. Their "new" platform that was to replace ours is failing miserably.
Both platforms had teams of UI designers working on it. For the "classic" platform our UI designers expected the systems to be used by people trained in their use. After all, this is medical diagnostic equipment, not a word processor. We never expected that some greenhorn newbie would be using it. Much of the UI design was done not by copying another platform, but by creating mockups and actually seeing how people used them. An extraordinary amount of effort was taken into gathering use metrics. Because of this, the "classic" platform has received many UI awards and is the preferred UI of users.
On the other hand, the "new" platform is a joke. Just as much UI manpower was placed into it. But the UI emphasis was to make it easy for the newbie. The user interface was deliberately designed to resemble the Windows desktop, because that's what the users were supposedly used to. Too many controls on the keyboard was too confusing, they said, so the elminated most keys and replaced them with onscreen icons and a playstation-style control pad. It's absolutely unusable for its intended purpose. It does sell somewhat well in Europe, but the reason it does is because physicians and sonographers don't make purchasing decision in Europe like the do in North America. Instead hospital administrators or government bureaucrats do. And since the "new" interface is easy enough for the non-technical admin or bureaucrat to use, they like it. But the people who actually have to use the system can't stand it. Which is a shame because underneath the skin it really is a fine system.
Both.
Take a trivial example, word processing. Throw an illiterate person in front of the UI. Absolutely pointless. That's why you need testers knowledgable in the task.
So now throw a professional fiction author in front of the UI. Better right? But what if the only word processor they've ever used was MSWord? The parts of the UI where they stumble and falter will be marked down by your metrics as bad, when its merely a result of unfamiliarity. Or to take an extreme case, take a subject who has never before used a computer. Wow, talk about skewing your study!
Throwing someone in front of a program or system won't tell you a damned thing. If they're already used to doing things in one particular way, then give them a lot of time to become familiar with the new way. That means giving them time to read the manual, and giving them time to make mistakes and blunders without those mistakes and blunders being counted in the metrics.
We are all ignorant of the long term effects of rampant and unchecked msimm posts. The consequences of such posts could be exceptional. I mean do you really trust msimm?
I can barely breath with all this bullshit that SCO is throwing around, I certainly don't need you to add to the mix.
Canopy has 5.8% stock in Trolltech. Trolltech employees have 70% stock in Trolltech. Trolltech is not a publicly traded corporation. Canopy does not own Trolltech!
Now go away and spread your GNOME FUD elsewhere.
Or is this just yet another way to force us into a new upgrade cycle?
It is yet another way to force you into a new upgrade cycle. For the average PC, the PCI bandwidth problem isn't even a blip on the radar.
Of course, Longhorn is on the horizon. Every version of Windows since 1.0 required twice as many resources as before...
Just like long division, there are times when you need to write your own search or sort algorithm. Why?
1) Sometimes it's easier to write your own sort than to write a weird ass adaptor for your weird ass data.
2) Sometimes "good enough" isn't "good enough" and you need that extra 15% performance increase you get for writing a search/sort customized for your data.
3) Actually knowing how stuff works is good for the brain. After you learn basic bonehead algorithms, take some time to learn long division as well.
4) Just to prove that you aren't a code monkey destined for the dustheap of history when you turn thirty.
Philisophy is one of the most important matters for me.
By all means. For example Blackbox as a Free Software window manager should have different usability goals then Blackbox as an Open Source window manager. When you think to yourself "I want a window manager that gives me free speech, fresher breath, and an insufferable smugness" then you're in Free Software mode and the window manager should behave one way. But when you think to yourself "I want a window manager that is pragmatic, well groomed, and quibbles over obscure meanings of the word 'the' in software licenses" then you're in Open Source Software mode and the widnow manager should behave in a completely different way.
In fact, the Blackbox configuration should let you choose between --free-software and --open-source at build time...
Grab someone and ask them if your program is easy to use. Sit them down in front of it -- without a manual -- and ask them to do something that the program was designed to do.
I agree with everything else except this. Let me rephrase the beginning of your statement slightly to make it work:
"Grab someone knowledgable in the domain...
After all, if someone through me in front of a circuit simulator, I would be lost no matter how elegant and correct the interface, simply because I know nothing about circuits.
The desktop is a slightly different market than the server, primarily because the user base is largely uneducated with regards to computers.
Once Windows got a certain marketshare it snowballed. It could have been another environment, but it was Windows that hit that magical number first. That magical number was when everyone knew someone else using Windows. When you don't know computers very well, it's reassuring to know that a couple of neighbors are using the same system you do. You can just call them up on the phone and ask your questions.
If the internet was as ubiquitious ten years ago as it is now, then the situation might have been different. But when you don't have instant access to all the answers to all your questions online, your tendency is to use whatever everyone else is using.
During the time that Microsoft was becoming a monopoly I was using DRDOS, GeoWorks and OS/2. I saw the monopoly happen. It didn't happen because Microsoft abused their monopoly power, because they DIDNT have a monopoly at the time! All of the nefarious schemings people acuse Microsoft of are perfectly legal and ethical if you are not a monopoly. Other environments were preloaded on some computers (GeoWorks). Other office tools had proprietary closed lock-in formats (WordPerfect). What made Microsoft different was that they managed to reach a certain critical marketshare before anyone else did around 1993 or so.
This can't be true. All the draconian IP laws come from the US. The MPAA and RIAA come from the US. The DMCA and UCITA are US laws. Microsoft and its DRM partners are all lcoated in the US. Alan Cox is boycotting the US. Every few weeks some random Slashdot poster threatens to emigrate from the US to preserve their dwindling freedoms.
But this is Sweden! As with all non-US nations, it's a socialist paradise of digital liberty. Is Holland going to criminalize marijuana next? Either this is April 1st in the Mayan Calendar or this must be a transcription error...
I never said Microsoft didn't do anything to hinder open source software. But to suggest that if Microsoft wasn't a monopoly that significantly more people would be using Linux on their home systems is wrong.
For example, if Microsoft had never been a monopoly their file formats for MSWord would still have been proprietary and closed. The evidence for this can be seen in the proprietary closed file formats for Framemaker, WordPerfect, WordPro, etc. People would STILL be locked into MSWord, and would STILL be choosing to use Window because of that lockin.
This USB CD Writer that I have checks for the USB speed. So imagine this scenario:
Customer buys a new computer with "USB 2" and a USB CD Writer. Customer goes home happy and smug. Customer proceeds to burn a CD. Customer sees the following message:
"USB 1.1 detected, limiting burn speed to x4..."
Who does the customer sue? The CD writer manufacturer? The burner software manufacturer? The dealer he bought his computer? The OEM? There is real criminal fraud here, but the odds are that the LAST person to be sued will be the actual people responsible.
What would happen if the Open Office folks suddenly had $5 million to hire programmers and work on making Open Office better?
Yeah, that would be nice. But it ain't going to happen. No way, no how, not even if this proposal passes in every nation in the world. Why? Because OpenOffice.org isn't a part of the "system". There are tens of thousands of people who know how to work the "system" and OpenOffice is going to be standing in line after them. They don't know how to lobby. They don't know how to apply for tax funding. They don't know where to pay their baksheesh.
The marketplace DOES work in the presence of a monopoly, so long as that monopoly is not mandated by the government. Open Source Software is SUCCESSFULLY competing against Microsoft.
Huh? Did you hear that right? Yes you did! Apache is the number one webserver, and still growing in marketshare. Linux and BSD are slowly but definitely eroding Microsoft's share on the server. The only place OSS isn't gaining a firm foothold is on the corporate and home desktop. The only reason it isn't doing well there has nothing to do with the Microsoft monopoly, but rather because OSS has not targetted that market segment in a rational manner.
Your third point is the most immediately compelling to me.
Dealing with the government imarketplace" is a specialized skill that extremely few Open Source developers have. For example, Oracle was able to overcharge California millions because MySQL didn't even have the contacts to know that a bid was available. The people who know how to work the system are going to be the ones getting pieces of this new tax pie. And those people won't be Open Source developers.
When the typical person sees a problem they instinctively say "we need a law!" If this person is slightly more sophisticated they might say "we need a regulation, tax, fee, oversight committee, etc". But no matter what words they use, the typical response to a problem is an increase in government power.
Is there a problem with the balance of FS and PS in the marketplace? Of course! But why must we instinctively rush to the government to solve the problem? We do we treat government as a god that we pray to for health, wealth and bountiful harvests?
If there is a bad law then by all means it is proper to eliminate it via a good law. If the FS/PS disparity is due to bad law, then let's eliminate that bad law. If it's due to obsolete bidding rules then let's change the bidding rules.
But this proposal doesn't do that. It's a prayer to the god'vernment to save the petitioner from the heathen proprietary hordes.
The concept of naming files, and sorting them in directories isn't a very good concept, and the proof of it is looking at how everyone here uses playlists to handle media files.
Another poster mentioned phone numbers. An even better analogy is email addresses. The concept of email addresses and typing them into a TO field isn't a very good concept, and the proof of it is looking at how many people use address books to handle email addresses. Why type in an email address when you can just type in (or select) "tom"?
Thus I have the situation at work where I can't find anyone's email address. I want to send an email to "John Smith" down the hall. But the company exchange server is global, so I have to scroll down an Outlook list poring over 50,000 John Smith entries to make sure I don't accidentally send it to the John Smith in Kuala Lampur instead of the John Smith down the hall. I finally find the right John Smith and I expect to see the email address so I can write it down for later. But no! It's not available! The way my company has Exchange set up there is no actual email to be found. So I can only send email to John Smith from Outlook, because Evolution, KMail, Netscape, etc., keep complaining that "John Smith" isn't a valid address.
If that's the kind of situation you want for my file system, then may I suggest you take a long walk off a short pier. There are valid reasons for file names just as there are valid reasons for email addresses. Just because you use a playlist does not mean that the filenames for your MP3s are irrelevant.
This obviously doesn't require a database filesystem, but I think it's gotten to the point where we *need* some way to assign metadata to files and then deal with files *soley* by metadata.
We (my, myself and the mouse in my pocket) are already dealing with files solely by metadata, because the path of a file is metadata. Maybe it's not metadata that you want or care for, but there's a lot of people that do. I'm all for having a lot of metadata attached to my data. But you haven't explained why we need to eliminate the current metadata in order to get new ones.
p.s. Have you ever seen how the typical Windows user works? There are fifty icons on the desktop in no particular order and every document they create goes into a single "My Documents" directory. What makes people think they won't just shove everything into the same metadata category of "unfiled"? I know if I had to specify four or five different categories every time I had to save some work, I would probably shove a crowbar through my monitor within the first week.
Right now I have the choice of using a file system or a database. Why must this choice be eliminated? Does the concept of a file system offend you so much that you have to eliminate everyone else's use of one? Can't you just go use a database and let the rest of use work the way we want to work?
Now, for an example, let's say that Microsoft releases the source to Windows, but it comes with a license that restricts what you can or cannot do with the source.
It would depend upon what those restrictions are as to whether it is Open Source and Free Software. The restriction that you had to pay $1000 for every copy you handed out would disqualify both definitions. But a restriction that you had to provide the source to everyone you provided a binary to would meet both definitions.
Although there may be profound religious differences between the Open Source and Free Software movements, the only difference between the definitions is one of detail.
Free Software is very loosely defined. Open Source is very narrowly defined. Since they both attempt to define the same class of software, it follows that it there will be some Free Software that doesn't meet the criteria of Open Source, but no Open Source software that doesn't meet the criteria of Free Software. All dogs are canines but not all canines are dogs.
But feel free to disagree. Name one piece of Open Source Software that does not meet the four freedoms of Free Software.